XIV
The story of the disaster at the Mill followed Pete and passed him as he made his way to Yale, having screwed a dollar or two out of old Smith. Indeed he got more than he had a right to, for old Smith wasn't a man to squeeze a dollar till the eagle squealed, by any means. The day after the news came of the split saw Pete had boarded the boat for Yale and was put out at the mountain town in a storm of rain. And Pete hated the wet as a saw-mill man must, or as one who had worked in the Dry Belt where the rain is scarce and the fattening grasses dry.
At this time the Railroad, the Railroad of all Roads, the longest on earth, gentlemen, partners and tilikums, was being put through the hills, through the Rockies and the Selkirks and the Eagle Range. The woods were full of Contractors, small and big, good and measly, generous and mean, men and pigs. But above them all towered the genial, blue-eyed Andy. The men said "Andy" here and "Andy" there. Andy was responsible if the bottom fell out of the sky, or if the earth blew up. He was held to account for floods and wash-outs, for land slides and snow slides, and he took 'em all as they came. The men said "damn Andy" or "Andy's all right." They got drunk and denounced him, and perhaps got sober and blessed him. On the whole they loved his blue eyes even if they damned them. But while he held the road which he had built, and before it was turned over to the men in Montreal, the good men and the great scoundrels (there always being talk of railroad boodlers) who thought the thing out and financed it, he charged a devil of a rate for passage on it. So everyone who went East or West went to Andy or some underling for a pass. Pete did it. There was only one tale to tell.
"I want to go up to Ashcroft to get a job, Mr. Vanderdunk," said everyone. Pete said it, and Andy being in a heavenly temper (as he wasn't when I struck him for a pass) let the Sitcum Siwash through easily, just as he had done before when Jenny was with him.
"I want to wu'k on the railroad, Sir," said Pete. When he went off with the pass he said he didn't want to "wu'k" on any railroad. He spent a dollar in drink and went on board the train drunk. It was the first time since the night when he had nearly killed Jenny that he had been very "full." The smoking car was crammed with men who had passes: men who wanted to work at the Black Cañon and those who didn't. Some were bound for Kamloops, some for the work on the Shushwap, some for Eagle Pass and Sicamoose Narrows, and there was one farming Johnny or mossback for Spallumcheen. They were all lively—some full up, some half-full. They yelled and laughed and yarned and swore and said—
"Oh, what are yer givin' us, taffy?"
They declined to swallow taffy—but they swallowed whisky. An old prospector gave Pete drink. Then he heard them tell the tale of the accident at the Mill.
"Some rotten son of a gun spiked the logs," said the man behind Pete.
"I heerd they'd found ten logs spiked," said another. "They bin over 'em with an adze."
"If they corral the kiddy wot done it, he'll wear hemp," said another.
"Serve him right, damn his immortal," returned the first speaker.
Pete begged another drink and drank so heartily that the old prospector said he was a hog. Pete was indignant, but he was nearly speechless and saw two, nay, three, prospectors, gaunt and hairy men, who looked very angry. He decided not to fight, and went to sleep, and slipped down on the floor. The prospector wiped his boots on him and expatiated on hogs in a whining monotone for forty miles.
They dragged Pete out at Ashcroft and put him and his bundle on the dry prairie, where the depôt was. He woke late at night and found his throat so parched that he could not speak to the darkness that closed about him. There wasn't a soul in the depôt, and not a shack or shebang handy. The dread collection of wallows described as a town was a mile off across the prairie, and Pete groaned as he set out for the lights of the biggest grog shanty there. He hadn't a red in his sack, to say nothing of a dime or two-bits, but some charitably disposed railroader, a Finn it was, gave him a drink, and he sat down in a corner along with a dozen others and went to sleep. In the morning he raised another drink, and set off for Kamloops, just as the railroad work began. He was asked to stop a dozen times, but he wasn't keen. "I go to Kamloops," he answered.
He humped himself and got to Sayona's Ferry in quick time, for someone gave him a lift on the road. He found a sternwheeler on the point of starting for Kamloops, and knowing the engineer and the fireman, who was a Siwash too, they shoved him in the stokehold and made him work his passage. Two hours of mighty labour with billets of firewood sweated the drink out of him, and by the time they were alongside the Kamloops shore he was something of a man again.
He found some tilikums in the town and recited his woes to them, telling them all about Jenny having quit him to go with Quin, who was Cultus Muckamuck's brother. He asked about his sister Mary, and about old Cultus.
"Cultus pahtlum evly sun, dlunk all the time now," said a Dry Belt Indian named Jimmy. "Nika manitsh Mary, I see Mary. She very sad with a black eye."
Pete was furious. Mary was older than he by five years and had been a mother to him when their mother went under. If he loved anyone he loved Mary.
"I wish I had a gun," said Pete. "I tell Cultus if he bad to Mary I kill heem."
He was almost bewildered by a sense of general and bitter injustice. Hadn't he been a good man to Jenny? Hadn't he been a good worker in the Mill? But Jenny had left him for the man he had worked for. Then instead of killing Quin or Ginger White he had killed poor old Skookum. He hadn't meant to kill him, but if the law knew he would be hanged all the same. And now poor Mary was having a bad time with old Cultus. When Cultus got mad, he was very dangerous, Pete knew that.
"Mary's a damn fool to stay with him," said Pete. "I tell her to leave heem. I get wu'k here, in the Mill. She live with me."
He went to the Kamloops Mill to look for work. They were full up and couldn't give him a show. But one of the men who knew him gave him a dollar and that made Pete happier. He raised a drink with it, a whole bottle of liquid lightning, and he didn't start for Cultus's ranche that day.
It was an awful pity he didn't. For Cultus had been in town that morning and had taken two bottles back with him. He had been drinking for weeks and was close upon delirium tremens. He had horrid fits of shaking.
Ned Quin was ten years George's senior, and had been in British Columbia for thirty years. He had been married to a white woman, whose very name he had forgotten. For the last ten years, or eight at least, he had lived with Mary, whom the previous owner of his ranche had taken from the kitchen of the Kamloops Hotel when she was twenty. Now he lived in a rude shanty over toward the Nikola, "nigh on" to twenty miles from Kamloops. He had a hundred and fifty steers upon the range, and made nothing out of them. The Mill, in which he had an interest, kept him going. He wanted nothing better. He was very fond of Mary, and often beat her.
Mary was a tall and curiously elegant woman for an Indian or a half-caste. By some strange accident, perhaps some inheritance from her unknown white father, she was by nature refined.
She had a sense of humour and a beautiful smile. She talked very good English, which is certainly more than her brother did, who had no language of his own and knew the jargon best of all. Mary was a fine horse-woman and rode like a man, straddling, as many of the Dry Belt women do. She could throw a lariat with some skill. She walked with a certain free grace which was very pleasant to see. And she loved her white man in spite of his brutality. For when Ned was good, he was very good to her.
"Now he beats poor me," she said. Perhaps she took a certain pleasure in being his slave. But she knew, and more knew better, that she lived on the edge of a precipice. More than once Ned had beaten her with the flat of a long-handled shovel. More than once, since Pete left, he had threatened to give her the edge and cut her to rags.
It was a great pity Pete had that dollar given him at the Kamloops Mill. He got drunk, of course, and only started for the ranche a little before noon next day.
It was a clear and cloudless sky he walked under as he climbed the winding road up from the town by the Lake. There was a touch of winter in the air and the road was still hard. The lake was quite blue, beyond it the hills seemed close: the North Fork of the Thompson showed clear: the Indian reservation on the other side seemed near at hand. But of those things Pete thought nothing. He wanted to see his sister, he groaned that he hadn't a cayuse to ride.
He was five miles out of Kamloops and on the upper terraces of the country, when he saw someone coming who had a cayuse to ride. Pete could see the rider from afar: he saw the cattle separate and run as the man came nearer to them. He saw how the steers, for ever curious, came running after him for a little way as the rider went fast. The man was in a hurry. Indeed he was in a desperate hurry. Pete, who knew everyone between the Thompson and the Nikola, wondered who it was, and why he was riding so fast.
"He ride lik' hell," said Pete, as he stopped and filled his pipe.
Every man has his own way of riding, his own way of holding himself.
"He ride lik' Cultus," said Pete curiously. "Jus' lik' Cultus."
For all his thirty years in a horse country Cultus Quin rode like no horseman. He worked his elbows up and down as he went at a lope. He usually wore an old ragged overcoat, which flew behind him in the wind.
"It is old Cultus," said Pete. "What for he ride lik' that?"
A little odd anxiety came into Pete's mind, and he held a match till it burnt his fingers. He dropped it and cursed.
"What for he make a dust lik' that? I never see him ride lik' that!"
The rider came fast and faster when he reached a pitch in the road. He was a quarter of a mile away, a hundred yards away, and then Pete saw that it was Cultus, but no more like the Cultus that he knew. The man's face was ashy white and his eyes seemed to bolt out of his head. As he swept past Pete he turned and knew him, and he threw up one hand as if it were a gesture of greeting. But it might be that it was rather a gesture of despair, for he threw his head back, too. He never ceased his headlong gallop and disappeared in dust on the next pitch of the descending road.
Pete stood staring after him.
"What for he ride lik' that?" he whispered. He wouldn't speak to himself of Mary. He walked on with his head down. Why did Cultus Muckamuck ride like that? Why did he ride like that?
The answer was still miles ahead of him, and if there was any answer he knew it was to be found where Mary was. There was no light in the sky for him as he went on.
And the answer came to meet him before an hour was past.
He saw others, on the far stretched road before him, and he wondered at the pace they came. They did not come fast, but very slow. As he held his hand above his eyes he saw that there were many men coming. They were not on horseback but on foot. Why did they come so slow?
"Why they walk lik' that?" asked Pete. He sat down to think why a crowd of men should be so slow. There were eight or ten of them. If they went so slow——
"It lik'——" said Pete, and then he shaded his eyes again. The men in front were carrying something. It looked like a funeral!
But Pete shook his head. There was no burial place nearer than Kamloops, and if a body were being taken there they would have drawn it on a wagon.
"They're toatin' something on their shoulders," said Pete, with a shiver. It was as if there had been an accident, and men were carrying someone to the hospital. Pete had seen more than one carried. He turned a little sick. Was Cultus riding for the doctor? Was there anyone the old devil would have ridden to help?
"When he wasn't pahtlum he was very fond of Mary," said Pete shivering.
He started to walk fast and faster still. Now the melancholy procession was hidden behind a little rise. He knew they were still coming, for a bunch of steers on a low butte were staring with their heads all in one direction. Pete ran. Then he saw the bearers of the burden top the hill and descend towards him. His keen eyes told him now that they were carrying someone on a litter shoulder high. He knew the foremost men: one was Bill Baker of Nikola Ranche, another was Joe Batt, and yet another Kamloops Harry, a Siwash. He named the others, too.
And some knew him. Pete saw that they stopped and spoke, turning their heads to those in the rear. One of the men, it was Simpson of Cherry Creek, came on foot in front of the others. Pete watched his face. It was very solemn and constrained. He nodded to Pete when he was within twenty yards. When he came up he put his hand on Pete's shoulder.
"We're takin' your sister to Kamloops, Pete," said Simpson.
Pete stared at him.
"Mary?" he asked.
Simpson nodded and answered Pete's wordless question.
"No, she ain't dead——"
Pete turned towards Kamloops.
"Ole Cultus passed ridin' lik' hell, Mr. Simpson."
The procession halted within a few yards.
"Damn him," said Simpson, "he's cut the poor gal to pieces with a shovel."