The prey of the strongest

by Morley Roberts

II

There were times when the Mill ate wood all night long, but such times were rare, for now the City of the Fraser was not booming. She sat sombrely by her bright waters and moaned the bitter fact that the railway was not coming her way, but was to thrust out its beak into the waters of the Inlet. The City was a little sad, a little bitter, her wharves were deserted, dank, lonely. She saw no great future before her: houses in her precincts were empty: men spoke scornfully of her beauty and exalted Granville and the forests whence Vancouver should spring.

But for such as worked in the Mill the City was enough. They lived their little lives, strove manfully or poorly, thinking of little things, of few dollars, of a few days, and of Saturdays, and of Sundays when no man worked. And each night in Sawmill Town, in Sawdust Territory, was a holiday, for then toil ceased and the shacks lighted up and there was opportunity for talk. Work was over. 'Halo Mamook,' no work now, but it might be rye, or other poison and gambling and debauchery. The respectable workers (note that they were mostly American) went off up town, to the Farmers' Home or some such place, or to the City library, or to each other's homes, while the main body of the toilers of the Mill 'played hell' in their own way under the very shadow of the Mill itself. For them the end of the week was a Big Jamboree, but every night was a little one.

Pete was back among his old tilikums, his old partners and friends, and it was an occasion for a jamboree, a high old jamboree of its order, that is; for real Red Paint, howling, shrieking, screaming Jamborees were out of order and the highly respectable rulers of the City saw to it that the place was not painted red by any citizen out on the loose with a gun. British Columbia, mark you, is an orderly spot: amazingly good and virtuous and law-abiding, and killing is murder there. This excites scorn and derision and even amazement in American citizens come in from Spokane Falls, say, or elsewhere, from such spots as Seattle, or even Snohomish.

But even without Red Paint, or guns, or galloping cayuses up and down a scandalised British City, cannot a man, and men and their klootchmen, get drink and get drunk and raise Cain in Sawdust Town? You bet they can, tilikums! Nawitka, certainly! Oh, shucks—to be sure!

Pete and Jenny (being hard up as yet) lived in a room of Indian Annie's shack, and had dirt and liberty. In Sawdust Town, just across the road and on the land side of the Mill, were squads of disreputable shacks in streets laid down with stinking rotten sawdust and marked out with piles of ancient lumber. All this had one time been a swamp, but in the course of generations sawdust filled it to the brim. Sawdust rots and ferments and smells almost as badly as rice or wheat rotting in a ship's limbers, and the odour of the place in a calm was a thing to feel, to cut, even with an axe. It was a paying property to Quin and Quin's brother, for lumber costs next door to nothing at a mill, and the rent came in easily, as it should when it can be deducted from wages. It was a good clean property as some landlords say in such cases, meaning that the interest is secure. Life wasn't; and as to morality, why, what did the Quin Brothers care about their renters of the shacks, shanties, and keekwilly holes? They cared nothing about their morals or their manners or the sanitation.

Chinamen lived there: they were Canton wharf-rats mostly, big men, little men, men who lived their own odd secret racial lives hidden away from the eyes of whites. White boys yelled—

"Oh, Chinkie, kihi, kiti mukhahoilo——"

And it was supposed to be an insult. The Chinkies cursed the boys by their Gods, and by Buddha and by the Christians' Gods. "Oh, ya, velly bad boy, oh, damn." Stones flew, chunks of lumber, and boys or Chinamen ran. The Orientals chattered indignantly on doorsteps. If a boy had disappeared suddenly, who would have wondered?

It was a splendid locality for nature, the nature of Man, not for the growth of other things. There were few conventions green in the neighbourhood, a man was a man, and a hound a hound there, and a devil a devil without a mask. It had a fascination.

The Chinamen mostly worked in the yard: handling lumber as it came out, stacking it, wheeling it, carrying it. But there were others than Chinky Chinamen about. There was Spanish Joe in one shack which he shared with Chihuahua, who was a Mexican. Be so good as to pronounce this word Cheewawwaw and have done with it. Skookum Charlie and his klootchman (he was from S'Kokomish and was a Puyallop and she from Snohomish and was a Muckleshoot) lived in another. There's no word for wife in Chinook but only Klootchman, woman, so though there's one for marry, malieh, the ceremony is not much thought of. When a man's klootchman is mentioned it leaves the question of matrimony open for further inquiry, if necessary. But is it worth while?

A dozen Sitcum-Siwashes camped in other shanties; they were from all along the coast, even Metlakahtla and from inland, one being nearly a full-blooded Shushwap. But the only pure-blooded Indian about the place was Indian Annie. She was a Hydah from the Islands and had been as pretty as a picture once, as so many of the Hydah women were. Now she was a hag and a procuress and as ugly as a burnt stick and as wicked as a wild-cat. If she was ever washed it was when she was dead drunk in a rainstorm: she was wrinkled like the skin of a Rambouillet ram: she walked double and screeched like a night-hawk. As to her clothes and the worth of them, why, anyone but an entomologist would have given her a dollar to burn them—Faugh! Nevertheless it was in her shack that Pete camped with Jenny.

About nine o'clock that night, the night of Pete's getting a job, it was wonderful at Indian Annie's. If you don't believe it come in and see, tilikum! There are tons of things you don't know, tilikum, the same as the rest of us.

Oh, hyah, oho, they were enjoying themselves!

Such a day it had been, clear, clean-breathed, splendid, serene, and even yet the light lingered in the cloudless heavens, though the bolder stars came like scouts over the eastern hills and looked down on Mill and River.

But shucks, what of that in Indian Annie's? The room that was kitchen, dining room, hall and lumber room was reeking full. A wood fire smouldered on the hearth: a slush lamp smoked in the window against the dying heavenly day. Pete was there and Annie, and Jack Mottram, an English sailorman. He lived next door with a half-breed Ptsean (you can't pronounce it, tilikum) who was scarcely prettier than Annie, till she was washed. Then she was obviously younger at any rate.

Everyone was so far very happy.

"Hyu heehee," said Indian Annie. By which she meant in her short way that it was all great fun, and that they were jolly companions everyone. Besides Annie there were three other klootchmen in the room and their garments were not valuable. But it was "hyu heehee" all the same, for Jack Mottram brought the whisky in; Indians not being allowed to buy it, as they are apt, even more apt than whites, the noble whites, to see red and run "Amok."

"Here two dollah, you buy mo' whisky, Jack," said Pete, who was almost whooping drunk by now and as happy as a chipmunk in a deserted camp, or a dog at some killing, perhaps.

"Righto," hiccupped Jack, and away he Went. Pete sang something. There's bawdry in Chinook even.

Pete was a handsome boy if one likes or does not dislike the Indian cheekbones. For the features of the Sitcum-Siwash were almost purely Indian; his colour was a memory of his English father. He was tall, nearly five foot ten, lightly and beautifully built. He was as quick on his feet as a bird on the wing. His hands, even, were fine considering he was one who would work. His eyes were reddish brown, his teeth ivory: his moustache was a scanty Indian growth. Not a doubt of it but that Pete was the best-looking "breed" round about Westminster. And he wasn't as lazy as most of them.

Take his history on trust. It is easy to imagine it. He had half learnt to read at an Anglican Mission. His English was not bad when he talked to white men. In truth it was better and heaps cleaner than Jack Mottram's. But talk on the American side of the water is always cleaner. "If you don't like bawdry, we'll have very little of it," said Lucio to the Friar, who was perhaps American. Pete was a nice boy of twenty-three. But he had a loose lip and could look savage. His mind was a tiny circle. He could reach with his hand almost as far as his mind went. He had a religion once, when he left the Fathers of the Mission. He then believed in the Saghalie Tyee, the Chief of Heaven: in fact, in the Head Boss. Now he believed in the head boss of the Mill and in whisky and in his wife: all of them very risky beliefs indeed.

So far Jenny, Pete's little klootchman (and a sweet pretty creature she was) hadn't yet showed up in the shebang. She had been out somewhere, the Lord alone knows where (Quin would have wished he knew), and she was now in the inside room, dressing or rather taking off an outside gown and putting on a gorgeous flowered dressing-gown given her by a lady at Kamloops. Now she came out.

She was a beauty, tilikum, and you can believe it or leave it alone. She was little, no more than five feet three say, but perfectly made, round, plump, most adequate, which is a mighty good word, seeing that she was all there in some ways. She had a complexion of rosy eve, and teeth no narwhal's horn could match for whiteness, and her lips were red-blooded, her ears pink. She had dimples to be sworn by: and the only sign of her Indian blood (which was obviously Hydah) came out in her long straight black hair, that she wore coiled in a huge untidy mass. But for that she was white as far as her body went. As for her soul—but that's telling too soon.

Now she came out of the inner chamber in her scarlet gown, which was flaming with outrageous tulips, horribly parodying even a Dutch grower's nightmare, and she looked like a rosebud, or a merry saint in a flaming San Benito with flower flame devils on it in paint. And not a soul of her tilikums knew she was lovely. They envied her that San Benito!

Jenny was sober enough this time (and so far), and if no one knew she was lovely she knew it, and she eyed some of the drunken klootchmen disdainfully. This was not so much that they were pahtlum but because they had but ten cents worth of clothes and were not toketie or pretty.

"Fo!" said Jenny, stepping lightly among the recumbent and half-recumbent till she squatted on her hams by the fire.

"Where you bin, Jenny?" asked Pete, already hiccupping. And Jenny said she had been with Mary, or Alice, or someone else. May be it was true.

"Have a drink," said her man, handing her a bottle. She tilted it and showed her sweet neck and ripe bosom as she drank and handed it back empty.

Then Jack Mottram, English sailorman and general rolling stone and blackguard, came in hugging two bottles of deadly poison, one under each arm.

"Kloshe," said the crowd, "kloshe, good old Jack!"

The "shipman" dropped his load into willing claws and claimed first drink loudly.

"S'elp me, you see, pardners, I bro't 'em in fair and square: never broached 'em. I know chaps as'd ha' squatted under the lee of a pile o' lumber and ha' soaked the lot. S'elp me I do!"

It was felt on all hands that he was a noble character. Indian Annie patted him on the back.

"'Ands off, you catamaran," said Jack. In spite of being a seaman he believed the word was a term of abuse.

He was a seaman, though—and a first-class hand anywhere and anywhen. To see him now, foul, half-cocked, bleary, and to see him when three weeks of salt water had cleaned and sweetened him, would surprise the most hopeful. He went passages, not voyages, and skipped ashore every time he touched land. There wasn't a country in the round world he didn't know.

"I know 'em all from Chile to China, from Rangoon to Hell," said Jack, "I know 'em in the dark, by the stink of 'em!"

Now he jawed about this and that, with scraps of unholy information in his talk. No one paid attention, they talked or sucked at the whisky. The more Indian blood the more silence till the blood is diluted with alcohol. Every now and again some of them squealed with poisonous happiness; outside one might hear the sound of the screams and singing and the unholy jamboree. The noise brought others. Someone knocked at the door. The revellers were happy and pleased to see the world and they yelled a welcome.

"Come in, tilikum!" they cried, and Chihuahua opened the door against one klootchman's silent body and showed his dark head and glittering eyes inside.

"Where my klootchman? You see my klootchman? Ah, I see!"

She was half asleep by the fire, and nodded at him foolishly. He paid no attention for he was after liquor and saw that the gathering welcomed him. He knew them all but Pete, but he had heard of the row in the Mill and had seen the head that Simmons put on Ginger and he knew that a tilikum of Skookum's had been made wedger-off.

"You Pete, ah, I tinks."

"Nawitka, tilikum, that's me, Pitt River Pete. You have a drink. Ho, Jenny, you give me the bottle. She's my klootchman."

Chihuahua took the bottle and drank. He looked at Jenny and saw that she was beautiful.

"Muchacha hermosa," he said. She knew what he meant, for she read his eyes.

"Your little klootchman hyu toketie, Mister Pete, very peretty, oh, si," said Chihuahua.

"Mor'n yours is," hiccupped Jack Mottram. "But—'oo's got a smoke?"

The beady-eyed man from Mexico had a smoke: a big bag of dry tobacco and a handful or pocket full of papers. He rolled cigarettes for them all, doing it with infinite dexterity. Drunk or sober Chihuahua could do that. His own klootchman clawed him for one of them and without a word he belted her on the ear and made her bellow. She sat in the corner by the fire and howled as lugubriously as if her dog or her father had just died.

"Halo kinootl, halo kinootl, mika tiki cigalette!"

"Oh, give the howler one," said Jack, as she kept on howling that she had no tobacco and that her man was angry with her. Pete gave her his, which was already lighted. She giggled and laughed and began crooning a Chinook song:—

"Konaway sun
Hyu Keely
Annawillee!"

It was a mournful dirge: she sang and smoked and wept and giggled and tried to make eyes at Jack who must love her or he could never have given her a "Cigalette." He was heaps nicer than Chihuahua.

She set them off singing and more drink was brought in, and still Annawillee said she was very "keely" or sad. Indeed, she was weeping drunk and no one paid any attention to her, least of all Chihuahua. Jack sang a chanty about Dandy Rob of the Orinoco and a pleasing meal of boiled sawdust and bullock's liver, "blow, my bully boys, blow!" and wept to think of Whitechapel. An encore resulted in "My rorty carrotty Sal, who kems from W'itechapal," and then Jack subsided amid applause, and slept the sleep of great success.

But Pete was now "full" and could speak to Chihuahua and to Spanish Joe and Skookum Charlie who had come in together.

"Why you come here, Pete?" asked Skookum. "They say you have a good jhob up to Kamloops."

"I tell you, tilikum," said Pete. "Me and Jenny here was with Ned Quin, Cultus Muckamuck we call him up alound the Dly Belt. Ain't he a son of a gun, Jenny?"

Jenny nodded and took a cigarette from Chihuahua with a heavenly smile. They were all lying around the fire but Pete and Jenny. The other klootchmen were mostly fast asleep: Indian Annie was insensible. Pete went on talking in a high pitched but not unpleasant voice. His English was by no means so bad though not so good as Jenny's.

"Mary, my sister, she's Ned Quin's klootchman," said Pete, "and has been with him years, since his white woman died. I forget how long: nika kopet kumtuks, it's so long. So me and Jenny work there: she with Mary, me outside with the moos-mooses, wagon, plowin', harrowin', and scraper team. Oh, I work lika hell all one year, dollar a day and muckamuck: and old Ned he was Cultus Muckamuck, oh, you bet, tilikums: mean as mud. Him and me don't hit it off, but I lika the place, not too wet, good kieutans to ride, and, when I get sick and full up of Cultus, Jenny here she fond of my sister and when she was full up of Mary I just happen to pull with Cultus, so that's why we stay. Sometime the old dog he allow a dollar a day too much for me, and me workin' lika a mule. Oh, I work alla time, by God, velly little dlunk only sometime in Kamloops. And I say 'Look here, Cultus, I not care one damn, I can go. I can quit:—you pay me!' But when it came to pay out dolla he very sick, for sure. So I say, 'You be damn,' and he laughed and went away, for I had a neck-yoke in my hand, ha!"

Pete showed his teeth savagely, and the others grinned.

"We do that often: he damn me, I damn him, and mebbe Jenny and me would be there yet if he had not hit Mary with a club while I was away over to Nikola bringin' in the steers that was over the range. I come back, and I find Jenny cryin' and Mary sick and cryin', and sore all over, and Cultus hyu drunk. So I ups and say to Cultus, 'You swine, you hit my poor sister once mo' and I quit.' Then he began to cry and fetch mo' whisky and we both get drunk and very much friends, and I go to sleep, and he get ravin' and fetch a long-handled shovel and frighten Jenny here to death and he hit Mary with the flat of the shovel, and say, 'You damn klootchman, next time I give you the edge and cut hell out of you.'"

"He say those same words," said Jenny.

"And when I wake up," Pete went on, "they tell me, and I say it no good to stay for if I stay I kill Cultus and no taffy about it. So next day I say 'Give me my money,' and he give me an order on Smith over to Kamloops, and we came down here, and now I get the job wedging-off again and that's better'n workin' for old Cultus. Gimme the bottle, Skookum, you old swine."

They all had another drink.

"George Quin heap berrer'n Cultus," said Skookum.

"'E lika peretty girls," said Chihuahua, leering at Jenny. "'E look after klootchman alla day, eh, Joe?"

Spanish Joe said that was so. "Spanish" was a real Castilian, as fair as any Swede and had golden hair and lovely skin and the blue eyes of a Visigoth, and he was a murderous hound and very good at songs and had a fine voice and could play the guitar. He had no klootchman, but there was a white woman up town who loved him and robbed her husband to give him money.

"All klootchman no good," said Joe scornfully.

"You're a liar," said Jenny, "but men are no good, only Pete is good sometimes, ain't you, Pete?"

"Dry up," said Pete thickly, for the last drink had done for him. "You dry up. All klootchmen talk too much. You go to bed, Jenny."

"I shan't," said Jenny, sulkily.

So he beat her very severely, and blacked her eye, and dragged her by the gorgeous dressing-gown into the next room. As he dragged her she slipped out of the gown and they saw her for an instant white as any lily before he slammed the door on her and came out again. Joe and Chihuahua yelled with laughter, and even Skookum roused up to chuckle a little. He had been asleep, lying with his head on the insensible body of an unowned klootchman, who was a relative of Annie's. His own klootchman still sat in the corner, every now and again chanting dismally of the woes of Annawillee. Joe and Chihuahua spoke in Spanish.

"She's a beauty, and George Quin will want her," said Chihuahua.

"And he'll have her too, by the Mother of God," said Joe. "But klootchmen are no good. My woman up town she cries too much. And as for her husband——"

He indulged in some Spanish blasphemy on the subject of that poor creature's man.

They slapped Pete on the back when he sat down again, and said he knew how to serve a saucy muchacha. And Joe sang a beautiful old Spanish love song with amazing feeling and then went away. But the melancholy of the song haunted poor Pete's heart, and he went to his wife and found her crouched on the floor sobbing and as naked as when she was born. And Pete cried too and said that he loved her.

But she still cried, for he had torn the lovely dressing-gown with its gorgeous garden of tulips. She hugged it to her beautiful bosom as if it were a child.

In the outer room they all slept, and even Annawillee ceased moaning.

The night was calm and wonderful and as silent as death.