XVI
KOOTENAY
The train was climbing slowly to the summit of the Crow's Nest Pass. To the northward rose an extraordinary mountain, deeply tinted at its base with greens and purples, and capped with a dazzling crown of snow and ice. Around the glowing base, like children gathered at the knees of a monstrous mother, rose seven inferior monoliths, pillars of rock which in the morning light flamed like torches. All around were mountains, some flat-topped and hooded, some broken spires as of a vast cathedral ruined; beneath them wild gullies yawned, intricate defiles, deep canyons to whose sides the pines clung in an agony of effort; and so far below that it appeared but a thread of silver ran a silent river. Into these defiles the train moved timorously; now hanging for an instant on a wall of precipice, now suspended on a groaning trestle-bridge over depths of air, but ever moving on, like a living creature animate with the unconquerable energy of man. How good this mountain air, chill and clear and bright; how welcome this irregularity of form, passing through every grade from the exquisite to the magnificent, after the long, barren monotony of the plains! It was the transition from prose to poetry, from barbarian prose to lyric music. It was with a sinking heart that Arthur had remarked the long unfolding of the plains. They oppressed the mind, they lay like a weight upon the eyes, they breathed a savage and a hostile spirit. The scattered towns had an air of dereliction; the very houses seemed frozen to the soil, and around them was a silence, like the silence of death. But here once more Nature became a living thing, a hospitable and kindly mother. And to Arthur, who had never seen a mountain, this sudden revelation of grandeur and magnificence came with a shock of exquisite pain. His eyes filled with happy tears, his nerves tingled with delight, he drank long draughts of crystal air, he could have sobbed and shouted. For the first time he knew the bliss of being alive.
On that long westward journey he had had time to reflect on many things. New York had already sunk into the past like a disordered dream. Legion and Horner were alike unsubstantial figures, shapes that had moved for an instant on a tinted cloud and had disappeared. But Bundy travelled with him; the spirit of the man still warmed his heart like a cordial. He saw his honest features wet with tears as he recalled his home; heard his reverberating eloquence in Parlour A.; was subdued and reverent before the generosity and ardour of the man. He had parted with him two days after that memorable midnight conversation. He was now upon his way to England—and Mrs. Bundy. If Arthur could have chosen, he would have wished to be the sole architect of his own fortunes. That had been his proud dream, and he had been slow to relinquish it. His pride had struggled to the last against Bundy's generosity, until remonstrance seemed ungracious and insulting. He saw now that that pride was the least worthy thing about him. The refusal to accept generosity was scarcely less base than the refusal to confer it. God had not designed man to stand alone; He had surrounded him with a network of obligations and relationships; total independence was impossible in a world where all living creatures existed by a dependence on each other. He had been in peril of becoming an Ishmael by renunciation of the social bond; Bundy had re-created that social bond for him.
And, strangely enough, Bundy's generosity owed itself to a similar generosity in his father—the father whom he had deserted. There was plentiful food for irony in that thought. He had condemned his father's mode of life, applied to him unsparing judgments, fled from him; and here, six thousand miles away, he was travelling toward an opportunity that would not have existed but for a quality of goodness in Archibold Masterman. He had refused partnership with his father in London; here, in a strange and distant land, he was still the partner of his father's deeds. The thought sensibly softened his heart toward his father. He had long ago ceased to think of him with anger; enmity he had never felt; now there came to him a gush of tender recollection, and with it the power of truer comprehension. He saw that no man is either wholly good or wholly bad; that character cannot be limned in plain black and white; that a thousand delicate gradations separate yet unite the two extremes; and that the final verdict on any man lies beyond the human mind. Man must be taken as he is; he is at all times a contradiction, an enigma, a creature that exceeds his category. To see this is to become human; to miss this vision is to remain a Pharisee, whose cardinal defect is inhumanity. And it was this wider and more charitable temper that came to birth in him as he reflected on the new course his life had taken.
From his pocket he took a bundle of letters, and re-read them slowly. The latest in date was from Elizabeth, and it closed with a phrase that had clamoured in his memory through all that week of journeying—"Well I know my true knight will not fail me." No emotional utterance could have moved his so deeply. It was the affirmation of a vow which he knew would endure as long as time, and after. It braced his spirit to repeat it; he accepted with a swelling heart its brave implication, and wore it like a badge of honour.
The longest letter was from Vickars. It was the last letter he had received before he left New York, and he had read it so often that he almost knew it by heart. "I have shot my arrow in the air," he wrote, "and God alone knows where it may fall. My book is out, and there are some signs that it may succeed. You know what I mean by that. The only success I crave is to influence other minds in right directions. Men have called me a dreamer, perhaps you yourself have thought so too; but I know, and I think you know, that I have dreamed true. We are moving toward a revolution. It is impossible that the present system can endure much longer. My message is for the day after the revolution is accomplished. Then will begin the reconstruction of life again from the base upward, a simpler and an ampler life. It is for that day I write, and my bones will thrill to it even in the grave. As for me, I am like Balaam; I shall see it, but not now; I shall behold it, but not nigh. Even so, I am content." There followed a fuller expression of his social ideals, and the whole closed with this paragraph—"Your mother came to see us last week. It was a great but very happy surprise. Can you guess what we talked of? Of you, Arthur. For we three know you as no others do, and we love you, and believe in you. She kissed Elizabeth at parting, and said, 'Some day——' and then stopped; but we knew what she meant. Well, you must work on toward that some day. Poor lady! Deal tenderly with her. I think she has sore wounds in her heart, and remember it was harder for her to part from you than for you to go. By so much her quiet sacrifice is greater than yours. She is the tarrier by the stuff, a harder lot, I think, than his that goes down into the battle."
Tears filled his eyes as he read the words. There came to him a sudden vision of the London he had left—the vast tribes of toiling men, the blind pain and suffering of so many millions, the silent agonies that hid beneath those gray skies and congregated roofs. And then, looking from the windows, the eye dwelt again upon this magnificent heritage that bore the flag of England, and he marvelled why men fought for bare life in cities when an empty empire called for them. Surely some day the wizard's spell would break, and London would pour its wasted tribes into this land of fertility and beauty. To reconstruct life from the base upward, that could never be done there; it might be done here. Here the simpler, ampler life was possible. Ah! if he could not fight by Vickars' side in London, he was still fighting for him here, and was it not better to create the new than to rebuild the old?
The mountain peaks were gradually receding. The train crawled slowly round the walls of precipice, hung suspended for a giddy instant, and then, with a tumult of squealing brakes and hissing steam, plunged into the abyss, doubling on itself a score of times, till it reached the valley and the roaring river. It was past noon when the train stopped beside a placid lake. Immense forests rose on every side; an immemorial silence lay on all things, broken only by the gentle ripple of the waters. A steamer lay beside the landing-stage; an hour later he was afloat.
There were not many passengers, and what there were seemed uncommunicative. They were for the most part long-limbed, sturdy men, ranchers, traders, lumber-jacks, their faces bronzed with outdoor life. They eyed him narrowly and critically. He knew quite well what their criticism implied. He was a greenhorn, and no doubt looked like one. As long as the light lasted he took no notice of them; he was too absorbed in the unfolding beauty of the lake, and in curiosity as to what it would reveal for him. Somewhere on the lake lay his small estate, and he found himself studying with eager interest the wooded shores, in the hope of discovering something that gave a hint of human habitation. There was very little to reward his gaze. Twice he saw a blue curl of smoke rising from the forest; once a rude hut, whose one window glittered like a gem in the setting sun; beyond this nothing met the eye but a shore of snow, the black bare poles of charred trees rising above the living pines, and the solitary sky. The scene was sombre; the silence so profound that the churning stern-wheel sounded like the passage of an army. Night fell swiftly. It was seven o'clock when a lighted hillside met the eye, and he was told that it was Nelson.
He slept that night at a small hotel near the shore, and rising early next morning was quite unprepared for the beauty of the scene that awaited him. The distant hills of snow were touched with rosy fire, the lake was like a turquoise, and the town surprised him by its sober aspect of prosperity. He scarce knew what he had expected in this remote outpost of the Empire, but certainly not what he saw—broad streets, buildings of hewn stone, substantial shops and warehouses, all gathered round a curve of lake so exquisite that few places could surpass it in its natural loveliness. The hotel was kept by an Englishman, who made haste to cultivate his acquaintance. He was a lightly built, bearded fellow, with a shrewd eye and a perpetual smile, one of the numerous family of Smith.
"So you're going up the lake?" he inquired.
"Yes. I want a ranch called Bundy's."
"Bundy. Let me see. I don't know of any Bundy here."
"He isn't here. It's his ranch I want to find."
"Did he tell you where it was?"
"Poplar Point."
"Ah! now I know. If you'll come with me, I think I can show you whereabouts it is." He took him to the landing-stage, and pointed out a deep fold in the hills. "You make for that," he said. "Unless I disremember, Bundy's ranch is there or thereabout. But people are always going and coming here. These 'ere ranches are always changing hands. Young fellows like you come out, and get tired of the work at the end of the summer, and sell out. They're the plague of Nelson. Quitters, we call 'em. I hope you ain't a quitter."
"I don't think I am. I've come here to live."
"Well, sir, you've come to a good place. But let me give you a word of warning. It's only hard work that pays here, and you'll have to work hard and wait long if you want to do anything in fruit. This is no place for quitters."
He went on to give him many brief histories of the obnoxious tribe of quitters. They were all looking out for a soft job—that was what was the matter with them. Mamma's darlings—that's what they were. Did he know what it was to handle an axe. No, he thought not. Land had to be cleared—did he know what that meant?
"But mine is cleared," Arthur interrupted. "At least, fifty acres are."
At this he looked puzzled.
"I never heard of fifty acres of cleared land anywheres near Poplar Point," he observed.
There happened to come along the landing-stage at that moment a somewhat extraordinary-looking old man. He wore blue jeans, a red wool sweater, and a battered felt hat. His hair and beard were unkempt, and both were gray. A beggar could not have been worse dressed, and yet there was about him something of the dignity that marks the open-air man.
"That's Jim Flanagan," remarked Smith; "he ought to know. Here, Jim, I want to speak to you."
The old man came towards them in silence.
"Jim, do you know a ranch at Poplar Point called Bundy's? You know most of the places up and down the lake, don't you?"
"Yes, I know it. It lies back a quarter of a mile or so, on a bench."
"Cleared, is it?"
"Not much. It was once, but most of it's growed up again."
"Well, this gentleman's going there. Maybe you could give him pointers."
"Going to live there?" asked Flanagan.
"Yes, I'm going to live there," said Arthur.
"Well, I don't know but what you can. There's a pretty good log-house. I'm living not far away myself."
"Can't you row me over?"
"No, I can't do that. It wouldn't be no good if I did. You can't live there without a good bit of preparation. There ain't no shops at Poplar Point, and there ain't no hotel," he remarked with a grin.
"Now I'll tell you what I would do, if I was you," said the landlord. "You just let Jim give you some pointers. He'll treat you right, will Jim."
"I'll be glad to do anything I can," said the old man. "I've got an hour to spare, any way."
Arthur took Flanagan up to the hotel with him, and was soon interested in his strange preceptor. It seemed he was an old hunter and prospector, a man of infinite adventures, with a dislike of civilisation, which was perhaps his most marked characteristic. There was no remote solitude of the surrounding woods with which he was not acquainted.
"As for this ranch of yours, I guess you've been expecting too much," he remarked. "It's good enough land, that I believe. And I won't say but what it has been planted all right once. But it's been let grow up. I kind of remember a man called Bundy bought it—took it for a debt, 'twas said. But he's never been here, not a£ I remember. And I've been here and hereabout a matter of a dozen years."
So it appeared that Bundy had let the light of his imagination gild Kootenay Lake with a delusive splendour, as it did all those "propositions" which engaged his ardent rhetoric. But Arthur was in no mood to judge his benefactor critically. The land was there—that was something; and it would go hard with him if he could not make it all that Bundy had imagined it. He might have known that Bundy had never seen it for himself. The story of his having taken it for a debt had the accent of truth. The mouth of the gift-horse must not be too closely examined, but at least he was a veritable beast. And in spite of the passing shadow of disappointment, Arthur's spirits rose at the menace of unexpected difficulty.
"Well," said Flanagan. "I must be getting along. When will you be coming out?"
"Immediately. Some time this afternoon."
"In that case you'll have to get a move on. You've a lot to do."
Flanagan thereupon sat down again and gave him a series of elaborate instructions. He must first of all buy a boat; he'd need one, any way. There was a boat he knew of that might be had second-hand for twenty dollars. Then he'd want to buy an axe or two, a grub-hoe, a sack of flour, sugar, rice, tea, coffee, tinned milk, and may be a side of bacon and a case of eggs. That would do for a beginning.
The boat was duly bargained for upon the wharf. It was an interesting ruin: the paint had long since disappeared, it had no rudder, and it leaked like a sieve. Its owner, remarking Arthur's innocence, wished to raise the price, but Jim kept him to the twenty dollars.
"That or nothing," he said sternly. "And put a couple of baling-tins in. They'll be needed."
Arthur looked upon this ancient tub with frank dislike and with some dismay. The beauty of the rose-tinted morn was over; the sky was gray, and a rising north-west wind was making more than ripples on the lake.
"How far is Poplar Point?" he asked.
"Five miles," Jim answered. "But I guess you'll do it. You look strong."
"It isn't myself I'm thinking of; it's the boat. Do you think she can do it?"
"I've seen worse," said Jim. "Not many of them, though. But she'll do it, never fear. That there old boat have been on the lake ever since I knowed it."
Which, under the circumstances, was scarcely a recommendation.
By one o'clock, somehow or other, Arthur had got through his preparations. His story had got about; he found himself stared at in the streets as a greenhorn; but every one had shown him civility, and some a rough kindness. At the bank a great surprise awaited him. He found that Bundy had telegraphed a considerable sum of money to his credit, more than enough to give him a fair and even generous start. Willing hands helped him to pack his goods. They were all there—the axes, the grub-hoe (with whose uses he was totally unacquainted), the sack of flour, and the various provisions. His valise was shoved under the stern seat, and with it half a dozen pamphlets on fruit-growing which he collected in the town. Flanagan had gone two hours earlier, with the promise that he would look out for him at Poplar Point.
"Keep your eye on the gap in the hills," was his final instruction, "then push up the creek to the left; and if it's dark, I'll burn a flare."
He had no sooner left the landing than he began to feel the force of the wind. It blew with a steady and increasing violence, dead ahead; pull as he would, he made little progress, and, to add to his discomfiture, he had to be continually baling. The moment he stopped to bale, the boat swung round or was driven backward. His hands were soon blistered, his muscles ached, yet toil as he would the far-off gap in the hills seemed no nearer. The water ran black and foam-flecked in short, choppy waves; the sky had darkened rapidly, and presently a cutting hail fell. In ordinary circumstances he would have turned back, but he had a lively recollection of Smith's stinging phrases, and had no mind to be written down a mamma's darling or derided as a quitter. This was, in its way, his first test, and to succumb would be to lose nerve for future difficulties. He was now in the very centre of the lake, and a thrill of apprehension seized him as he saw how small an object this crazy boat appeared in that loneliness of angry water. Black water, black forests, and on the upper hills pale rays of watery sunset—that was what he saw, and himself scarcely more noticeable than a bird, buffeted by the impending storm. But he toiled on, and at last got a little shelter from the shore. More than three hours had passed since he left Nelson; and in this deep fissure of the hills the night had already camped. The darkness deepened rapidly. It was five o'clock when he rounded the point of the creek. Here the water was smoother, and he could pull more leisurely; but it was now quite dark. All his hopes were fixed on Flanagan. For another hour he searched the shores eagerly for any sign of light. Nothing met his eye but the tiny twinkling of a lamp here and there in the window of some unseen house. At last, just when he had made up his mind to spend the night upon the lake and wait for dawn, a sudden shaft of red flame soared up not a hundred yards away. A voice hailed him, and never did a human voice sound sweeter. Ten minutes later Flanagan's hand grasped his, and he stepped ashore.
"The old boat's done it, then," said Flanagan. "I rather guessed she would. Now you come right along with me."
"So it was only a guess, was it?"
"Well, most things in this world are a sort of guess," said the old man. "The only thing sure is that men don't die till their hour's come." He turned away gruffly, and at once began to shoulder Arthur's goods.
"But you can't carry all that," cried Arthur, as the old man hoisted the sack of flour upon his shoulders.
"Needs must when the devil drives," he said grimly. "There ain't no hotel hereabouts, didn't I tell you? You've got to get all your goods into the shack to-night. That wind's bringing up snow, and the sooner we get this job done the better."
Arthur grasped his valise, and such impedimenta as Flanagan would let him carry, and followed the old man.
The snow was deep and soft, in spite of the cold wind. The darkness was like a solid wall on either side of the thin ray that fell from Jim's lantern. Through the wood there ran a perpetual ghostly murmur, a sound of sighing, groaning, struggling, as the branches beat to and fro and rubbed against each other. Suddenly a long and terrible cry rose above the noises of the forest, a cry of infinite pain, despair, melancholy, and Arthur started back, shouting, "What's that?"
"Why, that's only a coyote," said Jim—"just an old dog coyote. Bless you! he won't hurt you."
Arthur said no more, but he was glad that no one could see the colour of his face. He struggled breathlessly in the steps of his guide. The hill was steep, the foothold uncertain; more than once he waded to his knees in a hidden bog-hole. And yet, in spite both of his discomfort and his fear, he was conscious of a gradual heightening of his spirits. There was something wild and savage in these black walls of forest that encompassed him, in the mystery and solitude of this primeval place, something that exhilarated while it awed him. He was conscious of the falling from him of the trappings of a discarded civilisation. He had come to a place where the artificialities of life had no significance; where the natural man stood front to front with the stubborn earth, with no weapons to subdue her but his own thews and muscles, his own right of domination, and his unconquerable will.
The ground was easier now, and they moved more swiftly on a level narrow trail. At last the darkness thinned a little; they had reached a small clearing, and a light shone brightly.
"Here we are," said Jim. "And not sorry to get here either."
He pushed open the door of a log-hut. It was perhaps fourteen feet square; a stove burned red-hot in the centre of the hut; on one side was a long bunk built of red cedar.
"I done my best to clean it up," said Jim. "Maybe there's a rat or two around, and perhaps a porcupine, but they won't hurt you. It's dry, that's one thing. And now I'll say good-night."
He tramped off into the wood. Arthur stood a long time listening, but Jim's footsteps were soon lost amid the groaning of the trees. The long, melancholy cry of the coyote again thrilled the air. Arthur shut the door.
And it was so that he came into his heritage.