CHAPTER SIX
When King Howden awoke next morning it was with a feeling that he was beginning life in a new world. The feeling was deepened when he looked out through the small window and saw the pools of water left by the night's rain glistening in the bright sunlight. He had not slept well—during the earlier part of the night he had not slept at all. There had been much to think about, much that was perplexing and disquieting. And yet, as he looked from his window at the new morning and saw half a mile away the huts and white tents of The Town flooded with sunlight, he was conscious not so much of the disappointments that the week had brought him, as he was of the new determination, the high resolve with which he looked into the future.
When his mind went back to his brother—as it did frequently—the memory struck pain to his heart, but he was not melancholy. The loneliness he felt caused him to straighten his shoulders and prepare himself to square away before the task that lay before him. What that task was he could only vaguely define as yet. But he was beginning to understand that there was a man's work here—and a big man's work it was—awaiting the coming of someone to do it. The fact had dawned upon him slowly, but the first glimmerings of light were visible just the same. He was coming to see that a new country, even a small, half-enclosed valley-district such as this one, would become what the vital energies of its men made it. He had not as yet had any clear vision of what the country would be in years to come, when little towns and villages would spring up here and there along the railway, when hundreds of men and women and their families would rush in, hopeful that they might build again—and strongly build—though their old lives in other lands had crumbled into ruins. He had no concrete, complete conception of what lay ahead. He had nothing but the vague hopes, the uncertain dreams, the fleeting fancies that had come to him often during the past summer—only now they were more vivid.
To the events of the night before he gave little or no thought—at least, to the events that had brought him into conflict with Bill McCartney. In fact, in his new mood he wondered how he could have come so near to losing his temper over an affair that didn't amount to anything after all. He had been in Cheney's before, but not often. As he thought it over he quietly determined that the less he had to do with Cheney the better. His determination was stiffened as he remembered the group of men he had seen there the night before. It startled him to think how near they had come to witnessing what might easily have been a tragedy, because one of them was bent upon settling a dispute in his own ill-chosen way; and out of all his thinking about these things there grew up within him the clear understanding that only upon order and good judgment could men hope to build for the future in a new community.
In all his wondering about these things—and much of it was very vague wondering—there was only one element of a personal kind. He confessed to himself now for the first time that Cherry McBain was as nearly indispensable to him as anyone in his life had ever been. And now with the birth of a new hope he did what any man would have done under the circumstances—he threw his whole soul into a resolve that in the game of life he was playing now, the prize was the heart of Cherry McBain. Perhaps it was this thought that helped to make the world a good place for him to live in, and the future something to set store by.
It was something of this nature at any rate that he confided to his sole companion in the shack, old mongrel Sal, who had stood for some time looking up into his face, her shaggy body performing all kinds of contortions in vain attempts to attract her master's attention. Suddenly he sat down on the side of his bed and grasping her two ears with his hands drew her head between his knees and looked into her eyes.
"Sal, you old cuss, you," he said, shaking her head, "there's something I'm going to tell you."
He put his face down until his cheek was resting against the side of her head and murmured something very quietly. Then he straightened up and with his two hands closed the dog's mouth, holding it shut a moment with one hand round her muzzle.
Something in the mood that had come upon King caused him to look critically round the single room that made up the interior of his shack. One golden shaft of sunlight fell from the small window to the floor, but the light it gave revealed a condition that, for some reason or other, he had never been more than vaguely conscious of before. The place was indescribably dirty. His few days' absence from the place had given it a heavy, musty smell that was anything but pleasant. A litter of odd bits of clothing and old papers lay where he had thrown them probably weeks before. The heavy grey blankets on the bunk which he had built into one corner of the shack had not been washed for months—they had not even been spread out to the sun. The table that stood near the window was covered with unwashed tin plates and cups, dirty knives, forks and spoons. A bit of bread, dried hard, and some butter that had turned to grease in the sun's rays lay where he had left them when he went out on his last trip. Grey ashes covered the floor beside the rusted sheet-iron stove.
King had once regarded this as belonging essentially to the only place he knew as home. It had been perfectly natural, and far from revolting. It had been even cosy. But in his present mood he found it disquieting. He could not help wondering to himself how Cherry McBain's senses would react, if she were suddenly ushered into the place.