XII
In a place like the City on the Fraser, the time being years ago, years I count mournfully, one can't expect to run against genius in the shape of surgeons and physicians. But most of the medicine-men had queer records at the back of them, even in B.C. Now Green, for instance, though he had some of a doctor's instincts, didn't really know enough to pass any English examination. He read a deal and learnt as men died or got well under his hands, and the hands of the nurses. As a result of this Pete had a long solid time in bed. Even when he apparently came to there was something very wrong with him. He didn't know himself or anything else. It took Green part of a month to discover that he had better ask old Jupp to come and see his Siwash patient.
As the result of the consultation they put Pete on the table and shaved his head and trephined him and raised a depressed patch in his skull. It was the bit with which he had put a depressed place in a bridge bent. And then true intelligence (of the Sitcum Siwash order) came back into Pete's dark eyes, and he was presently aware that he was Pitt River Pete, and that Jenny his klootchman had run away with Quin and that he had gone for Quin in the Mill. So far as Pete was concerned this had happened a minute ago and he was very much surprised to find himself opening his eyes on two strange gentlemen in white aprons, and his nose to the scent of chloroform, when an instant before he had seen Quin in front of him among the finer odours of fresh sawdust. Pete made a motion to get up and finish Quin, but somehow he couldn't and he closed his eyes again and went to sleep.
When he woke once more he was in a nice bed with a white lady looking after his wants. He wondered vaguely what a white klootchman was doing there and again went to sleep. On the whole he was very comfortable and didn't care about anything, not even Jenny.
When he woke again, he made the white klootchman explain briefly what had happened to him. The white klootchman did her best to follow his wau-wau and gave him to understand that he had had an accident in the Mill and an operation. And it gradually dawned on Pete that all these occurrences had caused a lapse of time almost miraculous. Nothing that the white klootchman said convinced him, however: it was the scent of the keen autumn air coming down the river from his own home mountains, the Pitt River Mountains. It was now October and nearly the end of it, and there was already a winter garment on the big hills. From his window he could see the far cone of Mount Baker, white and shining. When he looked a little round the corner he saw his own hills. The air was beautiful and keen, fresh as mountain water, tonic as free life itself. To smell it brought him strength, for there is great strength in the clean scent of things. He snuffed the air of the upper river and recalled the high plateaus of the Dry Belt.
"By-by I go back to Kamloops," said Pete, as he sat in a chair by the window with a blanket round him. He was still weak, and didn't feel jealous about Jenny. "By-by I go to Pitt River or Hallison Lake."
He used to work when a boy for an old storekeeper at Harrison Lake. That was before he took to the Mill: before he had been to Kamloops. Old Smith was a pioneer, one of the Boston Bar Miners, one of those who had hunted for the mother and father of Cariboo gold in Baldy Mountain. He had been rich and poor and rich again, and even now, though poor enough, he grub-staked wandering prospectors on shares of the Dorado Hole they set out to find.
"Not a bad old fellow, old Smith," said the grubstaked ones. Pete said the same.
"Jenny she can go to hell," said Pete. And when he was well enough to leave the hospital he took a month's wages from the Mill, or nearly a month's, and went up-river to Harrison Lake. He never asked for Quin, and didn't even know that he and Jenny had both been laid up.
"She can go to hell," he told himself. "I go to Hallison Lake and by-by to Kamloops, see my sister Maly. Cultus Muckamuck much better man than Shautch Quin."
After all Cultus had never stolen his klootchman and smashed his skull.
Pete was still very weak when he left New Westminster behind and paid a dollar or so to go upstream to the mouth of Harrison River's blue waters. And Smith gave him "a jhob" at small wages but with good hash.
Then the East wind blew out of the hills, from the serried dark Cascades, and from the monarchs of the Selkirks on the Big Bend of the Columbia and from the giant Rockies beyond that swift clear stream. Nature closed up her wonderful store, and the Mills shut down, for the Lower Fraser was fast in heavy ice from way-up down to Lulu Island and even beyond, and no man and no Bull-Wheel, though it grunted in its frictions, could get logs out of the Boom. So Long Paul of the Boom as well as Long Mac of the Pony Saw and Ginger White of the Great Hoes and all the whole caboodle shut up shop and took to winter work, which meant growling and groaning and gambling and grumbling and playing Old Harry, and raising Cain and horrid crops besides, till frost unlocked the stream and booms again.
Oh, but the days when the East wind held up and the frost was clean and clear! The cold clean sun shone like pale fire in a pale blue sky and the world was hard and bright and white with fierce snow. It was fine enough in the City, and the boys went coasting down the hill streets across the main one, and the kiddies thought of Christmas with such joy as those elders, who had heaps of kids and little cash, could not feel. Nevertheless even a burdened father of many hoped while he could when the frost burned in the still air and fetched the blood to his face. There was health in it: health for Jenny, determined to love "Tchorch" always, and health for "Tchorch," whose poisoned wound healed up though it left a horrid scar on his left pectoral. If only it hadn't meant health for Pete too!
But it did. If it was fine in the City, how much finer, how much cleaner, how much more wonderful it was by the edge of a frozen lake, full of trout, and under the snowy feathery foliage of the firs and pines and the high pagodas of the majestic antique spruces. Pete sucked in health and strength like a child and ate his muckamuck with the determination of a bear at a discovered cache. He put on muscle and fat, and could leap again. And as he fattened, his mind grew darker. He missed his klootchman and woke of nights to miss her. The smile, that was his when he was weak, left him; it was put out by darkness. And under old Smith's wing in a little shack there was another Sitcum Siwash, one called John, who had a young klootchman of his own, and his young klootchman had a young papoose, and they were all as fat as butter and as happy as pigs in a wallow. This hit lonely Pete very hard. He was "solly" he hadn't killed Quin, and took to telling John his woes.
These woes on being told grew bigger, till they became huge once more. They were like a drift in a bitter norther, where a log can begin a mountain that stays all progress.
"I tink I burn his Mill," said Pete as he lay awake. It was a great idea. It grew like a fire, and would have come to something undoubtedly if by an accident old Smith hadn't put a pail of cold discouragement upon the flame as it twisted and crackled in the hot mind of Pete. The news came that Thomas Fergusson's store at Yale had been burnt down, and Smith explained to John and Pete and some store loafer (there always are store loafers everywhere: if there's a cracker cask at the North Pole some loafer holds it down against any South wind) that possibly Fergusson had made money out of the fire by the means of some very queer magic known as insurance, or "insoolance" as John and Pete said. They scratched their heads, for they knew nothing of "fire-bugs," not having read the comic New York papers. But the fact remained that according to old Smith, to burn down the Mill might mean to make Quin richer.
"I won't burn down his damn Moola," said Pete crossly.
Yet couldn't he do something else? Pete lay half one Sunday thinking over it, and came to the conclusion that there was a very reasonable revenge to be had fairly cheap. When he worked at the Mill at Kamloops he had been told of what one man had done at Port Blakeley.
"I do it," said Pete savagely. He heard John's klootchman laugh, and thought again of Jenny. The stronger he grew the more bitterly he missed her. And yet if she had come back to him now he would have thrust her out into the frost.
In this unhappiness of his heart it was natural he should turn to his sister Mary, up at Kamloops or the back of it, who was Cultus Muckamuck's klootchman. And after all old Cultus wasn't such a bad sort. Hadn't they got drunk together, as "drunk as boiled owls in a pan of hot water"? Cultus was a mean old hunks, and a bit rougher than his younger brother, but there was none of the high-toned dandy about Cultus. He would sit on a log with a man, and yarn and swap lies, and fetch out a bottle and say, "Take a drink, Pete." Oh, on the whole Cultus was a good sort. If he did whack Mary, perhaps Mary deserved it. The klootchmen wanted hammering at intervals and a good quirting did them good.
"Firs' I go down to the Moola," said Pete, "and I go back to Kamloops. I make it hot for George Quin when the Moola starts up. I spoil heem, ah, I spoil heem and Shinger White."
The hard frost lasted a month and then a quiet and insidious Chinook came out of the Pacific, a wandering warm West wind, and the ice relented and released the River. It was not very thick and soon departed on the ebb and flood of the tides, swaying in loose floes back and forth. And then the rain began and it looked like a strange soft winter for a little while.
"I go now," said Pete. He spoke to old Smith, asking for a day or two to go down to the City.
"You ain't thinking of killing Quin or your klootchman, sonny?" said Smith, who knew all about it.
"Not me, Mista Smith," said Pete. "She no good, by-by he velly solly he have her."
He got an old dug-out and paddled down to the City, and past it in the dark, when the town was nothing but a gleam of lights in the heavy rain. In the dugout Pete had a few things borrowed from Smith's store that Smith did not know he had borrowed.
"I fix heem," said Pete savagely, as he touched a bag which, held many pounds weight of ten-inch spikes. "I fix heem and his logs!"
He went past the City with the ebb, and taking the South Arm was soon abreast of Lulu Island. There he knew that a big boom of logs for the Mill was anchored to the shore, ready to tow up when the Mill boom was cut out. Besides his spikes he had a heavy sledge-hammer.
"Dat fix heem," said Pete. He knew what he was about.
"I hope it cut Shinger's beas'ly head off."
He knew that Ginger had thrown a spanner at him that last day in the Mill, and, indeed, he believed that it was Ginger, and not old Wong, who had keeled him over and chucked him down the chute.
Now the rain let up and some stars shone out. He got close inshore and felt his way in the shadow of the trees. He let the canoe float, for he came near where the boom should be. A big patch of sky cleared and a wedge of the new moon glimmered under rack. His eyes were keen, and presently he saw the darker mass of the assembled boom of logs anchored in a little bay. He grinned and went alongside and made the canoe fast. Then he filled his pockets with spikes and, taking the sledge, scrambled on the boom.
Outer log was chained to outer log with chains and heavy clamps. Inside, an acre of water was covered with round logs, all loose, logs of fir and pine and spruce. Some were six feet and more in diameter: some less than a foot. As he trod on one it rolled a little and then rolled more: he stepped upon it lightly, balancing himself beautifully, as if he had been a driver on the Eastern Rivers of wooded Wisconsin or Michigan. The motion he gave to one log as he sprang communicated itself to others. The logs seemed uneasy: it was as if he had waked them. He looked for the best, the biggest, with a pleasure akin to that of the hunter, or some trapper sorting peltry. He found a splendid spruce and stood on it in triumph.
"I make heem bad," grinned Pete. He took a spike and set it into the log with a light tap of the sledge held close to the heft. Then he stood up and swung the sledge double-handed. He had driven spikes on a railroad once, though he hated railroading, being by nature a millman or a ranche hand. The sledge fell on the spike clean and plumb. The dim forests echoed and he stood up as if the sound startled him. But after all no one could be near and the City was far off. He drove the deadly spike home into the beautiful log and smiled.
Into that one he put three spikes, then he leapt lightly on another, a Douglas Fir, and spiked that too. He grew warm and threw off his jacket. It was a great pleasure to him to work, to feel that his strength had come back, to feel himself active, lithe, capable. And revenge was very sweet.
"Mebbe the saw cut off Quin's head," he murmured. He knew what he was doing and what would happen. He saw it quite clearly, for once in a saw-mill, when he was a kiddy, he had heard what happened when a saw cut on a hidden spike. The wedger-off had told the others how the great saw struck fire with a horrid grinding squeal. With the sawdust from the cut came fiery sparks, and then the saw, split in huge segments, hurtled from the cut. One piece went through the roof, another skimmed through the Mill like a piece of slate hurled by some mighty arm.
Pete knew what he was doing as he killed the logs. He spiked two dozen before he let up upon them.
"I fix heem," said Pete. "I fix heem lik' hell!"
He put on his jacket again and with the sledge in his hands went towards the dug-out. There were still many spikes in his pockets, for twice he had renewed his supply of them.
"I think I drive one more," said Pete, who was drunk with pleasure. "I tink one more for luck."
He set the spike in and started to drive it home. Now he was careless and suddenly he slipped. As he tried to recover himself, the sledge flew one way and he flew the other. He dropped between two logs: the one he had been standing on, and one on the boom of logs. That is, one of the boom logs saved his life, for the heavy spikes would have pulled him down if he had had to swim for a minute. As he let a yell out of him and felt a sudden fear of death his hands caught a chain between two of the outer boom logs. He pulled his head out of the water and hung on. The stream was bitter cold, for there was still ice in it. He gasped for breath, but presently got a leg across the chain. With a great effort he clawed the upper edge of the log and clambered back to safety.
"Oh," he grunted, as he lay flat and caught his breath, "that a very near ting, Pete."
It was a very near thing indeed.
But before dawn, as he paddled hard on the flood tide, he was back at Smith's and fast asleep.
Next day there was a mighty row about the missing sledge-hammer.
"I tink some damn thief kapsualla heem," said Pete.
That week the frost returned once more. This time it lasted till the early spring.