FOOTNOTES:
[1] The subsidy from the Government was $16,000 a mile on the plains, and $48,000 a mile in the mountains.
THE BELLE OF ATHABASCA
Athabasca Belle did not burst upon Smith the Silent all at once, like a rainbow or a sunrise in the desert. He would never say she had been thrust upon him. She was acquired, he said, in an unguarded moment.
The trouble began when Smith was pathfinding on the upper Athabasca for the new transcontinental. Among his other assets Smith had two camp kettles. One was marked with the three initials of the new line, which, at that time, existed only on writing material, empty pots, and equally empty parliamentary perorations. The other was not marked at all. It was the personal property of Jaquis, who cooked for Smith and his outfit. The Belle was a fine looking Cree—tall, strong, magnifique. Jaquis warmed to her from the start, but the Belle was not for Jaquis, himself a Siwash three to one. She scarcely looked at him, and answered him only when he asked if she'd encore the pork and beans. But she looked at Smith. She would sit by the hour, her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, watching him wistfully, while he drew crazy, crooked lines or pictured mountains with rivers running between them—all of which, from the Belle's point of view, was not only a waste of time, but had absolutely nothing to do with the case.
The Belle and her brown mother came to the camp of the Silent first one glorious morn in the moon of August, with a basket of wild berries and a pair of beaded moccasins. Smith bought both—the berries for Jaquis, out of which he built strange pies, and the moccasins for himself. He called them his night slippers, but as a matter of fact there was no night on the Athabasca at that time. The day was divided into three shifts, one long and two short ones,—daylight, dusk, and dawn. So it was daylight when the Belle first fixed her large dark eyes upon the strong, handsome face of Smith the Silent, as he sat on his camp stool, bent above a map he was making. Belle's mother, being old in years and unafraid, came close, looked at the picture for a moment, and exclaimed: "Him Jasper Lake," pointing up the Athabasca.
"You know Jasper Lake?" asked the engineer, glancing up for the first time.
"Oui," said the old woman (Belle's step-father was half French); "know 'im ver' well."
Smith looked her over as a matter of habit, for he allowed no man or woman to get by him with the least bit of information concerning the country through which his imaginary line lay. Then he glanced at Belle for fully five seconds, then back to his blue print. Nobody but a he-nun, or a man already wedded to the woods, could do that, but to the credit of the camp it will go down that the chief was the only man in the outfit who failed to feel her presence. As for Jaquis, the alloyed Siwash, he carried the scar of that first meeting for six months, and may, for aught I know, take it with him to his little swinging grave. Even Smith remembers to this day how she looked, standing there on her two trim ankles, that disappeared into her hand-turned sandals or faded in the flute and fringe of her fawn skin skirt. Her full bosom rose and fell, and you could count the beat of her wild heart in the throb of her throat. Her cheeks showed a faint flush of red through the dark olive,—the flush of health and youth,—her nostrils dilated, like those of an Ontario high-jumper, as she drank life from the dewy morn, while her eye danced with the joy of being alive. Jaquis sized and summed her up in the one word "magnific." But in that moment, when she caught the keen, piercing eye of the engineer, the Belle had a stroke that comes sooner or later to all these wild creatures of the wilderness, but comes to most people but once in a lifetime. She never forgot the gleam of that one glance, though the Silent one was innocent enough.
It was during the days that followed, when she sat and watched him at his work, or followed him for hours in the mountain fastnesses, that the Belle of Athabasca lost her heart.
When he came upon a bit of wild scenery and stopped to photograph it, the Belle stood back of him, watching his every movement, and when he passed on she followed, keeping always out of sight.
The Belle's mother haunted him. As often as he broke camp and climbed a little higher upstream, the brown mother moved also, and with her the Belle.
"What does this old woman want?" asked the engineer of Jaquis one evening when, returning to his tent, he found the fat Cree and her daughter camping on his trail.
"She want that pot," said Jaquis.
"Then for the love of We-sec-e-gea, god of the Crees," said Smith, "give it into her hands and bid her begone."
Jaquis did as directed, and the old Indian went away, but she left the girl.
The next day Smith started on a reconnoissance that would occupy three or four days. As he never knew himself when he would return, he never took the trouble to inform Jaquis, the tail of the family.
After breakfast the Belle went over to her mother's. She would have lunched with her mother from the much coveted kettle, but the Belle's mother told her that she should return to the camp of the white man, who was now her lord and master. So the Belle went back and lunched with Jaquis, who otherwise must have lunched alone. Jaquis tried to keep her, and wooed her in his half-wild way; but to her sensitive soul he was repulsive. Moreover, she felt that in some mysterious manner her mother had transferred her, together with her love and allegiance, to Smith the Silent, and to him she must be true. Therefore she returned to the Cree camp.
As the sinking sun neared the crest of the Rockies, the young Indian walked back to the engineer's camp. As she strode along the new trail she plucked wildflowers by the wayside and gathered leaves and wove them into vari-colored wreaths, swinging along with the easy grace of a wild deer.
Now some women would say she had not much to make her happy, but she was happy nevertheless. She loved a man—to her the noblest, most god-like creature of his kind,—and she was happy in abandoning herself to him. She had lived in this love so long, had felt and seen it grow from nothing to something formidable, then to something fine, until now it filled her and thrilled her; it overspread everything, outran her thoughts, brought the far-off mountains nearer, shortened the trail between her camp and his, gave a new glow to the sunset, a new glory to the dawn and a fresher fragrance to the wildflowers; the leaves whispered to her, the birds came, nearer and sang sweeter; in short it was her life—the sunshine of her soul. And that's the way a wild woman loves.
And she was to see him soon. Perhaps he would speak to her, or smile on her. If only he gave a passing glance she would be glad and content to know that he was near. Alas, he came not at all. She watched with the stars through the short night, slept at dawn, and woke to find Jaquis preparing the morning meal. She thought to question Jaquis, but her interest in the engineer, and the growing conviction that his own star sank as his master's rose, rendered him unsafe as a companion to a young bride whose husband was in the hills and unconscious of the fact that he was wedded to anything save the wilderness and his work.
Jaquis not only refused to tell her where the engineer was operating, but promised to strangle her if she mentioned his master's name again.
At last the long day died, the sunset was less golden, and the stars sang sadder than they sang the day before. She watched the west, into which he had gone and out of which she hoped he might return to her. Another round of dusk and dawn and there came another day, with its hours that hung like ages. When she sighed her mother scolded and Jaquis swore. When at last night came to curtain the hills, she stole out under the stars and walked and walked until the next day dawned. A lone wolf howled to his kith, but they were not hungry and refused to answer his call. Often, in the dark, she fancied she heard faint, feline footsteps behind her. Once a big black bear blocked her trail, staring at her with lifted muzzle wet with dew and stained with berry juice. She did not faint nor scream nor stay her steps, but strode on. Now nearer and nearer came the muffled footsteps behind her. The black bear backed from the trail and kept backing, pivoting slowly, like a locomotive on a turntable, and as she passed on, stood staring after her, his small eyes blinking in babylike bewilderment. And so through the dusk and dark and dawn this love-mad maiden walked the wilderness, innocent of arms, and with no one near to protect her save the little barefooted bowman whom the white man calls the God of Love.
Meanwhile away to the west, high in the hills, where the Findlay flowing into the Pine makes the Peace, then cutting through the crest of the continent makes a path for the Peace, Smith and his little army, isolated, remote, with no cable connecting them with the great cities of civilization, out of touch with the telegraph, away from the war correspondent, with only the music of God's rills for a regimental band, were battling bravely in a war that can end only with the conquest of a wilderness. Ah, these be the great generals—these unheralded heroes who, while the smoke of slaughter smudges the skies and shadows the sun, wage a war in which they kill only time and space, and in the end, without despoiling the rest of the world, win homes for the homeless. These are the heroes of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Finding no trace of the trail-makers, the Belle faced the rising sun and sought the camp of the Crees.
The mysterious shadow with the muffled tread, that had followed her from the engineer's camp, shrank back into the bush as she passed down the trail. That was Jaquis. He watched her as she strode by him, uncertain as to whether he loved or hated her, for well he knew why she walked the wilderness all night alone. Now the Gitche in his unhappy heart made him long to lift her in his arms and carry her to camp, and then the bad god, Mitche, would assert himself and say to the savage that was in him, "Go, kill her. She despises her race and flings herself at the white man's feet." And so, impelled by passion and stayed by love, he followed her. The white man within him made him ashamed of his skulking, and the Indian that was in him guided him around her and home by a shorter trail.
That night the engineers returned, and when Smith saw the Cree in the camp he jumped on Jaquis furiously.
"Why do you keep this woman here?" he demanded.
"I—keep? Me?" quoth Jaquis, blinking as bewildered as the black bear had blinked at the Belle.
"Who but you?—you heathen!" hissed the engineer.
Now Jaquis, calling up the ghosts of his dead sires, asserted that it was the engineer himself who was "keeping" the Cree. "You bought her—she's yours," said Jaquis, in the presence of the company.
"You ill-bred ——" Smith choked, and reached for a tent prop. The next moment his hand was at the Indian's throat. With a quick twist of his collar band he shut off the Siwash's wind, choking him to the earth.
"What do you mean?" he demanded, and Jaquis, coughing, put up his hands. "I meant no lie," said he. "Did you not give to her mother the camp kettle? She has it, marked G.T.P."
"And what of that?"
"Voilà," said Jaquis, "because of that she gave to you the Belle of Athabasca."
Smith dropped his stick, releasing the Indian.
"I did not mean she is sold to you. She is trade—trade for the empty pot, the Belle—the beautiful. From yesterday to this day she followed you, far, very far, to the foot of the Grande Côte, and nothing harmed her. The mountain lion looked on her in terror, the timber wolf took to the hills, the black bear backed from the trail and let her pass in peace," said Jaquis, with glowing enthusiasm. It was the first time he had talked of her, save to the stars and to We-sec-e-gea, and he glowed and grew eloquent in praise of her.
"You take her," said Smith, with one finger levelled at the head of the cook, "to the camp of the Crees. Say to her mother that your master is much obliged for the beautiful gift, but he's too busy to get married and too poor to support a wife."
From the uttermost rim of the ring of light that came from the flickering fire la Belle the beautiful heard and saw all that had passed between the two men. She did not throw herself at the feet of the white man. Being a wild woman she did not weep nor cry out with the pain of his words, that cut like cold steel into her heart. She leaned against an aspen tree, stroking her throat with her left hand, swallowing with difficulty. Slowly from her girdle she drew a tiny hunting-knife, her one weapon, and toyed with it. She put the hilt to the tree, the point to her bare breast, and breathed a prayer to We-sec-e-gea, god of the Crees. She had only to throw the weight of her beautiful body on the blade, sink without a moan to the moss, and pass, leaving the camp undisturbed.
Smith marked the faintest hint of sarcasm in the half smile of the Indian as he turned away.
"Come here," he cried. Jaquis approached cautiously. "Now, you skulking son of a Siwash, this is to be skin for skin. If any harm comes to that young Cree you go to your little hammock in the hemlocks—you understand?"
"Oui, Monsieur," said Jaquis.
"Very well, then; remember—skin for skin."
Now to the Belle, watching from her shelter in the darkness, there was something splendid in this. To hear her praises sung by the Siwash, then to have the fair god, who had heard that story, champion her, to take the place of her protector, was all new to her. "Ah, good God," she sighed; "it is better, a thousand times better, to love and lose him than to waste one's life, never knowing this sweet agony."
She felt in a vague way that she was soaring above the world and its woes. At times, in the wild tumult of her tempestuous soul, she seemed to be borne beyond it all, through beautiful worlds. Love, for her, had taken on great white wings, and as he wafted her out of the wilderness and into her heaven, his talons tore into her heart and hurt like hell, yet she could rejoice because of the exquisite pleasure that surpassed the pain.
"Sweet We-sec-e-gea," she sighed, "good god of my dead, I thank thee for the gift of this great love that stays the steel when my aching heart yearns for it. I shall not destroy myself and distress him, disturbing him in his great work, whatever it is; but live—live and love him, even though he send me away."
She kissed the burnished blade and returned it to her belt.
When Jaquis, circling the camp, failed to find her, he guessed that she was gone, and hurried after her along the dim, starlit trail. When he had overtaken her, they walked on together. Jaquis tried now to renew his acquaintance with the handsome Cree and to make love to her. She heard him in absolute silence. Finally, as they were nearing the Cree camp, he taunted her with having been rejected by the white man.
"And my shame is yours," said she softly. "I love him; he sends me away. You love me; I send you from me—it is the same."
Jaquis, quieted by this simple statement, said good-night and returned to the tents, where the pathfinders were sleeping peacefully under the stars.
And over in the Cree camp the Belle of Athabasca, upon her bed of boughs, slept the sleep of the innocent, dreaming sweet dreams of her fair god, and through them ran a low, weird song of love, and in her dream Love came down like a beautiful bird and bore her out of this life and its littleness, and though his talons tore at her heart and hurt, yet was she happy because of the exquisite pleasure that surpassed all pain.
PATHFINDING IN THE NORTHWEST
It was summer when my friend Smith, whose real name is Jones, heard that the new transcontinental line would build by the way of Peace River Pass to the Pacific. He immediately applied, counting something, no doubt, on his ten years of field work in Washington, Oregon, and other western states, and five years pathfinding in Canada.
The summer died; the hills and rills and the rivers slept, but while they slept word came to my friend Smith the Silent, and he hurriedly packed his sleds and set out.
His orders were, like the orders of Admiral Dewey, to do certain things—not merely to try. He was to go out into the northern night called winter, feel his way up the Athabasca, over the Smoky, follow the Peace River, and find the pass through the Rockies.
If the simple story of that winter campaign could be written out it would be finer than fiction. But it will never be. Only Smith the Silent knows, and he won't tell.
Sometimes, over the pipe, he forgets and gives me glimpses into the winter camp, with the sun going out like a candle: the hastily made camp with the half-breed spotting the dry wood against the coming moment when night would drop over the forest like a curtain over a stage; the "lean-to" between the burning logs, where he dozes or dreams, barely beyond the reach of the flames; the silence all about, Jaquis pulling at his pipe, and the huskies sleeping in the snow like German babies under the eiderdown. Sometimes, out of the love of bygone days, he tells of long toilsome journeys with the sun hiding behind clouds out of which an avalanche of snow falls, with nothing but the needle to tell where he hides; of hungry dogs and half starved horses, and lakes and rivers fifty and a hundred miles out of the way.
Once, he told me, he sent an engineer over a low range to spy out a pass. By the maps and other data they figured that he would be gone three days, but a week went by and no word from the pathfinder. Ten days and no news. On the thirteenth day, when Smith was preparing to go in search of the wanderer, the running gear of the man and the framework of the dogs came into camp. He was able to smile and say to Smith that he had been ten days without food, save a little tea. For the dogs he had had nothing.
A few days rest and they were on the trail again, or on the "go" rather; and you might know that disciple of Smith the Silent six months or six years before he would, unless you worked him, refer to that ten days' fast. They think no more of that than a Jap does of dying. It's all in the day's work.
Suddenly, Smith said, the sun swung north, the days grew longer. The sun grew hot and the snow melted on the south hills; the hushed rivers, rending their icy bonds, went roaring down to the Lakes and out towards the Arctic Ocean. And lo, suddenly, like the falling of an Arctic night, the momentary spring passed and it was summer time.
Then it was that Smith came into Edmonton to make his first report, and here we met for the first time for many snows.
Joyously, as a boy kicks the cover off on circus morning, this Northland flings aside her winter wraps and stands forth in her glorious garb of summer. The brooklets murmur, the rivers sing, and by their banks and along the lakes waterfowl frolic, and overhead glad birds, that seem to have dropped from the sky, sing joyfully the almost endless song of summer. At the end of the long day, when the sun, as if to make up for its absence, lingers, loath to leave us in the twilight, beneath their wings the song-birds hide their heads, then wake and sing, for the sun is swinging up over the horizon where the pink sky, for an hour, has shown the narrow door through which the day is dawning.
The dogs and sleds have been left behind and now, with Jaquis the half-breed "boy" leading, followed closely by Smith the Silent, we go deeper and deeper each day into the pathless wilderness.
To be sure it is not all bush, all forest. At times we cross wide reaches of wild prairie lands. Sometimes great lakes lie immediately in front of us, compelling us to change our course. Now we come to a wide river and raft our outfit over, swimming our horses. Weeks go by and we begin to get glimpses of the Rockies rising above the forest, and we push on. The streams become narrower as we ascend, but swifter and more dangerous.
We do not travel constantly now, as we have been doing. Sometimes we keep our camp for two or three days. The climbing is hard, for Smith must get to the top of every peak in sight, and so I find it "good hunting" about the camp.
Jaquis is a fairly good cook, and what he lacks we make up with good appetites, for we live almost constantly out under the sun and stars.
Pathfinders always lay up on Sunday, and sometimes, the day being long, Smith steals out to the river and comes back with a mountain trout as long as a yardstick.
The scenery is beyond description. Now we pass over the shoulder of a mountain with a river a thousand feet below. Sometimes we trail for hours along the shore of a limpid lake that seems to run away to the foot of the Rockies.
Far away we get glimpses of the crest of the continent, where the Peace River gashes it as if it had been cleft by the sword of the Almighty; and near the Rockies, on either bank, grand battlements rise that seem to guard the pass as the Sultan's fortresses frown down on the Dardanelles.
Now we follow a narrow trail that was not a trail until we passed. A careless pack-horse, carrying our blankets, slips from the path and goes rolling and tumbling down the mountain side. A thousand feet below lies an arm of the Athabasca. Down, down, and over and over the pack-horse goes, and finally fetches up on a ledge five hundred feet below the trail. "By damn," says Jaquis, "dere is won bronco bust, eh?"
Smith and Jaquis go down to cut the cinches and save the pack, and lo, up jumps our cayuse, and when he is repacked he takes the trail as good as new. The pack and the low bush save his life.
In any other country, to other men, this would be exciting, but it's all in the day's work with Smith and Jaquis.
The pack-pony that had been down the mountain is put in the lead now—that is, in the lead of the pack animals; for he has learned his lesson, he will be careful. And yet we are to have other experiences along this same river.
Suddenly, down a side cañon, a mountain stream rushes, plunging into the Athabasca, joyfully, like a sea-bather into the surf. Jaquis calls this side-stream "the mill-tail o' hell." Smith the Silent prepares to cross. It's all very simple. All you need is a stout pole, a steady nerve, and an utter disregard for the hereafter.
When Smith is safe on the other shore we drive the horses into the stream. They shudder and shrink from the ice-cold water, but Jaquis and I urge them, and in they plunge. My, what a struggle! Their wet feet on the slippery boulders in the bottom of the stream, the swift current constantly tripping them—it was thrilling to see and must have been agony for the animals.
Midway, where the current was strongest, a mouse-colored cayuse carrying a tent lost his feet. The turbulent tide slammed him up on top of a great rock, barely hidden beneath the water, and he got to his feet like a cat that has fallen upon the edge of an eave-trough. Trembling, the cayuse called to Smith, and Smith, running downstream, called back, urging the animal to leave the refuge and swim for it. The pack-horse perched on the rock gazes wistfully at the shore. The waters, breaking against his resting-place, wash up to his trembling knees. About him the wild river roars, and just below leaps over a ten-foot fall into the Athabasca.
All the other horses, having crossed safely, shake the water from their dripping sides and begin cropping the tender grass. We could have heard that horse's heart beat if we could have hushed the river's roar.
Smith called again, the cayuse turned slightly, and whether he leaped deliberately or his feet slipped on the slippery stones, forcing him to leap, we could not say, but he plunged suddenly into the stream, uttering a cry that echoed up the cañon and over the river like the cry of a lost soul.
The cruel current caught him, lifted him, and plunged him over the drop, and he was lost instantly in the froth and foam of the falls.
Far down, at a bend of the Athabasca, something white could be seen drifting towards the shore. That night Smith the Silent made an entry in his little red book marked "Grand Trunk Pacific," and tented under the stars.
THE CURÉ'S CHRISTMAS GIFT
"A country that is bad or good,
Precisely as your claim pans out;
A land that's much misunderstood,
Misjudged, maligned and lied about."
When the pathfinders for the New National Highway pushed open the side door and peeped through to the Pacific they not only discovered a short cut to Yokohama, but opened to the world a new country, revealing the last remnant of the Last West.
Edmonton is the outfiling point, of course, but Little Slave Lake is the real gateway to the wilderness. Here we were to make our first stop (we were merely exploring), and from this point our first portage was to the Peace River, at Chinook, where we would get into touch once more with the Hudson's Bay Company.
Jim Cromwell, the free trader who was in command of Little Slave, made us welcome, introducing us ensemble to his friend, a former H.B. factor, to the Yankee who was looking for a timber limit, to the "Literary Cuss," as he called the young man in corduroys and a wide white hat, who was endeavoring to get past "tradition," that has damned this Dominion both in fiction and in fact for two hundred years, and do something that had in it the real color of the country.
At this point the free trader paused to assemble the Missourian. This iron-gray individual shook himself out, came forward, and gripped our hands, one after another.
The free trader would not allow us to make camp that night. We were sentenced to sup and lodge with him, furnishing our own bedding, of course, but baking his bread.
The smell of cooking coffee and the odor of frying fish came to us from the kitchen, and floating over from somewhere the low, musical, well modulated voice of Cromwell, conversing in Cree, as he moved about among his mute and apparently inoffensive camp servants.
The day died hard. The sun was still shining at 9 p.m. At ten it was twilight, and in the dusk we sat listening to tales of the far North, totally unlike the tales we read in the story-books. Smith the Silent, who was in charge of our party, was interested in the country, of course, its physical condition, its timber, its coal, and its mineral possibilities. He asked about its mountains and streams, its possible and impossible passes; but the "Literary Cuss" and I were drinking deeply of weird stories that were being told quite incautiously by the free trader, the old factor, and by the Missourian. We were like children, this young author and I, sitting for the first time in a theatre. The flickering camp fire that we had kindled in the open served as a footlight, while the Gitch Lamp, still gleaming in the west, glanced through the trees and lit up the faces of the three great actors who were entertaining us without money and without price. The Missourian was the star. He had been reared in the lap of luxury, had run away from college where he had been installed by a rich uncle, his guardian, and jumped down to South America. He had ridden with the Texas Rangers and with President Diaz's Regulators, had served as a scout on the plains and worked with the Mounted Police, but was now "retired."
All of which we learned not from him directly, but from the stories he told and from his bosom friend, the free trader, whose guests we were, and whose word, for the moment at least, we respected.
The camp fire burned down to a bed of coals, the Gitch Lamp went out. In the west, now, there was only a glow of gold, but no man moved.
Smith the Pathfinder and our host the free trader bent over a map. "But isn't this map correct?" Smith would ask, and when in doubt Jim would call the Missourian. "No," said the latter, "you can't float down that river because it flows the other way, and that range of mountains is two hundred miles out."
Gradually we became aware that all this vast wilderness, to the world unknown, was an open book to this quiet man who had followed the buffalo from the Rio Grande to the Athabasca where he turned, made a last stand, and then went down.
When the rest had retired the free trader and I sat talking of the Last West, of the new trail my friends were blazing, and of the wonderfully interesting individual whom we called the Missourian.
"He had a prospecting pard," said Jim, "whom he idolized. This man, whose name was Ramsey, Jack Ramsey, went out in '97 between the Coast Range and the Rockies, and now this sentimental old pioneer says he will never leave the Peace River until he finds Ramsey's bones.
"You see," Cromwell continued, "friendship here and what goes for friendship outside are vastly different. The matter of devoting one's life to a friend or to a duty, real or fancied, is only a trifle to these men who abide in the wilderness. I know of a Chinaman and a Cree who lived and died the most devoted friends. You see the Missourian hovering about the last camping-place of his companion. Behold the factor! He has left the Hudson Bay Company after thirty years because he has lost his life's best friend, a man who spoke another language, whose religion was not the brand upon which the factor had been brought up in England; yet they were friends."
The camp fire had gone out. In the south we saw the first faint flush of dawn as Cromwell, knocking the ashes from his pipe, advised me to go to bed. "You get the old factor to tell you the story of his friend the curé, and of the curé's Christmas gift," Cromwell called back, and I made a point of getting the story, bit by bit, from the florid factor himself, and you shall read it as it has lingered in my memory.
When the new curé came to Chinook on the Upper Peace River, he carried a small hand-satchel, his blankets, and a crucifix. His face was drawn, his eyes hungry, his frame wasted, but his smile was the smile of a man at peace with the world. The West—the vast, undiscovered Canadian West—jarred on the sensitive nerves of this Paris-bred priest. And yet, when he crossed the line that marks what we are pleased to call "civilization," and had reached the heart of the real Northwest, where the people were unspoiled, natural, and honest, where a handful of Royal Northwest Mounted Police kept order in an empire that covers a quarter of a continent, he became deeply interested in this new world, in the people, in the imperial prairies, the mountains, and the great wide rivers that were racing down to the northern sea.
The factor at the Hudson's Bay post, whose whole life since he had left college in England had been passed on the Peace River, at York Factory, and other far northern stations over which waved the Hudson's Bay banner, warmed to the new curé from their first meeting, and the curé warmed to him. Each seemed to find in the other a companion that neither had been able to find among the few friends of his own faith.
And so, through the long evenings of the northern winter, they sat in the curé's cabin study or by the factor's fire, and talked of the things which they found interesting, including politics, literature, art, and Indians. Despite the great gulf that rolled between the two creeds in which they had been cradled, they found that they were in accord three times in five—a fair average for men of strong minds and inherent prejudices. At first the curé was anxious to get at the real work of "civilizing" the natives.
"Yes," the factor would say, blowing the smoke upward, "the Indian should be civilized—slowly—the slower the better."
The curé would pretend to look surprised as he relit his pipe. Once the curé asked the factor why he was so indifferent to the welfare of the Crees, who were the real producers, without whose furs there would be no trade, no post, no job for the ruddy-faced factor. The priest was surprised that the factor should appear to fail to appreciate the importance of the trapper.
"I do," said the factor.
"Then why do you not help us to lift him to the light?"
"I like him," was the laconic reply.
"Then why don't you talk to him of his soul?"
"Haven't the nerve," said the factor, shaking his head and blowing more smoke.
The curé shrugged his shoulders.
"I say," said the florid factor, facing the pale priest. "Did you see me decorating the old chief, Dunraven, yesterday?"
"Yes, I presume you were giving him a pour boire in advance to secure the greater catch of furs next season," said the priest, with his usual sad yet always pleasant smile.
"A very poor guess for one so wise," said the factor. "Attendez," he continued. "This post used to be closed always in winter. The tent doors were tied fast on the inside, after which the man who tied them would crawl out under the edge of the canvas. When winter came, the snow, banked about, held the tent tightly down, and the Hudson's Bay business was bottled at this point until the springless summer came to wake the sleeping world.
"Last winter was a hard winter. The snow was deep and game scarce. One day a Cree Indian found himself in need of tea and tobacco, and more in need of a new pair of trousers. Passing the main tent one day, he was sorely tempted. Dimly, through the parchment pane, he could see great stacks of English tweeds, piles of tobacco, and boxes of tea, but the tent was closed. He was sorely tried. He was hungry—hungry for a horn of tea and a twist of the weed, and cold, too. Ah, bon père, it is hard to withstand cold and hunger with only a canvas between one and the comforts of life!"
"Oui, Monsieur!" said the curé, warmly, touched by the pathos of the tale.
"The Indian walked away (we know that by his footprints), but returned to the tent. The hunger and the cold had conquered. He took his hunting-knife and slit the deerskin window and stepped inside. Then he approached the pile of tweed trousers and selected a large pair, putting down from the bunch of furs he had on his arms to the value of eight skins—the price his father and grandfather had paid. He visited the tobacco pile and helped himself, leaving four skins on the tobacco. When he had taken tea he had all his heart desired, and having still a number of skins left, he hung them upon a hook overhead and went away.
"When summer dawned and a clerk came to open the post, he saw the slit in the window, and upon entering the tent saw the eight skins on the stack of tweeds, the four skins on the tobacco, and the others on the chest, and understood.
"Presently he saw the skins which the Indian had hung upon the hook, took them down, counted them carefully, appraised them, and made an entry in the Receiving Book, in which he credited 'Indian-cut-the-window, 37 skins.'
"Yesterday Dunraven came to the post and confessed.
"It was to reward him for his honesty that I gave him the fur coat and looped the big brass baggage check in his buttonhole. Voilà!"
The curé crossed his legs and then recrossed them, tossed his head from side to side, drummed upon the closed book which lay in his lap, and showed in any number of ways, peculiar to nervous people, his amazement at the story and his admiration for the Indian.
"Little things like that," said the factor, filling his pipe, "make me timid when talking to a Cree about 'being good.'"
When summer came, and with it the smell of flowers and the music of running streams, the factor and his friend the curé used to take long tramps up into the highlands, but the curé's state of health was a handicap to him. The factor saw the telltale flush in the priest's face and knew that the "White Plague" had marked him; yet he never allowed the curé to know that he knew. That summer a little river steamer was sent up from Athabasca Lake by the Chief Commissioner who sat in the big office at Winnipeg, and upon this the factor and his friend took many an excursion up and down the Peace. The friendship that had grown up between the factor and the new curé formed the one slender bridge that connected the Anglican and the Catholic camps. Even the "heathen Crees" marvelled that these white men, praying to the same God, should dwell so far apart. Wing You, who had wandered over from Ramsay's Camp on the Pine River, explained it all to Dunraven: "Flenchman and Englishman," said Wing. "No ketchem same Glod. You—Clee," continued the wise Oriental, "an' Englishman good flend—ketchem same Josh; you call 'im We-sec-e-gea, white man call 'im God."
And so, having the same God, only called by different names, the Crees trusted the factor, and the factor trusted the Crees. Their business intercourse was on the basis of skin for skin, furs being the recognized coin of the country.
"Why do you not pay them in cash, take cash in turn, and let them have something to rattle?" asked the curé one day.
"They won't have it," said the factor. "Silver Skin, brother to Dunraven, followed a party of prospectors out to Edmonton last fall and tried it. He bought a pair of gloves, a red handkerchief, and a pound of tobacco, and emptied his pockets on the counter, so that the clerk in the shop might take out the price of the goods. According to his own statement, the Indian put down $37.80. He took up just six-thirty-five. When the Cree came back to God's country he showed me what he had left and asked me to check him up. When I had told him the truth, he walked to the edge of the river and sowed the six-thirty-five broadcast on the broad bosom of the Peace."
And so, little by little, the patient priest got the factor's view-point, and learned the great secret of the centuries of success that has attended the Hudson's Bay Company in the far North.
And little by little the two men, without preaching, revealed to the Indians and the Oriental the mystery of Life—vegetable life at first—of death and life beyond. They showed them the miracle of the wheat.
On the first day of June they put into a tiny grave a grain of wheat. They told the Blind Ones that the berry would suffer death, decay, but out of that grave would spring fresh new flags that would grow and blow, fanned by the balmy chinook winds, and wet by the dews of heaven.
On the first day of September they harvested seventy-two stalks and threshed from the seventy-two stalks seven thousand two hundred grains of wheat. They showed all this to the Blind Ones and they saw. The curé explained that we, too, would go down and die, but live again in another life, in a fairer world.
The Cree accepted it all in absolute silence, but the Oriental, with his large imagination, exclaimed, pointing to the tiny heap of golden grain: "Me ketchem die, me sleep, byme by me wake up in China—seven thousand—heap good." The curé was about to explain when the factor put up a warning finger. "Don't cut it too fine, father," said he. "They're getting on very well."
That was a happy summer for the two men, working together in the garden in the cool dawn and chatting in the long twilight that lingers on the Peace until 11 p.m. Alas! as the summer waned the factor saw that his friend was failing fast. He could walk but a short distance now without resting, and when the red rose of the Upper Athabasca caught the first cold kiss of Jack Frost, the good priest took to his bed. Wing You, the accomplished cook, did all he could to tempt him to eat and grow strong again. Dunraven watched from day to day for an opportunity to "do something"; but in vain. The faithful factor made daily visits to the bedside of his sick friend. As the priest, who was still in the springtime of his life, drew nearer to the door of death, he talked constantly of his beloved mother in far-off France—a thing unusual for a priest, who is supposed to burn his bridges when he leaves the world for the church.
Often when he talked thus, the factor wanted to ask his mother's name and learn where she lived, but always refrained.
Late in the autumn the factor was called to Edmonton for a general conference of all the factors in the employ of the Honorable Company of gentlemen adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay. With a heavy heart he said good-bye to the failing priest.
When he had come within fifty miles of Chinook, on the return trip, he was wakened at midnight by Dunraven, who had come out to ask him to hurry up as the curé was dying, but wanted to speak to the factor first.
Without a word the Englishman got up and started forward, Dunraven leading on the second lap of his "century."
It was past midnight again when the voyageurs arrived at the river. There was a dim light in the curé's cabin, to which Dunraven led them, and where the Catholic bishop and an Irish priest were on watch. "So glad to see you," said the bishop. "There is something he wants from your place, but he will not tell Wing. Speak to him, please."
"Ah, Monsieur, I'm glad that you are come—I'm weary and want to be off."
"The long traverse, eh?"
"Oui, Monsieur—le grand voyage."
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked the Englishman. The dying priest made a movement as if hunting for something. The bishop, to assist, stepped quickly to his side. The patient gave up the quest of whatever he was after and looked languidly at the factor. "What is it, my son?" asked the bishop, bending low. "What would you have the factor fetch from his house?"
"Just a small bit of cheese," said the sick man, sighing wearily.
"Now, that's odd," mused the factor, as he went off on his strange errand.
When the Englishman returned to the cabin, the bishop and the priest stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Upon a bench on the narrow veranda Dunraven sat, resting after his hundred-mile tramp, and on the opposite side of the threshold Wing You lay sleeping in his blankets, so as to be in easy call if he were wanted.
When the two friends were alone, the sick man signalled, and the factor drew near.
"I have a great favor—a very great favor to ask of you," the priest began, "and then I'm off. Ah, mon Dieu!" he panted. "It has been hard to hold out. Jesus has been kind."
"It's damned tough at your time, old fellow," said the factor, huskily.
"It's not my time, but His."
"Yes—well I shall be over by and by."
"And those faithful dogs—Dunraven and Wing—thank them for—"
"Sure! If I can pass," the factor broke in, a little confused.
"Thank them for me—for their kindnesses—and care. Tell them to remember the sermon of the wheat. And now, good friend," said the priest, summoning all his strength, "attendez!"
He drew a thin, white hand from beneath the cover, carrying a tiny crucifix. "I want you to send this to my beloved mother by registered post; send it yourself, please, so that she may have it before the end of the year. This will be my last Christmas gift to her. And the one that comes from her to me—that is for you, to keep in remembrance of me. And write to her—oh, so gently tell her—Jesus—help me," he gasped, sitting upright. "She lives in Rue —— O Mary, Mother of Jesus," he cried, clutching at the collar of his gown; and then he fell back upon his bed, and his soul swept skyward like a toy balloon when the thin thread snaps.
When the autumn sun smiled down on Chinook and the autumn wind sighed in by the door and out by the open window where the dead priest lay, Wing and Dunraven sat on the rude bench in the little veranda, going over it all, each in his own tongue, but uttering never a word, yet each to the other expressing the silence of his soul.
The factor, in the seclusion of his bachelor home, held the little cross up and examined it critically. "To be sent to his mother, she lives in Rue —— Ah, if I could have been but a day sooner; yet the bishop must know," he added, putting the crucifix carefully away.
The good people in the other world, beyond the high wall that separated the two Christian Tribes, had been having shivers over the factor and his fondness for the Romans; but when he volunteered to assist at the funeral of his dead friend, his people were shocked. In that scant settlement there were not nearly enough priests to perform, properly, the funeral services, so the factor fell in, mingling his deep full voice with the voices of the bishop and the Irish brother, and grieving even as they grieved.
And the Blind Ones, Wing and Dunraven, came also, paying a last tearless tribute to the noble dead.
When it was all over and the post had settled down to routine, the factor found in his mail, one morning, a long letter from the Chief Commissioner at Winnipeg. It told the factor that he was in bad repute, that the English Church bishop had been grieved, shocked, and scandalized through seeing the hitherto respectable factor going over to the Catholics. Not only had he fraternized with them, but had actually taken part in their religious ceremonies. And to crown it all, he had carried, a respectable Cree and the Chinese cook along with him.
The factor's placid face took on a deep hue, but only for a moment. He filled his pipe, poking the tobacco down hard with his thumb. Then he took the Commissioner's letter, twisted it up, touched it to the tiny fire that blazed in the grate, and lighted his pipe. He smoked in silence for a few moments and then said to himself, being alone, "Huh!"
"Ah, that from the bishop reminds me," said the factor. "I must run over and see the other one."
When the factor had related to the French-Canadian bishop what had passed between the dead curé and himself, the bishop seemed greatly annoyed. "Why, man, he had no mother!"
"The devil he didn't—I beg pardon—I say he asked me to send this to his mother. He started to tell me where she lived and then the call came. It was the dying request of a dear friend. I beg of you tell me his mother's name, that I may keep my word."
"It is impossible, my son. When he came into the church he left the world. He was bound by the law of the church to give up father, mother, sister, brother—all."
"The church be—do you mean to say—"
"Peace, my son, you do not understand," said the bishop, lifting the little cross which he had taken gently from the factor at the beginning of the interview.
Now the factor was not in the habit of having his requests ignored and his judgment questioned.
"Do you mean to say you will not give me the name and address of the dead man's mother?"
"It's absolutely impossible. Moreover, I am shocked to learn that our late brother could so far forget his duty at the very door of death. No, son, a thousand times no," said the bishop.
"Then give me the crucifix!" demanded the factor, fiercely.
"That, too, is impossible; that is the property of the church."
"Well," said the factor, filling his pipe again and gazing into the flickering fire, "they're all about the same. And they're all right, too, I presume—all but Wing and Dunraven and me."
THE MYSTERIOUS SIGNAL
As Waterloo lingered in the memory of the conquered Corsican, so Ashtabula was burned into the brain of Bradish. Out of that awful wreck he crawled, widowed and childless. For a long time he did not realize, for his head was hurt in that frightful crash.
By the time he was fit to leave the hospital they had told him, little by little, that all his people had perished.
He made his way to the West, where he had a good home and houses to rent and a hole in the hillside that was just then being changed from a prospect to a mine.
The townspeople, who had heard of the disaster, waited for him to speak of it—but he never did. The neighbors nodded, and he nodded to them and passed on about his business. The old servant came and asked if she should open the house, and he nodded. The man-servant—the woman's husband—came also, and to him Bradish nodded; and at noon he had luncheon alone in the fine new house that had just been completed a year before the catastrophe.
About once a week Bradish would board the midnight express, ride down the line for a few hundred miles, and double back.
When he went away they knew he had gone, and when he came back they knew he had returned and that was as much as his house-keeper, his agent, or the foreman at the mines could tell you.
One would have thought that the haunting memory of Ashtabula would have kept him at home for the rest of his life; but he seemed to travel for the sake of the ride only, or for no reason, as a deaf man walks on the railroad-track.
Gradually he extended his trips, taking the Midland over into Utah; and once or twice he had been seen on the rear end of the California Limited as it dropped down the western water-shed of Raton Range.
One night, when the Limited was lapping up the landscape and the Desert was rushing in under her pilot and streaking out below the last sleeper like tape from a ticker, the danger signal sounded in the engine cab, the air went on full, the passengers braced themselves against the seats in front of them, or held their breath in their berths as the train came to a dead stop.
The conductor and the head man hurried forward shouting, "What's the matter?" to the engineer.
The driver, leaning from his lofty window, asked angrily, "What in thunder's the matter with you? I got a stop signal from behind."
"You'd better lay off and have a good sleep," said the conductor.
"I'll put you to sleep for a minute if you ever hint that I was not awake coming down Cañon Diablo," shouted the engineer, releasing his brakes. As the long, heavy train glided by, the trainmen swung up like sailors, and away went the Limited over the long bridge, five minutes to the bad.
A month later the same thing happened on the East end. The engineer was signalled and stopped on a curve with the point of his pilot on a high bridge.
This time the captain and the engineer were not so brittle of temper. They discussed the matter, calling on the fireman, who had heard nothing, being busy in the coal-tank.
The head brakeman, crossing himself, said it was the "unseen hand" that had been stopping the Limited on the Desert. It might be a warning, he said, and walked briskly out on the bridge looking for dynamite, ghosts, and things.
When he had reached the other end of the bridge, he gave the go-ahead signal and the train pulled out. As they had lost seven minutes, it was necessary for the conductor to report "cause of delay;" and that was the first hint the officials of any of the Western lines had of the "unseen hand."
Presently trainmen, swapping yarns at division stations, heard of the mysterious signal on other roads.
The Columbia Limited, over on the Short Line, was choked with her head over Snake River, at the very edge of Pendleton. When they had pulled in and a fresh crew had taken the train on, the in-coming captain and his daring driver argued over the incident and they each got ten days,—not for the delay, but because they could not see to sign the call-book next morning and were not fit to be seen by other people.
The next train stopped was the International Limited on the Grand Trunk, then the Sunset by the South Coast.
The strange phenomenon became so general that officials lost patience. One road issued an order to the effect that any engineer who heard signals when there were no signals should get thirty days for the first and his time for the second offence.
Within a week from the appearance of the unusual and unusually offensive bulletin, "Baldy" Hooten heard the stop signal as he neared a little Junction town where his line crossed another on an overhead bridge.
When the signal sounded, the fireman glanced over at the driver, who dived through the window up to his hip pockets.
When the engine had crashed over the bridge, the driver pulled himself into the cab again, and once more the signal. The fireman, amazed, stared at the engineer. The latter jerked the throttle wide open; seeing which, the stoker dropped to the deck and began feeding the hungry furnace. Ten minutes later the Limited screamed for a regular stop, ten miles down the line. As the driver dropped to the ground and began touching the pins and links with the back of his bare hand, to see if they were all cool, the head brakeman trotted forward whispering hoarsely, "The ol' man's aboard."
The driver waved him aside with his flaring torch, and up trotted the blue-and-gold conductor with his little silver white-light with a frosted flue. "Why didn't you stop at Pee-Wee Junction?" he hissed.
"Is Pee-Wee a stop station?"
"On signal."
"I didn't see no sign."
"I pulled the bell."
"Go on now, you ghost-dancer," said the engineer.
"You idiot!" gasped the exasperated conductor. "Don't you know the old man's on, that he wanted to stop at Pee-Wee to meet the G.M. this morning, that a whole engineering outfit will be idle there for half a day, and you'll get the guillotine?"
"Whew, you have shore got 'em."
"Isn't your bell working?" asked a big man who had joined the group under the cab window.
"I think so, sir," said the driver, as he recognized the superintendent. "Johnny, try that cab bell," he shouted, and the fire-boy sounded the big brass gong.
"Why didn't you take it at Pee-Wee?" asked the old man, holding his temper beautifully.
The driver lifted his torch and stared almost rudely into the face of the official in front of him. "Why, Mr. Skidum," said he slowly, "I didn't hear no signal."
The superintendent was blocked.
As he turned and followed the conductor into the telegraph office, the driver, gloating in his high tower of a cab, watched him.
"He's an old darling," said he to the fire-boy, "and I'm ready to die for him any day; but I can't stop for him in the face of bulletin 13. Thirty days for the first offence, and then fire," he quoted, as he opened the throttle and steamed away, four minutes late.
The old man drummed on the counter-top in the telegraph office, and then picked up a pad and wrote a wire to his assistant:—
"Cancel general order No. 13."
The night man slipped out in the dawn and called the day man who was the station master, explaining that the old man was at the station and evidently unhappy.
The agent came on unusually early and endeavored to arrange for a light engine to carry the superintendent back to the Junction.
At the end of three hours they had a freight engine that had left its train on a siding thirty miles away and rolled up to rescue the stranded superintendent.
Now, every railway man knows that when one thing goes wrong on a railroad, two more mishaps are sure to follow; so, when the rescuing crew heard over the wire that the train they had left on a siding, having been butted by another train heading in, had started back down grade, spilled over at the lower switch, and blocked the main line, they began to expect something to happen at home.
However, the driver had to go when the old man was in the cab and the G.M. with a whole army of engineers and workmen waiting for him at Pee-Wee; so he rattled over the switches and swung out on the main line like a man who was not afraid.
Two miles up the road the light engine, screaming through a cut, encountered a flock of sheep, wallowed through them, left the track, and slammed the four men on board up against the side of the cut.
Not a bone was broken, though all of them were sore shaken, the engineer being unconscious when picked up.
"Go back and report," said the old man to the conductor. "You look after the engineer," to the fireman.
"Will you flag west, sir?" asked the conductor.
"Yes,—I'll flag into Pee-Wee," said the old man, limping down the line.
To be sure, the superintendent was an intelligent man and not the least bit superstitious; but he couldn't help, as he limped along, connecting these disasters, remotely at least, with general order No. 13.
In time the "unseen signal" came to be talked of by the officials as well as by train and enginemen. It came up finally at the annual convention of General Passenger Agents at Chicago and was discussed by the engineers at Atlanta, but was always ridiculed by the eastern element.
"I helped build the U.P.," said a Buffalo man, "and I want to tell you high-liners you can't drink squirrel-whiskey at timber-line without seein' things nights."
That ended the discussion.
Probably no road in the country suffered from the evil effects of the mysterious signal as did the Inter-Mountain Air Line.
The regular spotters failed to find out, and the management sent to Chicago for a real live detective who would not be predisposed to accept the "mystery" as such, but would do his utmost to find the cause of a phenomenon that was not only interrupting traffic but demoralizing the whole service.
As the express trains were almost invariably stopped at night, the expert travelled at night and slept by day. Months passed with only two or three "signals." These happened to be on the train opposed to the one in which the detective was travelling at that moment. They brought out another man, and on his first trip, taken merely to "learn the road," the train was stopped in broad daylight. This time the stop proved to be a lucky one; for, as the engineer let off the air and slipped round a curve in a cañon, he found a rock as big as a box car resting on the track.
The detective was unable to say who sounded the signal. The train crew were overawed. They would not even discuss the matter.
With a watchman, unknown to the trainmen, on every train, the officials hoped now to solve the mystery in a very short time.
The old engineer, McNally, who had found the rock in the cañon, had boasted in the lodge-room, in the round-house and out, that if ever he got the "ghost-sign," he'd let her go. Of course he was off his guard this time. He had not expected the "spook-stop" in open day. And right glad he was, too, that he stopped that day.
A fortnight later McNally, on the night run, was going down Crooked Creek Cañon watching the fireworks in the heavens. A black cloud hung on a high peak, and where its sable skirts trailed along the range the lightning leaped and flashed in sheets and chains. Above the roar of wheels he could hear the splash, and once in a while he could feel the spray, of new-made cataracts as the water rushed down the mountain side, choking the culverts.
At Crag View there was, at that time, a high wooden trestle stilted up on spliced spruce piles with the bark on.
It used to creak and crack under the engine when it was new. McNally was nearing it now. It lay, however, just below a deep rock cut that had been made in a mountain crag and beyond a sharp curve.
McNally leaned from his cab window, and when the lightning flashed, saw that the cut was clear of rock and released the brakes slightly to allow the long train to slip through the reverse curve at the bridge. Curves cramp a train, and a smooth runner likes to feel them glide smoothly.
As the black locomotive poked her nose through the cut, the engineer leaned out again; but the after-effect of the flash of lightning left the world in inky blackness.
Back in a darkened corner of the drawing-room of the rearmost sleeper the sleuth snored with both eyes and ears open.
Suddenly he saw a man, fully dressed, leap from a lower berth in the last section and make a grab for the bell-rope. The man missed the rope; and before he could leap again the detective landed on the back of his neck, bearing him down. At that moment the conductor came through; and when he saw the detective pull a pair of bracelets from his hip-pocket, he guessed that the man underneath must be wanted, and joined in the scuffle. In a moment the man was handcuffed, for he really offered no resistance. As they released him he rose, and they squashed him into a seat opposite the section from which he had leaped a moment before. The man looked not at his captors, who still held him, but pressed his face against the window. He saw the posts of the snow-shed passing, sprang up, flung the two men from him as a Newfoundland would free himself from a couple of kittens, lifted his manacled hands, leaped toward the ceiling, and bore down on the signal-rope.
The conductor, in the excitement, yelled at the man, bringing the rear brakeman from the smoking-room, followed by the black boy bearing a shoe-brush.
Once more they bore the bad man down, and then the conductor grabbed the rope and signalled the engineer ahead.
Men leaped from their berths, and women showed white faces between the closely drawn curtains.
Once more the conductor pulled the bell, but the train stood still.
One of the passengers picked up the man's hand-grip that had fallen from his berth, and found that the card held in the leather tag read:
"John Bradish."
"Go forward," shouted the conductor to the rear brakeman, "and get 'em out of here,—tell McNally we've got the ghost."
The detective released his hold on his captive, and the man sank limp in the corner seat.
The company's surgeon, who happened to be on the car, came over and examined the prisoner. The man had collapsed completely.
When the doctor had revived the handcuffed passenger and got him to sit up and speak, the porter, wild-eyed, burst in and shouted: "De bridge is gone."
A death-like hush held the occupants of the car.
"De hangin' bridge is sho' gone," repeated the panting porter, "an' de engine, wi' McNally in de cab's crouchin' on de bank, like a black cat on a well-cu'b. De watah's roahin' in de deep gorge, and if she drap she gwine drag—"
The doctor clapped his hand over the frightened darky's mouth, and the detective butted him out to the smoking-room.
The conductor explained that the porter was crazy, and so averted a panic.
The detective came back and faced the doctor. "Take off the irons," said the surgeon, and the detective unlocked the handcuffs.
Now the doctor, in his suave, sympathetic way, began to question Bradish; and Bradish began to unravel the mystery, pausing now and again to rest, for the ordeal through which he had just passed had been a great mental and nervous strain.
He began by relating the Ashtabula accident that had left him wifeless and childless, and, as the story progressed, seemed to find infinite relief in relating the sad tale of his lonely life. It was like a confession. Moreover, he had kept the secret so long locked in his troubled breast that it was good to pour it out.
The doctor sat directly in front of the narrator, the detective beside him, while interested passengers hung over the backs of seats and blocked the narrow aisle. Women, with faces still blanched, sat up in bed listening breathlessly to the strange story of John Bradish.
Shortly after returning to their old home, he related, he was awakened one night by the voice of his wife calling in agonized tones, "John! John!" precisely as she had cried to him through the smoke and steam and twisted débris at Ashtabula. He leaped from his bed, heard a mighty roar, saw a great light flash on his window, and the midnight express crashed by.
To be sure it was only a dream, he said to himself, intensified by the roar of the approaching train; and yet he could sleep no more that night. Try as he would, he could not forget it; and soon he realized that a growing desire to travel was coming upon him. In two or three days' time this desire had become irresistible. He boarded the midnight train and took a ride. But this did not cure him. In fact, the more he travelled the more he wanted to travel. Soon after this he discovered that he had acquired another habit. He wanted to stop the train. Against these inclinations he had struggled, but to no purpose. Once, when he felt that he must take a trip, he undressed and went to bed. He fell asleep, and slept soundly until he heard the whistle of the midnight train. Instantly he was out of bed, and by the time they had changed engines he was at the station ready to go.
The mania for stopping trains had been equally irresistible. He would bite his lips, his fingers, but he would also stop the train.
The moment the mischief (for such it was, in nearly every instance) was done, he would suffer greatly in dread of being found out. But to-night, as on the occasion of the daylight stop in the cañon, he had no warning, no opportunity to check himself, nor any desire to do so. In each instance he had heard, dozing in the day-coach and sleeping soundly in his berth, the voice cry: "John! John!" and instantly his brain was ablaze with the light of burning wreckage. In the cañon he had only felt, indefinitely, the danger ahead; but to-night he saw the bridge swept away, and the dark gorge that yawned in front of them. Instantly upon hearing the cry that woke him, he saw it all.
"When I realized that the train was still moving, that my first effort to stop had failed, I flung these strong men from me with the greatest ease. I'm sure I should have burst those steel bands that bound my wrists if it had been necessary.
"Thank God it's all over. I feel now that I am cured,—that I can settle down contented."
The man drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead, keeping his face to the window for a long time.
When the conductor went forward, he found that it was as the porter had pictured. The high bridge had been carried away by a water-spout; and on the edge of the opening the engine trembled, her pilot pointing out over the black abyss.
McNally, having driven his fireman from the deck, stood in the cab gripping the air-lever and watching the pump. At that time we used what is technically known as "straight air"; so that if the pump stopped the air played out.
The conductor ordered the passengers to leave the train.
The rain had ceased, but the lightning was still playing about the summit of the range, and when it flashed, those who had gone forward saw McNally standing at his open window, looking as grand and heroic as the captain on the bridge of his sinking ship.
A nervous and somewhat thoughtless person came close under the cab to ask the engineer why he didn't back up.
There was no answer. McNally thought it must be obvious to a man with the intelligence of an oyster, that to release the brakes would be to let the heavy train shove him over the bank, even if his engine had the power to back up, which she had not.
The trainmen were working quietly, but very effectively, unloading. The day coaches had been emptied, the hand-brakes set, and all the wheels blocked with links and pins and stones, when the link between the engine and the mail-car snapped and the engine moved forward.
McNally heard the snap and felt her going, leaped from the window, caught and held a scrub cedar that grew in a rock crevice, and saw his black steed plunge down the dark cañon, a sheer two thousand feet.
McNally had been holding her in the back motion with steam in her cylinders; and now, when she leaped out into space, her throttle flew wide, a knot in the whistle-rope caught in the throttle, opening the whistle-valve as well. Down, down she plunged,—her wheels whirling in mid-air, a solid stream of fire escaping from her quivering stack, and from her throat a shriek that almost froze the blood in the veins of the onlookers. Fainter and farther came the cry, until at last the wild waters caught her, held her, hushed her, and smothered out her life.
CHASING THE WHITE MAIL
Over the walnuts and wine, as they say in Fifth Avenue, the gray-haired gentleman and I lingered long after the last of the diners had left the café car. One by one the lights were lowered. Some of the table-stewards had removed their duck and donned their street clothes. The shades were closely drawn, so that people could not peep in when the train was standing. The chief steward was swinging his punch on his finger and yawning. My venerable friend, who was a veritable author's angel, was a retired railway president with plenty of time to talk.
"We had, on the Vandalia," he began after lighting a fresh cigar, "a dare-devil driver named Hubbard—'Yank' Hubbard they called him. He was a first-class mechanic, sober and industrious, but notoriously reckless, though he had never had a wreck. The Superintendent of Motive Power had selected him for the post of master-mechanic at Effingham, but I had held him up on account of his bad reputation as a wild rider.
"We had been having a lot of trouble with California fruit trains,—delays, wrecks, cars looted while in the ditch,—and I had made the delay of a fruit train almost a capital offence. The bulletin was, I presume, rather severe, and the enginemen and conductors were not taking it very well.
"One night the White Mail was standing at the station at East St. Louis (that was before the first bridge was built) loading to leave. My car was on behind, and I was walking up and down having a good smoke. As I turned near the engine, I stopped to watch the driver of the White Mail pour oil in the shallow holes on the link-lifters without wasting a drop. He was on the opposite side of the engine, and I could see only his flitting, flickering torch and the dipping, bobbing spout of his oiler.
"A man, manifestly another engineer, came up. The Mail driver lifted his torch and said, 'Hello, Yank,' to which the new-comer made no direct response. He seemed to have something on his mind. 'What are you out on?' asked the engineer, glancing at the other's overalls. 'Fast freight—perishable—must make time—no excuse will be taken,' he snapped, quoting and misquoting from my severe circular. 'Who's in that Kaskaskia?' he asked, stepping up close to the man with the torch.
"'The ol' man,' said the engineer.
"'No! ol' man, eh? Well! I'll give him a canter for his currency this trip,' said Yank, gloating. 'I'll follow him like a scandal; I'll stay with him this night like the odor of a hot box. Say, Jimmie,' he laughed, 'when that tintype of yours begins to lay down on you, just bear in mind that my pilot is under the ol' man's rear brake-beam, and that the headlight of the 99 is haunting him.'
"'Don't get gay, now,' said the engineer of the White Mail.
"'Oh, I'll make him think California fruit is not all that's perishable on the road to-night,' said Yank, hurrying away to the round-house.
"Just as we were about to pull out, our engineer, who was brother to Yank, found a broken frame and was obliged to go to the house for another locomotive. We were an hour late when we left that night, carrying signals for the fast freight. As we left the limits of the yard, Hubbard's headlight swung out on the main line, picked up two slender shafts of silver, and shot them under our rear end. The first eight or ten miles were nearly level. I sat and watched the headlight of the fast freight. He seemed to be keeping his interval until we hit the hill at Collinsville. There was hard pounding then for him for five or six miles. Just as the Kaskaskia dropped from the ridge between the east and west Silver Creek, the haunting light swept round the curve at Hagler's tank. I thought he must surely take water here; but he plunged on down the hill, coming to the surface a few minutes later on the high prairie east of Saint Jacobs.
"Highland, thirty miles out, was our first stop. We took water there; and before we could get away from the tank, Hubbard had his twin shafts of silver under my car. We got a good start here, but our catch engine proved to be badly coaled and a poor steamer. Up to this time she had done fairly well, but after the first two hours she began to lose. Seeing no more of the freight train, I turned in, not a little pleased to think that Mr. Yank's headlight would not haunt me again that trip. I fell asleep, but woke again when the train stopped, probably at Vandalia. I had just begun to doze again when our engine let out a frightful scream for brakes. I knew what that meant,—Hubbard was behind us. I let my shade go up, and saw the light of the freight train shining past me and lighting up the water-tank. I was getting a bit nervous, when I felt our train pulling out.
"Of course Hubbard had to water again; but as he had only fifteen loads, and a bigger tank, he could go as far as the Mail could without stopping. Moreover, we were bound to stop at county seats; and as often as we did so we had the life scared out of us, for there was not an air-brake freight car on the system at that time. What a night that must have been for the freight crew! They were on top constantly, but I believe the beggars enjoyed it all. Any conductor but Jim Lawn would have stopped and reported the engineer at the first telegraph station. Still, I have always had an idea that the train-master was tacitly in the conspiracy, for his bulletin had been a hot one delivered orally by the Superintendent, whom I had seen personally.
"Well, along about midnight Hubbard's headlight got so close, and kept so close, that I could not sleep. His brother, who was pulling the Mail, avoided whistling him down; for when he did he only showed that there was danger, and published his bad brother's recklessness. The result was that when the Mail screamed I invariably braced myself. I don't believe I should have stood it, only I felt it would all be over in another hour; for we should lose Yank at Effingham, the end of the freight's division. It happened, however, that there was no one to relieve him, or no engine rather; and Yank went through to Terre Haute. I was sorry, but I hated to show the white feather. I knew our fresh engine would lose him, with his tired fireman and dirty fire. Once or twice I saw his lamp, but at Longpoint we lost him for good. I went to bed again, but I could not sleep. I used to boast that I could sleep in a boiler-maker's shop; but the long dread of that fellow's pilot had unnerved me. I had wild, distressing dreams.
"The next morning, when I got to my office, I found a column of news cut from a morning paper. It had the usual scare-head, and began by announcing that the White Mail, with General Manager Blank's car Kaskaskia, came in on time, carrying signals for a freight train. The second section had not arrived, 'as we go to press.' I think I swore softly at that point. Then I read on, for there was a lot more. It seemed, the paper stated, that a gang of highwaymen had planned to rob the Mail at Longpoint, which had come to be regarded as a regular robber station. One of the robbers, being familiar with train rules, saw the signal lights on the Mail and mistook it for a special, which is often run as first section of a fast train, and they let it pass. They flagged the freight train, and one of the robbers, who was doubtless new at the business, caught the passing engine and climbed into the cab. The engineer, seeing the man's masked face at his elbow, struck it a fearful blow with his great fist. The amateur desperado sank to the floor, his big, murderous gun rattling on the iron plate of the coal-deck. Yank, the engineer, grabbed the gun, whistled off-brakes, and opened the throttle. The sudden lurch forward proved too much for a weak link, and the train parted, leaving the rest of the robbers and the train crew to fight it out. As soon as the engineer discovered that the train had parted, he slowed down and stopped.
"When he had picketed the highwayman out on the tank-deck with a piece of bell-cord, one end of which was fixed to the fellow's left foot and the other to the whistle lever, Yank set his fireman, with a white light and the robber's gun, on the rear car and flagged back to the rescue. The robbers, seeing the blunder they had made, took a few parting shots at the trainmen on the top of the train, mounted their horses, and rode away.
"When the train had coupled up again, they pulled on up to the next station, where the conductor reported the cause of delay, and from which station the account of the attempted robbery had been wired.
"I put the paper down and walked over to a window that overlooked the yards. The second section of the White Mail was coming in. As the engine rolled past, Yank looked up; and there was a devilish grin on his black face. The fireman was sitting on the fireman's seat, the gun across his lap. A young fellow, wearing a long black coat, a bell-rope, and a scared look, was sweeping up the deck.
"When I returned to my desk, the Superintendent of Motive Power was standing near it. When I sat down, he spread a paper before me. I glanced at it and recognized Yank Hubbard's appointment to the post of master-mechanic at Effingham.
"I dipped a pen in the ink-well and wrote across it in red, 'O—K.'"
OPPRESSING THE OPPRESSOR
"Is this the President's office?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can I see the President?"
"Yes,—I'm the President."
The visitor placed one big boot in a chair, hung his soft hat on his knee, dropped his elbow on the hat, let his chin fall in the hollow of his hand, and waited.
The President of the Santa Fé, leaning over a flat-topped table, wrote leisurely. When he had finished, he turned a kindly face to the visitor and asked what could be done.
"My name's Jones."
"Yes?"
"I presume you know about me,—Buffalo Jones, of Garden City."
"Well," began the President, "I know a lot of Joneses, but where is Garden City?"
"Down the road a piece, 'bout half-way between Wakefield and Turner's Tank. I want you folks to put in a switch there,—that's what I've come about. I'd like to have it in this week."
"Anybody living at Garden City?"
"Yes, all that's there's livin'."
"About how many?"
"One and a half when I'm away,—Swede and Injin."
The President of the Santa Fé smiled and rolled his lead pencil between the palms of his hands. Mr. Jones watched him and pitied him, as one watches and pities a child who is fooling with firearms. "He don't know I'm loaded," thought Jones.
"Well," said the President, "when you get your town started so that there will be some prospect of getting a little business, we shall be only too glad to put in a spur for you."
Jones had been looking out through an open window, watching the law-makers of Kansas going up the wide steps of the State House. The fellows from the farm climbed, the town fellows ran up the steps.
"Spur!" said Jones, wheeling around from the window and walking toward the President's desk, "I don't want no spur; I want a side track that'll hold fifty cars, and I want it this week,—see?"
"Now look here, Mr. Jones, this is sheer nonsense. We get wind at Wakefield and water at Turner's Tank; now, what excuse is there for putting in a siding half-way between these places?"
Again Mr. Jones, rubbing the point of his chin with the ball of his thumb, gave the President a pitying glance.
"Say!" said Jones, resting the points of his long fingers on the table, "I'm goin' to build a town. You're goin' to build a side track. I've already set aside ten acres of land for you, for depot and yards. This land will cost you fifty dollars per, now. If I have to come back about this side track, it'll cost you a hundred. Now, Mr. President, I wish you good-mornin'."
At the door Jones paused and looked back. "Any time this week will do; good-mornin'."
The President smiled and turned to his desk. Presently he smiled again; then he forgot all about Mr. Jones and the new town, and went on with his work.
Mr. Jones went down and out and over to the House to watch the men make laws.
In nearly every community, about every capital, State or National, you will find men who are capable of being influenced. This is especially true of new communities through which a railway is being built. It has always been so, and will be, so long as time expires. I mean the time of an annual pass. It is not surprising, then, that in Kansas at that time, the Grasshopper period,—before prohibition, Mrs. Nation, and religious dailies,—the company had its friends, and that Mr. Jones, an honest farmer with money to spend, had his.
Two or three days after the interview with Mr. Jones, the President's "friend" came over to the railroad building. He came in quietly and seated himself near the President, as a doctor enters a sick-room or a lawyer a prison cell. "I know you don't want me," he seemed to say, "but you need me."
When his victim had put down his pen, the politician asked, "Have you seen Buffalo Jones?"
The President said he had seen the gentleman.
"I think it would be a good scheme to give him what he wants," said the Honorable member of the State legislature.
But the President could not agree with his friend; and at the end of half an hour, the Honorable member went away not altogether satisfied. He did not relish the idea of the President trying to run the road without his assistance. One of the chief excuses for his presence on earth and in the State legislature was "to take care of the road." Now, he had gotten up early in order to see the President without being seen, and the President had waved him aside. "Well," he said, "I'll let Jones have the field to-day."
Two days later, when the President opened his desk, he found a brief note from his confidential assistant,—not the Honorable one, but an ordinary man who worked for the company for a stated salary. The note read:—
"If Buffalo Jones calls to-day please see him.—I am leaving town. G.O.M."
But Buffalo did not call.
Presently the General Manager came in, and when he was leaving the room he turned and asked, "Have you seen Jones?"
"Yes," said the President of the Santa Fé, "I've seen Jones."
The General Manager was glad, for that took the matter from his hands and took the responsibility from his drooping shoulders.
About the time the President got his mind fixed upon the affairs of the road again, Colonel Holiday came in. Like the Honorable gentleman, he too entered by the private door unannounced; for he was the Father of the Santa Fé. Placing his high hat top side down on the table, the Colonel folded his hands over the golden head of his cane and inquired of the President if he had seen Jones.
The President assured the Colonel, who in addition to being the Father of the road was a director.
The Colonel picked up his hat and went out, feeling considerable relief: for his friend in the State Senate had informed him at the Ananias Club on the previous evening, that Jones was going to make trouble for the road. The Colonel knew that a good, virtuous man with money to spend could make trouble for anything or anybody, working quietly and unobtrusively among the equally virtuous members of the State legislature. The Colonel had been a member of that august body.
In a little while the General Manager came back; and with him came O'Marity, the road-master.
"I thought you said you had seen Jones," the General Manager began.
Now the President, who was never known to be really angry, wheeled on his revolving chair.
"I—have—seen Jones."
"Well, O'Marity says Jones has not been 'seen.' His friend, who comes down from Atchison every Sunday night on O'Marity's hand-car, has been good enough to tell O'Marity just what has been going on in the House. There must be some mistake. It seems to me that if this man Jones had been seen properly, he would subside. What's the matter with your friend—Ah, here comes the Honorable gentleman now."
The President beckoned with his index finger and his friend came in. Looking him in the eye, the President asked in a stage whisper: "Have you—seen—Jones?"
"No, sir," said the Honorable gentleman. "I had no authority to see him."
"It's damphunny," said O'Marity, "if the President 'ave seen 'im, 'e don't quit."
"I certainly saw a man called Jones,—Buffalo Jones of Garden City. He wanted a side track put in half-way between Wakefield and Turner's Tank."
"And you told him, 'Certainly, we'll do it at once,'" said the General Manager.
"No," the President replied, "I told him we would not do it at once, because there was no business or prospect of business to justify the expense."
"Ah—h," said the Manager.
O'Marity whistled softly.
The Honorable gentleman smiled, and looked out through the open window to where the members of the State legislature were going up the broad steps to the State House.
"Mr. Rong," the Manager began, "it is all a horrible mistake. You have never 'seen' Jones. Not in the sense that we mean. When you see a politician or a man who herds with politicians, he is supposed to be yours,—you are supposed to have acquired a sort of interest in him,—an interest that is valued so long as the individual is in sight. You are entitled to his support and influence, up to, and including the date on which your influence expires." All the time the Manager kept jerking his thumb toward the window that held the Honorable gentleman, using the President's friend as a living example of what he was trying to explain.
"Is Jones a member?"
"No, Mr. Rong, but he controls a few members. It is easier, you understand, to acquire a drove of steers by buying a bunch than by picking them up here and there, one at a time."
"I protest," said the Honorable member, "against the reference to members of the legislature as 'cattle.'"
Neither of the railway men appeared to hear the protest.
"I think I understand now," said the President. "And I wish, Robson, you would take this matter in hand. I confess that I have no stomach for such work."
"Very well," said the Manager. "Please instruct your—your—" and he jerked his thumb toward the Honorable gentleman—"your friend to send Jones to my office."
The Honorable gentleman went white and then flushed red, but he waited for no further orders. As he strode towards the door, Robson, with a smooth, unruffled brow, but with a cold smile playing over his handsome face, with mock courtesy and a wide sweep of his open hand, waved the visitor through the open door.
"Mr. Jones wishes to see you," said the chief clerk.
"Oh, certainly—show Mr. Jones—Ah, good-morning, Mr. Jones, glad to see you. How's Garden City? Going to let us in on the ground floor, Mr. Rong tells me. Here, now, fire up; take this big chair and tell me all about your new town."
Jones took a cigar cautiously from the box. When the Manager offered him a match he lighted up gingerly, as though he expected the thing to blow up.
"Now, Mr. Jones, as I understand it, you want a side track put in at once. The matter of depot and other buildings will wait, but I want you to promise to let us have at least ten acres of ground. Perhaps it would be better to transfer that to us at once. I'll see" (the Manager pressed a button). "Send the chief engineer to me, George," as the chief clerk looked in.
All this time Jones smoked little short puffs, eyeing the Manager and his own cigar. When the chief engineer came in he was introduced to Mr. Jones, the man who was going to give Kansas the highest boom she had ever had.
While Jones stood in open-mouthed amazement, the Manager instructed the engineer to go to Garden City when it would suit Mr. Jones, lay out a siding that would hold fifty loads, and complete the job at the earliest possible moment.
"By the way, Mr. Jones, have you got transportation over our line?"
Mr. Jones managed to gasp the one word, "No."
"Buz-z-zz," went the bell. "George, make out an annual for Mr. Jones,—Comp. G.M."
Jones steadied himself by resting an elbow on the top of the Manager's desk. The chief engineer was writing in a little note-book.
"Now, Mr. Jones—ah, your cigar's out!—how much is this ten acres to cost us?—a thousand dollars, I believe you told Mr. Rong."
"Yes, I did tell him that; but if this is straight and no jolly, it ain't goin' to cost you a cent."
"Well, that's a great deal better than most towns treat us," said the Manager. "Now, Mr. Jones, you will have to excuse me; I have some business with the President. Don't fail to look in on me when you come to town; and rest assured that the Santa Fé will leave nothing undone that might help your enterprise."
With a hearty handshake the Manager, usually a little frigid and remote, passed out, leaving Mr. Jones to the tender mercies of the chief engineer.
Up to this point there is nothing unusual in this story. The remarkable part is the fact that the building of a side track in an open plain turned out to be good business. In a year's time there was a neat station and more sidings. The town boomed with a rapidity that amazed even the boomers. To be sure, it had its relapses; but still, if you look from the window as the California Limited crashes by, you will see a pretty little town when you reach the point on the time-table called