CHAPTER I
Somebody was playing a mouth-organ in the midst of a group of "hard cases" that waited on a certain wharf at Montreal. You who arrive there in spick and span passenger steamers can pick out the place from the promenade decks as you come alongside, for on the shed roofs is painted, with waterproof paint, "The Saint Lawrence Shipping and Transport Co., Ltd."
At the gable of these sheds the Hard Cases waited, alert for anybody of importance coming from citywards. But they did not forget that the important person might be already in the sheds. Therefore, as they strolled a step or two forth and back, or double-shuffled in response to the mouth organ, they cast glances now and then into the shed, between the lattice-work of a barrier at its end, a barrier that continued the slope of the roof to the wharf-side and about a foot beyond. A determined man could have clambered round it at the projecting part, or over it for that matter—although it looked fragile at the top as well as showing many prominent nails. But no one did clamber over it, or round it even. In America there is a sneaking regard for the man who climbs over, or crawls round, barricades; but it was hardly likely that any of the Hard Cases, who waited for a job outside the barrier, would have obtained that job at the end of such gymnastics. These men were not hoboes, tramps, sundowners, beachcombers, though there was not a handkerchief-full of luggage in the crowd. They were cattlemen, who lead a life more hard and uncertain than that of sparrows, crossing and recrossing the great, grey Atlantic, with Liverpool for their British port; and, for their American ports, Montreal, Halifax, Boston.
"Well, what's this?" said one of them, Big Mike.
The "Push" glanced at "this"—a lean man, brown as an Indian, wearing a broad-brimmed hat that set him apart from the "Push," which wore, chiefly, scooped sailor-caps, and, secondly, dilapidated Trilbys. True, the latter were of felt, but only in regard to material were they like this hat that hove in sight on the newcomer's head.
The new comer approached more closely and looked at the crowd.
"What's he?" asked Jack, a slender and finely-built young man with a face handsome and devil-may-care and cunning, a face oddly aristocratic though leathery, and bearing signs that ablution was not a daily matter in his life any more than in the lives of the others.
"It's one of them cow-boys," said Mike. "One of them fellers that comes from beyant, in the cars with the cattle, and takes a thrip over sometimes to see what its loike in our counthry."
"I suppose 'e'll go fer nuthin'," said Cockney. "Do one of hus out of a job."
"Well, ye needn't be supposing till ye hear," answered Mike. "I never seen wan of them do that yet."
The newcomer approached more closely and looked at the crowd, one of whose members, an inquisitive youth, caught his eye and daringly proffered assistance.
"You goin' on this ship?" he asked.
"I hope so. I've just come down to see how the chances are."
The "Push" that had been listening mostly in quarter and three-quarter face, wheeled about, and all their "dials," as they would have expressed it, confronted him.
"'Ow much you goin' to hask?" said Cockney.
"What do they usually give?"
"Oh, I don't know," several replied.
Jack extracted himself from the "Push" to spit over the wharf-side, and then turned back again.
"Thirty shillings," he said.
"Is that what you get?" asked the Inquisitive One.
Canted back, hands in pockets, Jack leered at him.
"You hask thirty shillings then," said Cockney.
Big Mike pushed through.
"What are ye all talking about?" he said. "I tell ye what it is, now," he went on, turning to the stranger. "There's some of these fellers go over for tin shillin's; the most of them don't get more'n a pound, and when it's getting cold here you'll find 'em runnin' round and saying, 'I'll go for fifteen shillin's, mister.' But if ye came down from beyant in the cars yourself ye're all right. You fellers that come down from The Great Plains goes on with your own cattle on the ships if ye want."
Some of the lesser lights in the "Push" snarled.
"Want more than ten shillings," said the subject of their discussion. "Ten shillings for across the Atlantic! Good Lord!"
"There now! What was I tellin' ye?" asked Mike of Cockney.
"What does he want comin' round?" said a man with eyes in which madness showed.
"Did ye come down on the cars?" asked Mike again.
"No—I didn't come down with cattle. I can't tell them that so as to get on."
"There you are then!" cried he of the mad eyes, and walked away.
Mike looked frowningly at the young man.
"Well, young feller," he said, "you've no cause for worry. It doesn't matter whether ye came down in the cattle cars or not. That hat of yours will get ye the first chance."
Some of them laughed, and he turned and looked scathingly at them, but did not deign to explain that he was serious. Cockney, who had understood the significance of Mike's words, if he did not now come over exactly as ally to the newcomer, at least withdrew from his position as a possible enemy.
"That's right!" he declared. "That's the kind of 'at the fellers wear up there w'ere the cattle comes from. You hask thirty shillings. You know about cattle any'ow wiv that 'at. They'll bring yer down to a quid. Well, that's all right, ain't it? Good luck."
The others seemed to see the justice of this. Mike hitched his belt and regained his position as Bull of that herd by saying: "Pay no attintion to thim——"
"To me?" yelled Cockney, breaking in.
"That's all right, that's all right," said Mike soothingly to him. "You're all right. See, young feller,"—to the man with the Stetson hat—"you come over here beside me and I'll tell you when there's a chance."
The young fellow came toward him.
"Good luck!" said Cockney.
"What I get," added Mike, "is none of their business."
"Well," said the young fellow, "ten bob to 'tend cattle across the Atlantic seems pretty poor. I'll ask thirty."
"Well, ye can't do better than that, can ye?" answered Mike. "Askin' it, I mane."
Cockney whirled round upon someone who had muttered, and thrust forward his face at the end of an elastic neck.
"No, he's not—'e's not goin' over fer nuthin'! Didn't yer 'ear 'im say? I bet yer 'e'll go over fer more'n you."
A short broad man, somewhat like Mike in miniature, declaimed: "What's the use o' listening? Can't believe anybody. I hear a feller say: 'I wouldn't go over for ten shillings—wouldn't go over for less than two quid.' Believe he goes over just to get across—for nothing."
Several, at this, glanced grinning at the young man whom Mike had befriended.
"No," said the miniature edition of Mike, "I don't mean him. He's not a liar anyhow. I can tell that. I mean fellers that talks and talks about what they would do and what they wouldn't do."
"Pay no attintion to thim fellers," said Mike, less talking to the newcomer in particular than generally, to those in the group who had ears to hear. And then to his new friend: "You didn't come down in the cars then, young feller?"
"I've come from the West," answered the young fellow.
"That's good enough," said Mike, in the accents of one instilling hope. "There's no need to answer what they don't ask. You look as if you came from beyant. Let yer hat spake for ye. Here he comes now."
Hands behind back, walking slow, came a man of forty or so, lean, grizzled, projecting himself with easy swinging steps toward the "Push," looking at them, head bent, from under his brows, with eyes so calculating and keen that the glance might have been considered malevolent were it not for a faint smile, or suggestion of a smile, about his close-pressed lips. There was a fresh agitation among the "Push," as of a pool when a stone is dropped therein. Mike stood a little more erect and drew his chin back. The aristocratic-looking Jack—in some queer way, despite his old, seedy, hand-me-down garments, he was almost dandyish—hands in pockets, jacket wrinkled up behind, body canted backwards, strolled out of the group a step or two with eyes on the man who advanced upon them, and strolled back again, as one who would draw attention to himself.
"Is this one of the bosses?" inquired the young man who had come by kind request if not exactly under Mike's wing at least to his side.
Mike gave a brief nod and closed one eye.
"Candlass," he said; and Candlass coming now level with them, Mike leant towards him and made a grimace which evidently Candlass understood. The others, at this, tried to crowd in between them. Candlass frowned grimly, opened a door in that latticed barricade between shed and wharf-side, and passed through. The "Push"—one might now have a hint of the derivation of its name—flocked after him, but he stood in the narrow entrance way and considered it over his shoulder as a man looks at a bunch of doubtful dogs that snap at his heels. Mike commented, in the background: "What are yez all crowding for? He'll tell ye when he wants us." Candlass closed the gate in the barricade, moved slowly away, but was still to be seen by those outside. He walked along the wharf looking up at the iron wall of the S.S. Glory that lay there, considered the high-sided cattle gangways that stretched up to the hull. Then he turned away and disappeared in the rear of the nearest shed, to reappear anon with a stout, fatherly man whose clothes had the appearance of rather being made to measure than reached off a hook. This man seemed to be trying to look grim, but when Candlass swung over to the barricade, whipped open the door, and wheeled back again as a sign to the "Push" to enter—and they did enter—any mere looker-on could have seen a quick droop of his eyelids, a momentary biting of his lip as of a man who is hurt in some way. There was a deal of the milk of human kindness about Mr. Smithers, wharf-manager of the St. Lawrence Shipping and Transport Co., and he never became used to the Hard Cases. He often wanted to know all about them, where they were born, how they lived, what they thought of it all. Some of the men, out of their breast-pockets, were tentatively withdrawing bundles of discharge papers lest John Candlass might care to see them. Candlass looked over the crowd again as it thronged into the St. Lawrence shed. He spoke now, for the first time, and his voice was amazingly quiet.
"I don't want you," he said to one man, with a quick lift of his eyebrows; and the man went out backwards, and swiftly, suggesting in his manner that he was ready either to put up a fight if pursued, or to turn tail and run the moment he passed through the barrier again. He backed away from the sultry and quiet Candlass much as a lion-tamer leaves a cage. Another man prepared to follow him, yet not as if whole-hearted in his retreat. Candlass had an eye on him.
"Er——" he began, in the tone of one who considers to himself. The retreating man heard this and paused like a weather-cock in a lull, looked at Candlass, and Candlass looked at him. They studied each other thus in a way that made the others, brief though the time of study might be, realise that there had been some prior understanding or misunderstanding, between the two.
"Well," said Candlass, still in that low voice, "if you think you can behave yourself."
The man's expression changed. A waggish look came on his face.
"All right, Mr. Candlass."
"All right then," said Candlass. "You can wait around and I'll see—if I don't get plenty otherwise. Leave it that way."
Candlass looked over the group once more, then nodded to Mr. Smithers.
"All right. Come this way, boys," said Mr. Smithers. But though he straightened his back and thrust his neck into his collar in the recognised attitude of people who are not to be trifled with, there was something paternal that he could not efface from himself as he walked over to a little office on wheels that stood in a backward corner of the shed. In the wall of this box contrivance a small window opened on his arrival, and a clerk was beheld within.
Candlass said: "Line up, boys; one at a time."
Mike elbowed himself to leading position, looking round at his new friend. "You come with me, lad." And when some grumbled, "Well, well," he said. "We all have a chance."
The man to whom Candlass had decided to give another trial strolled backward and stood beyond the group so as to be last in the string.
"Now then, come along," said Smithers, and tapped twice with the end of a fountain pen on the little ledge before the diminutive window. The "Push," realising that all would have a chance, seeing how few there were, did not crowd now. There was more of: "You go ahead"—"No, that's all right, you go!"—than of anxiety. One by one they stepped up to the wicket, to one side of which Smithers leant, and in front of which Candlass had taken his stand. Each in turn exchanged a few quiet words with these two; the clerk within, pen in hand, bent over his tome, giving ear at the window. Once or twice Candlass looked round and beckoned to a man, when the group, milling instead of retaining the queue, was slow to decide who should go next. He did this by raising a hand, thumb and forefinger in air, looking keen and cold in some man's eye, and then flicking down the forefinger and dropping his hand to his side again. While this signing on was still in progress there entered the shed, slowly swinging his legs forward, clad in dirty khaki, large-hatted like the young man of whom we have already heard, a close-lipped, short-nosed youth. Candlass remarked him as he came in and said: "All right, you. Come ahead."
"One of the fellows what come down in the cars," it was suggested, or explained.
A little later there came a man in a long coat, tweed cap, heavy boots, leggings, wearing spectacles.
"What's this blown in?" one asked.
Smithers, by the side of the wicket, drew a deep breath.
"All right. Come ahead," called Candlass.
"Did that come down in the cars?" inquired a little pale-faced, thin-handed youngster.
Mike, standing over to one side with those who had already signed on, offered explanation:
"He's one of them young fellers from up behind somewheres. Comes from feedin' pigs, and doin' the chores, and what they call learnin' farmin'." He noticed that his newly adopted friend had allowed some others to precede him and had not yet signed on. "Go on there forward, young feller," he admonished. "Take your turn there after Four Eyes with the coat."
"Go on, then, go on," chorussed several of the "Push," and he who, though he wore the Hat of the Great Plains, had not come down on the cars with cattle, as indeed had that other large-hatted recent arrival, stepped up to the wicket. The onlookers noticed that with him, as with others, there was evidently a little bargaining being done.
"No—'e's not goin' fer nuthin'; 'e's all right," said Cockney to Mike.
Mike merely turned his head toward Cockney and then turned it away again.