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Title: The prey of the strongest

Author: Morley Roberts

Release date: September 19, 2022 [eBook #69014]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Hurst and Blackett, Limited

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PREY OF THE STRONGEST ***







  THE PREY OF THE STRONGEST


  BY

  MORLEY ROBERTS



  LONDON:
  HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED,
  Paternoster House, E.C.

  1906




PREFACE

  To Archer Baker,
    European Manager of the Canadian
          Pacific Railroad

MY DEAR BAKER,

Of all the men I worked with on the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the
Kicking Horse Pass and on the Shushwap, when you and men like you
were hustling to put it through, I am not, nowadays, in touch with
one.  They are, doubtless, distinguished or have gone under.  Some of
them, perhaps, lie in obscure graves beside the track of other roads,
which, in their parlance, "broke out" when the C.P.R. was finished:
when End of Track joined End of Track: when the very bottom of their
world fell out because two Worlds, East and West, were united by our
labour, yours and theirs and even mine.  Others of them are perhaps
famous.  They may have some mighty mountains and a way station named
after them, as you may have, for all I know: they may even be
Managers!  And what so great as a Manager of a Through Continental
Road, after all?  There are Ministers and Monarchs and other men of
note, but to my mind the Managers top them all.  That is by the way,
and you shall not take it as flattery: the humble worker with the
pick and shovel and hammer and drill and bar, like myself, cannot but
think with awe of the cold clear heights in which they dwell.

Years ago, when I was toiling on another grade, in another sort of
rock-cut, hewing out a trail for myself in the thick impenetrable
forests of which the centre may be Fleet Street or where Publishers
dwell, I came across you.  And it is to my credit that I never let
you go.  Most men represent other men or shadows, but you represented
yourself and a great part of my old life: you stood for the Grade,
for the Mountains, and the Passes, for the steel rails, for the
Contractors with whom I worked, for the Road, for all Railroads, for
Canada and British Columbia, linked and made one at last.  You know
what Colonial fever is: that disease of desire which at intervals
afflicts those of us who have come back out of the Wilderness.  You
were often the cause of it and the cure of it.  Perhaps I owe you
one: perhaps but for your giving me a chance of vicarious consolation
in our talk, I might have laid my bones by some other railroad in the
West on the illimitable fat prairies of our Canada.  Therefore I
offer you this book.  I offer you only a sketch, a rough and
incomplete sketch, of certain obscurer aspects of life in one of the
finest countries in the world, a country for which I have as much
hope as I have affection.  I have not tried to put the Pacific Slope
into a pannikin.  To cram British Columbia into a volume is as easy
as trying to empty Superior with a spoon.  For it was a full country
when I knew it: when your Big Bosses came along with drills and
dynamite and knocked the Rockies and the Selkirks into shape to let
your Railroad through.  In those days the World emptied many thousand
of its workers into your big bucket, and in that bucket I was one
drop.  I had as partners, as tilikums, men from the Land of
Everywhere: not a quarter, hardly a country, of the round world but
was represented in the great Parliament of the Pick and Shovel and
Axe that decreed the Road, the Great Road, the one Great Road of all!

I have seen many countries, as you know, but none can ever be to me
what B.C. was when I worked there.  It fizzed and fumed and boiled
and surged.  It was in a roar: it hummed: it was like the Cañon when
the grey Fraser from the North comes down to Lytton and smothers the
blue Thompson in its flood.  We lived in those days: we worked in
those days: we didn't merely exist or think or moon or fool around.
We were no 'cultus' crowd.  We lit into things and dispersed the
earth.  Some day, it may be, I shall do another book to try and
recall the odours of the majestic slain forests and the outraged
hills when your live Locomotives hooted in the Passes and wailed to
see the Great Pacific.  In the meantime I offer you this, which deals
only incidentally with your work, and takes for its subjects a
Sawmill and the life we lived who worked in one on the lower Fraser,
when we and the River retired from the scene that to-day ends in busy
Vancouver and yet spreads across the Seas.

It is possible that you will say that there is too much violence in
this story, seeing that it is laid in British Columbia and not South
of the Forty Ninth Parallel.  Well, I do not hold you responsible for
the violence.  Even in law-abiding B.C. man will at times break out
and paint the Town red without a metaphor.  There is a great deal of
human nature in man, even when suppressed by Judge Begbie: and
Siwashes will be Siwashes, especially when "pahtlum," or drunk, as
they say in the elegant Chinook with which I have adorned a veracious
but otherwise plain story.  Take it from me that there is not an
incident, or man, or woman in it who is not more or less painted from
real life.  That amiable contractor for whom we all had quite an
affection, whom I have thinly veiled under the name of Vanderdunk, is
no exception.  He will, I feel sure, forgive me, but some of the
others might not and they are veiled rather more deeply.  This I owe
to myself, for I may revisit B.C. again and I cannot but remember
that, for some things I said of folks out there many years ago, I was
threatened with the death, so dear to the Western Romancer, which
comes from being hung by the neck from a Cottonwood.  If ever I do
see that country again, I hope it will be with you.  As my friend
Chihuahua would have said, "Quien sabe?"  My best regards to you,
tilikum!  Here's how!

  Your sincere friend,
      MORLEY ROBERTS.




THE PREY OF THE STRONGEST



I

"Klahya, tilikum."

As Pitt River Pete spoke he entered the humming Fraser Mill by the
big side door chute down which all the heavier sawed lumber slid on
its way to the yard.  He had climbed up the slope of the chute and
for some moments had stayed outside, though he looked in, for the sun
was burning bright on white sawed lumber and the shining river, so
that the comparative gloom of the Mill made him pause.  But now he
entered, and seeing Skookum Charlie helping the Wedger-off, he spoke,
and Skookum, who could not hear in the uproar, knew that he said
"Klahya."

The Mill stretched either way, and each end was open to the East and
the West.  It was old and grimed and covered with the fine meal of
sawdust.  Great webs hung up aloft in the dim roof.  In front of Pete
was the Pony Saw which took the lumber from the great Saws and made
it into boards and scantling, beams and squared lumber.  To Pete's
right were the Great Saws, the father and mother of the Mill, double,
edge to edge, mighty in their curved inset teeth, wide in gauge and
strong whatever came to them.  As they sang and screamed in chorus,
singing always together, the other Saws chimed in: the Pony Saw sang
and the Great Trimmer squealed and the Chinee Trimmer whined.  Every
Saw had its note, its natural song, just as naturally as a bird has:
each could be told by the skilled hearer.  Pete listened as he
stepped inside and put his back against the studs of the wall-plates,
out of the way of the hive of man, he only being a drone that hour.
And the Big Hoes, Father and Mother of the Mill, droned in the cut of
logs and said (or sang) that what they cut was Douglas Fir, and that
it was tough.  But the Pony Saw said that the last big log had been
Spruce.  The smell of spruce said "spruce" just as the Saw sang it.
And the Trimmers screamed opposing notes, for they cut across the
grain.  Beneath the floor where the chorus of the Saws worked was the
clatter of the lath-mill and the insistent squeal of the Shingle Saw,
with its recurrent shriek of pride, "I cut a shingle, phit, I cut a
shingle, phit!"

The whole Mill was a tuned instrument, a huge sounding board.  There
was no discord, for any discord played its part: it was one organic
harmony, pleasing, fatiguing, satisfying; any dropped note was
missed: if the Lath Mill stayed in silence, something was wanting,
when the Shingler said nothing, the last fine addition to the music
fell away.  And yet the one harmony of the Mill was a background for
the soloes of the Saws, for the great diapason of the Hoes, for the
swifter speech of the Pony, for the sharp cross note of the Trimmers.
The saws sang according to the log, to its nature, to its growth:
either for the butt or the cleaner wood.  In a long log the saws
intoned a recitative: a solemn service.  And beneath them all was the
mingled song of the belts, which drove the saws, hidden in darkness,
and between floors.  Against the song of the Mill the voice of man
prevailed nothing.

When any man desired to speak to another he went close to him and
shouted.  They had a silent speech for measurements in feet; the
hand, the fingers, the rubbed thumb and finger, the clenched hand
with thumb up, with thumb down, called numbers for the length of
boards, of scantling, what not.

"Eleven feet!" said the rubbing thumb and forefinger.

If any spoke it was about the business of the Mill.

"Fine cedar this," said Mac to Jack, "fine cedar--special
order--for----" a lost word.

But for the most part no one spoke but the saws.  Men whistled with
pursed lips and whistled dumbly: they sang too, but the songs were
swallowed in the song of the Saws.  They began at six and ran till
noon unless a breakdown happened and some belt gave way.  But none
had given this day and it was ten o'clock.  The men were warm and
willing with work, their muscles worked warm and easy.  It was grand
to handle the lever and to beat in the iron dogs: to use the maul
upon the wedges as the Saws squealed.  They worked easy in their
minds.  They looked up and smiled unenvious of idle Pitt River Pete.
They knew work was good, their breath felt clean: their hearts beat
to the rhythm of the Mill.

As mills go it was a small one.  It could not compete with the giants
of the Inlet and the Sound who served Australia, which grows no good
working wood, or South America.  It sent no lumber to Brisbane, no
boards to Callao or Valparaiso.  It served the town of New
Westminster and the neighbouring ranches: the little growth of
townships on the River up to Hope and Yale.  Sometimes it sent a
cargo to Victoria or 'Squimault.  A schooner even now lay alongside
the wharf, piled high with new sawed stuff, that the saws had eaten
as logs and spewed as lumber.

As logs!  Aye, in the pool below, in the Boom, which is a chained log
corral for swimming logs, a hundred great logs swam.  Paul (from
nowhere, but a tall thin man) was the keeper and their herder.  He
chose them for the slaughter, and went out upon them as they
wallowed, and with a long pike stood upon the one to be sacrificed
and drove it to the spot whence it should climb to the altar: a long
slope with an endless cable working above and below it.  He made it
fast with heavy dogs, with chains may be, and then spoke to one above
who clapped the Friction on the Bull-Wheel and hove the log out of
the water, as if it were a whale for flensing.  It went up into the
Mill and was rolled upon the skids, and waited.  It trembled and the
Mill trembled.

"Now, now, that log, boys.  Hook in, drive her, roll her, heave and
she's on!  Drive in the dogs and she goes!"

Oh, but it was a good sight and the roar was filling.  Pete's eyes
sparkled: he loved it: loved the sound and the song and itched to be
again on the log with the maul.  Those who speak of sport--why, let
them fell a giant, drive it, boom it, drag it and cut it up!  To
brittle a monarch of the forest and disembowel it of its boards: its
scantlings: its squared lumber: posts, fences, shingles, laths,
pickets, Oho!  Pete knew how great it was.

"Oh, klahya, tilikum, my friend the log."

He spoke not now to Skookum, but strong Charlie, and lazy Charlie,
understood him.  At one hour of the day even the lazy surrendered to
the charm of the song of the work and did their damnedest.  So
Skookum understood that his old friend (both being Sitcum Siwashes,
or half breeds) loved the Mill and the work at that hour.

White, the chief Sawyer, the Red Beard, was at his lever and set the
carriage for a ten inch Cant when the slabs were off and hurtling to
the lath mill.  Ginger White no one loved, least of all his
Wedger-Off, Simmons (a man, like silent Paul of the Boom, from
nowhere), for he too was gingery, with a gleam of the sun in his
beard and a spice of the devil in his temper.  He was the fierce red
type, while White was red but lymphatic, and also a little fat under
the jowl and a liar by nature, furtive, not very brave but skilled in
Saws.  Simmons took a wedge and his maul and waited for the log to
come to him.  The carriage moved: the saws bit: the sawdust squirted
and spurted in a curve with strips of wood which were not sawdust,
for they use big gauges in the soft wood of the West and would stare
at a sixteenth gauge, to say nothing of less.  Now Simmons leapt upon
the log and drove in the wedge to keep the closing cut open for the
saws.  The lengthening cut gave opening for another and another.
Simmons and Skookum played swiftly, interchanging the loosened wedge
and setting it to loosen the last driven in.  The Wedgers-Off on the
six-foot log were like birds of prey upon a beast.

"Oh, give it her," yelled Skookum.  It was a way of his to yell.  But
Ginger drove her fast, hoping to hear the saws nip a little and alter
their note so that he could complain.  Simmons knew it, Skookum knew
it.  But they played quickly and sure.  They leapt before the end of
the cut and helped to guide the falling cant upon the skids.
Chinamen helped them.  The Cant thundered on the skids and was thrust
sideways over to the Pony Saw.

"Kloshe kahkwa," said Pete.  "That's good!"

And as he sent the carriage backward for another cut, Ginger White
looked up and saw Pete standing with his back to the wall.  Ginger's
dull eye brightened, and he regarded Simmons with increased
disfavour.  Pete he knew was a good Wedger-Off, a quick, keen man
very good for a Siwash, as good as any man in the Mill at such work.
He had seen Pete work at the Inlet.  Oh, he was good, "hyas kloshe,"
said White, but as for Simmons, damn!  He was red-headed, and Ginger
hated a red man for some deep reason.

It was a busy world, but even in the rhythm of the work hatred
gleamed and strange passions worked as darkly as the belts, deep in
the floor, that drove the saws.  Quin, the manager (and part owner),
came in at the door by the big Saws, and he saw Pete standing by the
open chute.  He smiled to himself.

"Back again, and asking for work.  Where's his wife, pretty Jenny?"

She was pretty, toketie klootchman, a pretty woman: not a half breed:
perhaps, if one knew, less than a quarter breed, tenas Sitcum Siwash,
and the blood showed in the soft cheeks.  She was bright and had real
colour, tender contours, everything but beautiful hands and feet, and
they not so bad.  As for her face, and her smile (which was something
to see), why, said Quin, as he licked his lips, there wasn't a white
woman around that was a patch on her.  Jenny had smiled on him.  But
Pete kept his eye on her and so far as it seemed she was true to him.
But Quin----

In the busy world as it was Quin's mind ran on Jenny.

"Yes, Sir," he used to say, "we're small but all there.  We run for
all we're worth, every cent of it, every pound of beef.  If you want
to see bigger, try the Inlet or Port Blakeley.  But we cut here to
the last inch.  Thirty thousand feet a day ain't a hell of a pile,
but it's all we can chew.  And, Sir, we chew it!"

He was a broad heavy man, dark and strong and much lighter on his
feet than he looked.  If there hadn't been Skookum Charlie it might
have been Skookum Quin.  He was as hard as a cant-log.

"We're alive," said Quin the manager.  They worked where he was, and,
hard as they had worked before, White set a livelier pace and made
his men sweat.  Quin smiled and understood that Ginger White was that
kind of a man.  Now Mac at the Pony Saw always took a breather when
Quin came in.  Just now he walked from his saw, dropped down through
a trapdoor into a weltering chaos of sudden death and threw the
tightener off his saw's belt.  The Pony Saw ceased to hum and whined
a little and ran slow and died.  The blurred rim of steel became
separate teeth.  Long Mac stood over the saw and tightened a tooth
with his tools and took out one and replaced it with a better
washleather to keep it firm.  He moved slow but again descended and
let the tightener fall upon the belt.  The Pony Saw sprang to valiant
life and screamed for work.  Quin smiled at Mac, for he knew he was a
worker from "Way Back," and the further back you go the worse they
get!  By the Lord, you bet!

So much for Quin for the time.  The Stick Moola, as the Chinook has
it, is the theme.

It was a beast by the water, that lived on logs.  It crawled into the
River for logs, and reached out its arms for logs.  It desired logs
with its sharp teeth.  It hungered for Cedar (there's good red cedar
of sorts in the ranges, and fine white cedar in the Selkirks), and
for Spruce (the fine tree it is!) and Douglas Fir and Hemlock or
anything to cut that wasn't true hardwood.  It could eat some of the
soppy Slope Maple but disdained it.  It was greedy and loved lumber.
Men cut its dinner afar off and towed it around to the Mill, to the
arms, the open arms of the Boom with Paul helping as a kind of great
kitchen boy.

At early dawn its whistle blew, for in the dark (or near it) the
underlings of the Engineer stirred up the furnaces and threw in
sawdust and woke the steam.  At "half after five" the men turned out,
came tumbling in for breakfast in the boarded shack by the Store and
fed before they fed the Mill.  The first whistle sounded hungry, the
second found the men hungry no more, but ready to feed the Beast.

In winter it was no joke turning out to begin the day early, but when
frost had the Fraser in its arms the Mill shut down and went to
sleep.  One can't get one's logs out of eighteen inches of ice and
then a frozen log cuts hard: it shines when cut.  But at this season,
it was bright at five and sunny at six.  The men came with a summer
willingness (that is, with less unwillingness than in frost time,
for, remember, it takes work to make work easy and your beginner each
day hates the beginning) and they were drawn from all ends of the
earth.

There were British Canadians:

And Americans: from Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas, Iowa and the Lord
knows where.

And Spaniards: one a man of Castile, and one from Mexico.

There were two Kanucks of the old sort from the East or there was one
at any rate.

There were Englishmen.  Well, there was one Jack Mottram and he a
seaman.

There was one Swede, Hans Anderssen, in the Mill.  There were two
Finns outside it.

And one Lett (from Lithuania, you understand).

There was a Scotchman of course, and, equally of course, he was the
Engineer.

There was a French Canadian, not by any means of the _habitant_ type
but very much there, and he knew English well, but usually cursed in
French as was proper.

There were two Germans.  One was as meek as one German usually is
unless he is drunk.  But one was not meek.  More of him anon.

It was an odd crowd, a mixed crowd at meal times in the Mill hash
house.  To add to everything Chinamen waited: Chinamen cooked.

"Now then, Sing, chuck the chow on!"

"Sing-Sing (that's where you ought to be), where's the muckamuck?"

"Sacré chien----"

"Der Teufel----"

"By the great Horn Spoon----"

"Holy Mackinaw!"

"Caramba--Carajo----"

"By Crimes----"

"Oh!  Phit!"

"Oh, where's the grub, the hash--the muckamuck, you Canton rats!
Kihi, kiti, mukha-hoilo!"

And the hash was slung and the slingers thereof hurried.

The hash-eaters talked English (of sorts), American (North and
South), Swinsk, Norsk, Dansk, true Spanish (with the lisp), Mexican
Spanish (without it and soft as silk).  They interlarded the talk
(which was of mills, lumber, and politics, and Indian klootchmen, and
the weather, and of horses and dogs and the devil and all) with
scraps of Chinook.  And that is English and French and different
sorts of Indian fried and boiled and pounded and fricasseed and
served up in one jargon.  It's a complete and God-forsaken tongue but
Easy, and Easiness goes.  It is as it were brother to Pidgin English.

The grub was "muckamuck" and luckily was "kloshe."  But as it
happened (it usually did happen) there was salmon.

"Cultus slush, I call it," said one.  "Cultu muckamuck."

"That's Ned Quin's nickname up to Kamloops," said Jack Mottram.

"Our man's brother?"

"Him," said Jack.  He picked his teeth with a fork and Long Mac eyed
him with disgust.

"I know Ned, he's tough."

But Jack was tough himself: he had been salted in all the seas and
sun-dried on all the beaches of the rough round world.  He made short
stays everywhere: passages not voyages: skippers were glad to give
him his discharge, for after sixty days at sea he sickened for the
land and became hot cargo.

"Oh, I'm tough enough," he would prelude some yarn with.

Now Shorty Gibbs spoke, he of the Shingle Mill.  Lately the Shingle
Mill had annexed half a thumb of his as it screamed out to him.
"He's a son of a----"

He completed the sentence in the approved round manner.

They all admitted that Quin the Manager was Tough, but that Ned Quin
of Kamloops was tougher admitted not a doubt.

They swept the food from the table.  Just as the logs were divided by
the Saws and fell into various Chutes and disappeared, so the food
went here.  Most of the men ate like hogs (the better Americans least
like): they yaffled, they gurgled, they sweated over the chewing and
got over it.

"I'm piled up," said Tenas Billy of the Lath Mill.  He too was minus
a thumb and the tops of some fingers, tribute to the saw.  Especially
do the Shingle Saw and Lath Saw take such petty toll.  When the Hoes
ask tribute or the Pony Saw it's a different matter.

"I'm piled up."

As to being piled up, that was a Sawmill metaphor.

"You've put the tightener on your belt!"

To be sure they all had.

But as to piling up, when things were booming and men were warm and
feeling the work good, and when nothing went wrong with the belts or
with the Engines and the logs came easy and sweet, it was the
ambition of the Chief Sawyer to pile up the Skids of Long Mac who had
the Pony Saw.  Then it was Long Mac's desire to pile up the skids for
the Chinee trimmer (not run by a Chinee) and it was that Trimmer's
desire to pile up the man opposing.  To be piled up is to have bested
one's own teeth, when it comes to chewing.

"My skids are full," said the metaphorical.

At six the whistle blew again, with a bigger power of steam in its
larynx.  The Mill said:--

"Give me the logs, the boom is full and I'm in want of chewin'!  Nika
tiki hyas stick!  Give me logs: I've new teeth this morning!  I'm
keen and sharp.  Hoot--too--oot--too--oot!  Give me Fir and Pine and
Spruce--spru--ooce!"

The Hash-Room emptied till noontime, when next Hash-Pile was
proclaimed, and the men streamed across the sawdust road and the
piled yard to the open Mill.  Some went in by the door, some by the
Engine-Room, some climbed the Chutes.  The sun was aloft now and
shining over the Pitt River Mountains (where Pete came from) and over
Sumach.  The river danced and sparkled: scows floated on its tide:
the _Gem_ steamer got up steam.  The Canneries across the big River
gleamed white.  The air was lovely with a touch of the breath of the
mountains in it.  The smell of the lumber was good.

The men groaned and went to work.

They forgot to groan in twenty minutes.

It was good work in an hour and good men loved it for a while.

But it was work that Pitt River Pete saw as he leant against the
wall.  It wasn't an English pretence, or a Spanish lie, or an Irish
humbug: it was Pacific Slope work, where men fly.  They work out West!

"Oh, Klahya!"

"I wonder if I can get a jhob," said Pete.  And the job worked up for
him under his very eyes, for Quin had a quick mind to give him work
and get pretty Jenny near, and Ginger White was sore against Simmons.

Yes, Pitt River Pete, you can get "a jhob!"  Devil doubt it, for
you've a pretty wife, and White drove the carriage fast and faster
still, drove it indeed faster than the saw could take it, meaning to
hustle Simmons and have present leave to burst out into blasphemy.
Things happen quick in the Mill, in any mill, and of a sudden White
stopped the carriage dead and yelled to Simmons on the log:

"Can't you keep her open, damn you?  Are you goin' to sleep there?
Oh, go home and die!"

Simmons, on the log on his knees, looked up savagely.  Though the big
Hoes were silent there was row enough with the Pony Saw and the Big
Trimmer and Chinee Trimmer and the Lath Mill and the Shingle Saw and
the Bull Wheel and the groaning and complaining of the planing
machines outside.  So Simmons heard nothing.  He saw Ginger's face
and saw the end had come to work.  He knew it.  It had been coming
this long time and now had come.  But Simmons said nothing: he
grinned like a catamount instead, and then looked round and saw Quin.
He also saw Pete.

"To hell," said Simmons.

As he spoke he hurled his maul at White, and Ginger dodged.  The head
missed him but the handle came backhanded and smote Ginger on the
nose so that the blood ran.

"Oh, oh," said Ginger as sick as any dog.  Simmons leapt off into the
very arms of Quin.

"I'll take my money, Mr. Quin," said Simmons.

"Take your hook," said Quin.  "Look out, here's White for you with a
spanner!"

White came running and expected Simmons to run.  But Simmons' face
was red where White's was white.  He snatched a pickareen from the
nearest Chinaman, and a pickareen is a useful weapon, a sharp half
pick, and six inches of a pick.

"You----" grinned Simmons, "you----"

And White stayed.

"Yah!" said Simmons, with lips set back.  And Ginger White retreated.

"Here, sonny, take your pick," said the Wedger-Off that had been to
the Chinaman; "fat chops don't care to face it."

He turned to Quin.

"Shall I go to the office, Mr. Quin?"

"Aye," said Quin carelessly enough.

He beckoned to Pete, whose eyes brightened.  He came lightly.

"You'll take the job, Pete?"

Would he take it?

"Nawitka," said Pete, "yes, indeed, Sir."

Nawitka!  He took the job and grinned with Skookum, who fetched the
maul and gave him the wedges with all the pleasure in the world, for
Skookum had no ambition to be Chief Wedger-Off.  White came forward,
dabbing at a monstrous tender nose with a rag.

"I've seen you at the Inlet?" he asked.

"Yes," said Pete, "at Granville."

"You'll do," said White.  He dabbed at his huge proboscis and went
back to the lever.  Pete leapt upon the log and drove in the first
wedge.

"Hyas, hyas!  Oh, she goes!"

She went and the day went, and Pete worked like fire on a dry Spruce
yet unfelled.  He leapt on and off and handled things with skill.
But when he looked at White's growing nose he grinned.  Simmons had
done that.

"If he ever talk to me that away," said Pete, "I'll give him
chikamin, give him steel!"

He didn't love White, at the first glance he knew that.  But it was
good to be at work again, very good.

At twelve o'clock the whistle called "Hash," and the engine was shut
down.  The Saws slackened their steady scream, they grew feeble, they
whined, they whirred, they nearly stopped, they stayed in silence.
Men leapt across the skids: they slid down the Chutes: they clattered
down the stairs: they opened their mouths and could hear their
voices.  They talked of White (he grubbed at home, being married),
and of Simmons and of Pete (he being a Siwash, even if not married,
would not have grubbed in the Hash House) and heard the story.  On
the whole they were sorry that Simmons had not driven the pickareen
through White.  However, his nose was a satisfaction.

"Like a beet----"

"A pumpkin----"

"A water melon----"

A prodigious nose after contact with the Maul Handle.

"I knew Mr. White," said Jenny to Pete, "Mr. White bad man, hyu
mesahchie."

"Sling out the muckamuck," said Pete calmly.

He fell to with infinite satisfaction, and Jenny came and sat on his
knee as he smoked his pipe.

"She is really devilish pretty," said Quin, who had no one to sit on
his knee.

The whistle suddenly said that it was half after twelve and that it
would be infinitely obliged if all the working gentlemen from
everywhere would kindly step up in a goldarned hurry and turn to.

"Turn to, turn too--toot," said the whistle as brutally as any
Western Ocean bo'sun.

The full fed reluctant gentlemen of the Mill went back into the
battle, waddling and sighing sorely.

"Wish to God it was six o'clock," they said.  There's no satisfying
everybody, and going to work full of food is horrid, it really is.

What happened in the morning happened in the afternoon, and all the
saws yelled and the planers complained and the men jumped till six,
when the Engines let steam into the Whistle high up against the Smoke
Stack and made it yell wildly that work was over for the day.  Mr.
Engine-man played a fantasia on that pipe and hooted and tooted and
did a dying cadenza that wailed like a lost soul in the pit and then
rose up in a triumphant scream that echoed in the hills and died away
across the waters of the Fraser shining in the peaceful evening sun.

And night came down, the blessed night, when no man works (unless he
be in a night shift, or is a night watchman or a policeman or, or--).
How blessed it is to knock off!  But there, what do you know about
it, if you never played with lumber in a Stick Moola?  Nothing, I
assure you.  Go home and die, man.




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.




III

Nah Siks, ho, my friend, let me introduce you to George Quin: Manager
and part owner of the Mill, of the Stick Moola which ate logs and
turned out lumber and used (even as sawdust) the lives and muscles of
high-toned High Binders from Kowloon and the back parts of Canton,
and hidalgos from Spain with knives about them, and gentlemen from
Whitechapel who knew the ways of the sea, and many first-class
Americans from the woods, to say nothing of Letts, Lapps and Finns
and our tilikums the Indians from the Coast.

Quin was two hundred pounds weight, and as solid as a cant of his
fir, and his mind was compact, a useful mind when dollars were
concerned.  He was a squaw-man and was always in with one of them,
for there are men who don't care for white women (though indeed he
had cared very much for one) and so run after klootchmen just as
water runs down hill.  It is explicable, for the conduct of (or the
conducting of) a white woman for the most part takes a deal of
restraint.  Quin hated any form of it: he was by nature a kind of
savage, though he was born in Vermont and bred up in lower Canada.
He went West early (even to China, by the way) and only kept so much
restraint as enabled him to hang on and make dollars and crawl up a
financial ladder--with that wanting he might have been:--

  A Hobo,
  A Blanket Stiff
  or
  A mere Gaycat,

and have ended as a "Tomayto-can Vag!"  These are all species of the
Genus Tramp, or Varieties of the species, and the essence of them all
is letting go.  We who are not such vagabonds have to hold on with
our teeth and nails and climb.  But the blessedness of refusing to
climb and the blessedness of being at the bottom are wonderful.  We
all know it as we hang on.  Now Quin, for all his force and weight
and power of body and of mind was a tramp in his heart, but a coward
who was afraid of opinion, where want of dollars was concerned.  He
turned himself loose only with the women.  He hated respectable ones.
You had to be civil and gentlemanly and a lot of hogwash like that
with ladies.

"Oh, hell," said Quin.  "Great Scott, by the Holy Mackinaw, not me!"

The devil of it all is that we are pushed on by something that is not
ourselves, and for what?  It's by no means a case of "Sic vos non
vobis" but "sic nos non nobis," and that's a solid fact, solid enough
to burst the teeth out of any Hoe that can cut teak or mahogany, to
say nothing of the soft wood of the Coast.

Quin compromised with the Mournful Spirit of Push and gave his soul
to dollars on that behalf, and his body to the klootchmen.

It wasn't often that he slung work and took a holiday, but in
latitude 49.50 N. and longitude 122 W., which is about the situation
of New Westminster, so far as I can remember, Mills themselves take
holidays in frost time, and when the Mill was shut down the Christmas
before, he had taken a run up to Kamloops to see his brother Ned or
Cultus Muckamuck.

There he saw Jenny, the sweet little devil, who hadn't been married
to Pete for more than six months and was just nineteen.  He made up
his mind about her then, but there were difficulties.  For one thing
Ned was always wanting him, and Indian Mary, Ned's klootchman, was a
good woman and heartily religious in her own way, and she had a care
for the pretty little girl when the Panther, or Hyas Puss-Puss,
called George Quin, came nosing around.  And Pete was but newly wed
and hadn't beaten Jenny yet.  And Jenny, the pretty dear, was fond of
her Sitcum Siwash and loved to see him on horseback, all so bold and
fine with one hand on his hip and a quirt in the other.  Given
favourable circumstances and enforced sobriety there's no knowing
what the two might have been.

I shall have to own it wasn't all George Quin after all: I couldn't
help liking George somehow.  It's the most mixed kind of a world, and
though the best we know, it might have been improved by a little
foresight one would think.  There's always something pathetically
good in blackguards, something that redeems the worst.  What a pity
it is!

George Quin loved one woman who lived in far off Vermont.  She was
his mother.  He sent her dollars and bear skins more than twice a
year.  He had his portrait taken in his best clothes for her.  He
looked so like a missionary that the good old lady wept.

There was something good in George one sees.  But he kissed Jenny
behind Ned's old shack before he went away.  It might look like a
coincidence for Pete to come down to the Mill to work for George
after getting the Grand Bounce by Ned, if it hadn't been for the
kiss.  Women are often deceitful.

"I'll tell Pete," said Jenny in the clutches of the Panther.

Hyas Puss-Puss laughed.

"You tell him, you sweet little devil, and I'll blow a hole through
him with a gun!" said he.

If he played up, that is!  Sometimes they don't, you know.

"You give me a kiss without a fight, and I'll give you a dollar,"
said the Panther.  Jenny still kicked.  But she didn't squeal.  Mary
was inside the shack and would have heard her, if she wanted help.

"Not for two dolla," said Jenny, hiding her mouth with the back of
her hand, with her nails out claw fashion.

"Three then," said Hyas Puss-Puss.  He was as strong as the very
devil, said Jenny's mind inside, three times, four times, ever so
many times stronger than Pete.

"Oh, no, not for three, nor four, nor five," said Jenny, laughing.

He got it for nothing.  But he got no more.  Indian Mary came outside
and called--

"Jenny!"

George sat down on a log and filled his pipe while Jenny went back.
She ran fast so that her colour and her tousled appearance might be
accounted for.  George Quin saw it.

"The deceitful little devil, but I kissed her!"

He got no more chances.  When he had hold of her with that immense
strength of his she was as weak as water, as was only natural, but
she wanted to be good (Mary and the missionary had told her it was
right to be good, and Mary said that Ned was going to marry her some
day, so she was all right) and she was really fond of Pete.

However, when Quin was going down to the Coast again he got a moment
with her.

"If you want to come down my way, I'll always give a first-class job
to Pete, my dear.  Don't forget.  He's a good man in a Mill.  I saw
him over at the Inlet before he married you.  I wish I'd seen you
before that, you little devil.  Ah, tenas, nika tikegh mika!  Oh, I
want you, little one!"

When she and Pete pulled out from Cultus Muckamuck's six months
afterwards, they naturally went on a Howling Jamboree in Kamloops,
and it ended in their being halo dolla, or rather, with no more than
Jenny had secreted for a rainy day.  She was a little greedy about
money, it must be owned.  Some wanted Pete to go up to the Landing at
Eagle Pass as the Railroad was getting there from East and West,
though he wasn't a railroad man by nature, but a lumber man.  The
railroader is always one and so is the lumber man.  Jenny suggested
the Coast and New Westminster.

In the meanwhile Pete had beaten her several times and many had told
her she was very pretty.  She wasn't quite the little girl she had
been at Cultus Muckamuck's ranche.  She missed Mary, and her morals
did, too.  She remembered all about George Quin's, "I'll give you two
dollars for a kiss!"  For a kiss only, mind.  She could take care of
herself, she said.  But they went to the Coast by way of the only
way, Savona and the Cañon.  At Savona, Jenny's eyes got a pass to
Yale out of Mr. Vanderdunk, who had beautiful blue eyes and was a
very good chap, take him all round.  Jenny lied to him like sixty and
said her mother was dying at Yale.  Her mother was as dead as
Washington long years before.  She died, poor thing, because Jenny's
father became respectable and renounced her and married a white woman
in Virginia.  He was a shining light in a church at that very time,
and was quite sincere.

"Give the pair a pass down," said Vanderdunk, "of course they're
lying but----"

Eyes did it as they always will.  So they went down to Yale and by
the _Fraser_ steamboat to New Westminster, and they put up at Indian
Annie's as aforesaid and the row in the Mill happened and Quin saw
Pete and he knew Jenny had come, and he smiled and licked his lips.

The very next day after Pete's swift acceptance of that noble
position in the hierarchy of the Mill, the Wedger-Off-Ship, and after
the drunken jamboree at Indian Annie's, Pete and Mrs. Pete moved the
torn dressing-gown, etc., into Simmons' vacated shack.  For Simmons
had gone to Victoria in the S.S. _Teaser_, that old scrap-heap known
to every one on the Sound, or in the Straits of Georgia or San Juan
de Fuca, by her asthmatic wheezing.  Pete's and Mrs. Pete's etc.
comprised one bundle of rags, and a tattered silk of Jenny's, and two
pairs of high-heeled shoes (much over at the heel) and a bottle of
embrocation warranted to cure everything from emphysema to a compound
fracture of the femur, and a Bible.  Pete had knocked Jenny over with
that on more than one occasion.

The traps that Simmons left in his shack he sold to Pete for one
dollar and two bits, and they were well worth a dollar, for they
comprised two pairs of blankets of the consistency of herring-nets
and a lamp warranted to explode without warning.  He threw in all the
dirt he hadn't brushed out of the place during a tenancy of eight
months, and made no extra charge for fleas.  But Jenny was pleased.
It was her first home, mark you, and that means much to a countess or
a klootchman.  Pete had wedded her at Kamloops and taken her to
Cultus Muckamuck's right off, for there were no other men around
there but old Cultus, and his Mary looked after him if he needed it.

So now Jenny grew proud for a while, and felt that to have a whole
house to herself and her man was something.  She forgave him her
black eye, the poor dear, and she mended the tulips carefully in a
way that would have given the mistress of a sewing school a fatal
attack of apoplexy.  She worked the rent together with gigantic
herring-boning like the tacking of a schooner up some intricate
channel with a shifting wind.

Then she swept the shack and set out her household goods the boots
and the Bible.  The boots had been given her by a Mrs. Alexander,
sister to the donor of the dressing-gown, and the Bible (it had
pictures in it) was the gift of a Methodist Missionary who saw she
was very pretty.  So did his wife, so everything was safe there.

The bed belonged to the shack, that is, to the Mill, to the Quins,
and as it was summer there was no need to get better blankets.  Jenny
laid the precious tulips on it and the bed looked handsome enough for
Helen, she thought, or would have thought if she had ever heard of
her, and Pete admired it greatly.

They set out to be happy as people will in this world.  Jenny had a
piece of steak cooked for Pete's dinner and she laid the newspaper
cloth very neatly, and put everything, beer, bread and so on, as well
as some prunes, quite handy.

"By gosh, I'm hungry, old girl," said Pete, as he marched in at noon.

"It's all ready, Pete," she said, smiling.  The smile was a little
sideways, owing to last night.  "Sit down and be quick."

There was need, for the Mill only let up for the half hour.

"This is work here, Jenny," said Pete, "by the Holy Mackinaw, I
almos' forgot what work was at old Cultus'.  Now she goes whoop!"

But he felt warm and good and kind.

"I'm sorry I hurt you, gal," he said, "but you was very bad las'
night.  Drink's no good.  I won't drink no more."

"You very good to me," said Jenny meekly.  "Whisky always makes me
mad.  I'm glad we're here.  Indian Annie's bad, Pete."

"Cultus' ole cow," said Pete, with his mouth full, "but now we have
our home, Jenny, my gal, and plenty work and forty dollar a month.
I'm going to be a good man to you, my dear, and buy you big shelokum,
lookin' glass."

Jenny's eyes gleamed.  There was only a three-cornered fragment of
glass nailed up against the wall, and it was hardly big enough to see
her pretty nose in.

"Oh, Pete, that what I like.  Oh, yes, Pete, a big one."

"High and long," said Pete firmly.

"Very high," screamed Jenny joyfully.

"So you see all your pretty self," smiled Pete.  "I see one two yard
high.  I wonder how much."

"One hundred dolla, I tink," said Jenny, and Pete's jaw dropped.

"Never min', we get a good one for five dolla," said Jenny, and she
kissed Pete for that five "dolla" one just as he filled his pipe.
Then the whistle of the Mill squealed "Come out, come out, come out
o' that, Pete, Pe--etc!" and Pete gave his klootchman a hug and ran
across the hot sawdust to the Mill.

"Pete very good man, I won't kiss no one but Pete," said Jenny.  "I
almos' swear it on the Bible."

She was a human little thing, and Pete was human, poor devil.  And so
was George Quin, alas!  And the worst of it is that we all are.

"I almos' swear it on the Bible!"

The sun burned and the water glared, and the Mill, the Stick Moola,
howled and groaned and devoured some twenty thousand feet of logs
that afternoon, and over the glittering river rose the white cone of
Mount Baker and up the river shone the serrated peaks of the Pitt
River Mountains, where Pete came from, and all the world was lovely
and beautiful.

And that poor devil of a Quin sat in his office and tried to work,
and had the pretty idea of Jenny in his aching mind.

"I almos' swear it on the Bible!"

Even George wanted to do the square thing, very often.  But Jenny's
"almos'" was hell, eh?  Tilikum, we both know it!




IV

But for the fact that there was too muchee pidgin for everyone, as
the Chinaman said, or hyu hyu mamook as the Siwashes said, many might
have run after Jenny.

"One piecee litty gal velly hansum, belongy Pitt Liber Pete," said
Wong, who was the helper at the Chinee Trimmer.  He said it with a
grin, "Velly nicee klootchman alla samee tenas Yingling gal my know
at Canton, Consoo's litty waifo."

She was as pretty as any Consul's little wife, that's a solid
mahogany hard wood fact.  But with twelve hours work of the sort of
work that went on in the Mill who could think of running after the
"one litty piecee hansum gal" but the man who didn't work with his
hands?

Wong was a philosopher, and, like all real philosophers, not a good
patriot--if one excepts Hegel, who was a conservative pig, and a
state toady and hateful to democrats.  Wong had fine manners and was
a gentleman, so much so that the white men really liked him and never
wanted to plug him, or jolt him on the jaw or disintegrate him, as
they did most of the Chinkies.  He returned the compliment, and
sometimes quarrelled with his countrymen about the merits of the
whites, as one might with Americans and others about the children of
the Flowery Kingdom.

"My likee Melican man and Yingling man," said Wong.  "Velly good man
Melican: my savvy.  Some velly bad, maskee oders velly good.  If
Chinaman makee bobbely and no can do pidgin, Melican man say 'sonny
pitch'; maskee my can do, my savvy stick-mula mamook, so Melican man
and Yingling man say, 'Good Wong, no sonny pitch, velly good.'
Melican gentleman velly good all plopa.  What ting you tinkee?"

Wong was an enigmatic mask of a man, wrinkled wondrously and looking
sixty, though nothing near it, as hard as solid truth, fond of
singing to a mandolin, great at Fan tan, but peaceable as a tame duck.

He had a kind heart, "all plopa that one piecee man" from Canton, and
one day (not yet) he has his place here, all out of kindness to the
"litty hansum gal belongy Pitt Liber Pete."  May his ashes go back to
China in a nice neat "litty piecee box" and be buried among his
ancestors who ought to be proud of him.  Blessed be his name, and may
he rank with Konfutse!  I preferred him to Hegel.  And if any of you
want to know why I refer to him, you must draw conclusions.

But, as we were saying, who could have full time to run after the
"litty gal" but Quin?

To make another excursion, and explain, it may be as well to let
Pappenhausen talk.  There were two Germans in the Mill, and both
worked in the Planing Shed.  One was a man of no account, a
shuffling, weak-kneed, weak-eyed, lager-beer Hans, with as much
brains as would have qualified him to be Heir Apparent to some
third-rate Teutonic Opera-House Kingdom.  But Pappenhausen was a Man,
that is to say, he didn't compromise on Lager or weep because he
drank too much.  And he could work like three, and he wasn't the
German kind as regards courage.  German courage is very fine and
fierce when the Teutons are in a majority, but when they aren't their
courage ranks as the finest discretion, that is, as cowardice nine
times out of ten.  Pappenhausen would fight anyone or any two any
time and any where.  He could fight with fists or a spanner, or a
pickareen or a club, and he took some satisfying.  He was an amazing
man, had been in America thirty years.  He said he was a
"Galifornian" and fought you if you didn't believe it.  Once he stood
up to Quin and was knocked galley-west, for besides Long Mac there
wasn't a man in Saw-Mill Town that could tackle the Boss.  Quin got a
black eye, but Papp had two and lay insensible for an hour.  Quin was
so pleased with that, that he put him to work again and stood him
drinks.  He actually did.  After that Papp, as he was called, stood
up for, and not to, George Quin, and said he was a man, and he asked
what it mattered if he did run after the klootchmen?

"Dat's der Teufel," grunted the native "Galifornian," "dat's der
Teufel, we all run avder der klootchmen, if we don'd avder trink.
I'm a philozopher, I, and I notizzes dat if it arn'd one ding it's
anoder.  And no one gan help it, boys.  One man he run avder dollars,
screamin' oud for dollars, and if you zay a dollar ain'd wort' von
'ondred cents of drubble he tink you grazy.  I zay one dollar's wort'
of rest wort' a dollar and a half any day.  On'y I cain'd help
workin'.  If I don'd I feel I braig somedings mit mein hands.  Oders
run avder klootchmen; if dey don'd dey feels as if dey would also
braig somedings.  I tinks the welt a foolish blace, but in Shermany
(where my vater game from) I dinks it most foolish.  And Misder Guin
he run avder Pete's klootchman and bymby Pete gill her as like as nod
and then Mr. Guin very sorry he spoke.  I dell you I knows.  Life is
a damn silly choke, boys."

But it was (and is) only a joke to a Democritus of Papp's type.  Even
Papp said:--

"Bymby I ged a new sood of glose and fifdy dollars and I go back home
to California."

He said it and had said it.

"Bymby----"

Poor Papp!

It was no joke to Jenny presently that "Misder Guin" ran after her.
But then it is no joke at any time to be the acknowledged belle of
any place, even if it is a Saw-Mill Sawdust Town, and the truth is
that Jenny shone even among the white women, gorgeous in their pride
and occasional new frocks from San Francisco, the Paris of the Coast.
There wasn't a white "litty gal" in the City who was a patch on her:
she was the "slickest piece of caliker" within long miles.  Folks who
were critical and travelled, said that there was her equal over at
Victoria, but that was far off, and much water lay between.  From the
mighty white-peaked summit of the Rockies, and the wonders of the
Selkirks, down through the Landing and Kamloops and Yale at the end
of the Cañon away to Westminster, she was the prettiest.

Think of it and consider that she lived in a two-roomed shack with a
decent-looking wedger-off who was a Sitcum Siwash!  She got
compliments on the street as she went up and down town.

"Great Scott, she's a daisy!"

"By the Great Horn Spoon, and also by the Tail of the Sacred Bull,
she knocks spots off of the hull crowd."

Such things said openly have their effect.  But the tulips on the
dressing-gown did even more, and the high-heeled shoes.  She hankered
after things in the streets to which the dressing-gown was but a
faded flower.  Quin spoke to her once as she glared into a window.

"You like that, Jenny?"

"Oh, my," said little greedy Jenny.

Quin didn't care a hang if he spoke to the little klootchman in
public.  He wasn't in society, for even in the River City there was
Society.  They drew the line at squaw-men who went to dance-houses
and so on.  But for that, the Manager and Owner of a Mill (or half
one or even a quarter) could have had entrance to the loftiest
gaieties and the dullest on earth.  He didn't "give a damn," not a
"continental," for the "hull boiling," said Quin.  Jenny was his
mark, you can take your oath.

She was worth it in looks only, that's the best and worst of it.

"Oh, my," said Jenny.

"I'll give it you: it's my potlatsh," said the Manager, who cared
little for dollars when the girls came in.

It was a "potlatsh," a gift indeed!  To get Jenny, Quin would have
done "a big brave's potlatsh" and given away all he owned, horses,
mill, house, and all.  That's a fact, and it must be remembered as
Papp said, that "dey also veels as if dey would braig somedings!"

She got the gorgeous silk of tartan stripes that flared in the window
like a light lightening the darkness, for Quin went in and bought
what is known as a dress length and sent it down to her by his
Chinese "boy."  When he met Pete in the road at noon that day he
stopped him.

"Oh, Pete----"

"Sir," said Pete respectfully, for the Tyee was so big and strong
besides being a Tyee, which always counts.

"I have given your wife some stuff to make a dress.  She was very
good to my brother and to Mary," said Quin.  "She's a very good
little girl."

He nodded and walked on.  He wished Pete would get killed on the top
of a log, but his face was inscrutable and calm as that of any
full-blooded Siwash.  Pete was as innocent and as unsuspicious as any
child.  If he feared anyone it was Spanish Joe, with his guitar and
his songs.  He went home as pleased as Punch by the condescension of
the Boss, and found Jenny laying out dinner.

The trouble came as quick as it could come.  It came right there and
then, when both were as happy as they could be.  Jenny fairly
shivered with pleasure to think of the silk she had hidden inside the
inner room.  Real silk it was and new, not a cast-off rag from Mrs.
Alexander, of the Kamloops Hotel.  The tulips of the dressing-gown
faded clean out of sight: they died down in their monstrous array.
She saw the Dress, saw it made up, saw the world admire it: heard the
other klootchmen clicking envious admiration.  But how was she to
account for it to Pete?  She had been kissed by Quin, and she knew he
liked her, wanted her.  The big man flattered her senses, he was a
white man, rich and strong.  She wouldn't have almost sworn on the
Bible that she wouldn't lass him, now that this silk filled earth and
heaven for her gaudy little mind.  She would have to think how to
tell Pete.

So in came Pete in excitement.

"Show me what Mr. Quin give you," he demanded.  And her unlucky lie
was ready.  It fell from her lips before she had a moment to think.

"He give me nothing; why you say that?"

Pete's jaw fell and his eyes shut to a thin line.

"You damned liar, kliminiwhit," he said.  "I know."

"It's not true, you dam' liar you'self," said Jenny.  "What for you
tink the Tyee give me tings?  You tink me a cultus klootchman like
Indian Annie?"

On his oath he would have sworn one happy moment before that he had
never thought so.  Now he thought too much.

"You show it me or I kill you," said Pete.  "I know Mr. Quin he give
you some stuff to make a dless."

In his rage his words grew more Indian, and his taught English
failed, his r's became l's.  So did hers.

"Damn lie, I have no dless," screamed Jenny.  "You no give me
no'ting, you make kokshut my dlessing-gown.  I dless like one cultus
klootchman, in lags."

He ran at her and she fled round the table.  The newspaper and the
dinner went on the floor, and she screamed.  Then she slipped on the
steak, and went down.  As chance had it the table came over on top of
her and she held it tight, so that he could not get at her to hurt
her much.  But he kicked her legs hard and then went into the inner
room.

"No, Pete, no," she screamed.  She knew that he must find the dress,
the precious silk, and she forgot all else in her great desire that
it should not be harmed.  "I tell you the trut', Pete."

She crawled from under the table: her hair was down to her waist, her
wretched every-day gown torn from her back: her bosom showed.

"Oh, Pete, oh, Pete!"

Her lips hung piteous for the lovely thing that Pete had found and
now held up in horrid triumph.  The roll unrolled: he had the
crumpled end in his hand.  It was a flag of blazing silk, a tartan to
appeal to any savage.  Now it cried for help.

"You damn klootchman, you," said Pete.  "What for Quin he give you
this?"

He kicked the roll with his foot.  The stuff unrolled more and Jenny
cried aloud as though it was her papoose that her savage man ill-used.

"I don' know why he give it me," she squealed.

"Him velly kin' man always.  Oh, don' tear it, Pete, oh, oh!"

With his hands he ripped the silk in fragments.

"You damn bad woman, mesahchie klootchman," he roared.  "You no take
such a ting from Mr. Quin!  You look at him lika you look at Spanish
Joe the other day: I see you."

"You no see me do anyting wrong," Jenny cried, weeping bitterly.  "I
don' lika Spanish Joe.  'Tis a lie, Pete.  And I no can help if Mr.
Quin give me tings.  I a very good woman, on the Bible I swear it.  I
quite virtuous; Mr. Quin he no touch me, I swear it.  Don' tear it no
more.  Pete, oh, don'!"

He set his foot on the silk and ripped full twenty yards into
fragments.  The room was full of shining stuff, of red and yellow and
green: the floor was gorgeous with colour, and as he exhausted his
rage upon what he had found and was quite pitiless, her little flower
of love for him seemed to die in her outraged heart, which loved
beautiful things so much.  Now she had nothing left, her visions
passed from her.  She sat down on the floor and howled aloud, keening
over the death of the beautiful dress.  She was no longer full of
pride, and conscious of her beauty: she was no more than a poor dirty
ill-used, heart-broken little klootchman, no more thought of than
dirty old Annie and Annawillee, who mourned so sadly the other happy
night.

"Aya, yaya, hyaalleha," she cried aloud.  "Hyas klahowyam nika, very
miser'ble, aya!"

And Pete ran out of the shack leaving her moaning.

"That make her know what, eh?" said Pete.  He worked furiously at the
Mill, without any food, and was very unhappy, of course, though he
knew he had done quite right in tearing the silk to pieces, and in
knocking thunder out of his klootchman.  He didn't believe she had
been "real wicked," but when it came to taking presents from Mr.
Quin, and lying about them, it was time to look out.

"I teach her," said Pete; "give her what for, eh?"

But he wasn't mad with Quin.  It was quite natural for Quin to want
Jenny.  Pete knew all the men did.  She was so pretty.  Even the
Chinamen knew it and said so.  Pete was proud of that.  "Velly hansum
litty klootchman," said Wong.  Why should a man be angry because
another man wants his "litty gal?" No need to "makee bobbely 'bout
that" surely.  But the litty girl had to be taught, Nawitka!

"I give her the stick by-by," said Pete, and he used the wedges and
the maul as if he were giving poor wretched Jenny the stick then.  He
worked that day though he hadn't an ounce of muckamuck inside him.
Ginger White said he was as quick as the devil: worth ten of that
swine Simmons.  White's nose was gradually resuming its natural
shape, but when he thought of Simmons his hand went up to it.

Oho, but they all worked, worked like the Bull-Wheel, like Gwya-Gwya
and "him debble-debble," said Wong.

"No Joss in British Columbia," said Wong; "spose wantee catchee Joss
catchee Debble-Debble.  Bymby Blitish Columbia-side an'
Californee-side him allo blong China, then Joss he come, galaw!"

The "debble-debble"' was in Pete's heart for hours, but there's
nothing like work to get him out, and by four o'clock he was getting
sorry he had kicked Jenny and torn up the "dless."  The little
klootchman had been good, he was sure, and she cooked for him nicely
and didn't get drunk often.  If she did get too much, it was his own
fault, he knew that.

"I tell her I'm sorry," he said.

Aya, yaya, what a cruel world it is, Pitt River Pete!

The little klootchman was "dying" now and telling the old hag Indian
Annie all about it.  And it's only four o'clock and the Mill runs
till six.

Poor Jenny, with bare shoulders and bare bosom, howled upon the
gorgeous floor of silken rags for a long hour after Pete ran out in a
rage.

"Aya, yaya, nika toketie dless kokshut, no good.  Pete him wicket
man, aya!"

Oh, think of it!  That beautiful green and yellow and red silk so
fine and thick and soft and shining t That "dless" which it contained
as a possibility, that her natural woman's eye put on her pretty
self!  Aya, Yaya!  Even a dear white woman would be very cross indeed
if her man came in and said, "You damn person, you have a roll of
silk given you by Smith or Brown or Jones," and then tore it up.
Aya, Yaya!  How sad for poor Jenny, only nineteen, and so sweet to
look at and with a love of colour.  Aya, as I speak I feel "hyu
keely."  I could mourn with Jenny and say I'd get her another roll of
silk, for a kiss, perhaps, for the devil's in such a pretty dear.
Tut, tut, it's a sad world and a wicked, and the pretty ones are the
devil, aya, yaya!

It was quiet enough in Shack-Town in the afternoon and a continual
aya, yaya-ing soon attracted the attention of Indian Annie when she
came from begging up-town past Pete's shack.

"Aha, oho," said the bundle of wicked rags, once a beautiful
klootchman and a white sea-captain's darling, and yet another's and
another's, ay de mi, as Chihuahua said when he was sad, and others
still in a devil of a long diminuendo and degringolade and a sad, sad
fall, just as if she had been an improper white.  "Oho, why Jenny
cly, kahta she cly?"

In she went, for she knew Pete was wedging-off, and in the inner room
she found a pretty one half naked on the silken rag carpet.

"Oh, my toketie Jenny, kahta cly?  Oh, Lejaub, the pretty stuff all
tole up, yaya?  Who done it, Jenny, real kloshe silk all assame white
klootchman have in chu'ch?  Who give him, aya?"

She was down on her knees gathering up the silk in whole armfuls.

"Dis Pete?  Eh, Pete, pelton Pete, fool Pete, eh?"

Jenny sobbed out it was Pete who had torn it all up, and Annie nodded
cunningly as she stuffed a good bundle of it into her rags.

"Aha, pelton Pete mamook si'k kokshut, but klaksta potlatsh mika,
nika toketie, who give him you, my pretty?"

"Mr. Quin give him, and my bad man he say I mesahchie, no good, a
cultus klootchman alla same you!" howled Jenny open-mouthed.

Annie showed her yellow fangs in a savage grin.

"Cultus, alla same nika?  Oho, pelton Pete, fool Pete!"

"And he say," roared Jenny like any baby, "that I no good, not
virtuous, and he beat me, and taka silk and tearum lika so!  And I
think I make a dless so pretty and now the pretty dless is all lags,
all lags!"

She roared again and shook with sobs, and Annie got her by the
shoulder.

"Pete is Lejaub, the devil of a bad man, my pretty.  I get you ten
new dlesses for that.  I hear Pete no go to mamook but go up town and
dlink whisky at Spanish Joe's white woman's.  By-by he come back and
beat you, Jenny."

Jenny clutched her.

"Oh, he kick me bad, see, nanitch!"

She showed her pretty knee with a black bruise on it.

"That nothin', tenas toketie, by-by Pete come back pahtlum and knock
hell out of you, Jenny," said Annie.  Then she bent and whispered in
Jenny's ear.

"Oh, no, no," said Jenny.  She clutched at Annie's skirt as the old
wretch got upon her feet.  But Annie turned on her and twitched her
rags away.

"You pelton, too?  Much better be live and with rich good man than
dead with Pete and Pete with a lope on him neck.  I go tell Mr. Quin,
him very good man, kloshe man."

But Jenny implored her not to go to him.  And as she sobbed that she
was afraid of Quin the old hag gathered up more and more of the silk
until she had nearly all that poor Jenny wasn't sitting on.

"You stay.  I go see, go think what I do for you.  I no go to Mr.
Quin, I promise, tenas toketie."

And she got away and went straight to the office in which Quin was to
be found, and asked to see him.

"Quit, you old devil," said the young clerk, "pull your freight out
of this.  No klootchmen wanted here."

She had her ugly old face inside the door and the boy threw the core
of an apple at her.

"I want see Mr. Quin," she cried, as she dodged the missile.

"I want see him.  You no kumtuks.  Mr. Quin see me, I tell you he
want see me.  Ya, pelton!"

The boy knew very little Chinook and missed half the beauty of what
she went on to say to him.  But she told him much about his parents
and a great deal about his sisters that would have been disagreeable
even if translated with discretion.  By the time she came to a
climax, her voice rose to a shriek that might have been audible in
the Mill itself, and Quin came out in a rage.

"Get to thunder out of this, you old fool," said Quin, "or I'll have
you kicked off the place!"

She looked at him steadily and held up a long fragment of the silk
before him.

"Mika kumtuks okook, you know him?" she asked with a hideous leer.

And Quin came off the step and went up to her.

"Where you get it, Annie?"

"You know," said Annie.  "Tenas toketie have him, you give him, ah.
But who tear him, makum kokshut?"

"Pete?" asked Quin with the devil of a face on him.  But Annie walked
a little away and beckoned him to follow.  She got him round the
corner and he went with her like a child.  He thought he understood.
Annie put out her claw and took his coat.

"I give you klootchman often, now you give me tukamonuk dolla, one
hundred dolla, and I give you pretty Jenny."

Quin blew out his breath and bent down to her.

"You old devil," he said with a wavering grin.

"Me Lejaub?  Halo, no, I give you pretty young squaw, that not like
Lejaub.  You give me one hundred dolla, see."

Quin sighed and opened his mouth.

"I give it.  How you do it, Annie?"

"Now she hate Pete, him pelton," said the witch; "he beat her, kick
her knee, kick her back, kick her belly too, and tear up si'k in
tenas bits, Mr. Quin.  She cly like any papoose, she scleam and make
gleat latlah.  He tear up si'k and tear her dless, now she half-naked
on the floo'.  That bad, and she pretty and say Mr. Quin give me
dless, kloshe Mr. Quin.  She love you, she tikegh mika, cly kahkwa
the si'k yours.  You come: she go with you.  I make so no one know
tings, if you take her yo' house."

His house was on the hill above them.  There he lived with not a soul
but his Chinese boy.

"How you make no one know?" he asked.

"Kloshe, I do it," said Annie.  "I say to Pete she say to me she lun
away, and not come back, eh?"

But as Quin explained to her, the first person Pete would think of
would be the man who had given her the dress.

"Oh, ya, I know," said Annie.  "Kloshe; I very clever klootchman, I
know evelything.  She lun away with Shipman Jack this very day and
came tell me so I tell Pete.  How that do, Mr. Quin?  You tink, eh?"

But Quin was doubtful.  Annie urged her scheme on him and still drew
him further down the road.

"Pete him once jealous, hab sick tumtum about Jenny with Shipman
Jack, because Jack pinch her behind and she cly out and Pete hear it.
That the other night.  I know, I know evelything.  I tell him mo'.  I
say she often meet Jack befo'.  Now you have fire Jack, and he goes
away this day and he now go in _Teaser_ piah-ship to Victolia, I see
him.  Ah, velly good, she go with him.  I say klahowya to them.  I
get Annawillee for a dolla say she say klahowya to them.  And alla
time Jenny in yo' house.  I bling her this night.  You see, all
light.  You give me one dolla now?"

"You'll get drunk, you old harridan," said Quin, who was all of a
shake, "and if you do you'll mamook pelton of me and no get the
hundred dolla.  No, I give you all to-night."

And knowing that it was true that she might get drunk if she had that
dollar she went away without it, back to Jenny.




V

It was true enough that Jack Mottram, "Shipman" or sailorman, had
been fired that day a little before noon.  To be "fired" is to get
the Grand Bounce, and to get that is to get what everyone understands
when the sack is spoken of.  Another way of saying it is to mention
that "he got his time," or perhaps his Walking Ticket.  So now it is
understood.  Before getting all these qualifications as a free
unemployed seaman he had got drunk early in the morning.  This is
nearly always a fatal error and brings trouble anywhere.  In a
Stick-Moola running at full time it is liable to bring death.  For
death stands handy with his scythe, or perhaps his pickareen,
uplifted in a Mill.  Indeed, Jack the Shipman very nearly sent back
to Bouddha, or maybe to Posa, one poor native of the Flowery Kingdom
by landing him one on the "ear-hole."  Poor Fan Tang (or something
like it) up-ended and disappeared down a chute, and was so sadly
disgruntled that he limped to the office and denounced Jack to Quin
in a fine flow of Pidgin English and mixed Chinook.

"Muchee bad bad man belong Tlimmer pukpuk my!  My fallee down chute
allo same lumber.  My muchee solly, you look see bluise!"

He exposed his awful injuries to Quin's view.  He had parted with
many patches of cuticle in his tumble down the chute.

"Dat shipman bad man, muchee dlunk," said Fan Tang spitefully, and
when Quin went over to the Mill he found that Jack was indeed "muchee
dlunk," and full of insolence and whisky.

"All ri', Mr. Quin, I quit.  I'm full up of this work.  You give me
my money and I'm off to sea.  What the 'ell I ever came ashore for, I
dunno!  What ho!"

Tom Willett, a young Englishman, went from the Chinee Trimmer to the
Big Trimmer, and Wong the philosopher took the Chinee Trimmer.

"Out of this," said Quin, "or I'll smash your jaw."

That was to Jack, who wasn't so drunk as to take up the challenge.
He went to the office quite meekly after all.  He was almost as meek
as one "Dutchman" among ten English.

"Righto, I'm off to Victoria this very day," said Jack.  He drew
fifteen dollars and three bits, rolled up his dunnage, and went to
the wharf where the _Teaser_ steamboat, or "piah-ship," was lying.
He bade farewell to Sawmill Town with much contempt.  But Indian
Annie saw him go.  He goes out of this history on his way to Hong
Kong with lumber.  He got well man-handled by an American mate and
lost much insolence before he sighted Mount Stenhouse.

Annie went back to Jenny, now moaning sadly with a dirty face,
striped with tear-channels, and told the poor pretty dear a dreadful
tale.  Pete was up-town, having got drink in spite of his being a
Siwash, and was ready to kill, said Annie.

"Aya, I'm very much flightened," said poor Jenny.  "What shall I do,
Annie?"

The procuress stole a little more silk and dragged at Jenny's arm.

"You klatawa, go away, chahco with me.  I hide you, toketie.  Pete
wicked, bad man, and get hang if he see you.  Come hyak, hyak!"

She got her into her own den, and hid her in the inner room.  Then
she hobbled off to Annawillee, while Jenny sobbed herself to sleep on
the dirty bed.  Annie and Annawillee were old friends, for Annie
liked her.  When Chihuahua beat Annawillee too much she took refuge
at Annie's till her man calmed down.  For love of Annie and a dollar
Annawillee would do anything.

"I say I see Jenny klatawa in piah-ship with Jack the shipman.
Nawitka, I say it, and you give me dolla?"

"Ha, one dolla, and one dlink, Annawillee," said Annie, grinning.
"Pete he much solly, and get pahtlum to-night, for I take Jenny away
to Mista Quin.  By-by I ask mo' dolla.  Nanitsh?"

Oh, but indeed Annawillee was no fool and saw quick enough.  To get
money for helping Quin to Jenny and to get more for not telling was a
fine business!  "What you tink, eh?"

At five o'clock, Jenny dressed in a horrid yellow dress belonging
notoriously to Annawillee, and with her head bound up as if she were
indeed Annawillee after Chihuahua had booted thunder out of her in a
jamboree, crawled with Annie up the hill, and sat behind a big stump
close to Quin's house, which stood alone.  Poor Jenny was scared to
death by now, for Annie said terrible things of a drunken Pete, who
was supposed to be sharpening a knife for a pretty throat.

"You very good klootchman to Pete," said Annie, "and he bad, oh, bad
to you, tenas toketie.  Mista Quin him good man, rich and very
skookum.  Pete kwass, afraid of Mista Quin.  You alla same white
klootchman, good dlesses, very pretty.  You no forget poor Annie: you
give her dless and dolla when you alla same white woman in chu'ch, in
legleese."

Jenny wept bitterly.  She still thought she loved Pete, and she was
conscious that she was no beauty in her dirt and the dreadful yellow
rags of Annawillee.

"I wicked klootchman," said Jenny, "no mo' virtuous, I have shem see
Bible.  And I not toketie now, very dirty.  How I look now, Annie?"

"You always toketie, tenas," said the old witch truly enough.  "I do
up yo' hair, tenas.  By-by you mamook wash yo' face, and be very
pretty.  Mista Quin mamook wash every day, him gleat man, skookum
man, very lich, very lich, plenty dolla.  Him love you mo' than one
hundred dolla."

She did up Jenny's mass of tumbled black hair, and wiped her face
with a rag.  She wetted it in her mouth.

"Now you clean," said Annie.  "What time Mista Quin come to him
house?"

She peered from behind her stump, and presently saw Quin come up the
hill.  As he passed her she called to him in a low voice.

"Yahkwa, here, Mista Quin."

And Quin came across the brush to them.  Jenny buried her face in her
hands and her shoulders troubled.

"I bling her," said Annie.  "She much aflaid, hyu kwass, of Pete.  He
say he makee her mimaloose, kill her dead, she muchee aflaid, and she
tikegh you, love you always."

Jenny shook and trembled like a beaten dog.

"She now very dirty and bad dless, but you mamook wash, and she hyu
toketie.  No klootchman here like Jenny.  Now, tenas, you klatawa in
house quick."

She dragged the trembling child to her feet, and then held out her
hand to Quin.

"You give me the dolla?"

And Quin gave her the money in notes.  She knew well enough what each
one was worth.

"Now I tell Pete she klatawa with shipman Jack to Victoly, ha!"

She scrambled down the hill and Quin took Jenny by the arm.

"Come, tenas," he said in a shaking voice.

But it was a kind voice after all, and Jenny burst into a torrent of
sobs and clung to him.

"I have much shem," she said, "I have much shame."

Even Quin had some too, poor devil.

They went into the house.




VI

By the time that the evening sun, slanting westwards to the Pacific,
which roared on wild beaches sixteen miles away, shone into the
western end of the Mill, Pete had worked the anger out of his heart
as healthy children of the earth must do.  The song of the Mill was
no longer angry or menacing: it became a harmony and was even sweet.
Work went beautifully: the logs were sweet-cutting spruce for the
most part, or splendid pine, or odorous red cedar, and one precious
log of white cedar.  The saws ran easy and their filed teeth were
sharp: the Hoes said "We can do, we can do," and the Pony Saw piped
cleanly and clear, while the Trimmers, though they cut across the
grain, cut most swiftly, and said, "Gee whiz, gee whiz."  Young
Willett was pleased to get the Big Trimmer and Wong most proud to run
the Chinee one, which by its name certainly belonged of old to some
Chinaman, perhaps now in the country of Green Tea and Bamboos, and
forgetful of his ancient toil in alien lands.  The engines, too, ran
well and the sawdust carriers did not break down, and no belt parted,
and nobody but Ginger White said much that was uncivil, and if he
went no further than that no one minded him any more than they minded
the weather or the wind.

So as things went sweetly, Pete's heart grew sweet and he was sorry
he had kicked at Jenny's legs as she lay under the table, and sorry
he had torn up the pretty silk.  After all it was natural enough that
Quin should give her something, and it was natural he wanted her.
But of course he couldn't get her, for she was virtuous and had a
Bible, and knew religion, and believed that Lejaub, or the diable,
would take anyone who was not virtuous.  Both the Catholic and the
English priests said that, so it must be true.  And, if she had
denied having the dress, he owned that he had often frightened her
and it was natural for her to say she hadn't got it, poor toketie
Jenny.  He nobly determined to forgive her and say no more about it.

And then the exultant whistle declared with a hoot that the work was
over for the day, and the engines stopped and the saws whirred and
whined and drawled and yawned and stood still while the workers
clattered out, laughing and quite happy.

Oh, but it's good to be strong and well and to have work, but to have
none and thereby to get to cease to love it is very bad, oh, very bad
indeed.  Let the wise know this, as the unwise and ignorant who
labour know it in their hearts and in their hands.

"Oho," said Pete as he strode across the yard, "oho!"

He was nobly determined to forgive.  He would go in to Jenny and say,
"Look here, Jenny, I forgive you because you tell that lie, that
kliminwhit.  I forgive you, but you be good, kloshe, tell your man no
more kliminwhit."

He came to his silent shack and didn't notice that no smoke, no
cooking smoke, came from its low chimney.  He marched in bent on
forgiveness, and found the front room empty.

"She still cly about that silk," said Pete uneasily.  He hesitated a
moment before he opened the inner door and called to her.

"Jenny, Jenny."

Silence answers you, Pete, silence and two empty rooms with a table
upset, and some few rags of dirtied silk still left by the predaceous
fingers or claws of the vulturine Annie.

"She velly closs, go out with some other klootchman," said Pete.
"Damn, I beat her again."

It was very hard indeed that he, the Man, should come in ready for
forgiveness and good advice with regard to future lies, and should
find no one meekly ready to accept pardon and to promise rigid truth
in future: it was very hard indeed, and Pete's brows contracted and
his heart was outraged.

"Now I not forgive," said Pete.  "She not here, no muckamuck ready
and I so olo, so hungry."

He saw the steak that poor Jenny had cooked for his dinner.  It lay
upon the floor, as she had lain on it.  It was trodden and filthy and
Pete kicked it spitefully.  He saw an old rag of a dress that was
Jenny's.  It was the one she had discarded for Annawillee's horrid
yellow rag of quarantine, which said, "I'm Annawillee, be wise and
don't come near me."  She had changed at Annie's, but Annie brought
it back and put it in sight.  For she was a spiteful devil.

"What for?" said Pete.  A dull fear entered his heart which did not
dispossess his anger.  "What for: kahta she leave dless?"

It was a "dless" indeed.  But she did not need it then.  There were
certain beautiful garments at Quin's house, and there would be more.

"I'll kick her when I find her," said Pete.  He ran out and went
straight to the next shack, to Indian Annie's den.

He found her and Annawillee, and both were drunk, but not yet too
drunk for speech, or for the discretion of the arranged lie.

"You see Jenny?" he demanded.

Annie lifted her claws to heaven and moaned.

"I so sorry, Pete, Jenny bad klootchman!"

"What you mean, you old devil?" roared Pete, in horrid fear.

"I tell you delate, I tell you, Pete.  She klatawa with--with----"

His jaw dropped.

"She go with Shipman Jack to Victoly in piah-ship," said Annie,
hiccupping.  "I see her, Annawillee see her."

"I see, nika nanitsh Jenny klatawa with Jack," puked Annawillee.
"She klatawa in piah-ship, she go Victoly."

She was hugging a bottle to her pendant breasts as she told her lie.
But she believed it by now, and kept on repeating "to Victoly, an' to
California in piah-ship with Shipman Jack, inati chuck; acloss water."

"Oh, God," said Pete.  He was a dirty white colour.  His lips hung
down.

"She tikegh Jack velly much," said Annie, "love him very much, and
cly and say him good man, not beat her and tear her dless.  She much
aflaid of you, Pete.  She cly and go away."

"She cly and go away," chimed in Annawillee, weeping tears of awful
alcohol.  She was so sorry for everyone, and for herself and Jenny
and Pete and all the world.  "I cly, I cly!"

She sobbed and drank, and still Pete stood there, very sick at heart.

"My pretty tenas klootchman," he murmured, "oh, hell, what I do?"

"You hab dlink," said Annie, holding him up the bottle.  He took it,
put it to his mouth, and drank half a pint of fiery stuff that nearly
skinned his throat.  He dropped the empty bottle on the floor and
turned away back to his empty shack.

"I will kill Jack," he said, "I, I, kill Jack!"

He saw the world in a haze: the Mill danced darkly before his eyes,
dark against a golden sunset, his brain reeled, and when he came to
his own door he fell inside and lay insensible.

"Pete dlink too much, he gleedy beast," said Annie.  But Annawillee
nursed her empty bottle to her bosom and said foolishly--

"I see--nika nanitsh Jenny klatawa, oh, hyu keely Annawillee."

And the night presently came down, and as the shacks lighted up it
was told among all the Siwashes and the Chinkies and the White Men of
ten Nations that Jenny, pretty Jenny, tenas toketie Jenny, had
"scooted" with Shipman Jack across the water to Victoria, to
California, to China, oh, to hell-an'-gone somewhere!

"To Hell and Gone out of this," they said.  And Spanish Joe sang to
the guitar a bitter little song about someone's señora who fled
across the sea, and Chihuahua grinned at Jack's luck (Annawillee did
not tell him the truth), and the Whites, Long Mac, and Shorty Gibbs
and Tenas Billy and even young Tom Willett, who knew nothing about
klootchmen, though some had their eye on him hopefully, said there
was no knowing what any woman would do.  They understood that men
would do what they had a mind to.

"Anyhow," said Shorty, "she was a dern sight too pretty for a
golderned Siwash like Pete.  Someone wuz sure to kapswalla her sooner
or later.  If I wuz given to klootchmen, which I ain't, thank the
Lord, I'd ha' put in for her myself."

But to think of such a coyoté as Jack Mottram picking up the Pearl of
the River!

"It would sicken a hog," said Shorty Gibbs.




VII

Quin might be a Squaw-Man (as indeed he was in his irregular way) but
he lived in comfort, and Sam, his "boy," aged twenty-five, was a
wonder, worth more dollars by far than the days of the longest months
and all he could steal as well.  Sam was good-looking and as clean as
a fresh-run quinnat, and he had the most heavenly and ingratiating
smile, and the neatest ways, and a heaven-sent gift of cooking.  He
was pleasant to the world and to himself, and he sang little Chinese
songs as he worked and made Quin's house as clean as heaven after
rain.  He didn't "hit the pipe," which Wong did, of course, and he
only smoked cigars.  They were Quin's and good ones.  Not that opium
is so bad as liquor, by the way, though the missionaries say it is.
It is better to "hit the pipe" than to "dlinkee for dlunk," and
that's an all-solid fact.

Sam was discreet, and he let no one rob Quin but himself.  Indeed, he
almost loved Quin, for Quin had good qualities.  For example, he
rarely swore in his own house, and he had a way of making little
presents to Sam which were very encouraging.

"Boss he makee allo tim' litty cumshaw my," said Sam.  "He givee my
cigar: he givee my dolla.  He givee my close: makee stlong cutsom
givee me all ting he no wantshee.  My catchee allo tim' good close,
boot, tlouser, and he speakee my velly good: neber makee bobbely.
Massa Quin velly good Boss, no can catchee better.  Supposee
klootchman no good, makee bobbely, he say 'hyack klatawa:' supposee
klootchman good klootchman allo same wifo dat velly good: Massa Quin
velly good and makee mo' cumshaw my."

And now there was a new klootchman.

"Ho," said Sam Lung, "ho, he bling 'nodder klootchman.  My tinkee
'bout time he catchee new klootchman.  He velly lestless, like he got
water topside, clazy.  What she like this new klootchman?"

He put his eye to the key-hole, and then drew up in disgust.

"Fo, velly dirty, cly allo tim'.  She velly litty young gal.  After
las' wun he likee catchee young gal.  Ha, my tinkee bymby she catchee
wash and look velly pletty.  She whitee gal my tinkee when she
catchee washee."

But poor Jenny was on the floor, still crying as if her little heart
would break.  She was not yet able to look up and see the wonder of a
nice clean house, such as she had never been in, in all her life.

"You're all right, Jenny, my dear," said Quin, "don't you cry.  No
one shall hurt you, my girl.  I'll give you a good time, my dear.
Now get up, Jenny, and look at your home, and then I'll take you into
another room and find you a new dress.  Come, tenas Jenny."

He spoke quite tenderly and touched Jenny's heart.

"Oh, but I have shem," she said.

"You come and mamook wash," said Quin, "and by-by we'll have
muckamuck and then you'll be all right.  Come now."

He lifted her to her feet, and when she felt his strong hands on her
she felt a little better.  It was like fate, though she knew not what
fate was.  He was strong and kind, and he said he loved her.  She
caught his hand.

"You no beat me?" she cried in a sudden passion of fear and
helplessness.  "You no beat me, Mr. Quin?"

"No, Jenny, no," he said.  He turned her tearful dirty face round and
kissed her.

"Oh, I too much dirty," she exclaimed in great distress.  "No bebee
me till I mamook wash."

She caught sight of herself in a big glass over the mantelpiece.

"Oh, Mr. Quin, I have shem: I so dirty.  You forgive me, Mr. Quin?"

And Quin laughed a little uneasily.

"Of course, my dear, now I make a lady of you; you are so pretty,
Jenny."

He went out of the room and told Sam to make a "plenty hot" bath in
the bedroom.  And he put out some clean clothes for her, which he
took from a locked cupboard.  Some were new.  Most of them had been
got for a Haida girl who had died of consumption two years before.
But Quin had forgotten her.  He spoke to Sam when the "boy" brought
in the bath and water.

"Sam, you no fool, I think," he began.

"That same my tinkee, Sir," said Sam.

"I bring another klootchman here, Sam."

"Where you catchee?" asked Sam with great interest.

"You mind your own pidgin," said Quin.  "Now look, Sam, I no wantshee
anyone know who she is.  When they ask you, you say she white woman,
allo same wife, from San Francisco.  If you tinkee that not true,
that all right, but if you say so I fire you and give you no dolla.
While she stay here and no one know who she is I give you five more
dolla, moon-pidgin, every month.  Now you savvy?"

Sam stood with his head on one side all the time his master spoke.
He looked as intelligent as a sharp Chinaman can look, and he
answered with decision and a perfect gravity.

"My savvy that plenty!  You catchee one litty gal and no wantshee man
savvy.  Dat light, I plenty savvy.  My say she numpa one pletty litty
gal from San Flancisco.  I savvy plenty and if litty gal stay you
givee my mo' five dolla moon-pidgin.  My savvy plenty.  Now you
washee her?"

"Fill the bath, you damn fool," said Quin.

"All li', savvy plenty," said Sam.  "My cookee good dinner for
Missus.  Five dolla mo' velly good.  My cookee velly good: makee
litty gal stop allo same wifo."

And he went back to the kitchen, solemn and satisfied, but very
curious to see the litty piecee gal when she was washed.

It was all an amazing dream for poor Jenny.  If it had not been for
the black bruise on her knee she would have thought herself in some
new world.  For the house was beautifully built and lined inside with
red cedar.  The furniture was as good as any in the City, for the
tragedy of Quin's life was, that he had met a white woman, and had
fallen in love with her three years ago.  They were to have been
married, but the woman found out about his past history, his
character as a squaw-man, and threw him over.  He had prepared the
house for her.  The dead Haida girl Lily had come instead.  Jenny
dreamed and wondered and half forgot that she was not good to be
there.  Quin was very strong, "hyu skookum," and his house was to be
hers, and he would prevent Pete killing her.  As she got into the hot
water the tears ran down her face.  But the bath was pleasant, and
she was not too degraded to enjoy the cleanliness of things; and the
hot water eased the tension of her mind, and it seemed suddenly as if
her life with Pete was something very far off, hardly to be
remembered.

And then she handled the clothes she was to wear, and the mere woman
woke in her heart.  Here was linen far better than that she had
helped to wash for Mrs. Alexander before Pete had come and taken her
from Kamloops!  It was beautiful linen to her eye, and in spite of
everything the pleasure she found in it was wonderful, for though she
did not know it, her skin was tender and delicate and had always
suffered from the stuff she had worn.

There were silk stockings!

"Mista Quin he very gleat man," said Jenny, awestruck.  "Much better
than any I ever see, never nanitsh any like 'em."

When she got them on she took up the dress.  It was also silk, but
not like the monstrous tartan the cause of all her woe.  It was a
dark red and fine and supple, for Lily had seen it in her last days
at Victoria and Quin had bought it for her, knowing that she would
never wear it.  She died with it on her bed: her dead hand touched
it.  It made another klootchman nearly happy.

"I aflaid to wear it," said Jenny as she held it up, "it too
beautiful for poor me.  I don't know where I am: I feel silly, all
like a dleam."

She looked at the big glass and saw herself white clad, and with the
red silk in her hands.  Her shoulders were white: her sun-tanned neck
showed how white they were.  And the red was lovely.

She put it on and she almost screamed with pleasure.

"I 'most like a lady, like Missis Alexander," she cried.  And indeed
there was no prettier lady within a hundred miles.

She stood and looked at herself and trembled.

"Oh, oh," said Jenny.

And then she found that the dress fastened up the back.

"I no savvy how can do it," said Jenny in great trouble.  "If I do um
up firs' I no get in and if I no do um up it fall off.  How can white
lady do, when she have no one help her?"

It was an awful puzzle which she could not solve.  A worse trouble
was at hand, however, for when she tried to put on the shoes meant
for her they were too small.

"What I do?" asked Jenny of herself in the glass.  "My ole shoes no
good and my foot too big for this little shoe.  I have shem go
without shoe and with dless undone.  I wis' I had someone help me.
But alla same I very pretty I tink, but I have shame of everything.
I no more good, no more virtuous--"

Her lip hung down preparatory to her bursting into tears.  But Quin
knocked at the door.

"Muckamuck ready, tenas Jenny," he said.  And Jenny murmured that she
would come directly.

"He very kind man I tink," said Jenny, "I ask him through the door if
he mind I no have shoe."

The door led straight through into the sitting-room.  In her turn she
knocked on it timidly and opened it an inch.

"Mista Quin, I have shem--"

"Why, tenas Jenny?" asked Quin.

"I no can put on shoe," she said.  Quin laughed and she shrank back.

"Come in, never mind," he said as he came to the door and pushed it
open.  She bent her head.

"And please, Mista Quin, I no can do dless up at back.  I much aflaid
it fall off."

Quin came into the room as Sam brought in the dinner.  He shut the
door and caught her in his arms.

"I have shem," she murmured, but he kissed her neck and mouth.  "I
have shem."

He did the dress up at the back and held her away from him at arm's
length.

"By the Holy Mackinaw, you are a pretty girl, Jenny," he said
thickly.  "You bebee me now?"

The slow tears rolled down her face as she lifted it to him.

"Yes, Mista Quin, but I have shem," she said simply.

Sam banged on the door.

"Chow-chow, Sir and Missus," said Sam, who was much interested in the
"love pidgin;" "Chow-chow all leady, Sir and Missus."

It was an amazing dinner for Jenny.  She had never seen the like save
in the kitchen of Mrs. Alexander's hotel, and if she had eaten
anything half as good, it was when she was a tenas klootchman and sat
outside on the wood-pile with a plate of food given her by the hotel
cook.

But that Chinese cook wasn't a patch on Sam, who had been nerved to
unwonted efforts by the new situation and by the extra five dollars
while the new "Missus" stayed.  He put out Quin's best cutlery and
polished the electro-plate till it shone indeed.  The glasses were
like crystal and there was a bottle of champagne, made in San
Francisco (and perhaps very little the worse for that, seeing the
quality of western imported wines), on the full table.

Jenny gasped and sat down very humbly.  But if she looked up she
could see herself in a mirror opposite.  It was a very strange and
pretty and abashed creature that she saw, a creature who "had shame"
but was too dazed to feel it greatly.  For everything was so fine,
and Quin was a big strong man and white-clad Sam was so polite.  "You
hab dis, Missus," or "my tinkee, Sir, Missus hab mo' wine."  And the
floor had a carpet, and there were red curtains at the window,
through which she could see the shining mighty river and the far
faint hills of Sumass, lighted by the sinking splendid sun.

"Oh, my dear, you are very pretty," said Quin when Sam was out of the
room.

"I tink so too, Mista Quin," she said; "but I have shem to be here.
I know not'ing.  I velly foolish klootchman, cultus and halo good; I
tink I very wicked to be here, but I like it allo same, Mista Quin."

He gave her more wine and her eyes began to sparkle.  The world of
yesterday, nay, even of to-day, was far off, further off than the
pure faint hills.

"You be good to me, Mista Quin?"

His hard heart was touched.

"You bet, Jenny, I'll give you all you'll want."

"Ah, you very big boss," said Jenny.  If he could give any human
creature all she wanted he was a very big boss indeed.

"Yes, my kiddy, you forget all about everyone but me, and I'll act
square to you, on my oath I will," said Big Quin.  He pulled her
towards him and kissed her mouth.  She flamed scarlet.

"I lik' heem better'n Pete," she said.  "Pete cluel to me; tear my
dless.  Now I have better, ah!"

The dinner came to an end and Sam brought in a lamp as the evening
light faded.

"That will do, Sam.  I don't want you any more," said Quin.

And when Sam had washed up he went down to a compatriot's in the City.

"My tinkee he makee love-pidgin now," said Sam, as he went.  "Litty
piecee gal velly pletty alla same lady, maskee she no savvy what for
do with knife and fork.  Dat not plopa: my tinkee her savvy velly
littee.  Bymby my talkee how can do with Missus.  My tinkee she no
flom San Flancisco.  She makee hair not plopa, allo same lope.  My
tinkee my talkee her how can do, my savvy plenty."

But he told his gossips down below that Mista Quin had got a white
woman up from San Francisco.  Indeed he did not know that Jenny was
no more than a quarter-breed Siwash, though he wondered at her
knowing so much Chinook, of which Sam himself was very ignorant,
though he savvied even how to do hair.

The world of the little Shack-Town by the Mill believed that Jenny
had really fled with Shipman Jack and Pete got very drunk again that
night.




VIII

"The Siwash'll be on Jack's tracks," said the Men of the Mill, "for
sure he'll be after him, hyak koolie!  What the thunder did the
little klootchman see in Jack!  Oh, hell, he warn't nothin' but a
special kind of sea hobo, boys, allers on the go: a blanket-stiff at
sea, that's what.  And drink--we should say so!  And mean, oh, there
ain't words!  If Pete runs into him----"

Pete wanted blood, that's a fact, but when a man wants blood and gets
liquor the blood stays unshed unless the victim is right handy.  That
is also a fact, all wool, and a yard wide.

Another fact was of great importance, and that is that Pete owed the
Mill dollars instead of the Mill owing him any, and to get across to
Victoria in the Island took silver, t'kope chikamin, in the shape of
dollars.  And Pete couldn't swim, not so much as a hundred yards.  He
was no Fish Indian.  And the Straits are some miles across.

Pete woke out of his drunk early in the morning and saw three facts
in the light of dawn, saw them come out of the darkness and stand up
before him, just as the Mill did and the tin-roofed shining Cannery
across the River, where Chinamen wallowed in shining salmon for
Eastern consumption.  Pete saw the array of facts and at the back of
his Indian brain he had a notion of destiny, as they all have.  Jenny
had run: he had "halo dolla," and it was a long swim across the
Straits of Georgia, in spite of all the islands a man might rest at.

"She hyu bad klootchman," said Pete.  "I no care one damn.  I take
another by-by.  She too much pletty, no sit down, klatawa with Jack."

There wasn't a drink for Pete that morning, but he lighted a fire and
made some "caupy" or coffee.

"I go work at Moola alla same," said Pete.  "I no dlink, I make
dolla: I get another good klootchman.  By-by Jack go to sea, leave
Jenny, she go hell.  That all light.  She damn bad klootchman."

So when the Whistle, the great prophet of the strenuous life, yelled
the "Get up" in quick time, he was ready, and as determined as any
Blackfoot at a Siwash stake to show nothing of his torment.  The
second whistle that shrieked "Get out" sent him off, and the day
began with the usual preliminary jawing-match in the Engine-room
where fiery monsters ate sawdust.

"Ha, Pete," said Skookum Charlie, whose big bulk was spread on a
sawdust pile where the glare of an open furnace shone on him.  "He
come to wuk' alla same."

Long Mac with the blue eyes and keen clean American look was there.
And next him was black-a-vised, beady-eyed Chihuahua, far more
ancient Mexican than Spanish, and then Hans Anderssen and Johann
Smit, both seamen.  And with them showed the fair and devilish face
of Spanish Joe with the beautiful voice and a soul fit for hell.  And
the Engineer, a little Scotty from Glasgow, went about his work with
one Chinee helper as if they were not there, and only said "damn your
jaw," if they got in his way.

The crowd looked at Pete, who swung in boldly enough with his head up.

"Hullo," said the crowd with sympathy.  But Joe laughed.

"You' klootchman she pulled up her stakes and quit, eh?" he asked
with a sneer.

"That so," said Pete quietly.  "I tell her to go night befo' las'
night.  She no good in fac', bad klootchman, get dlunk, no savvy
cook.  Thlow my muckamuck on the floo'.  I say go.  I tink no
klootchman any good.  Jack Shipman soon tire of she."

"Perfectamente," said Joe, "you spik truth.  All women are bad."

Scotty managed to jam Joe in the pit of the stomach with the handle
of the huge wooden shovel with which he was feeding the greedy fires.

"Beg your pardon," said Scotty with a grin, "but they arn't all bad."

"Every damn one," said Joe, writhing.

"All klootchmen no good, I say," Pete cried once more.

"You had a mother, lad," said the Engineer severely.

Pete shook his head.

"That all light, Mr. Engineer, but she no good neither.  She sell my
poo' damn sister to the man at Kamloops that had the ranche Cultus
Muckamuck Quin got now, sell her for two dolla, I tink.  And now
Cultus got her too."

Scotty having no more remarks to make, yanked the whistle lanyard.
It was six o'clock.

"This is a hell of a country for a mahn wi' ony releegion in him,"
said Scotty.

He turned savagely on his Chinese helper.

"Now then, Fan, you wooden image, get a move on you: hump yersel',
man, or I'll scupper you."

The gift of work to unhappy mortals is that they cannot work and be
wholly unhappy, and Pete sucked a grim kind of pleasure out of the
labour that was his, and found some anodyne in it for the aching
wound he bore in his foolish childish heart.  That day the labour was
great, for Ginger White had a mind to set the pace and make it fiery.
It was, as the men knew, one of his bad, his wicked days, such a day
as that on which he had driven Pete's predecessor to a standstill.
When Ginger's face was tallow against his fiery beard they knew what
to expect, and got it every time.  It was said that on these
occasions he had quarrelled with his wife, but the truth is he had a
vicious nature and a love of work together.  It gave him pleasure to
see the great saws do their work, and a greater pleasure still to see
a man turn white and fail.

But now he had Pete, not Simmons, and the devil himself at the Saws
would not have broken Pete that day.  For there was a hard devil in
his heart, and he grinned savagely as he saw White's motions get
every minute quicker and quicker.  He nudged Skookum Charlie.

"This Ginger White have one bad day.  The debbel, how he go.  You
see!"

They saw.  He cut them wicked slabs, slabs that had an unholy weight,
with all of it in the butt.  When they fell they dropped between the
skids and got up and kicked.  One struck Skookum on the nose and made
it bleed, another threw Pete.  But though they both knew that Ginger
gave it them hot and heavy and wasted wood in slabs to do it, they
made no sign.  This was a day that no one would be beaten.  All the
men knew by instinct and by knowledge that this was to be a day of
hell, when the cut would be great and Ginger would go home half dead
with his endeavours to work them up.  They set their teeth, even as
the saws' teeth were set in another fashion, and prepared to chew the
lumber that he hurled to them.

The atmosphere was strange, charged, electric, strained.  There were
days when the Tyee Sawyer left them slack, and went easy.  Now they
jumped, their eyes were bright, they sweated, got alive, moved like
lightning.  Each was an automaton; each a note struck by the Player.
And he played, oh, tilikum, he played!

This was work, tilikum, such as even the Stick Moola hadn't known.
The engines knew it, and the steam gauges told it and the fires, and
the sawdust carriers.  Chinamen knew it and shrieked horrid oaths at
each other.  The belts knew it and squealed.  Scotty knew it and
groaned, for he alone, bar accidents, could stop Ginger's drunken
debauch of labour.

But the men he played on knew it best and almost cheered him when
they got the pace and found it at first so easy.  They were all
young, not an old man among them, Ginger White himself was the senior
of them all.  They could love and work and fight and play hell, for
they had youth in them.  They had to show it to the song and dance of
the Saw, the song and dance of the flying dust.  The engines ran
easy, and their muscles played beneath a glistening moist skin as
with open shirts they did what came to their hands.  "Go it, you
devils," and "Let her scoot," and "Oh, hell," they said.

They smiled and were happy enough, but as the hum increased and the
great skids got full over against the Pony Saw, you might have seen
Long Mac's smile die down into a good settled seriousness, quite
worth seeing.  Long Mac had a way of dreaming as he worked, for he
had a power of thought and was sadly intelligent, but when Ginger
started trying them high, he had no time to think, well as he knew
all things a saw-mill man may and shall know.  The skids were piled
high, you shall understand, you greenhorns, and he knew how it would
rejoice Ginger White to see that they would take no more, while
everything the wedgers-off tried to sling on the pile rolled
backwards to the very rollers.  That would please White: he would
give a shrug of his shoulders as if to say--

"What a damned loafing lazy lot I've to do with!"

"To hell with Ginger," said Mac.  He set his teeth.  The lumber flew:
he took risks: for swift running in a Mill means risks.  Some of the
lumber was shaky, ring-shakes and wind-shakes were in it, and in some
of the wet-shakes fine white gum.  When the saw strikes a shake the
loose pieces work out: some are like to touch the teeth of the saw
and get picked up!  What that means is that the helper to the Pony
Saw is shot at by jagged lumps of wood: they come by whizzing like a
horrid bullet.  Mac and his man watched and at times Mac lifted his
hand and his helper ducked as the Saw said "Phit, phit," and threw
things at him.  It was exciting, it made the blood run fast in his
veins to know that at any moment he might be killed, and be so quiet.

This was the battle of the lumber: for saws kill men and logs, kill
them and maim them, oho, but the day was fine and the fight long!
Down in the boom the man of the Boom, the man with the long pole, who
made the logs swim to their ascent to the Temple, whence they were
dragged by the Bull-Wheel, had his work cut out, but worked.  If he
kept Ginger waiting, Ginger would skip over the skids and come to the
open way that led down to the Boom and use sulphurous language.

"What the--how the--why the--oh, hell, are we to shut down and go
home?  Hump yourself, Paul, hump yourself."

And much worse if it hadn't been that Paul, a thin silent dark man,
was reputed dangerous, and was said to have killed a man in Texas,
somewhere in the neighbourhood of El Paso, where not a few pass up
the golden stairs on an unholy sudden.  But the atmosphere down there
is fine, in its way: you shall not believe otherwise, I entreat you.

It was towards noon when Mac had Ginger beat or near it.  Or if not
that, he saw that Mac wasn't to be overcome.  The Trimmers, Wong, the
Chinee, and Willett, the Englishman, had the thing down fine, for
Wong knew his business and Willett was at hard as a keg of nails or a
coil of barbed wire.  He could claw and sling and work and sweat with
any.

And still Ginger sent the thing going and again spurted, for Quin
came in!

"Stand back, clear the track for Mr. Josephus Orange-Blossom," said
the nigger, the coon, the "shiny" (not a Sheeny, by the way) of the
song.  That was the way Quin felt.  He felt like someone in
particular.  Indeed he always did, but now with Jenny at his house,
clad in beautiful clothes and looking "a real daisy," he was very
proud of himself.  That's the way the male has, if the truth be said,
men or moose or wapiti, or a lion or a tiger for that matter: or, let
us say, a tom-cat.

He was full of himself!  And all he wanted to do now was to "fire"
Pete and get him out of the place, as was natural.

Some men would have done it even without excuse, though that is
difficult, but George Quin had some natural or unnatural notion of
justice and couldn't go so far.  He watched Pete with critical
half-savage eyes.  Was there a glint of pity in them?  Perhaps,
tilikum, for a man is hard to know.

If this was Ginger's day and Ginger's hour when Quin looked in, it
was Pete's day too, for he threw his poor outraged Indian soul into
labour and did, oh, he did very well.  Quin saw that he did, he was
pleased with the man, and seeing that he had to pay him, the work
pleased him.  Pete's face was hard now and his eyes glittered: his
muscles stood up: his face and neck were wet: they glistened.  He
went like a machine: and never made a mistake.  He climbed a
five-foot log on the carriage close to the teeth of the saw (the
sawdust was in his hair and it looked white and woolly) like a
cougar, at one bound.  He worked up Skookum Charlie in like manner
and made the Siwash like it.

"Oh, he's good," said Quin approving and yet savage.  "Oh, he's----"
and then Scotty yanked the whistle lanyard and the whistle said,
"Knock off, you galoots, galoots, galoo-oots!"

The men threw up their heads, and most wiped their brows as they
straightened their backs and said "Oo!"  They breathed and filled
their lungs and then thought of their empty bellies and started for
the Hash-house.  But White, always polite and obsequious, stayed a
while with Quin.

"We've cut a lot, Mr. Quin," said White; "the boom's nigh empty."

"More in to-day," replied Quin.  "How's your wedger-off doin'?  If he
don't suit you, fire him, White."

"He's the best man I've had this year," said White.  He did not
understand why Quin grunted and turned his back on him.  If he had
known Pete would have gone that day.

"What's wrong?" asked White.  "Well, I made 'em skip to-day."

So the men thought as they piled into the hash, and said what they
thought of him and grubbed in anticipation of an afternoon the equal
of the morning.

"He's a swine but a first-class sawyer, and no mistake, no fatal
error, eh, what?  He made us skip and sweat to-day, but never piled
us up!  That was what the tallow-faced swine was after, eh?"

"You bet!  Here Fan Tong, or Hang Chow, more chow this way!  White's
a swine; oh, he made us skip."

"'E's a 'oly terror," said Willett.

"A tough from Terror Flat!"

"No razor in his boot, though!  There ain't no real fight in
Tallow-Chops.  Pass the mustard."

What a good life it was!  And the chewing was good enough for a boss
hobo, death on three fine squares or set-downs, and don't you forget
it!

But Pete grubbed silently in Indian Annie's, who moaned to him about
Jenny.

"Damn klootchman, I forget her," said Pete.  Yet many days passed and
he did not forget.


When they were all out of the Mill, Quin stood and stared at the dead
saws without seeing them.

"It's hard lines: but I can't fire him," said Quin.




IX

For the workers, these Bees in a Wood Hive, the days passed swiftly.
Oh, it was wonderful how they passed!  The dawn broke up night's
massed army and chased it into the Pacific Ocean, and round the quick
little world, and again fled.  The days went round like a wheel, like
a saw.  They came up and flowered: they died down and were not.  Only
Sunday stayed like a monstrous month, an oppression as all workers
find it, an unnecessary day when every muscle and nerve ask for the
habit of big work.  We cursed and groaned on Sunday, tilikum, and if
you don't like to believe it, there's no one will plug you for doing
the other thing.  Sunday wasn't an Oasis, it was a desert.  On Monday
it was, however, desirable: Tuesday pined for it: Wednesday yearned
for it: Thursday screamed for it: Friday sickened for it and Saturday
hallooed joyfully with it in sight.  And by ten on Sunday the Workers
loathed it.

But the swift days of work were the days.  They streamed past like a
mountain torrent.  Even sad and sorry Pete found it so.  He smote his
wedges with his maul and, lo and behold! a day was dead; and the
stars sang above the hills and the starlight gleamed on the Fraser's
shining flood.  He laid his head, his cabeza, on a pillow (unwashed)
and it was day.  Again it was night.

Yet for one the hours were strange and slow.  She looked out from the
house on the hill-side and saw the slow sun wheel his team into the
West, as if his horses drew innumerable thousands and hundreds of the
world's big freight.  Poor Jenny, now plump and sweet and beautifully
clad, and learned in the delights of hot water (of which Sam was a
kind of prophet, for he loved baths as if he were a Japanese), found
the days slow in spite of baths and clothes and cleanliness.  The
poor dear pined a little, as one might who had lived wildly, for the
ruder joys of her earlier life.  Things were onerous.  She wanted at
certain hours to sit down, to "squat upon her hunkers" and suck at a
pipe, perhaps.  A yarn with wretched Annie or Annawillee would have
been pleasing.  She even thought of Pete, though she was getting very
fond of her conqueror Quin, who dominated her wonderfully.  That was
her nature; for if some conqueror of Quin had come along she would
have gone with him, very likely, as a wapiti hind will follow a
conquering wapiti.  And yet who can say?  I cannot; for I think she
loved Quin very well indeed, though he denied her the trivial
consolations of Indian bawdry with Annie or mournful Annawillee.

Somehow I think Jenny was very good.  One can't say.  She grew
prettier and gentler every day, every hour.  Sam admired her frankly
and was very polite.  It was his nature.  He told Quin quite openly
what he thought, and sometimes gave him good advice.

"My tinkee Missus heap pletty, Mista Quin," said Sam, "evely day mo'
pletty, maskee my tinkee she velly sad, hab noting to do.  Missus
wantche flin, Mista Quin, t'at what she wantchee.  No can lead, no
can lite, my tinkee, no can makee dless allo tim'.  T'at velly sad.
No likee cookee chow-chow, she say."

He shook his head.  She wanted a friend ("wantchee flin"), that was a
fact, and all Quin could do was to order her more dresses and linen
from Victoria.  He got her picture-books (for, as Sam said, "she no
can lead") and talked to her about what she saw there.  When he was
with her she was happy.

"I velly happy at night-time, Tchorch," she said meekly.  "But
daytime velly keely, very sad."

"Tchorch" Quin picked her up in his arms and set her on his knee.

"Litty gal, I love you, tenas," he answered, mixing the lingoes.
Perhaps he did love her.  Quien sabe?--as Chihuahua said about
everything uncertain.

"You love me, Tchorch?" she asked flushing, "velly much?"

"Tenas, hyu, hyu, very much indeed, little one."

"I not mind if the day is sad, then," said Jenny.  She regarded him
with big sad eyes, and then looked down.

"But I not a good woman, Tchorch."

Quin frowned and grumbled.

"Damn nonsense, tenas."

But it wasn't damn nonsense to Jenny.  And most especially it wasn't
so on Sundays, though on that day she had George Quin all to herself
and the greedy Mill stood quiet.  On Sundays she heard the tinkling
church bells, and when the wind blew lightly from the east the sound
of distant singing came up to her as she stood at the open window.
She remembered what the good Missionary, the "kloshe leplet," had
said about goodness, and badness, and the Commandments.  There were
ten of them, Jenny remembered, though she had been to no service ever
since she lived at Cultus Muckamuck's ranche.

"I velly wicked, Tchorch," she said mournfully.  "I blake the
Commandments!"

"Humph," said George Quin, "don't cry about it, kiddy.  I've kicked
'em all to flinders myself.  If you go to Lejaub's hyas piah, I go
with you, tenas."

He kissed her.  His bold and ready undertaking to go to hell with her
was really very consoling.  His statement that he had broken all the
Commandments comforted her: it showed his good faith.  Jenny had a
wonderfully material view of hell, and her imagination showed it to
her as a sawmill in flames.  She had seen the Mill at Kamloops on
fire, that is why.  Now George Quin was the Manager of the Mill and
the owner and a big strong man.  She had a kind of dim notion that he
would be able to manage a good deal even in hell.

And besides she loved him really.  There's no doubt about it, and
even he knew it.

The big strong brute of a man was very gentle with her, and let her
"cly" a little when she thought of the good missionary (who happened
to have been a very bad man, by the way, though many of them were
splendid) and the wood fires of the diabolical saw-mill of which
Lejaub the devil was manager.

But he never knew how her feelings worked on her when he was away,
and indeed if he had known there might not have been the trouble that
there was.  And he had entirely forgotten that he had a Bible in the
house: the gift of his old mother who still lived in Vermont, far
away to the East.

The Bible was the source of all the woe that followed when a big deal
in lumber took Quin over to Victoria and kept him there three days.
He had more than half a mind to take her with him, and if her speech
hadn't betrayed her origin he would have done it like a shot.  And
when he went Jenny cried as if he were going to cross the Big Salt
Chuck or the Pacific.  Though her mother had been a Hydah she knew
nothing of the waters.

"I much aflaid of Pete," she thought.

But Quin gave great directions to Sam and he believed he could trust
him.

"My look see evely ting," said Sam.  "Missus all light: my givee good
chow-chow, hot wata, blush dlesses, t'at all light.  My no lettee
Missus go out?  No, good, my no lettee."

But he played Fan-tan of course, and couldn't be expected to stay in
all the time, or to understand that the Missus was upset in her mind
about morality.  And he knew nothing and cared less about the Bible.
There wasn't the making of a rice Christian in him unless rice was
very scarce indeed, and now he lived on the fat of the land of
British Columbia.

So the day after she had cried herself to sleep, she came across the
Bible.

It was not quite a family Bible, and only weighed a pound or so, but
it had a biblical cover of sullen puritanical leather which suggested
that the very bookbinder himself was of the sourest disposition, a
round-head, a kill-joy, with ethics equal to the best Scotch
morality.  This binding alone, however, would have had comparatively
little effect on the childish mind of Jenny.  But the book had in it
dour and savage pictures of so surprising a lack of artistic merit
that they struck her down at once, poor child.  In spite of the lack
of colour the dreadful draughtsman made very effective curly-whirly
flames in a hell which was remarkably like a study of a suburban
coal-cellar, and the victims of his fire and ferocity expressed the
extremest anguish as they fried on eternal grids!  Oh, horrors, but
the pictures brought back to the fearful mind of the tenas klootchman
all the dread with which the good (or bad) minister, Alexander
Mickie, had inspired her when she attended Sunday School at Kamloops
and heard him preach in Chinook.  For Chinook is no more than a few
hundred words and most of them are very material.  So was Mickie's
mind, whether he preached openly or drank in secret, and the hyas
piah of Lejaub, or the great fire of the Devil (Lejaub being equal to
Le Diable), was a hot wood fire to Jenny.  She believed naturally
enough in Lejaub much more than in God, for her Indian blood helped
her there, or rather hindered her, and the English God was a far-off
notion to a mind not given to high abstractions.

So Jenny when she got the picture Bible sat with it in her lap and
trembled.

"I a bad woman, I go to hell; very wrong for me to love Tchorch!" was
her mind's commentary as she turned the blind pages for some other
picture.

And every now and again she turned back to the curling flames and
elaborate grids of hell.  She traced in some anguished lineaments a
remote likeness to herself.  Then she fell to weeping, and weeping
Sam found her.  He was sympathetic.  On the whole Sam was a very good
sort.

"Why you cly, Missus?"

It was in vain for her to say she wasn't crying.

"Oh, yes, you cly, Missus, but what for you cly?  Mista Quin he come
back to-molla."

He might even be back that night, as Sam knew, though he would not be
till late.  But Jenny sobbed and the Bible slipped from her knees
upon the floor.  Sam picked it up and recognised it at once.  He
snorted as he gave it her back.

"My tinkee no good lead dis," he said solemnly.  "My tinkee all the
stolies in it lies, Missis.  My savvy one, two, tree, piecee
Joss-pidgin-man Chinaside, what you callee leplet, my savvy Yingling
word, miss'onary, and he talkee no good.  My tinkee him got wata
topside, clazy, pelton you say."

Out of this difficult hishee-hashee of words Jenny extracted the
notion that in Sam's opinion missionaries were fools, for "leplet"
and "pelton" put together mean that.  She shook her head and sobbed.

"My tinkee no good makee littee Missus cly," said Sam.  "T'at book
makee nicee litty gal cly allo time.  My see um.  No good littee gal
cly: my say it damn foolo book.  Mista Quin him velly good man:
plenty chow-chow, dlesses and Sam for washee evelyting.  Missus, you
no lead Bible.  Him no good.  Damn foolo stoly, my savvy."

But what good was it for a Chinaman to tell her that?

"Him velly good book, I tink, Sam," she said earnestly.

"My no tinkee," returned Sam.

"It belongs to Mista Quin," urged the "Missus."

"Him never lead him," said Sam triumphantly.  "My putty him away and
Mista Quin him never savvy."

Perhaps that was true.  But then was not "Tchorch" wicked too?

Her lips trembled and she opened the book again at the fiery picture.

"What t'at picture?" asked Sam, quite eager to see.

"It's hell," said Jenny, trembling.

"Ah," said Sam, "t'at Debelo's house.  T'at all light.  Wong him
velly clever man, him say Debble-Debble here all light, but only
China-side belong God.  My tinkee too.  Wong say one time no food, no
licee, and evelybody hungly, and makee player to Posa, allo same God,
and nex' day one foot licee all over.  T'at China-side, galaw.  But
my no can stay: my cookee chow-chow: Missus no cly, Debble-Debble
never take litty gal, Missus."

But the fact remained that even Sam believed the devil was in British
Columbia (and all America, of course), even if God only thought of
China.  On the whole Sam's cheerful intervention did harm rather than
good.  Jenny did put the book away and tried not to think of the
"hyas piah," but as the evening came on there was a gorgeous sunset
and even that brought fire to her timid mind.  When it was dark she
shivered and was glad to see a light.  Then she got out the book
again.

She was living a very wicked life, oh, yes, the missionaries would
say that.  She was Pete's wife and was living with Tchorch!  That was
very wrong, it was against the Commandments.

What ought she to do?

What was right?

If only George were back!  That is what her heart said, for now she
hungered for him very bitterly, because she felt she would see him no
more.  The little girl had gone so far on the burning path of
repentance.  She _must_ see him no more: and what she saw in the
gloom was the glow of the Pit itself.  She ran to the window and
looked down on the quiet world and the few shining lights of the
quiet city and the star-shine on the great river.  But all these were
as nothing to her loneliness and her sudden fear and all the awful
threats of hell that came back to her in such an hour.  She fell upon
her knees and tried to pray and found herself murmuring, "Tchorch,
dear Tchorch."  He was coming back to her that night and was glad to
come back, for he had no notion, no adequate notion of what a bad man
he was.  He loved the tenas klootchman, loved her far better,
perhaps, than the white woman who had scorned him because of dead
Lily's predecessors.

But Lily was now no more than a dead flower unremembered in some
spring garden.  He was going back to Jenny.

She cried as she prayed to God and said "Tchorch!"  George was the
little foolish woman's prayer, and it may be a good one.  The name of
the Beloved is for ever a prayer, tillikum.

It was nearly ten o'clock when Sam looked in.  He did not think Quin
would come now.  It was late for the S.S. _Yosemite_.

"You all light, Missus?" he asked.

And she said that she was all right and Sam went away down to Wong's
shack for an hour's Fan-tan.  He hoped to make a few dollars easily,
so that he could go back China-side and buy one "litty piecee waifo"
for himself so that he could have children to attend to his ashes and
his kindly paternal spirit.

But Jenny saw her spirit, her soul, her body, in the flames.

She must go back to Pete, and ask him to forgive her.  He would beat
her badly, she knew, and he would tear her "dless" from her and speak
things of shame.

"I have shem," she said.  She heard Sam go down the path singing a
high-pitched quavering Chinese song.  When he was quite gone she
began to weep, and wept until she was ill.  She stumbled blindly
round the room, and went into the bedroom and kissed things of
George's, and the very bed itself, and then went out into the
darkness.  In that hour, the poor child forgot how beautifully she
was dressed.  She stumbled in light shoes down the path, and as she
went she wished she were dead.  For Pete would be cruel.  He would
beat her and take her back.

"I'm very wicked," she said, weeping.  George would be unhappy.  She
turned with her empty arms outstretched to the hill above her, to the
empty house.  George had been very good to her.

She passed Wong's shack.  Sam was in there with half a dozen others,
and they were hard at it gambling.  After Wong's came Skookum
Charlie's and then Indian Annie's.  The next shack was Pete's.  She
sank down in the darkness between the two shanties in a state of fear
and stupor.  In front of her was shame and cruelty and behind her the
fires of hell.  But she wanted to be good.

There was no light in Pete's shack.  When she saw that, she hoped for
one despairing moment that he had gone away.  Yet she knew that if he
had gone George would have told her.  Most likely he was with Indian
Annie.  He would be at least half-drunk.  She felt dreadfully beaten.
There was a roar of bestial silly laughter from Indian Annie's.

From down the river almost abreast of Lulu Island there came the
sound of a steamer's whistle.  It meant nothing to her and Sam did
not hear it.  Annie's door opened and Annawillee ran out reeling.
She was going home to Chihuahua and had to pass Jenny, crouching on
the sawdust in silks and fine linen.

"Oh," groaned Jenny as Annawillee came along crooning in mournful
tones her old ballad that said she was "keely."  When she was close
to Jenny she reeled and recovered and stood for a moment
straddle-legs.  She hiccupped and in the clear darkness saw Jenny
without knowing her.

"Who you?" she hiccupped.

Then she saw who it was, and burst into idiotic laughter.

"Oh, Jenny klootchman," she screamed.  And Pete came out of Annie's
to go home.

"What's that, Annawillee?" he asked in the thick voice of liquor.
"What you say, eh?"

Annawillee forgot there was money and drink in Pete's not knowing,
and she stood there laughing--laughing as if her sides would split.

"Your klootchman Jenny she come home," said Annawillee.  And Jenny
groaned as Pete came running.

Before he spoke a word, he kicked her.

"You damn klootchman," he said.  He took her by the hair and dragged
her along the ground while Annawillee still laughed.  And Jenny
screamed.

"Where's your man now, ha?" said Pete, thickly.  "I tink I kill you
now."

The _Yosemite_ came alongside her wharf as if it were bright day and
Quin leapt ashore.

As Pete dragged her, Jenny got upon her knees and fell.  And again
she half-rose and again fell, and under his brutal grip of her hair
her scalp seemed a flame of agony.  She was sorry she had determined
to be good and to repent.  She screamed dreadfully and many heard.
Some shrugged their shoulders, for screams in Shack-Town were only
too common.  Yet some came out of their houses.  Among them was
Chihuahua.  Indian Annie came too, and before Pete had got his wife
to his own door, there were others, among them two Chinamen from an
overcrowded shanty further up the road.  And still they did not
interfere.  Jenny was Pete's klootchman and she had run away.  Like a
fool she had come back, and must suffer.  There was none among them
that dared to interfere: for they feared a knife.

And as George Quin came ashore he heard Jenny's screams.  "Another
drunken row," he said carelessly as he faced the hill to his lonely
house.  He was very glad to get back home to his tenas klootchman,
for he hated loneliness.  He said "poor little Jenny" as he walked.

There was now a crowd about poor Jenny, for more came running, more
Siwashes, among them Skookum Charlie, and more Chinamen.  But still
no one interfered, though Annawillee shrieked even more than Jenny.
She implored Chihuahua to kill Pete.  But Chihuahua booted Annawillee
and made her howl on her own account.

"She run way and come back," said Chihuahua.  "If she mine I kill
her, carajo!"

And Pete started kicking Jenny.  Once and again she cried out, and
then the last of all who looked on came like a fury at Pete.  The
bleared and haggard and horrible old Annie was the one who had the
courage, and the only one.

"Aya, you damn Pete," she screamed.  She got her claws in Pete's long
black hair and pulled him down.  She was a bundle of flying rags with
a savage cat in them.  If Jenny were killed she would be nothing to
Annie, but while she lived she was worth drinks.  And perhaps Annie
loved the little klootchman.  Who can tell?

She and Pete rolled together on the dusty road, and the onlookers
shrieked with laughter.  Quin heard it as he climbed.

"The row's over," said Quin.

More came out of the huts, and this time Wong, old Wong, the
philosopher was among them.  And with him came Lung and Wing, and at
last Sam.  The Chinamen stood outside the circle of the Siwashes and
chattered.  The first told the others that Pete had killed his wife,
and now was killing someone else.  The devilish twisting bundle in
the dusty road revolved and squealed.  But Annawillee howled by the
side of Jenny, who lay insensible.  Skookum struck a light, and it
shone upon the poor girl.  It showed her dress of scarlet, and Sam's
quick eyes saw it.  He ran in quickly towards her, though the wise
Wong held him back.  Chinamen never join in alien rows if they can
help it.  It is wisest not to, and they have much wisdom.  Skookum's
match went out.  Sam lighted another and knelt beside Jenny.

"'Ullo, Chinaman," grinned Skookum, "you tink she dead, you tink
mimaloose?"

Oh, said Sam, this was Mista Quin's Missus right enough.  What did
she want here?  He called to Wong, who came calmly, unhurriedly.  Sam
spoke to him in their own tongue, and then Sam, who was as quick to
catch as Wong was wise to suggest, cried out suddenly that the tenas
klootchman was dead.  He took her in his arms and ran with her to
Wong's shack.  And as he ran Pete got up from Annie, whom he had
choked into stillness.  But his torn face bled and one eye was nearly
on his cheek.  He kicked Annie as she lay, and then turned to where
he had left Jenny.

"Where my klootchman go?" he demanded.

They told him in a dreadful chorus that she was dead, and he
staggered back against his shack.

"Where is she?"

"Wong take her."

They believed wise old Wong a physician, for Chinamen have strange
gifts.

"I go see," said Pete.

"No, you run 'way," said Skookum urgently.  He believed Jenny was
dead.

"Mus' I run?" asked Pete with a fallen jaw.

"Dey hang you, Pete," screamed Annawillee joyfully.  Old Annie sat up
in the road.

"Where I go?" asked Pete.  "I wis' I never see Jenny."

He burst into tears.  They brought him a bottle, and told him to
"dlink."  They gave him advice to go down the river, up the river, to
the Inlet, to the Serpentine, oh, anywhere from the Police.

"I go," said Pete.  He drank.

"I--I--go," said Pete.  He drank again, and fell and lay like a log.

"Now they catch Pete and hang him," screamed Annawillee.  Annie
staggered across to him and kicked him in the face.

"Pig Pete," said Annie.

Quin came to his empty house and called to tenas Jenny.  And then to
Sam.  When no answer came he ran through the hall into the empty room
where the lamp was.  On the floor he saw the Bible.  He understood.
He quite understood.




X

There was no doubt at all in George Quin's mind as to what had
happened, and perhaps he was not wholly surprised.  What did surprise
him was his own ferocious anger, and the wave of pity that even
swallowed up his wrath.

"My God!" said Quin.

There wasn't a man in the City who knew him a little but was prepared
to swear that Quin was a brute, and a devil without any feeling to
speak of.  It was said that he had killed Lily, the Haida girl, when,
as a matter of fact, it was his brother, Cultus Muckamuck as the
Siwashes called him, who had done a deed like that.  He had treated
Lily well.  Her people said so.  He had treated them well, the greedy
brutes!

Now Quin was full of pity, and of jealousy.  This Bible had hurt her
poor weak mind, no doubt of that: and it had driven her back to Pete,
perhaps.

"My God," said Quin again, "where else?"

He remembered the screams he had heard coming from Shack-Town as he
landed.  And as he remembered he found himself running down the hill
in the starlit gloom.  He wasn't a very young man either.  Quin was
nearly forty: hard and set: at times a little stiff.  Now he went
recklessly.

"If Pete----"

It didn't bear thinking of, so Quin wouldn't think of it.  He was
jealous, hideously jealous.  He could have torn Pete asunder with his
powerful hands.  He felt his nerves in a network within him, and in
his skin.  They thrilled like fire.

"My poor little Jenny!"

Why, the fact was that he loved her!  When one comes to think of it,
this was a monstrous discovery for him to make.  He had really never
loved anyone, certainly not dead Lily, more certainly not that white
woman over in Victoria, though he thought he had.  What he felt for
Jenny was a revelation; it made him a saint and a devil at once, as
passion does even the best and worst of men.  And Quin had force and
fire, and bone, and muscle and a big heavy head and hands like
clip-hooks.  Now passion shook him as if he were a rag in the wind.

He came down to Shack-Town, and stopped.  He was hot but again he
sweated ice.  He looked down the road and saw figures moving.

"Which is the shack?" he asked himself.

He went past Wong's house, where Jenny lay on a table with ten
jabbering Chinamen around her.  He heard a high-low sing-song of
their chatter and cursed his boy Sam for leaving the house as he had
done.

"I'll kick the damn stuffin' out of him," said Quin savagely.

He passed Indian Annie's and saw the group beyond it, standing about
Pete's recumbent body.  Skookum Charlie was almost in tears to think
that Pete would be hanged.  Annie wiped her bloody face with her
skirt.  Annawillee, howling curses at Pete, sat by her.

"What's all this?" said Quin, coming out of the darkness.  He saw
Pete, or rather saw a body.  He spoke hoarsely.

"Mista Quin, oh!" said Skookum, scrambling to his feet.

"What is it?" asked Quin again.  "Kahta mamook yukwa?  What do you do
here?"

"Pete him kill Jenny," screamed Annawillee.  Quin staggered back.

"He, he----"

He pointed at the drunken man.

"Not mimaloose, him dlunk," said Annawillee, "Jenny with Chinaman."

Skookum led Quin, the big Tyee, to Wong's shack.

"If she's dead----" said Quin, looking towards Pete.  He opened
Wong's door.

The room was eight feet by twelve by ten: it reeked of fierce tobacco
and the acrid fumes of "dope."  Some of them "hit the pipe," smoked
opium.  The smell was China; Quin, who had been there, knew it.  With
the odours of Canton were the odours of bad oil.  Three lamps ate up
the air.  Quin saw a row of whitish masks about the table: some
excited, some stupid, one or two villainous.  At the head of the
table was the quiet majestic head of the old philosopher Wong.  He
had a great domed skull and a skin of drawn parchment over wide
bones.  With a sponge he wiped blood from Jenny's face.  Sam held a
bowl of water.  He looked anxious and strange.  And Jenny's body, in
white linen and crimson silk, fouled with sawdust and blood, lay
there quietly.

"Is she dead?" asked Quin.

The philosopher, whose shiny skin declared his love of opium, said
she was not dead.

"My tinkee she all light bymby," said Wong, "She belongy you, Tyee?"

"Turn the others out," said the Tyee, and at Wong's word they fled
out of the door, and stood in the dark jabbering about Quin having
taken Jenny.

Quin turned on Sam.

"Why did you leave the house, Sam?  My tell you stop, you damn thief!"

Sam, now as pale as Jenny, threw out his hands in urgent deprecation
of Quin's anger.

"My no go out," he lied, "my stay allo tim' with Missus, maskee she
go out and my no findee.  I lun down here, Mista Quin, lun queek,
findee damn Pete hurtee Missus.  T'at tlue.  My tellee Missus no cly:
maskee she lead Bible and cly.  My no can do."

He wrung his hands.  Perhaps what he said was true.  Quin felt
Jenny's pulse and found it at last.  He saw she breathed.

"I'll have her home," he said.

They took the door off its hinges, and Sam with the others carried
her up to the house.  Wong went into town to ask the doctor to come
to Quin's at once "chop-chop," and Dr. Jupp came.  He found Jenny on
the bed moaning a little.

"What's this, Quin?" asked Jupp, who knew Quin well enough.

Quin answered sullenly and told the truth.

"Tut," said Jupp, "some day you'll get knifed, Quin; why can't you
get married and leave the klootchmen alone?"

He was a white-bearded old boy, who knew how ignorant he was of
medicine.  But he knew men.  He went over Jenny carefully.

"Two ribs broken," he said, "and the small bone of the left arm.  And
a little concussion of the brain.  I think she'll do, Quin."

"Thank you," said Quin.

Between them they made her comfortable after Jupp had sent for
splints and bandages.

"She's very pretty," said Jupp, For Pete hadn't kicked her face.
"She's very pretty."

"She's as good as gold, by God!" said Quin.

"Humph," said Jupp.  "I'll come in to-morrow morning early.  Shall I
send you a nurse?"

"I'll sit up with her," said Quin.  "You'd only send some cursed
white woman with notions."

"Maybe," said Jupp, "they frequently have 'em incurably."

Quin's face was white and hard.  He stood up and looked across the
bed.

"I tell you this little girl is as good as any white woman in town,
Jupp."

Jupp took snuff habitually; he took some now.

"Who the devil said she wasn't?" he asked drily.  He left the room.

It was early morning before Jenny became conscious, and even then
Quin had great trouble with her.  For she was very sick.  There was
no end to his patience.  Nor was there any to Sam's.  The boy sat
outside on the mat all night.

"My askee Missus no tellee Boss my go playee Fan-tan," he said
nervously.

At bright dawn Jenny found Quin half-dozing with his head on the
quilt under her hand.  She touched his hair tenderly, and he woke up.

"Tchorch," she said feebly, with a heavenly smile, "Tchorch!"

"Yes, little girl," said George.

"I tink I no go away again, Tchorch.  I no want to be good, I want to
stay with you.  What you tink, Tchorch?"

The tears ran down George's face.  That's what he thought.

"I'll kick that damn Pete's head in," said George to himself.

"I no want to be good.  I jus' want Tchorch," said Jenny.

She closed her eyes and slept.




XI

His friends, even including Skookum Charlie, left Pete where he lay.
If a man killed his klootchman and then got pahtlum, or
"blind-speechless-paralytic" on something cousin-german to methylated
spirit, what could be done with him but let him alone till the police
came for him by daylight?  Don't forget, tilikums, that none of the
officers of the law could come in Sawdust Shack-Town after dark.
They would as soon have gone to Cloud Cuckoo Town.  It was as much as
their cabezas were worth, and that's a hard-wood truth, without knots
or shakes.  The last time a constable (under the influence of a good
but uninstructed superior and some bad whisky) did go into Shack-Town
after dark he stayed there in a pool of blood (or what would have
been a pool but for the convenient sawdust) till it was broad
daylight, and he took much patching-up before he got into running
again.  After dark we had it to ourselves, Whites, Reds, and all
colours who were of the order of the Mill, or the disorder of it.
The "bulls" or "cops" or "fingers," as hoboes say, kept order in the
orderly uptown streets.

Skookum "quit" and went home.  So did Annawillee, whom Chihuahua
hauled off as he was doubtful of her morals in the dark.  But Annie,
whose windpipe was exceedingly sore, went out several times and
booted Pete in the ribs where he lay, as a kind of compensation or
cough lozenge.  However, she let up on him at last and went home to
"pound her ear" in the sleep of the just and virtuous.  It never even
occurred to her that Pete didn't know anything whatsoever about Quin
being the man who had kapsuallowed or stolen his dear Jenny.
Everybody else knew, Chinamen, Swedes, Lapps, Letts, Finns, Spaniards
and a number of whites of the rougher kind who camped in Shack-Town.
I knew myself.  But the man who ought to have known didn't.  It was a
sign that life is the same everywhere.

Pete woke up before dawn, as it seems to be a revenge of nature to
make drunken men wake when they can't find a drink, and when he woke
he hadn't the remotest notion of what had happened to him.  He knew
that he had a thirst on him of a miraculous intensity, and when he
moved he was aware that he had a pain in his side which almost made
him forget his thirst.  For Annie wore a man's shoes, with heavy
soles to them.  And when a man is helpless and his ribs open even a
woman's kicks can do mischief.

"Oh," said Pete, "ah!"

He rolled over and groaned, poor devil.  And, just as the secret dawn
began to flame, so the red deeds of the night before began to come up
to him.  He sat up and his jaw fell.

"Ah," said Pete, "I tink I--I kill Jenny!"

There's a crowd of virtuous ones who will imitate Annie and boot him
in the ribs, poor devil.  He drank and gambled and played hell and
beat his wife and drove her into the arms of Quin.  Even a
missionary, who ought to know something about such humanity, would
disapprove of him.  And those whites of high nobility and much money
and great station, who are ready, in like cases, to drag their own
wretched women by the hair of the head through the bloody sawdust of
the Divorce Court, and who hire (at so many guineas and one or two
more) some gowned ruffian to boot her in the ribs, will objurgate
Pete perhaps, poor chap.  He had no chance to know better and now the
terrors of the rope and the gallows had hold of him.

Pete was brave enough, even if he did kick klootchmen.  As Ginger
White knew, he was the best wedger-off thereabouts, and could have
got a job at any of the big Mills of the Sound or the Inlet.  He
could ride a horse and fight a man of his own weight quite well
enough.  Indeed there was nothing wrong with him but the fact that he
was a Sitcum Siwash and given to drink when it was handy.  Up at
Cultus Muckamuck's, where it wasn't handy, he was as sober as any
judge and a deal more sober than some out West.  He was brave enough.

But when he thought of being hanged he wasn't brave.  He sat up and
wondered why he wasn't in the Calaboose or cooler or jail already.
He looked round fearfully as if he expected to see Jenny's body
there.  Then he groaned and felt his ribs.  It was odd he should be
so sore.  But the oddest thing was that he wasn't already jailed.

"I don' b'lieve I kill Jenny after all," said Pete.  And as soon as
he didn't believe it, he very naturally determined to do it as soon
as possible.  He staggered to his feet, and made for his shack,
thinking that Jenny perhaps was there.  Of course it was as empty as
an old whisky bottle, and Pete scratched his head.  Then the dawn
came up, and just about the time that Jenny was murmuring that she
didn't want to be good but only wanted "Tchorch," he went out again
and ran against Annie, who had also waked up with a thirst and with
an idea that it would ease her throat and her mind if she went out
and had another go at Pete's ribs.

"Yah, you pig Pete," she said with her jaw out at him and her skinny
throat on the stretch.

"Why you call me pig, you damn Annie?" demanded Pete, savagely.

"Because you halo good, no good, damn bad man, try to kill you tenas
klootchman," yapped Annie raucously as she spat.

"You a damn fool," said Pete.  "Jenny she been away from me----"

"Yah," yelled Annie, "she find a good man, and Mista Quin, he give
her good dlesses, he velly kind to Jenny."

It was a blow between the eyes for Pete, and he staggered as if he
had been struck.  His jaw dropped.

"Mista Quin, kahta mika wau-wau, what you say?" he stammered.

"I say she now Mista Quin's klootchman: he velly good to her.  By-by
he come and kill you, because you kick his klootchman.  Las' night he
say he mamook you mimaloose, kill you dead, you pig Pete," she
squealed, withdrawing into her house, so that she could slam the door
on him if he made a rush.  But truly it was the last thing he thought
of.

"The Tyee take my klootchman!" he said with a fallen jaw, "the
Tyee----"

The boss had taken Jenny!

"Dat tlue, Annie?" he asked weakly.

"Dat tlue, you pig," said Annie.

Pete made a horrid sound in his throat like a strangled scream and
Annie slammed and bolted her door and got a bar of iron in her hands
as quick as she could move.

"I kill Mista Quin," screamed Pete.  "I kill heem!"

He ran to his shack on the instinct to find something then and there
to kill the boss with.  But he had no weapon, not even a good knife.

"I kill him all same," said Pete.  As the men in the South would have
said he was "pretty nigh off his cabeza."

He started to work on his shack, and smashed the windows and their
frames and then all the wretched furniture in both rooms.  By the
time the house was an utter wreck he felt a little calmer.  But
though many heard him none came near.  It might be dangerous.  Then
at last it was daylight: there was a pleasant golden glow, and the
river was a stream of gold.  The tall Mill chimneys began to smoke,
for Scotty's helper fed the fires early.

"I go to work all same," said Pete, "and I see Quin."

He ground his teeth and then took a drink of water, and spat it out.
There was nothing that he wouldn't have given for some whisky, but
who ever had whisky in Shack-Town early in the morning?  He had to do
without it.  And at last the whistle spoke and the sun shone, and the
working bees came out of their hives and went to the Mill.

There was a devil of a wau-wau going on that morning in the
Engine-Room, for the place was crowded.  Some Chinamen even were
allowed to come inside, for they had news to give.  The patriarch and
philosopher Wong was interrogated by Mac and Shorty Gibbs and Tenas
Billy (white man in spite of Tenas).

"Quin--eh, what?" said Tenas Billy with open eyes.

"He took Jenny!  Well I'm damned," said Gibbs.

"I never reckoned that slabsided cockeyed roust-about Jack Mottram
took her," said Long Mac.  "But I own freely I never gave a thought
to Quin."

"Oh, he was always a squaw-man," said Ginger White.  "What was that
talk of a gal called Lily?  Wasn't she from Coquitlam?"

"She was a Hydah, but I never seen her," said another.  Papp the
German intervened.

"She was a bretty gal.  I zeen her mit Quin at Victoria; no, at
Nanaimo.  She died of gonsumption, boys."

They had heard Quin had killed her, kicked her when she was going to
be a mother.

"It ain'd drue," said Papp.  "Thad was the odder Quin, him dey galls
Gultus Muckamuck.  When I was ub to Gamloops I saw her grave.  Gultus
kigged her in the stomag, poor thing, and she died."

"Is it true Pete killed Jenny last night?" asked young Tom Willett,
who had just come in.

Wong had told Long Mac all about it and he had told the others.  They
all told Tom Willett all about it at once.

"Pete hadn't better run up agin Quin this day," said Ginger.  "I've
lost the best wedger-off I ever struck."

He saw Skookum Charlie grinning in a corner.

"And now I've got to put up with Skookum.  I guess Pete has lighted
out."

"Pulled his freight for sure," said Tenas Billy.  Then Scotty yanked
the whistle lanyard and the men sighed and moved off.

And as they moved Pete came in.

"Oh, hell," said those that saw him.  They scented trouble quick.

There was no doubt there would be trouble.  By all accounts Pete had
only just failed to kill the little klootchman, and that he showed up
afterwards, when he knew that Quin had cut him out, was proof enough
of coming woe.

Ginger White didn't like it.  He had no nerve for rows, in spite of
his nasty temper, and to have a murderous struggle between the
wedger-off and Quin, with guns shooting it might be (though gun-play
is rare in B.C.), made him shake.  Even if no "guns" came in there
would be blood and hair flying, and mauls and wedges and pickareens,
and perhaps a jagged slab or two.  Ginger remembered the huge nose
with which outraged Simmons had decorated him.

"I ain't goin' to let Quin come in ignorant," said Ginger.  At the
very first pause, while they were rolling a mighty five foot log on
the carriage, he shoved his head through the wall to the Engine-Room.

"Say, Scotty, send over to the Office and let Mr. Quin know that that
swine Pete has turned up to work."

Scotty nodded.

"And say he looks mighty odd, likely to prove fightable," added
Ginger.  He went back to the lever.

It was one of his off-days, when he couldn't drive the Mill or the
Saws for sour apples.  It's the same with everyone.  It's no sacred
privilege of artists to be off colour.  And yet in his way Ginger was
an artist.  He played on the Mill and made an organ of it: pulled out
stops, made her whoop, voix celeste, or voix diabolique.  Or he waved
his bâton and made the Stick Moola a proper old orchestra, wind and
strings, bassoon, harp, lute, sackbut, psaltery and all kinds of
raging music.  Now he was at a low ebb and played adagio, even
maestoso, and was a little flat with it all.

The quick men of the Mill loafed.  Long Mac flung off the tightener
and put new teeth into his saw with nicely-fitting buckskin.  He took
it easy.  So did everyone.  The very Bull-Wheel never groaned.  Down
below the Lath Mill chewed slowly.  The Shingle Mill, though it had
all the cedar it could eat, said at slow intervals, "I cut-a-shingle,
ah," ending with a yawn instead of a "Phit."

The truth was that everyone was waiting.  They loafed with their
hands but their minds were quick enough.  Tenas Billy of the Lath
Mill every now and again climbed up the chute to see if bloodshed was
imminent.  Shorty Gibbs, the Shingle Sawyer, did the same.  The very
Chinamen sorting flooring underneath bobbed up like Jacks out of
Boxes.

Only Pete never raised his head from his work.  When he drove a steel
dog into a log he did it with vim and vice.

He smashed Quin's big head every stroke.  Quin's head was a wedge
under the maul.  And it was nine o'clock.  Before ten Quin always
came into the Mill and stood as it were on deck, looking at his crew
as they sailed the Mill through forests, making barren the lives of
the green hills fronting the Straits.

As ten drew on the work grew more slack and men's minds grew intense.
But a big log was on the carriage, one nigh six foot in diameter.
The slab came off, and Pete and Skookum Charlie handled it.  Ginger
set her for a fifteen-inch cant and sent her at it.  Just as the log
obscured the doorway Quin came in and no one saw him but Skookum.
Pete drove a wedge, and reached out his hand for a loose one.  Then
he saw Quin.  As he saw him he forgot his work, and the saw nipped a
little and squealed uneasily.  Ginger threw up his angry head and
stopped her and saw that Pete saw Quin.

"Here's trouble," said the men.  The Pony Saw stopped dead.  The
Trimmers ran back into their casings.  There was silence.  The Lath
Mill stayed and the Shingle Saw and men's heads came up from below.
They heard Quin speak.

"Get off that log," said Quin.

Pete dropped off on the side away from Quin, as quick as a
mud-turtle.  As he fell upon his feet he grabbed a pickareen lying on
the skids and ran round the end of the carriage.

"Look out, Sir," yelled Ginger.  A dozen men made a rush.

Long Mac came over two skids at a time.  The only man who was near
enough to do anything was Skookum Charlie, but he feared Pete and had
no mind for any trouble.  He was safer on the top of the log.  Ginger
took a heavy spanner in his hand and went round the other end of the
log.  He was in time to see Pete rushing at Quin, who had nothing in
his hands.  Quin was the kind of man who wouldn't have, so much can
be said for him.

Now Quin was standing at the opening of the great side chute, down
which big cants and bents for bridge-work were thrown sideways.  It
was a forty-foot opening in the Mill's wall.  It was smooth, greasy,
sharply inclined.  At the foot of it were some heavy eighteen-foot
bents for bridge repairing.

"Ah," said Pete.  It seemed to Quin that Pete came quick and that the
other men who were running came very slow.  Perhaps they did, for
Pete was as quick on his feet as any cat or cougar.  He weighed a
hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and light bone.  Quin weighed two
hundred at the least.  He wasn't quick till he was hot.

But Pete's quickness, though it caught Quin, yet saved him.

Had he been less quick Quin would have stopped his sharp downward
pickareen.  But Pete delivered his blow too soon.  He aimed for
Quin's head, but Quin dodged and the blow was a little short: instead
of catching him inside the collar-bone and penetrating his lung, the
steel point grazed the bone and came down like fire through the
pectoral muscle.  And Quin struck out with his right and caught Pete
on the point of his left elbow.  The Sitcum Siwash went back reeling
and Ginger White flung his spanner at him.  It missed him by a hair's
breadth and Pete recovered.  Before he could make another rush Mac
was within a yard of him.  But something passed Mac and struck Pete
on the side of the head.  It was an iron ring from an old roller.
The philosopher Wong had flung it.  Pete went over sideways, grabbed
at nothing, lost his pickareen, caught his feet on the sill of the
chute and pitched out headlong.  He shot down the ways into the bents
below and lay there quiet as a dead man.

"Are you hurt?" asked Ginger White.  Quin's hand was to his breast.

"A bit," said Quin, as he breathed hard.

"It was a close call," said Ginger.  The men stood round silently.

Skookum clambered down from the log.  He was a dirty-whitish colour,
for he wasn't brave.

"Pick that chap up," said Quin, "and see if he is hurt.  If he is
some of you can carry him up to the hospital."

Though he pressed his hand tight to the open wound in his breast he
bled pretty fast, and presently sat down on one of the skids.

"I'll help you over to the Office," said Ginger White, ever ready to
be of service to the Tyee.  They went across together while Long Mac
and some of the boys picked up Pete.  If it had been a close call for
Quin it had been even a closer one for the Sitcum Siwash.  He was as
near a dead man to look at as any man could be.  The iron ring had
only caught him a glancing blow and cut his scalp, but when he slid
down the chute head-foremost his skull came butt on solid lumber.
Then he had turned over and struck the edge of a bent with his arm.
It was broken.  When Long Mac and three Chinamen carried him to the
hospital, on a door borrowed from the Planing Mill, the surgeon there
found his left collar-bone was in two pieces as well.  He had serious
doubts as to whether his skull was fractured or not.  On the whole,
when he had made his examination, he did not think so.  But he had
every sign of severe concussion of the brain.

"How did it happen?" asked Dr. Green when they had turned Pete over
to the nurses.

Mac told him.

"Humph," said Green, who knew something about Quin, "it is lucky for
Quin that the chap went for him first."

"You think he'll die then?" asked Mac.

"He might," said Green.  "But he has a skull that's thicker than
paper.  They can stand a lot, some of em'.  And others peg out very
easy.  It's diseases fetch 'em, though, not injuries."

So Mac went to the Mill again, leaving Pete on his back in a fine
clean bed for the first time in his life.  He was very quiet now.

While Mac was at the hospital they had sent for Dr. Jupp to look
after Quin.  When the old doctor heard what had happened he shook his
head.

"What did I tell him?"

He found Quin pretty sick, but smoking all the same.  He was
partially stripped and he had plastered the wound till help came with
a large pad of blotting paper, which was nearly as primitive as
spiders' webs.

"Well, I got it, doc'," said Quin.

Jupp shook his head again.

"You'll never learn sense, I suppose.  Let's look.  What was the
weapon?"

They showed him a pickareen, a half-headed pick of bright steel some
six inches long.

"Lucky for you it wasn't an inch nearer," said Jupp, "or you would
have had froth in this blood!"

Quin knew what he meant.  In any case it was a nasty wound, for part
of it was ripped open.  Nevertheless Quin smoked all the time that
Jupp washed and dressed it, and said "Thank you" pleasantly enough
when the job was over.

"Go home and lie down," said Jupp.  "I'll be up in an hour and see
the cause of the war."

So Quin, with the help of a clerk in the office, found his way home
to Jenny.  As he went he saw Mac coming down the road with long
strides and waited to hear what they said of Pete.

"Will he go up the flume?" asked Quin, using a common Western idiom.

"Mebbe," said Mac.  "The doc' allowed he couldn't give me a pointer.
He said it was a case of might or mightn't."

"Damn," said Quin.

When he got back to Jenny he never told her he was hurt.  He didn't
even squeal when she rose up in bed and put her arms about his neck
and hurt his wound badly.

"I love you, Tchorch.  You are velly good to me," said Jenny.




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.




XIII

B.C., as the boys call it, or British Columbia, is most undoubtedly a
wonderful place, a first-class place, even if the bottom falls out of
it periodically and booms die down into slumps and the world becomes
weary.  But the odd thing is that it is a country which is, so to
speak, all one gut, like a herring.  The Fraser Cañon is the gate of
the lower country and the gate of the upper country.  There's only
one way up and down, tilikum, unless you are a crazy prospector or a
cracked hunter.  Though the great River itself comes from the North
past Lillooet and by, and from, Cariboo, yet the main line of men and
railroads and wanderers to and fro lies rather by the blue Thompson
than the grey Fraser.

You meet Bill and Charlie and Tom and Jack and Dick and Harry on the
road.  You liquor with them at Yale, where the Cañon opens: you toss
for drinks with them at French Charlie's, you climb Jackass Mountain
with them (or meet them there) and again discuss work and railroading
and sawmills and Mr. Vanderdunk, the Contractor, at Lytton.  You run
against your partner or the man you quarrelled or fought with at
Savona.  You see Mrs. Grey or Brown or Robinson at Eight Mile Creek.
Very likely you get full up at Oregon Pete's with the man you last
met at Kamloops, or the son of a gun who worked alongside you at the
Inlet.  On the Shushwap you tumble up against your brother, maybe, in
a sternwheeler, and at Eagle Pass you give cigars (5 cents Punches!)
to a dozen whose nicknames you know and whose names you don't.

Properly speaking there are few ways into B.C.  Perhaps there are
none out.  It is a devil of a country for getting to know every man
jack in it.  From the Columbia Crossing, or even from the summit of
the Rockies down to the Inlet, and the City of Vancouver (in Pete's
time mere forest and as thick as a wheatfield), it's the Main Street.

The fact of the matter is that the whole of the Slope, the Pacific
Slope, is only one Main Street.  It begins to dawn on a man on the
Slope, that in a very few years he might know everyone from the Rocky
Mountains down to Victoria and to Seattle and Tacoma and Portland and
San Francisco.  Men wander to and fro like damned souls or migratory
salmon or caribou.

Pete, you know, knew everyone in B.C. by sight, more or less.  There
wasn't a shebang on the road he wasn't familiar with.  He came on
chaps here and there who said "Klahya" or "What ho!" or "Hell, it
ain't you?" or "Thunder, it's old Pete, so it is."  He felt familiar
with the road, with the Cañon, with every house, every loafer, every
bummer, every "goldarned drifting son of a gun" who went up and down
like a log in the tide-way, or round and round like one in a
whirlpool, betwixt the Victoria beginning and the Rocky Mountain End.
When he had been full of Mills and Canneries he used to mosey off
up-country.  When he was soaked by the Wet Belt and the wet rains he
pined for the Dry Belt.  When the high dry plateaus of the Dry Belt
dried him up, he thought of the soft days lower down, or higher up in
the Upper Wet Belt of the Shushwap.  One can swap climate for climate
in a few hours.

Now the frost of the lower country, of the lower Fraser, with its
intervals of warm Chinook wind and rain, sickened Pete.  He put in a
lot of time at old Smith's, but by the end of February he was keen on
climbing higher.  Old Smith got on his nerves, good old soul though
he was, and of course Pete couldn't stick to one "jhob."  Old Cultus
seemed so good a chap, and Pete thought it would be a fine thing to
put his legs across a cayuse once more and go a-riding, whooping hell
and thunder out of the steers.  And he had come nigh to forgetting
Jenny.  When he thought of her his face looked devilish, but he
thought of her seldom.

"She bad klootchman, yah," said Pete.  But he couldn't go yet.  He
waited for the harder frost to go, for the big ice, then two feet
thick, to break again in the lower river.  Then the Mill would start,
and he would hear of the spiked logs.

"That make Quin sick," said Pete.  So he hung on and waited, knowing
he would hear.  It couldn't be long.  Men from the City said that
things had been tough that winter in Shack-Town.  He heard at
intervals about this chap or that: about Skookum, good old Skookum,
and Chihuahua, who had been jailed for a jag which was of portentous
dimensions, leading him to assault a policeman Up Town.  The "bulls"
yanked Chihuahua in and he got it hot, officially and otherwise, as a
man will in the calaboose.

Then the River cracked loudly: the ice roared and broke, and piled
itself up in bars and ridges and grumbled and swung and went away
with the ebb and up with the flood, roaring all the time.

"Now they start up the Moola queek," said Pete as day by day he saw
less ice.  The rain poured down and the river was almost in flood
already, though the winter held up-country, of course.  When the
frost broke in the wet Cascades and up in Cariboo, and in the head
waters of the forking Thompson, there would be a proper amount of
water in the Cañon.

And still he waited.

But in the Mill they started at last, and came nigh to the end of the
Mill boom before they could get a steamer to tow them up the new
boom.  Then they got it, and Pete heard that it was there.

"I make heem sick," said Pete, still waiting.  And the spiked logs
waited.  Their time must come.

It came at last, and of that day men of the Hills still speak.

It was one of Ginger White's devilish days, when he hated himself and
his kind and was willing to burst himself if he could make others
sigh or groan.  He ran the crew of the Mill almost to death, and
death came at last as the day died down and found them running the
saws screaming in logs still cold within.  For the winter left the
men soft: they had been half-fed, many of them: they had lived idle
lives, and found work hard on their hands, hard on their muscles.
But Ginger never failed when the devil was in him.  The winter was
over: he wanted to work, for he was all behind with money.

"I'll make 'em sweat, I'll make 'em skip," said Ginger.

That day Quin was much in the Mill, and he was there when the
lightning struck Skookum Charlie: when the saws spouted fire.  He,
too, was glad to get back to labour: to the doing of things.  And he
loved the Mill, as many did.

It was a great log of spruce that carried death within it.  High up
above the Saws hung a lamp so that Skookum and his partner could see
the cut as well as feel it.  The whole Mill squealed and trembled:
every machine within it ran full blast: the song of the Mill was
great.

"Oh, heave and roll," said the Bull-Wheel.  They got the log on the
carriage, drove in the dogs and Ginger sent her at the eager saws.
He cut the slab off, and then set her for an eight-inch cant and got
her half through, when the lightning came.

There was a horrid rip, a grinding, deafening crash and streams of
fire came out of the cut log.  On top of it was Skookum driving home
a wedge.  He drove it deep and deeper, and as the crash came, Quin
stood where he had stood when Pete went for him.  There was another
horrid scream as the smashed saw broke and hurled a jagged quadrant
upward from the cut.

"Oh, Christ!" said those who saw.  At Quin's red feet, a bloody
corpse lay, for the saw had sliced Skookum nigh in two, shearing
through flesh and bones, ribs and spine.  For one moment he was
helped to his feet by the thing that cut his life out, and he stood
upon the log, with a howl torn out of his very lungs, and then
pitched headlong on the floor.

There came screams from the far end of the Mill, for another segment
of the saw had flown out straight, and, striking a roller, came up
slanting from it, and disembowelled a wretched Chinaman.  He stood
and squealed lamentably and then looked at himself and lay down and
died.

And all the Mill ceased and men came running even from below.

"My God," said Quin.

But Ginger said nothing.  Terror had hold of him.  He leant against
the deadly log and vomited.  Every lamp in the Mill was held up in
two circles, one about Skookum and the other about the Chinaman.
Faces as white as the dead men's looked at the dead.

That night Skookum's klootchman sat with loosed hair howling over the
body of her good and stupid man.  And by her Annie and Annawillee
mourned.

And many thought of Pete.  Among them were Quin and his klootchman
Jenny, who understood the nature of the man who had been her man and
was now no better than a murderer.

"I done it, I," said Jenny; "if I stay with Pete this no happen!"

She cried all night and "Tchorch" could not comfort her.  Nor could
he sleep till in his rage he cursed her, and came nigh to striking
her.  Then she crept into his arms and tried to soothe him, and wept
no more.

The next day Pete started up-country, for Kamloops.

"I never mean to kill Skookum," he said with a white face.  "I never
mean to keel him.  I lik' Skookum."

The poor fool cried.




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."




XV

They said to Pete--

"Come into Kamloops with us."

Pete shook his head and said nothing.  But his eyes burned.  Kamloops
Charlie urged him to come with them, and talked fast in the Jargon.

"You come, Pete, no one at the house now, Pete.  By-by she want you.
She often talk of you with me, want to see you."

Charlie had worked for Cultus since Pete went away.

"I come by-by," said Pete.  They left him standing in the road.  When
some of them turned to look at him before they came where they would
see him no more, he was still standing there.

"Tell you Pete's dangerous," said Simpson.  He was a long, thin
melancholy man from Missouri, with a beard like grey moss on a
decayed stump.

"He'll hev' a long account with the Quin brothers," replied Joe Batt.

"Many has," said Bill Baker.  Cultus owed him money.  Baker chewed
tobacco and the cud.  He muttered to himself, and the only audible
word was "dangerous."  Above his shoulder the hurt woman moaned.

And even when they had disappeared Pete stood staring after them.
They had time to go more than a mile before he stirred.  Then he
walked a little distance from the road and cached his bundle behind a
big bull-pine.  He started the way his sister had come, and went
quick.  He had seen some of his sister's blood on the road.

In two hours he was at the ranche, and found it as the others had
found it, when Kamloops Charlie had come to tell them that Cultus had
killed Mary.  The door was open, the table was overturned, there was
broken crockery on the floor.  There was a drying pool of blood by
the open fire which burnt logs of pine.  Scattered gouts of blood
were all about the room: some were dried in ashes.  The dreadful
shovel stood in the corner by the fire.  Pete took it up and looked
at it.  Many times he had heard old Cultus say he would give Mary the
edge.  Now he had given her the edge.  Pete's blood boiled in him: he
smashed the window with the shovel.  Then he heard a bellow from the
corral in which some of the best of Cultus' small herd were kept up,
some of them to fatten for the railroad.

"I do that," said Pete.  In the stable he found Mary's horse, a good
old grey, but past quick work save in the hands of a brute, or a
Mexican or an Indian.  Pete put the saddle on him and cinched up the
girths.  He found a short stock whip which he had often used.  He led
the horse out, and going to the corrals, threw down the rails.  Going
inside he drove thirty cows and steers out.  On the hills at the back
of the ranche about fifty more were grazing.  Pete got on the horse
and cracked his whip.  He drove them all together up the hills and
into a narrow valley.  It led towards a deep cañon.  There was little
water in the creek at the bottom, but there were many rocks.  From
one place it was a drop of more than two hundred feet to the rocks,
and a straight drop too.  The mountain path led to it and then turned
almost at right angles.  The valley in which the cattle ran grew
narrow and narrower and Pete urged them on.

Cultus loved his steers and had half-a-dozen cows that he milked
himself when they had calves.  Whenever Pete came near one of these
he cut at her with the whip, and urged them all to a trot.  They were
lowing, and presently some of the rowdier steers bellowed.  They
broke at last into a gallop, and then Pete shrieked at them like a
fiend and raced the old pony hard.

"I fix 'em," said Pete.

Now they were in thickish brush, with no more than a big trail for a
path.  Pete lashed the grey till he got alongside the very tail of
the flying herd and made them gallop faster still.  They were all
dreadfully uneasy, alarmed, and curious, and as they went grew
wilder.  They horned each other in their hurry to escape the devil
behind them, and the horned ones at last fairly stampeded as if they
were all wild cattle off the range in the autumn.  They went
headlong, with a wild young cow leading.  Pete screamed horribly,
cracked with his whip, cut at them and yelled again.  The brush was
thick in front of them on the very edge of the cañon.  The little
thinning trail almost petered out and turned sharply to the left.
The leader missed it and burst through the brush in front of her.
The others followed.  Behind the maddened brutes came Pete.  He saw
the leader swerve with a horrid bellow and try to swing round.  She
was caught in the ribs by a big steer and went over.  The ones who
came after were blinded, their heads were up in the crush: they saw
nothing till there was nothing in front of them.  They swept over the
edge in a stream and bellowed as they fell.  On the empty edge of the
cañon Pete pulled up the sweating grey, who trembled in every limb.
Below them was a groaning mass of beef.  They were no longer cattle,
though one or two stumbled from the thick of the herd and the dead
and stood as if they were paralysed.

"I wis' Ned was there," said Pete, as he turned and galloped back
down the beaten, trampled trail.  "I wis' I had him here.  I serve
him out."

He rode as hard as the wretched grey could go to where he had left
his bundle.  He picked it up and turned the horse loose.  Perhaps it
was hardly wise to ride it into Kamloops.  It was night before he got
there.  He found Kamloops Charlie in town, drinking, and reckoned
that no one would find out for days what had happened to the cattle.
He told Charlie that he had stayed where he was left, and had at last
determined to come into town.

"Kahta ole Cultus?" he asked.

But Cultus had taken steamer, having caught it as it was on the point
of leaving.  Pete saw Simpson at the hotel and spoke to him.

"Your sister says as it warn't Cultus as done it," said Simpson.
"That's what she says: she allows it was a stranger, poor gal!"

They said she would live.  But those who had seen her said it would
be best if she died.  One side of her face was dreadfully injured.

"She must ha' bin' mighty fond of Ned Quin," said Simpson.  "She's
the only one araound ez is, I reckon."

He stood Pete a drink.  Pete told what he had told Kamloops Charlie.

"I tho't you'd kem along bymby," said Simpson.  "I'm sorry for the
poor gal, so I am.  There's them as don't hanker after any of you
Siwashes, Pete, but I maintain they may be good.  But dern a nigger,
anyhaow.  You'll be huntin' a job, Pete?"

Pete owned sulkily enough that he was hunting a job.

"Then don't you stay araound hyar," said Simpson.  "Barrin' sellin' a
few head o' measly steers there ain't nothin' doin'.  When the
railroad is through, the bottom will fall out of B.C. fo' sewer.  You
go up to the Landing: things is fair hummin' up to the Landing, an'
Mason hez gone up there to start up a kin' o' locomotive sawmill at
what they calls the Narrows.  You hike off to the Landing and tackle
Mason; say I named him to you, Pete, and if he ain't full-handed
you'll be all hunkey."

He stood himself another drink, and grew more melancholy.

"A few measly steers in a Gawd-forsaken land like B.C.!  Don't you
hanker arter revenge agin Ned for mishandling Mary.  Revenge is sweet
to the mouth, Pete, but it's heavy work on the stummick, ondigestible
and apt to turn sour.  If it hadn't been that I hankered arter
revenge (and got it) I'd ha' bin now in Mizzouri, Gawd's kentry, whar
I come from.  A few head o' weedy miserbul steers!  You leave Ned
alone and I'll be surprised if he don't leave you and Mary alone.  To
half cut off a gal's head and her not to squeal!  I calls it noble.
Ned will be sorry he done it, I reckon.  You go up to the Landing,
boy."

And Pete did go up to the Landing.

And Ned, the poor wretch, was very sorry "he done it."




XVI

Ned Quin hadn't been down in the coast country for years.  Indeed,
the last time he had been in New Westminster he had gone there by
coach.  Now it was a new world for him, a world of strange hurry and
excitement.  B.C. was in a hurry: the people of the East were in a
hurry: the very river in the roaring Fraser Cañon seemed to run
faster.  And he, of all the world, was the one thing that seemed to
go slow, he and his train.  He was sober now, and in terror of what
he had done.

"By God, they'll hang me," he said.  They hanged men for murder in
British Columbia, hanged them quickly, promptly, gave them a short
quick trial, and short shrift.

"I wish I was over the Line," said Ned, as he huddled in a corner
seat and nursed his chin almost on his knees.  Across the Line they
didn't hang men quick, unless they stole horses and were exceedingly
bad citizens who wouldn't take a clean cut threat as a warning.  "I
wish I was over the Line."

And the 49th Parallel wasn't far away.  Yet to get to it wasn't easy.
He had galloped from what he believed a house of death with no money
in his pocket.  He had borrowed from the skipper of the sternwheeler,
which took him from Kamloops to the Ferry, enough to pay his fare
down to Port Moody.  He must go to George's to get more.

"They'll catch me," said Ned Quin, "they'll catch me: they'll hang me
by the neck.  That's what they say--'by the neck till you are
dead'--I've heard Begbie say it, damn him!"

Yes, that was what Judge Begbie said to men who cut their klootchmen
to pieces with a shovel.

"I--I was drunk," said old Ned.  "Poor Mary."

She had been as good a klootchman as there was in the country, sober,
clean, kind, long-suffering.  He knew in his heart how much she had
endured.

"Why didn't she leave me?" he whined.  Whenever the train stopped he
looked up.  He saw men he knew, but no one laid his hand on his
shoulder.  Few spoke to him: they said that it was as clear as mud
that he was rotten with liquor and half mad.  They left him alone.
He wanted them to speak to him, for he saw Mary on the floor of his
shack.  He saw the shovel.

"Pete will find her," said Ned.  "He said he'd kill me if I hurt her.
He'll take her horse and ride to Kamloops and tell 'em, and they'll
telegraph and catch me, they'll catch me!"

At Port Moody he saw a sergeant of police and felt a dreadful impulse
to go up to him and have it all over at once.  He stopped and reeled,
and went blind.  When he saw things again the sergeant was laughing
merrily.  He looked Ned's way and looked past him.

"They don't know yet," said Ned.  He got a drink and took the stage
over to New Westminster.  A postman with some mail-bags sat alongside
him.  A postman would naturally hear anything that anyone could hear,
wouldn't he?  This postman didn't speak of a murder.  He told the
driver bawdy stories, and once Ned laughed.

"Good story, ain't it?" said the pleased postman.

They came to the City late, and as soon as they pulled up Ned slipped
down on the side away from the lights, and went down the middle of
the street towards the Mill.  He knew that George now lived in a new
house and wondered how he should find it.  He didn't like to speak to
anyone.  But by the Mill he found an old Chinaman and spoke to him.

"Boss live up there," said the Chinaman.  "You tee um, one plenty big
house, velly good house."

He pointed to George's house and Ned followed the path he indicated.
Ten minutes later he knocked at the door and it was opened by Sam.
But he was not let in till Sam had satisfied himself that this was
really the brother of the Boss.  He went to the door of the
sitting-room, opened it just enough to put his head in, and said----

"One man, alla same beggar-man my tinkee, say he wantee see you, Sir.
My tinkee him velly dlunk.  He say your blother.  My tinkee t'at not
tlue."

But George ran out and found the beggar man shivering on the steps.

"Ned, why, what's brought you?"

The hall was dimly lighted and he couldn't see Ned's face.  But by
his voice he knew he was in trouble.  He trembled.

"George, I've--I've killed Mary," he said in a dreadful whisper,
"help me to get away."

"You--my God," said George.  He took the wretched man by the sleeve.
"You've done what?"

"Killed Mary," said Ned shivering.  "For God's sake help me over the
border or they'll hang me."

He broke down and wept.  George stood and looked at him in the dim
light.  Sam could not pass them to go back to the kitchen, and
waited.  The sitting-room door was ajar.  Someone inside moved.

"Who's with you?" asked Ned.

He knew nothing about Jenny.  But George forgot that he knew nothing.

"Go in," he said, "it's Jenny."

He thrust Ned inside and turned to Sam.

"Sam, boy, you savvy no one has come.  If anyone ask you say no one.
You savvy?"

"My savvy all light, my savvy plenty," said Sam doubtfully.  "My
tinkee him your blother all light, Sir?"

"Yes," said Quin.  He stood with his hand on the handle of the door
after Sam had returned to the kitchen.

"My God," said George again.  He went into the room.

When Ned had gone in he failed to recognise Jenny, and thought she
was a white woman.  She was nicely dressed, and now her hair was done
very neatly.  Sam had taught her how to do it.  When she stood up, in
surprise at the unexpected entrance of Ned, it was obvious even to
his troubled eyes that she was near to becoming a mother.  She gasped
when she saw him.

"Oh, Mr. Ned," she cried.  He looked dreadful: his clothes were
disordered, ragged; his grizzled beard and hair unkempt and long.  He
looked sixty, though he was no more than fifty, and his eyes were
bloodshot.

"Who are you?" asked Ned sharply.

"I'm Jenny," she murmured, looking abashed and troubled.

And then George came in.  When Jenny saw him she cried out--

"What's the mattah, Tchorch?"

There was matter enough to make her man pallid.  But he was master of
himself, for he had to look after the poor wretch who now fell into a
chair by the fire and sat huddled up in terror.

"I'll tell you by and by," said George.  "Give him a drink, Jenny
girl, and give me one.  I've got to go out."

She brought the whisky to him.  He poured some out for Ned, who
swallowed as a man, who had thirsted for a tropic day, would swallow
water.  George took some himself.

"Sit quiet, Ned," said George.  "I'll be back in half an hour, Jenny!"

She followed him to the door.

"Don't let him move.  If anyone calls, say I'm out, dear."

"What's the mattah, Tchorch?  He looks very ill," she murmured, with
her hand on his shoulder.  George told her what Ned had told him, and
Jenny trembled like a leaf.

"Poor, poor Mary!" she sobbed.  "Oh, the cruel man!"

"Oh, hell," said George, and Jenny controlled her tears.

"What you do, Tchorch?"

"I'm going to get someone to take him across the other side," said
George.  "I must, I must."

He ran out and down the hill path, and Jenny went back reluctantly to
the room where the murderer sat.  He was shivering, but the liquor
had pulled him more together for the time.  He wanted to talk.  How
was it that Jenny was here?  He remembered he had seen Pete on the
road.

"I saw Pete to-day," he said suddenly.

Jenny stared down at the floor and answered nothing.

"I'm a wretched man, girl," said Ned; "did George tell you?"

Jenny did not reply, and Ned knew that she knew.  He burst into tears.

"I've killed Mary," he said.  His face was stained with the dust of
the road and the tears he shed channelled the dirt.  He looked
dreadful, ludicrous, pathetic, hideously comic.  "I--I killed her
with a shovel.  She was a good woman to me, and I got mad with drink.
I'll never touch it again."

He looked eagerly towards the bottle on the table.  He had taken some
more when the others were out of the room.

"I've killed her, and they'll hang me, Jenny!  Where's George gone?"

The tears ran down Jenny's face.

"He's gone to get someone to take you away, Mr. Ned!"

They might come any moment and take him away!  There was quite a big
jail in the City.

"I--I saw Pete this morning, no, yesterday.  I don't know when," said
Ned.  "When did you come here, Jenny?"

Jenny said it was long ago.  She dried her tears for shame was hot
within her.  And yet joy was alive within her.  She loved Tchorch!

"I couldn't leave Tchorch now," she said to herself, as Ned went on
talking.  "I'd rather he killed me.  Poor Mary!"

If Pete had been brutal, Mary had always been kind.  She hated Ned
suddenly.

He took another drink and sat crouched over the fire.  Every now and
again he looked round.  At any noise he started.  Perhaps the police
were trying to look into the house.  Jenny could have screamed.  It
seemed hours since George went away.  Ned muttered to the fire.

"Mary, Mary," he said in a low voice.  He and Mary had been lovers
once, for when she first went to him he was a man, and she was quite
beautiful.  Across the dark years he saw himself and her: and again
he saw her as she lay in blood upon the earthen floor of his shack,
what time he had run out and taken his horse for flight.

"They'll hang me," said Ned, choking.

And there were steps outside.  He sprang to his feet and hung to the
mantel-shelf.

"What's that?" he asked.  The next minute they heard George enter the
house with some other man.

"It's the police," screamed Ned thinly.  He believed George had
denounced him.  And George put his head inside the room and beckoned
to him.  Ned ran to him stumbling.  The door closed on them and Jenny
fell upon her knees.  Then she sank in a heap upon the floor.  She
had fainted.

In the hall was someone Ned did not know.  But George knew him and
knew that he was a capable strong man.  He was Long Mac of the Pony
Saw, as strong as he was long.  In the winters he hunted, and knew
all the country round about.

"Take him across the river to-night, and away by Whatcom to-morrow,
Mac," said George; "do your best."

Mac never did less, whether it was for evil or for good.  On the
balance he was a good and fine man.  But he cared nothing for the Law
and had a curious respect and liking for George Quin.

"I'll do that," said Long Mac.  He took Ned by the arm, and Ned
without a backward glance shuffled into the darkness.

George went in to Jenny and found her unconscious on the floor.  He
sprinkled cold water in her face, and she moaned.

"Poor little woman," said George.  "Oh, but it's hard lines on these
poor squaws.  If I died what'd happen to her?"

He knew their nature and knew his own.

"But Mary's dead," said Quin.  "Better for her."

Yet Mary wasn't dead, though Mac was dragging a whining, puling
wretch of a man on a dark trail to a country where there's a very
poor trail indeed cut for the slow and burdened army of the Law.




XVII

Next day the Pony Sawyer was wanting at the Mill and no one knew what
had become of him, the finest and steadiest man in the place.  George
White was pleased to hear of it, for it was always his notion that
Quin would some day fire him and put Long Mac at the lever of the
Hoes.

"Ah," said Ginger, "we never can tell: some crooked business, I
dessay!  They crack up M'Clellan 'sif he was a gawd-a-mighty, but to
my tumtum he ain't nothin' extra."

He put Shorty Gibbs from the Shingle Mill in Mac's place, and found
his usual pleasure in piling poor Shorty up.  For of course Gibbs,
though he understood the Pony, couldn't run that lively animal at
Mac's pace.  When Ginger stood up and groaned publicly at Shorty, the
new man was cross.  It led to a scene at last, but one which only
puzzled the others.  For Shorty Gibbs was one of the very quietest
men who breathed.  He said he hated rows like "pison."  When Ginger
came round to him the second time and said "Oh, hell," Shorty had had
enough.  He stopped the Pony carriage and walked over to Ginger.  He
nodded to him and said--

"Say, see here, Ginger!"

Ginger was an uninstructed man, he was very hard to teach.

"Get on with your work," said Ginger.

Shorty was up to his shoulder.  He lifted an ingenuous face to the
sawyer.

"Ain't you bein' rather hard on a new hand, Ginger?" he asked
politely.  And Ginger White mistook him, altogether.  He swore.  What
happened then the other men missed; it was all so quiet.

"Look here, you red-headed bastard," said Shorty in a conversational
tone, or as near it as the clatter of the Mill would allow, "look
here, you slab-sided hoosier, if you as much as open your head to me
agin I'll rip you up from your fork to your breast-bone.  See!"

And Ginger saw.

"You can't bull-doze me," said Shorty, becoming openly truculent,
"any more than you can bull-doze Mac, you white-livered dog!"

White was never brave, but since the saws had killed Skookum his
nerve was bad indeed.  There were spikes in every log for him by now.
He went back to the lever without a word and ran so slow that Gibbs
got a chance to clear the skids.

By the time Gibbs knew what was what with the Pony, Mac returned.  He
had taken Ned somewhere to the neighbourhood of Seattle and left him
there.  He went to see George Quin the moment he got into town.  And
by that time there was news from Kamloops.

"I've planted him with an old partner of mine that runs a hotel back
o' Seattle," said Mac.  "Jenkins will keep him away from too much
liquor.  I rely on Jenkins."

George thanked him.

"But after all," said George, "I hear that the woman isn't dead, Mac,
and what's more she lets on that it wasn't my brother that hurt her."

He looked at the sawyer.

"Good girl," said Mac, "but he did it right enough, Sir; he talked of
nothing else all the way across."

"But if she dies what she says won't be everything," said George.
"It's best he should stay.  Thank you for going with him.  Gibbs is
taking your saw."

"Hell he is," said Mac pensively; "has he had trouble with White?"

But Quin hadn't heard of it.  Just of late White hadn't gone to the
office with so many complaints.  Since the spiking of the logs Quin
had been less easy to deal with.  He was troubled in his mind about
Pete, and about Jenny.  If Pete had spiked the logs, as Quin
believed, he was capable of anything.  And poor little Jenny was
about to be a mother.  It wouldn't be more than a month or two now.

Until Jenny had come into his life in real earnest, the Mill, the
Stick Moola, had been the man's whole desire.  He loved it amazingly:
there wasn't a plank in it he didn't love, just as there wasn't a job
in it that he couldn't do in some fashion, and no fool's fashion
either.  He had run the old Moola "good and strong," caring for
everything, seeing that it had the best of everything.  There wasn't
a makeshift in it: it was a good Mill and Quin was a good manager.
An accident of any kind hit him hard.  For accidents there must and
will be when saws are cutting lumber.  To have a man killed troubled
him, even if it were a sheer accident.  But to have a man killed by a
spiked log was very dreadful to him.  It was the more dreadful that
he had provoked the spiking.  It shook Quin up more than he had ever
been shaken.  It broke his nerve a little, just as it had broken
Ginger's.  And by now he was very fond of Jenny, even if he cursed
her, as he sometimes did.  He dreaded this devil of a Pete, who
wasn't the kind of Siwash that one found among the meaner tribes, the
fishing, begging Indians.  He had some red and ugly blood in him.  He
got on Quin's nerves.

And then Mary was Pete's sister.  If she hadn't been he would never
have known Jenny, and if he had given Pete a job it would have been
like giving it to any Siwash.  Now Pete would be more than ever down
on them both.  George began to think it worth while to find out where
Pete was.  He sent up to Kamloops to ask.  At the same time he sent
word to the hospital that Mary was to have anything she wanted.
There was a deal of good in George Quin, and somehow little Jenny
brought it out.

The poor girl in the hospital knew there was good in him.  And in the
old days there had been good in Ned.  Even now she loved him.  When
they asked her how she had come to be injured, she declared that it
was not Ned who had done it.  She said that as she lay swathed in
bandages before she knew how much she had been hurt.  She said it
with white lips that trembled when she had seen herself for the first
time in the looking-glass.  Perhaps few women would have been so
brave, for she knew that henceforth no one would look on her without
strange white bandages to hide the wound which her mad-man had made.
For she had been beautiful, and even now there was beauty in her eyes
and in the sunken cheek and curved chin that had been spared.  But
henceforth she went half covered in white linen, since none but a
doctor could bear to look upon her without it.

"It wasn't Ned that did it," she said to the Law when it came to her.
"It was a stranger."

And everyone knew better than that, unless indeed too much liquor had
made Ned a stranger.

"I want to see Ned," she murmured.  And yet she was very strong.  A
weak thing would have died.  But she loved life greatly, though she
wondered why.  She made one of the nurses write to her man saying
that she wanted him.  That brought Ned back from Seattle.  George
received him sullenly.  Jenny refused to see him.

"Watch out for Pete," said George when his brother went up-country.

"Pete, oh, to thunder with Pete," replied Ned.

"Look out for him," repeated George.

"You ain't wanting me to be scared of a Sitcum Siwash, are you?"
asked Ned angrily.  "Perhaps you're scared of him yourself.  You took
his klootchman anyhow.  It's more'n I did."

George Quin was afraid of him.  Many who knew his record would have
said that he was alike incapable of fear or love, but some might have
known that love for the mother of his first and unborn child took the
courage out of him and made him full of fears.  Now he was always
"watching out."




XVIII

Difficult to think of anything at the Landing, Sir, but what was
going on!  Give you my word it was hurry; it hummed, and hissed and
sizzled and boomed.  The forest fell down before the axe and saw:
felling axe and cross cut; and shacks arose, shacks and shanties and
shebangs, drinking shanties, gambling shanties, stores which sold
everything from almonds to axes, and all that comes after A right
down to Z.

The Landing's in the Wet Belt.  It rains there, it pours there, the
sky falls down.  Sometimes the Lake (it's on the Shushwap, you know,
close to the head of it) rises up in dancing water-spouts.  It was
once a home and haunt of bears (and is again by now likely), but when
Pete stepped ashore from the hay-laden lake wagon called the s.s.
_Kamloops_, it wouldn't have been easy to find a bear or a caribou
within earshot.  The Street, the one Street, was full of men.  There
were English, French, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians, Russians,
Finns and Letts, mixed with autochthonous Americans with long greasy
hair (Siwashes who lived on salmon) and other Americans of all sorts.
It was a sink, a pool, a whirlpool, it sucked men up from down
country: it drew them from the mountains.  To go East you had to pass
it: going West you couldn't avoid it.

Men worked there and drank there and gambled there.  There were
Chinamen about who played the universal Fan-tan.  There were Faro
tables: Keno went there: stud-horse poker had its haunts and
votaries.  The street was a mud channel: men drank and lay in it.  By
the Lake they lay in piles, and more especially the Swedes did.  They
are rousing drinkers "and no fatal error."

There was night there, of course, for the sun couldn't and wouldn't
stay to save them oil, but as to peace or quietness, the peaceful
quiet of a human night, there was no such thing.  Sunday was rowdier
than other days, if any day could be rowdier.  If a man wanted work
he could get it.  Devil doubt it, work was to be had at fine prices.
Bosses employed men to come and pretend even for two and a half a
day.  They dragged men in and said, "Take my dollars, sonny, and move
some of this stuff."  Men worked and took the dollars and gave them
to the stores and gamblers.  It seemed impossible that there could
ever be a lack of work.  You could get work on the grade, tilikum;
you could have a little contract for yourself, my son.  You could
drive a team if you could handle horses and mules over a toat road
that would make an ordinary driver weep: why, there were all kinds of
work, with axe and saw and pick and shovel, and bar and drill and
wedge and hammer, and maul and all sorts of other tools.  It was a
concert truly, a devil's dance of work, and of hurry and scurry and
worry.

Why, tilikum?

Because the railroad was being put through and coming to an End, to
two ends, to two Ends of Track, now closing up rapidly.  Once the
work had been spread over four thousand miles, away by Montreal and
Quebec and the Lake of the Woods and the Great Lake Side, and away to
Winnipeg and Medicine Hat and Calgary and the Rockies.  Now the work
narrowed to a few hundred miles, to a hundred; to-morrow, perhaps to
fifty.  All the world of the road was rammed and jammed and crammed
into a little space, as if it were but the Gulf of Athlone.  Men
thrust each other aside, it was elbow work, jostling, it was a high
old crowd.  Betcher life, tilikum, it was a daisy of a time and place
that dark-eyed Pete stepped into out of that old scow of a
stern-wheeler.

The Town scooted: she hummed: she sizzled.  What ho, and let her rip!
That was the word.  The soberest men grew drunken on mere prospects:
there was money in everything: no one could miss it: dollars grew on
trees: they lined the roads: they could be caught swimming in the
Lake.  Men lived fatly: hash was good and none too dear, after all.
"For hayf a dollar" one could get piled up, get stodged, pawled.

"Oh, come in and Eat," said one house.

"We give the best Pie," said another.  Pie fetched the men every
time.  Your worker loves his pie: there's a fine lumberers' song
about Pie which is as popular with the men of the Woods as "Joint
Ahead and Centre Back" is with Railroaders.  They all gave good pie
at the Landing.  You bet, tilikum.

Pete, in all his born days, had never seen or heard or dreamt of such
an astonishing hubbub, such go, such never-let-up, as he saw at the
busy Landing.  He was a stunned, astonished Siwash for a while and
wandered around with his eyes out of his head, feeling lonely,
stranded, desolate.  And then he found that he knew men here and
there and everywhere.  Some of them slapped him on the back: some
said "Howdy": some said "Hev a drink, sonny!"  Men were generous:
they felt they were millionaires or on the way to be: it was a fine
old world.  Pete smiled and smoked and drank in this house and that
and forgot for awhile all about Mason, who was supposed to be running
a little saw-mill in the woods, that Missouri Simpson had told him
of.  Pete put his woes into the background; he couldn't hear or see
them at the Landing for quite a while.  There was truly a weakness of
revenge in him.  If either or both of the Quins had followed him up
and said:

"Look hyar, Pete, come and hev a drink and let's talk about these
klootchmen----"

Why, it is at least possible that Pete would have drunk till he wept
and have taken dollars to forgive them about Jenny and Mary.  He had
a weakness in him, poor devil, as so many have.

But when finally he did get work in a big stable helping the head
stableman who looked after some of the C.P. Syndicate's horses, he
found many who remembered or had heard, or had just learned all about
Jenny and Mary.  That's the best or the worst of B.C., as I said some
time ago, everyone knew everyone and all about them.  They talked
scandal like a lot of old or young women: told you about this man's
wife or that: they raked up the horrid true story of Ned Quin's
killing one poor klootchman by kicking her.  They asked Pete for
information about Mary.  When some were drunk they mentioned Jenny.
They never gave poor Pete a chance to forget, and over and above the
mere mischief of drunken scandalous chatter, there were one or two
who hated the Quins.  Neither of them hesitated about downing a man
by way of business, though of late years Ned had been no more than a
shooling no-good-sort of man all round.  So one or two said:

"Say, Pete, you ain't let up on them Quins, hev you?  Them Quins are
two damn smart-alecks, that's what they are!  I say they're mean, oh,
mean ain't the word.  I hear Ned Quin cut your sister to slivers with
an axe.  Is it true?"

They got him crying about Mary and Jenny, and presently it was
understood that Pete had forgotten nothing.  All he was after was a
few dollars.  Why?  "Well, to tell the trewth, tilikums, I believe,
straight, that the boy's idea is to kill one or both o' them Quins
and then skip across the forty-ninth Par'lel and away."

They put that into Pete's head: told him it was easy to skip out.
They knew better.  But one man, named Cumberland, who had been done
in a deal by George and done pretty badly, cheated, in fact, and
outfaced, egged the boy on daily.  Cumberland had all the desire to
be "a bad man" without the pluck, or grit, or sand to be an imitation
of one.  But he never forgot.

In all the fume and roar of this short-lived Town it was easier to
get money than to save it.  Everything cost money, cost dollars; "two
bits" was the least coin that went, and that's a quarter of a dollar.
Pete had an Indian's thirst, and drank more than was good for him.
If it hadn't been that the rush of work handling hay-bales, sacks of
oats, maize, flour, mats of sugar, cases of dynamite, and tools and
all the rest, sweated the alcohol out of him he would have got the
sack promptly, the Grand Bounce.  As it was he stayed, being really a
worker, and as nice a boy to work alongside as one could wish.

"Pete's a clever boy for a Sitcum Siwash," said the Boss.  For clever
in the vernacular of the West means nice.  They quite liked him, even
though the real white men looked down on him, of course, as real
Whites will on everyone who isn't White.  But he had his tilikums
even there, an Irish Mike who hadn't learned to look down on anyone
and would have actually consorted with a nigger, and another
half-breed, originally from Washington Territory and by his mother a
D'wamish, or Tulalip, of the Salishan, but educated, so to speak.
They both looked down on the Indians of the Lakes, who caught salmon
and smelt wild and fishy, like a bear in the salmon-spawning season.
Oh, yes, Pete had his friends.  But no friend that was any good.  For
D'wamish Jack was a thick-headed fellow and the Micky always
red-headed for revenge on everyone.

"I'll stick 'um," he used to say.  He was going to stick everyone who
disagreed with him.  He had an upper lip almost as long as an
American-Irish caricature.  When he was drunk he moaned about Ireland
and Pete's woes and his own.

With such partners in the hum of the Town it wasn't a wonder that
Pete didn't accumulate the shekels, or pile in the dibs or the
dollars, or the t'kope chikamin.  He had as many cents to his name by
the time it was high summer as when he came to the Landing.  And then
he struck a streak of luck, as he said, and as D'wamish Jack said and
as the Mike said.  He went one Sunday into a Faro lay-out, run by an
exceedingly pleasant scoundrel from Arizona, who was known as Tucson
Thompson.  You will kindly pronounce Tucson as Tewson, and oblige.

There wasn't another such a man as Tucson in the Town, or the Wet
Belt, or the Dry Belt, or all B.C.  He was born to be a gambler and
was really polite, so polite that it was impossible to believe he had
ever killed anyone when you were with him and quite as impossible to
doubt it when you went away and thought of him.  He was nearly fifty,
but as thin as a lath, he could talk like a phonograph, tell stories
like an entertainer, and the few women in the town held the belief
that he was exceedingly handsome.  He wasn't, but he had a very
handsome tongue.  When he lost, if he did lose, he didn't seem to
mind.  When he won, he appeared to take the money with some regret.
At the worst he did it as a pure matter of business: he gave you so
many cards, and you gave him so many dollars.  He said he ran a
straight game.  There wasn't a man in the Town equal to saying he
didn't, and when one understands that no one is allowed to kill
anyone else in British Columbia for saying he is a liar, it will be
understood that there was more to Tucson Thompson that lay on the
surface.  He inspired respect, and required it with a politeness
which was never urgent but never unsuccessful.

He had his lay-out in the back-room of the Shushwap House, where they
sold "Good Pie," and said so outside in big letters.

It was there that Pete acquired what he looked on as a competency.
It was two hundred and fifty dollars, a very magnificent sum.
Whether Tucson really ran a straight game, or thought it was about
time to give himself a great advertisement, cannot be said, but this
time Tucson or the straight cards let Pete in for a mighty good
thing, which turned out a bad thing, of course.  The only point about
it was that Tucson didn't get the cash back again, as he might very
reasonably have expected, seeing that gamblers are gamblers, and that
a Sitcum Siwash doesn't usually hang on to dollars till the eagles on
them squeal in anguish.

And the reason of this was that someone from Kamloops, a storekeeper
on the look out for business at the Landing, was in the gambling
shanty when Pete raked in his pile.  He slapped Pete on the back
first of anyone and took him on one side.

"Say, Pete, old son, hev you heard about your sister?" he asked.

"Heard what?" asked Pete.

"She's outer the hawspital."

"Have you seen her?"

The storekeeper nodded.

"She's dreadful hurt, Pete," he said with horrid unction.  "I saw her
the day she kem out.  She's wropped up all one side of her face, like
a corp, all in white.  They say Ned Quin cut half her face off."

Pete's face was as dreadful as his sister's.

"Where is she?"

"She's gone back to Ned," replied the storekeeper.  "She would go
back: it warn't no good arguin' with her.  Mrs. Alexander offered her
a job in her kitchen, bein' a good old soul, but Mary would go back
to him, she would."

Pete stood him a drink and then took one himself and then another.
He flatly refused to play any more.  But he spent ten dollars on the
crowd.  The more he drank the soberer he seemed to grow.  The liquor
hid the tension in him, and the excitement of the game.  Mary was cut
to bits and was back with Ned!  He chewed on that as he drank.  The
storekeeper got hold of him again.

"Some enemy o' Ned's got home on him, Pete, and no fatal error," said
he, with his eyes fixed on the young fellow; "some enemy got home on
him and no fatal error."

"What?" said Pete.

"They ran his cattle, some fine fat steers and a few good cows, into
the cañon back of his place, and killed most of them."

Pete grunted and looked on the floor.

"He allows you done it, Pete.  But there ain't no evidence you done
it, boy.  The men araound Kamloops allows it sarves him right, Pete.
Ned Quin ain't a single friend araound Kamloops.  The poor girl!  She
used to be so pretty.  I reklec' her as a little girl: there warn't a
tenas klootchman araound ez' could hold a candle to Mary, bar your
wife Jenny.  I heerd George Quin hez give her dresses and rides her
araound in a carriage, Pete."

There were many times when the Kamloops steamer left the Landing at
night.  She couldn't keep to times: she came and went when she was
full or empty.  The owners of the cranky old scow, turned into a
sternwheeler, coined money out of her, though her steam-chest leaked
and she shook as she went.  Now she tooted her horn, blew her
whistle.  It was nigh on to midnight, but there was a high white moon
above the hills, and on the quiet lake a moon's wake shone.  Pete
thrust the storekeeper aside and went to the door.

"Hullo, Pete, old chap, where you goin'?  Halo klatawa, you son of a
gun!" said many.  But Pete paid no attention.  His wife was riding
around in carriages with George Quin, and Mary had gone back to Ned.
He ran down to the wharf where the steamer lay and jumped on board as
she backed off the shingle.

He saw the fairy lights of the Landing die down, and then the steamer
rounded a point and the Landing saw him no more.

"I'll kill em' both," said Pete.  He could not see the quiet wonder
of the night and the glory of the moon above the peaceful pine-clad
hills.  He saw poor Mary in a shroud, and Jenny laughing at him from
the side of George Quin, who also smiled in triumph.




XIX

What the storekeeper told Pete was true enough, but such a man as
that could know nothing of the deep inside of things, and the heart
of such a strange woman as Indian Mary was hidden from him and all
like him.  It was hidden from herself, even when she knew she was
maimed and disfigured, for still in spite of her bitterness and grief
she yearned to go back to him who had hurt her and made her very
dreadful to see.  She had given herself to him once for all, and her
heart was steadfast to the man he seemed to be when he took her to
his house.  Even then she had known his history, and had not been
ignorant of his cruelty to a little dead woman who lay with an unborn
child in the cemetery at the back of Kamloops town.  When they first
met he was grieving, as even such as Ned must, for the deed that made
him lonely, and he was doing his poor best to keep away from drink.
In those days he was a handsome man, taller and finer looking than
his brother, and he captured Mary's heart.  She was taken, as women
can be taken, by seeing a strong man grieving, and she believed that
he was more unfortunate than evil.  For ten years she had hoped
against hope, and now knowing that it was almost hopeless, was yet
faithful rather to the dead man within him than to the wretch that he
was.

"I must go back to him," she said.  She could do no other.

And yet when he came to the hospital, and asked for her, she fell
into a deadly tremble of sickness and would not see him.  He had made
her hideous, for though white linen hid her face, she could see
beneath it, and knew.  The man would hate what he had done, and hate
her to whom he had done it.  He went away mournfully, and for once
went out of Kamloops quite sober, carrying no liquor.  But before he
went he was spoken to by the same sergeant of police whom Pete had
feared after he had destroyed the cattle, and Ned was sick of heart
to be so spoken to.

"It's lucky for you the gal didn't die, Quin," said the sergeant.
"We'd ha' hung you high for it.  She allows you didn't do it, but we
know better.  Run straight and keep sober, or we'll have you yet.
You're a disgrace to a civilized community, a disgrace to a civilized
country, Sir, that's what you are, you damned cayoot!"

Ned Quin had to take that and chew on it.  And once, as he knew, he
had been a man.  He cried as he rode back to his ranche.  He met old
acquaintances who would not know him, and when he got back home to
find it lonelier than his worst imagination, he feared to face it.
Even the corrals were empty.  The cattle that he had loved were dead:
the cañon stank with them.  One solitary cow lowed near the shack:
Mary's horse was on the hill behind it with horses that belonged to
Missouri Simpson, one of those who that day had met him on the road
without the salutation that any stranger would get in a hospitable
and kindly land.

He "hung it out" for days without drinking.  He worked all he could:
he rode over to the Nikola and rounded up a few head of steers that
hadn't been handy when Pete drove the rest to death.  He mended the
broken fences of his corrals: he cleaned up the cold, neglected
house.  He cleaned up Mary's blood, and shivered as he scraped the
earthen floor of the signs that were so nearly those of murder and of
death.

He suffered agonies at night-time and still struggled, perhaps in his
last fight against alcohol.

And when he had been alone a week Mary came back.  She could not help
coming: her heart was a mother's, seeing that she had no children,
and the poor thing she loved was her child.  She was lonely without
him.  Perhaps he would be kind now, perhaps he would forgive her for
being so hideous.  For one side of her face was still beautiful: both
her sorrowful eyes were lovely.  She left the hospital, and never
entered a house in town.  She went out at night lest they should see
her, and faced the hill-road, as it wound up the hills at the back of
the town, in a starry darkness.  Her strength was not much, but she
had enduring Indian blood in her veins, that blood that helps poor
squaws to carry loads their lordly men will not touch: that blood
that helps them to suffer uncomplaining: that blood which, in their
male children, helps to endure, if need be, the dreadful torture of
the hostile fire and stake.  She went swiftly through the night, and
long before dawn came over the last hill in the trail which led to
the desolate ranche where her steadfast heart lay.  Under the stars
and a faint fine glow that was the dawn, she saw the little shack,
and then her heart and limbs failed her.  She sat down and cried
softly for her sad life and her tortured love, and her lost beauty
under the shroud of white linen over her right cheek and jaw.  Would
he be kind to her, or would he hide his eyes and drive her from him?
She knew nothing but that her sad heart needed him, even him, rather
than any kind and gentle man that lived.  She rose up trembling but
set forward on the trail, and at last came to the house.  A little
chill breeze blew down from the hills, and a cloud hid the faint rose
of dawn, so that it was full night as she crossed the threshold.  For
Ned, sleeping uneasily and afraid of the very house, had set the door
open.  She stayed and heard him move in the bed.  She reached out her
empty arms, but not to any God.  She reached them to her wretched
child, her man.  And then Ned woke.

"What's that?" he cried aloud.  He saw a dark figure against the
lucid night beyond the door.

"What's that?" he cried again.  His voice shook.

"It's Mary," said the ghost he saw and feared.

"Oh, you----" he cried.  She heard him shake.  "Have you come back?"

She fell upon her knees by the bed.

"Yes, Ned."

He reached out a hand to her.  It was cold as ice: for the blood had
gone to his heart and brain.

"You've come back--to me?"

He knew it was a miracle, and, brutish and besotted as he was, he
felt the awful benediction of her presence.

"To me!"

To him, to a man who had cursed her life at its springs, who had
given her no joy, who had cut her to pieces by their bed and warm
hearth!  She had come back.

"If you want me," she murmured.

He shook and trembled.  If he wanted her!  He wanted nothing but her:
she was the world to him.

"If I want you!"

He clutched her hands and kissed them.  She felt the hot tears run on
them.  He wept for her, the poor man wept.  She dragged herself close
to the bed and tried to speak, tried to tell him that she was so
altered.  She spoke as if he had nothing to do with it: as if she had
been smitten by some strange accident, by some disease, by some
malignant and most unhappy fate.  He heard her whisper.

"I'm, I'm not pretty now," she sobbed dryly.  "Ned, I'm not toketie
any more!"

For once, perhaps, he suffered more than she did: for that time he
exceeded her grief, because this was his deed.  He groaned.

"But if you want me!"

"I want you, Mary," he screamed suddenly, "no one else, dear Mary:
oh, what a wretch I am!"

The best of him, long hidden, long concealed, in a drought of tears,
came up at last.  He hid his head in the pillow and cried like a
child.  She sat upon the bed in an urgent desire of maternal help and
held his head between her hands.

"Poor Ned!"

She took him at last in her arms and murmured to him gently.

"Oh, oh, my man, my Ned!"

He felt the linen on her face and shivered, but spoke no more.  She
lay down by him and, overcome by her strange pure passion and the
fatigue of the miles she had travelled to come to him, she at last
fell asleep.

Then the slow dawn grew up over the clouds, and came in colour across
the sunburnt hills and entered their home.  Ned sat up in bed beside
her and saw her dear face covered by its shroud.

"Help me, oh, God!" said the man.

And perhaps help might come, not from any God, but from the deep
heart that prayed to the spirit of man which hides in all hearts and
only answers to prayer, if it answers at all to any pleading.




XX

Though the railroad, the mighty railroad, the one and only Railroad
of the Big Admiring World, was the chief topic of talk from Montreal
to the Pacific, and not least so in little Kamloops by her blue river
and lake, yet there was time for talk of other things even there.
The men cackled and chattered in saloons and out of them, as is the
fashion in sparsely inhabited countries as well as in suburbs, of all
the windy ways of men.  Like dust was the talk lifted up, like dust
it fell and rose again.  And the boys often talked of Ned, who, it
seemed, had struck a new streak of virtue and avoidance of liquor.

"'Twas nip and tuck with him and the law," said one, "and he's still
scared."

"True 'nough, Indian Mary nigh payssed in her checks.  One more cut
and she'd ha' bin mimaloose.  They say so at the hawspital," said
another.

"I wonder if he's done with Pitt River Pete, yet," wondered a third.
"D'ye think he druv them steers into the cañon?"

"Who else?  No, Ned Quin ain't through with Pete.  Now I like Pete,
he's a first-class Siwash, not bad by no means.  And I never cottoned
to Ned.  He's got religion now, eh?  Oh, shucks!"

So the fates and men disposed of things even at the time that the
_Kamloops_ sternwheeler came sweeping west through the quiet waters
of the lakes and the quick stream of the connecting river, bearing
Pete and his strange fortunes.

He fell instantly among such thieves of reputation, such usual
slanderers of hope in sorrowful men, and heard the worst there was to
hear, made better by no kindly word.  Perhaps they knew well in their
hearts that reformation was a vain thing: they scorned Ned's efforts
to be better, and made the worst, as the world is apt to do, of all
he had done.  They drew frenzying pictures of Mary with the half-hid
face: they told Pete of her sad aspect, and related, in gross
passages of bloody words, exaggerations constructed out of stories
from the hospital of mercy.

As if their incitements were insufficient, the coast talk of George
and Jenny came up stream to him.

"Him and her's havin' a hell of a good time, Pete.  He took your
pretty klootchman over to Victoria as bold as brass, as if he was
Lord High Muckamuck and she my Lady Dandy oh!  Druv her araound in
carriages, little Jenny as we knowed in Mis' Alexander's kitchen: she
ez praoud ez any white woman, dressed to kill, and no fatal error.
He's giv' her silks and satins like as if she wuz his wife, and she
gigglin' happy.  I say it's a dern shame for a man to kapsualla a
chap's klootchman.  Bymby he'll throw her over, chuck her out.  And
they say she's got a kid now, and it ain't yours, Pete."

There was love of offspring deep in Pete's heart, hidden from himself
till this moment.  He ran out of the shanty into the street.

"There ain't no need to fill the boy up the way you're doin'," said
one of the loafers uneasily.  "If ain't no good to make him so ez
he'll murder them Quins."

The others laughed.

"None of us is stuck on the Quins," they declared.  "And if Pete is
burro enough to bray too loud and kick up his heels, forgettin' he's
only a Siwash, they'll fill him up with lead.  And even in this yer
British Columbia, which is a dern sight too law-abidin' for a man, we
reckon that self-defence is a good defence sometimes.  Here's the
worst of luck to Judge Begbie, anyhaow."

Next morning Pete rode on a hired horse towards the Nikola, being
full of liquor ere he set out with a bottle in his pocket.  He had
tried to buy a gun, a six-shooter, but there are few in most British
Columbia towns, and those who wore them by habit, in spite of the
law, were not sellers.  When a man has carried a "gun" for years he
feels cold and helpless without it.  That's one of the facts that are
facts, tilikum.

But Pete didn't care.  There were such things as shovels, said Pete
furiously.

It was a heavenly bright morning, and the far distance of the warm
hills, rising in terraces above the Lake, shone clear and warm.  Such
is the summer there, so sweet, so tender, so clear, and every day is
a bride of kindly earth.

Pete rode hard and saw nothing but the wan aspect of his sister, and
the giggling jeer of Jenny, clad in scarlet and bright shame.

The good brown earth with the lordly bull-pines scattered on rising
hills was very fair to look upon.  On the higher levels of the
terraces were pools of shining lakes: some shone with shores of
alkali and some were pure sweet water.

Pete, riding a doomed man however he wrought, drank no pure water
with his heart.  He sucked bitter water from the bitterest lakes,
poor fool, going to do his duty, as his Indian blood said, and as
much white blood would have said as well.

The sun, unclouded as it was, shone without the fierceness of the
later summer.  The grass, though it was browned, had still sap within
it.

Pete rode half-drunken, with fire within him.

And then at last he topped the rise that hid Ned's shack.  He saw a
woman by the shack, and with his eyes discerned even from afar that
she wore white linen on her head.  But he could not hear her sing.
And yet poor Mary sang: it seemed that out of her sorrow there had
grown so great a joy that song would come from her wounded healing
heart.

Pete rode down the trail.  So in fine weather among the hills a storm
may break.  So may a cyclone, a tornado, approach a city.  So may
fire burst out at quiet, sleepy midnight.  In one moment there was
horror in the happy and repentant and praying home where Ned and Mary
had come together once again.

"Oh, Mary," said Pete.  He came riding fast.  She looked up, did not
know him, and looked again, and knew him.  She called to Ned, who
came out at the sound of galloping.

"It's Pete," she cried, but Ned stood there stupidly.  In his great
repentance and his new found peace he could not believe in bitter
enmity, in war or in revenge.

There is a power of strange madness in the Indian blood, diluted
though it be.  Under the maddening influence of liquor the nature of
the Indian flowers in dreadful passions, forgetful of new
circumstances, oblivious of punishment and of law.  None knew this
better than Ned Quin, and yet he stood there foolishly, with a
doubtful smile upon his face, a smile almost of greeting.  He was
even ready to forgive Pete for what he had done.  He felt his heart
was changed, and without a touch of religion or creed this was a
natural and sweet conversion.  But Mary tugged at his arm, for she
knew.

The whirlwind came down on them: Pete rode at him and, ere he
awakened and turned, rode him down.  Ned fell and was struck by the
horse, reluctant to ride over him, and Pete leapt from the saddle.
He saw Mary with her hands up, but chiefly saw the white shroud on
her face.  He forgot her, forgot his horse, and only remembered that
one of the brothers he hated lay sprawling before him, half stunned,
raised on one hand.  With a club, a branch of knotted fir, that he
seized on, he went for the man and battered him.  Mary flew at him,
and he sent her headlong with a backward motion of his left arm.  She
reeled and fell and got upon her knees, screaming with bitter rage at
her brother.  But she was weak, and though she got to her feet again,
she fell once more.  She saw Ned bleeding, saw him fall supine, saw
his empty hands open and shut: she heard the blows.

"Oh, God," she cried.  Within the shack there was a shot-gun.  It
stood in the corner, there were cartridges handy.  She crawled for
the house, and got on her feet again and staggered till she reached
it.  She found the gun and the cartridges, threw the breech open,
rammed one in and closed it.  The possession of the weapon gave her
strength.  She ran out, and Pete saw her coming, saw the gun go to
her shoulder.  With the club in his hand he ran at her as quick as he
had been in the Mill.  And as he nearly closed with her she fired.
He felt the very heat of the discharge, was blinded by it and by the
grains of powder, and fell unhurt, save for a burnt and bloody ear.
Mary struck him with the butt and knocked him senseless: he lay
before her like a log.  She dropped the gun and ran to Ned and fell
upon her knees.  She lifted his battered head and prayed for his
life, and even as she prayed she believed that he was killed.  There
was no motion in him; her trembling hand could feel no heart-beat.
She heard her brother groan.

"He's killed him," she screamed, "he's killed him!"

She laid her man down with his head upon a sack that lay near by.
She turned to Pete with blazing eyes and saw the man she believed she
had slain sitting up and staring about him foolishly.  From one car
blood ran: his white face was powder-scorched.

"You devil," said his sister, "you've killed my man, the man I loved;
oh, you wicked beast, you cruel wretch, you pig----"

She screamed horrible abuse at her brother, dreadful abuse and
foolish.

"They'll hang you, hang you, hang you!"

She yelled this at him as she stood before him like a fury.  The
words went by him like a breeze: they entered his ears but not his
brain: he was still stupefied, half unconscious.  He turned away and
was violently sick.  She pitied him not and was remorseless.  She
took him by the shoulder and shook him.  He turned a foolish and
wondering face at her, with some dawn, a very dim dawn, of
consciousness in him.

"I'll get you hanged," she said.  He heard the word "hanged" and
again "hanged" and wondered sickly what it meant.  She ran from him
and he watched her.  She went to the horse which stood some twenty
yards away.  The animal started and walked away and she stopped and
spoke soothingly to it, using low words and bidding it be gentle.
She went round in a circle and got upon the other side of it, and at
last the horse stood still and let her grasp the bridle.  Pete
wondered what horse it was and why she was catching it.  She brought
it to the shack and slipped the bridle reins over a post.

He saw her use incredible strength and drag Ned Quin into the house.
She cried aloud and sobbed most dreadfully.  She put her man in the
shadow, laid his head upon a pillow and covered his wounded face with
white, even as her own was covered.  She shut the door and came out.
Pete still sat upon the ground with both hands outspread behind him.
She said that he would be hanged, again she said it.  He saw her get
upon his horse and ride away towards the road.  Where was she going?
Who was it that was going?  What was this woman going for?

These were horrible problems, but he knew, as a man knows things in a
nightmare, when he cannot move, that their solution concerned him.
They concerned him seriously.  He struggled to solve them.  It seemed
that he spent years, aye, centuries, in the bitter attempt and still
he saw the woman astraddle on a horse go up the rise to the north.
This was a woman, oh, God, what woman?--a woman with a white cloth on
her face, a ridiculous fierce figure who had said "hanged!"  What was
"hanged"?  What did it mean?  And why did she say it to him?  What
was he for that matter, and who was he?  He struggled hard to
discover that.  So far as he could see, he was an unnamed, peculiarly
solitary speck of aching, struggling matter in a world of pain.  So
they say the disembodied may feel.  His senses were numbed: they sent
foolish messages to him, messages that warned him and alarmed him
without being intelligible.  He knew that he was in some great
danger.  He saw a house, but did not know it; a gun, but could not
say what it was and why it lay there in the pounded, trodden dust.
Something wet dripped from his head: he put his hand up and saw blood
upon it.  Whoever he was, he was hurt in some way.  He sighed and
still saw the woman.  Now she disappeared.  It mattered very much.
Why was she leaving him?  He spoke suddenly.

"What's my name?" said Pete.

If he could only get that.  On that point hung everything: he felt
sure of that.  Now he knew he was a man; he had got so far.  But what
manner of man he could not tell.  How silly everything was!  He
groaned and grinned.  Then he started.

"My name's Pete," he said suddenly.  "It's Pete!"

This was the clue: this the end of the tangled cord of things.  It
was, he felt, utterly idiotic and alarming to know so much and no
more.  It was infinitely annoying.  He said "I'm Pete, am I Pete, I'm
Pete, eh!" and then sat staring.  He wanted some kind of help, but
what help he did not know.  The task of discovering what all things
were from what seemed the primal fact of all, that he was called
Pete, appeared hugely difficult.  He cried about it at last.  And
then some chickens came round the corner of the shack, and pecked in
the dust.  A big rooster came after them and stood upon a log, and
whooped a loud cock-a-doodle-doo!  It was a natural sound.  Pete knew
it and stared with sudden intelligence at the brilliant bird upon the
log.  Of a sudden the whole veil over all things was lifted.  He knew
who he was and why he was there and what he had done!  Above all he
knew what the word "hanged" meant.  It was his sister who had said
it.  He got upon his knees and staggered till he could hold on to the
house.  It was a help to hold on to something while he thought.

"Hanged," said Pete.  He had killed a man.  Where was he?  It was Ned
Quin.  But if he had killed him how had he got away?

"I won't be hanged," said Pete.  "I won't.  She's gone to tell 'em
I've made Ned mimaloose, killed him.  I'll stop her!"

That was a very clear idea, and the notion satisfied him for a while
as he swayed to and fro.  But how?  The woman with the white linen
had taken his horse.  It was again a hard problem, but since he knew
who he was, things were very much easier, though they were still a
struggle.  He didn't know how he got there, but presently he found
himself in the stable, leading out Ned Quin's horse, a lean and old,
but still sound, sorrel.  It was wonderful to find that he had a
horse already saddled and bridled.  He didn't know that he had put
the saddle on and cinched up the girths himself.

"Now I'm all right.  That kloshe," said Pete.  He almost forgot in
his satisfaction what he wanted the horse for.  But presently he
remembered that he had to stop that woman (his sister, was she?) from
going somewhere.  Was there such a place as Kamloops?  Very likely
there was.  Then he saw the gun.

"She shot at me," he said with feeble indignation, "I'm bleeding."

He wept again.

And suddenly he saw all things as clear as day.  He had killed Ned:
she had shot him and then she had said she would go into Kamloops and
denounce him.  There wasn't any time to lose.  He "hung up" the horse
and picked the gun from the ground.  He went to the house and opened
the door.  It was very dark inside and the outside sun was now
burning bright.  He stumbled across something and only saved himself
from falling with great difficulty.  What had he stumbled over?  He
peered on the ground and as the pupils of his eyes dilated he saw a
body stretched out with a white cloth over the face.  He trembled.

"It's--it's Ned," he said, shaking.  "They'll hang me!"

He wanted to lift the white cloth but dared not.  He went round the
body to the shelf where he knew the cartridges were kept.  He put a
handful in his pocket and then went out with his eyes straight before
him.  But he still saw the white cloth.  When he was outside he
loaded the gun in both barrels and clambered on the old sorrel with
great difficulty.  As he rode he swayed to and fro in the saddle.

But he had to catch Mary, had to stop her.  That notion was all the
thought in him.  It helped to keep him from falling off.  Yet he rode
like a drunken man, and the landscape reeled and shifted and danced.
The big bull-pines swayed as if there were a great wind and the road
was sometimes a double track.  Yet far ahead of him he saw a figure
on a horse.  It must be Mary.  He clutched the gun and the horn of
the saddle and spurred the old sorrel with a solitary Mexican spur
which he had borrowed in the town.  And as he rode the world began to
settle down before him at last.  Though his head was splitting he
rode without his hat.  It lay in red dust by Ned's house.

At first he went at a walk, but presently he urged the sorrel to a
reluctant lope.  The figure before him loped too.  He saw he made
little headway.  He put the sorrel into a gallop and knew that he
gained on her who now hated him.  It was unjust of her: what he had
done was for her, not for himself.  Ned had hurt her horribly.  Pete
couldn't understand her.  She appeared to love the man who had cut
her down.  It was foolish, strange.

And she meant to have him "hanged."  That was the last spur to him:
his vision cleared and became normal.  The shifting planes of the
terraced land in front of him sat down at last.  He drove the spur
into the sorrel brutally and set him at a furious gallop.  He knew
the horse that Mary rode was tired: it was not much of a cayuse at
any time.  He saw her plainly now.

And then she looked round and saw a horseman coming furiously.  What
horseman it was she knew not.  Yet it might be Pete, though he was
disabled.  She made her horse gallop: she flogged him with a heavy
quirt that hung to Pete's saddle.

But the man behind her gained.  She saw him coming in front of a
cloud of white dust.  She looked back through dust.  But perhaps it
wasn't Pete.

Then she knew the action of the old sorrel, and panic got hold of
her.  It was Pete.  Yes, that was certain.  She screamed to her
horse, and struck him hard.  Now she heard above the sound of his
hoofs upon the road the following echo-like thud of the sorrel as he
crept up to her.  She topped a little rise and raced down hill
recklessly.  Behind her now there was a moment's cessation of the
following sound.  Then she heard it again and looking back saw Pete
come down the hill.  He was within a quarter of a mile of her and she
was not yet half-way to Kamloops!

She was his sister and an Indian.  She was usually merciful to
animals in spite of that: merciful and kind.  But now she feared for
herself, and the deep nature within her flowered as it had done when
she sought Pete's life.  She flogged the horse till she was weary and
then pulled out a little knife she carried and stabbed it through the
hide just behind the saddle.  It was a bitter and cruel spurring.
Under the dreadful stimulus her tired horse responded and galloped
furiously.  But the old horse behind her was the better animal: he
answered that gallop of his own accord and was emulous, eager.

She heard Pete's voice, she turned and saw him creeping up to her:
she saw he had the gun.  She looked at him over her shoulder as they
galloped: his face was dreadful to see: part of his ear was hanging
loose: the blood was on his neck and shoulder.  She saw him open his
mouth: he was speaking: telling her to stop!

But he had killed her man!  She believed it!  She would not stop.

Now he crept further up to her, and her old horse was urged on by the
following thunder of near hoofs.  She turned from her pursuer: he saw
nothing of her face but the white cloth.  She heard him cursing
awfully.  He called her foul names: he screamed insults.  Though she
kept her eyes upon the road she saw dimly that he was ranging up
alongside her.

"Stop," cried Pete.  She answered on her horse with the quirt: she
had dropped her knife a mile back.  Behind the saddle there were
blood marks.  She was in a whirlwind: the sun burnt: the dust rose:
she saw cattle run across the road.  Beyond that slope Kamloops lay:
through a fold of one of the terraces she saw a patch of the lake
away to the east: yonder was the crystalline and azure Thompson.  In
front, the dark stained hill beyond the river and beyond Kamloops
rose more clearly.  Then she heard nothing of what he said: she saw
his furious face, saw the blood again, the flapping cartilage of his
ear, and then she saw him lift the gun.  This then meant death!  But
when the explosion burst upon her like a blow, she felt the horse
throw up his head, and knew that they were both falling.  She saw,
even as she fell, the one clear picture: the horse with his bleeding
neck outstretched and his legs failing: the white road: the radiant
prairie: the tall brown trees: the splendid river.  Then the earth
rose at her: she pitched headlong, and rolled over motionless.

On the road the wounded horse lay, lifting up his head as one aghast
at death.  He made no sound: the blood poured from the burst arteries
and his head sank back.

Pete never looked behind him as he threw the gun away and went at a
merciless gallop for the last level mile before the uplands opened on
the valley of the Lake.  He cursed his sister and Ned Quin and
himself.  How could he get away?

Before he got to the pitch of the road he turned in his saddle and
looked back.  He saw the dark patch that the dead horse made.  He saw
the cattle coming to find out what the unusual spectacle meant, for
their curiosity was insatiable.  Some already stood, staring and
tossing their heads, in a half-circle round Mary and the horse.

Soon all the world would be in a circle round the victims!  Where was
he to go and how was he to act?  He pulled up suddenly and put his
hand to his aching head.  If he went into Kamloops as he was, with a
horse all flaked with foam, and with his own ear bleeding, all the
little world of the town would be agog to know what had happened.

And yet if he hid till dark, some would find Mary, perhaps dead, upon
the open road.  Someone might go to the shack and discover Ned.  It
was hard to know how to act.  He remembered for the first time that
he had a bottle in his pocket.  He asked advice of that: it sent him
flying down the road to Kamloops.  It was best to risk things, best
not to wait, not to dodge or to hide.  His only chance was to get
down to the coast and out of the country.  To get north to the
Columbia and then to Sand Point through Kootenay, practically the
only alternative route out, was impossibly dangerous.  And as he rode
he saw a steamboat coming down the river from the Lakes.  If he rode
hard he might catch it and get away before a word was said.  As he
rode he bound up his head and ear with a big coloured handkerchief.
It was red enough to hide the oozing blood.

It was an hour or more after noon when he rode into Kamloops.  He
came in at a lope and took on a careless air, calling "Klahowya" to
some of his tilikums as they passed him.  He even saluted a mounted
policeman and went by him singing till he came to Alexander's, where
he had got his horse from.  He had to explain how he came back on Ned
Quin's instead of the one he hired.  But the stableman, who knew he
had hired out a wretched crock, was easy enough to satisfy.

"That damned kieutan fell with me," said Pete, swaggering, "fell at
an easy lope and burst my ear.  I left him at Ned Quin's, sonny, and
Ned'll bring him in to-molla and fetch out this old sorrel.  Here's
four bits for you."

He had paid the hire before he took out the horse that now lay dead
upon the road.  He heard the steamer's whistle at the nigh wharf and
ran to catch her.  In ten minutes he was on his way down stream to
the Ferry.

He knew it would be, or so easily might be, "a close call" for him.
And yet there was nothing else to do but to risk it.  As the cool air
of the river struck him he shivered.  For he thought he had killed
Ned Quin and, now that the heat went out of his blood, chilling the
fever of revenge in him, he began to be very much afraid.

But he took a drink.


Far back upon the road the cattle ringed round Mary's body and the
body of the horse, and a million flies blackened the pool of blood
and drank against the dust that soaked it up.  The cattle to leeward,
smelling the horror of a spilt life, tossed their heads uneasily and
challenged strange death, that horror of which their instincts spoke
to them.  Some to windward came closer and blew at the flies.  They
rose in black swarms and settled again.  From a distance other cattle
marched to the wavering ring about this wonder.  Some came running.
One of the inside steers touched Mary's body with his horn.  She
moaned and lifted her hand.  The steer ran backwards, snorting,
backing on others, who horned each other angrily.  Then the steers
crept up again to Mary and blew at the dust in which she lay.

But this time she rose to a sitting position, and the ring of cattle
with their lowered heads retreated from her.

She wondered where she was, and how she came to be there.  Then she
saw the dead horse, and the gun that a cow smelt uneasily.  She
remembered that Pete had killed Ned, and that he had perhaps tried to
kill her.  She scrambled to her feet and the cattle jostled each
other to get away from her.  She staggered as she stood: for she had
no strength, and all desire of life had gone out of her.  And with
that there came a sickness of the notion of revenge: it would only be
trying to revenge herself on the inexorable destiny which was hers.
Pete had killed her man and had gone.  She would go back to her dead.

Overhead the sun burnt as she staggered on the road, the long,
endless, wearying road, so like to life.  She went at a foot pace,
and the miles were weary endless spaces without hope.  For her man
was dead, and Pete was a cruel madman, and there was nothing left for
her.  Yet still she walked, like some painful hurt creature returning
to its lair.  She ached in every limb: her head seemed splitting: the
physical torture of her being dulled her mind.  And as it seemed to
her only the sun of all things moved swiftly.  It was drawing on
towards evening when she came to her house and stood outside the
door.  Her knees trembled: she clutched at the latch and door-post to
prevent herself falling.

Inside was her man dead: her man who had been so good and so cruel.
She began to weep and opened the door, letting the westering sunlight
in.  The next moment she screamed dreadfully, for the place where she
had left him was vacant!

"Oh, Ned, Ned!" she cried in a most lamentable voice.  And yet within
her murdered heart there sprang a faint poor flower of hope even as
she cried.  If he had been moved was it not that someone had come and
taken him away?  Then--then, oh, God, perhaps he was not dead!  Her
brain turned: she reeled again and clutched at the table and held to
it.

"My God, listen to me, be merciful, where is my man, the man I love?"

She wrestled with the dark gods of fate whose blinded eyes knew not,
nor cared, whom they trod down upon the dusty roads of earth.

And then she heard a rustle in the room, as of something stirring!
She prayed that this was true: that she did not hear amiss and that
when her eyes opened she would see Ned once more.

She heard a groan and ran to it blindly and found her man there, on
the bed, their bed, still alive, though half blinded, blood-covered
and hardly conscious!

"Ned, Ned!"

In her mad desire for revenge she had left him, believing him dead.
She fell beside him with a scream that was no more than a sigh, and
when she became conscious again after that awful shock of joy, she
found his wounded hands seeking hers.  She heard his hurt mouth
whisper for water.  For the little good that came with all the evil
she thanked her God very humbly and brought the man water.  He spoke
to her and did not know that she had been away from him.  He knew not
how he had reached the bed, or come back to life and to her.  He was
very weak and gentle.

"My dear," he said feebly.  She washed his wounds and bound them up.
She cried softly over his pain, which was so much less than her own.

"I've been a brute to you," he mumbled.  "But God help me I'll be
that no more."

"You've always loved me," she said.  It was true in spite of
everything.

"Yes," said old Ned.  Then he fell asleep and woke in an hour and
wandered a little in his talk.  But she soothed him into peace again
and he rested quietly.  Yet she could not leave him to get help till
next morning, and when she went over to their nearest neighbour,
Missouri Simpson, he was away from home.  It was noon when he
returned and rode into Kamloops for the doctor.  He told the police
what had happened, and found that someone had already brought into
town Ned's gun and told them of the horse.  They telegraphed to all
stations to the Coast to hold a certain Sitcum Siwash, known as Pitt
River Pete.  But by that time Pete was in hiding on the south side of
the Fraser, over against the Mill, with a canoe, stolen from a house
near Ruby Creek, where he had left the train.  For it seemed to him
that he could not escape if he went further.  That he had not been
arrested yet was a miracle.

"They'll catch me and hang me," he said with a snarl.

He felt sure they would and he had something to do before they did.

As he lay in the brush, across the river, he tried to pick out the
lights of the house, high upon the hill, in which Jenny and George
Quin lived.




XXI

The news that one Pitt River Pete was wanted by the police, by the
"bulls," spread fast through the town and into Shack City.  As soon
as they heard, and as soon as Indian Annie was chuckling grossly over
the possible delight of seeing Pete hanged, the police came down and
searched every hole and corner in the sawdust swamp.  They routed out
Annie almost the first of the lot, and she screamed insults at them
as they searched her den.

"Kahta you damn plisman tink I hide Pete?" she yelled.  "Pete hyu
mesachie, him damn bad Siwash; if him come I say 'mahsh, klatawa, go,
you damn thief.'  Oh, you damn plisman, what for you make mess my
house?  You tink Pete him one pin I hide him lik' dat?"

They bade her dry up and when she refused they took her by the scruff
of the neck and bundled her outside.  She sat in sawdust and yelled
till they left her shack and searched the others.  They found
nothing, of course, but they found out one thing, and that was the
readiness of most of the men of the Mill, Siwashes or Whites, to give
away Pete with both hands.  For they, at any rate, were certain that
it was he who had spiked the logs and killed poor old Skookum
Charlie.  And since he had killed a Chinaman, too, all the men from
the Flowery Kingdom were ready to do the same.  Old Wong said so to
the "damned plismen."  But as the Chinamen relied on the police to
save them from abuse and injury, they were even readier to help than
the Siwashes.

"Supposee we savvy Pete, we tellee you allo tim'," said Wong.  "My
tink Pete damn bad man, spikee logs, killee my flin Fan.  Fan velly
good man, my flin, and Pete spoilum 'tumach,' killee him dead.  All
light, we come tellee."

There wasn't a doubt about it, that if Pete turned up in Shack-Town
he would be given away, and though the police went away empty-handed
they had high hopes of nailing him shortly.

They had had a considerable pow-pow that morning in the Engine-Room
before work started up and there wasn't a soul found there to say a
word for Pete.  This was natural enough.

"A man that'll spike logs ain't a human being, boys," said Long Mac
seriously.

"Killing his own tilikums," said Shorty Gibbs.  "It was horrid seein'
pore old Skookum!"

"The Chinky was horridest," said Tenas Billy.  "I picked him up."

"So you did," said Shorty.  "But what d'ye think Pete's doin'?"

"He'll be on the scoot."

"To be sure, but where?"

"Oh, to hell and gone out of this."

"That's your tumtum.  It ain't mine by a mile.  If he's been spoilin'
Ned Quin's face what'll he do 'bout George, eh?"

Mac intervened.

"Waal, boys, these Injuns are a rotten crowd.  You can't bet on what
they'll do.  Some o' them don't care a damn if their klootchmen quit.
I know, for I've run with 'em on the Eastern Slope o' the Rockies and
on the plains.  Sometimes they will though."

He told a ghastly tale.

"Pete's a holy terror, that's what," said Tenas Billy.  "I never give
him credit for sand, I admit, but he has it."

"Sand be damned," said Long Mac; "he hasn't sand.  It's only Injun
temper.  I know 'em.  They ain't sandy in the way we speak of it,
boys.  Bein' sandy is bein' cool.  Pete don't do notion' unless he's
mad.  None of 'em do, at least none of these fish-fed coast Injuns.
They's a measly crowd."

The men chewed on that.

"Nevertheless," said Shorty, considering the matter fully, "I'd
rather be me than George Quin with Pete loose on the tear.  The man
that spiked our boom and hunted old Cultus Muckamuck's steers into a
dry cañon and then hammered him to pulp with a club mayn't have sand,
but he's dangerous."

"He's the kind of Johnny that'd fire the Mill," said Ginger White,
who so far had held his tongue.

"White's on the target," said Mac as the whistle blew.  But he forgot
about it when the song and the dance of the day commenced.  There's
fine forgetfulness in work.

Quin was as foolish as the rest of them.  That is to say, he talked
to the police and came to the conclusion that Pete wasn't likely to
be on hand now and for ever after.  He knew what Mac knew and
despised the average Coast Indian.  It was true enough they weren't
up to much unless they were "full," full, that is, of liquor.  And a
man like Quin knew by instinct the weakness there was in such as
Pete, in spite of his now bloody record.  For Quin had a fine square
jaw and Pete hadn't.  But then Quin was incapable of underhand night
work.  And he didn't know that Pete was like a rat in a trap, as a
criminal is in British Columbia.  And there was another thing.  He
knew that Ned wasn't dead, by any means.  It never occurred to him
that Pete believed he had killed Cultus and must be desperate if he
wasn't out of the country.

"I wish the swine was dead," said George Quin.  "I believe I'd marry
Jenny."

She had twined herself round his heart, and when he saw her nursing
the one child he had ever been father of he was as soft as cream with
her.  Not a soul about the City would have believed it was George
Quin if they had seen him with his naked boy in his arms.  Only the
Chinamen knew about it, for Sam told them, being delighted, as they
all are, with male offspring.  They really sympathised with the big
boss as they thought of their own wives far away in "China-side" and
the children some of them hadn't seen.  Old Wong wept secretly, for
he had worked and gone home to marry a wife, and she had died.  It
wasn't likely he would ever make enough money to buy another, unless
he got it by gambling.  He was as bad at that as old Papp, the
German, who still hadn't made sufficient to go home to "California,"
in spite of all his work, and those muscles which made him feel as if
he would "braig dings" if he didn't toil.

Yes, tilikum, George Quin, "Tchorch," was happy, as happy as he could
be.

And Jenny was nearly as happy as she could be.  Her child was a gift
from heaven, even if heaven frowned as it gave her the beautiful boy.
She never saw the Bible or the horrid pictures and she saw instead
the scripture of the child's pure flesh hourly and read the dark
language of her man's heart.  He adored what she had given him, and
she knew, as a woman may know, that underneath his awkward roughness
and his careless ways, sometimes not wholly gentle, there was real
love for her and the wish to be good.  And when he sat with her and
smoked, she caught the paternal look of full satisfaction that he
feigned to hide from himself.  What a boy it was!

He was as fat as a prairie chicken, and as full of life as a
fresh-run salmon.  How pink he showed in hot water: how he squealed
like a dear little pig and kicked his crumpled dimpled legs!  Was
there ever such a boy before?

"Oh, Tchorch, see," said Jenny.  She showed him the baby's thick dark
hair.  The child was a garden of delight that she cultivated all day
long.

But she never forgot "Tchorch," who had been so good to her, and had
taken her to Victoria and driven her about in a fine carriage: who
had showed her the world.  If she had only been his wife the whole
earth could have offered her nothing.

And yet behind her was the dark shadow of Pete.  George never spoke
of him, and if he had known that Sam did he would have kicked the
Chinaman from the house to the Mill.  Yet it wasn't Sam's fault,
though he was a chatterbox and always ready for "talkee" at any time.
Jenny asked him about things.  She knew that men said it was Pete who
had spiked the logs.  Sam told her of the death of his poor
countryman.  She wept bitterly about Skookum, who had always been a
kind, thick-headed chap, very good to his klootchman.  She had now
taken up with another who wasn't good to her.

"Poor old Skookum," said Jenny.  Oh, it was dreadful of Pete.  And
yet it was her fault.

But she had her boy!  Oh, not for anything, not for life or heaven or
all the round world contained of good, would she have parted with her
child and George's.  She hadn't lived before.  And now "Tchorch"
loved her so much more.  He was so satisfied, so content to sit and
smoke.  Her Indian blood was happy to see her man sit solemnly and
puff the clouds into the air without a word.

Now she knew of the search for Pete, and knew what he had done, just
as she knew what wicked Ned had done to poor Mary.  She hated Ned,
and was sure he was utterly bad.  Nevertheless, Mary had gone back to
him.  That she knew was natural.

"Poor Mary loves him," she said, "but she has no baby!"

If the sky was clear, it was for her little boy: when the breezes
blew they were for him: the beauty of the river was his: the
loveliness of stars and the goodness of her milk were the gifts of
God, who was not angry with her but only sorrowful because she was
not married.

"He would marry me if----"

Oh, yes, if Pete were dead!  She could not say it, but could not help
the bad thought rising within her.  To be married to George!  She
trembled to think of it.

In her heaven Pete was the dark cloud.  Perhaps her constant thought
of him put it into George's head to say, as he did say, very suddenly
that same night--

"I wish I could marry you, tenas!"

She crept to his knee, and laid her head on his hand.  She got more
beautiful every day, more gentle, more tender.

"There's not a spark of vice in the little woman," said her man, with
tears in his eyes.  He said he was a damn fool and spoke gruffly next
time.  But she understood her Chief, her great man, and was pleased
to serve his gruffest speech.

"If only that cursed Siwash was dead," said George.

But if he wasn't he would either be in the "pen" for years or would
be seen no more on the Fraser River.  That seemed certain.

And still George was uneasy.  It was impossible to say where the man
was.  The belief of the police that he had escaped out of the country
went for nothing.  British Columbia might be a mouse-trap, but it was
a handy place for holing up in, and the brush alongside the river
would have hidden a thousand.  George had a talk about the matter
with Long Mac, who was the only one of the workers in his Mill who
had brains beyond his daily task.

"What do you think, McClellan?" asked the Tyee.

Mac's eyes showed that he could think.

"He's a dangerous skunk, that's my tumtum, Mr. Quin," said Mac.  He
told him what Ginger White had said and Quin frowned heavily.

"Fire my Mill!"

The Mill was his life, and till Jenny had borne him a child it had
been his true and lasting passion.  There was a fascination about it
and the work of it that he loved.  The scent of the lumber: the sound
of the saws: the rush of the work: the hustling of the men, made
something beyond words.  The Mill was a live thing, warm, strong,
adequate, equal to its work.  It filled Quin's alert, strong mind.

"Fire my Mill!"

That was Long Mac's "tumtum," his thought, his notion.

"If he ain't really skipped out, that's what a cuss like Pete would
do to you, Sir," said Mac.  "He's made a holy record for himself,
ain't he?  We know he spiked the logs and killed poor Skookum, and
there ain't the shadder of a doubt he fixed your brother's cattle.
And then he's laid him out, and started off down here.  They traced
him to Ruby Creek, and it's tol'ble sure he kapsuallowed a canoe
there.  But no one's got on his tracks.  It's bad luck there's been
such a mighty poor salmon run this year, or he'd ha' been seen on the
River."

As it was, the lordly tyee salmon, the quinnat, had been making a
poor show in the Fraser that year, as he will at intervals, more or
less regular.  The canneries were fairly frozen out and shut down.
The river was empty of boats and men.

"I'll set another night-watchman on," said Quin.  "There's something
in what you say, McClellan.  The police are damn fools, though."

"I'll take a night or two at it myself, if you like, Mr. Quin," said
Long Mac.

"You're the very man," replied Quin.


That night Pete got his hidden dug-out into the water.  But his chief
thoughts were not of the Mill.




XXII

It was all very well for George Quin, who had brought all the trouble
on himself by running after other people's klootchmen, to say the
police were fools, but as a matter of fact they had done as much as
could be expected of them, and perhaps more, seeing that Quin wasn't
very popular with them.  His Mill with its Shack-Town gave them more
trouble than the whole of the City, and within a year two "damn
plismen," as Annie called them, had been laid out cold with clubs in
its vicinity.  And nobody had gone into the penitentiary for the
murderous assaults.  Nevertheless they had searched every likely hole
and corner for Pete, from his old native hang-out, Pitt River, down
to the Serpentine and beyond it.  They had beaten the brush along
both sides of the Fraser, North and South Arm and the Island.  And,
indeed, they came within a throw of the dice of catching Pete.  One
of them missed him and his canoe by a hair's-breadth, and the Sitcum
Siwash had been about to cave in and show himself when the man turned
aside.

As it was, the very search for Pete worked him up to desperation just
as he was beginning to get cold on revenge and to think rather of
escape.  If the police were so keen as to search the brush and go up
and down the river, how was he to get away?  Like most of his sort he
didn't know the country, and would have been puzzled to get even as
far as Whatcom.  And even if he did there would be someone waiting
for him.  And to go down stream in the dug-out would be to run right
into a trap, like a salmon.  His rage began to burn in him again, and
to this was added hunger.  He had over a hundred dollars in his
pocket but hadn't eaten for four-and-twenty hours.  He would have
given his soul for a square meal and a long drink, and as hunger bit
him he knew that if he lingered any longer mere famine would induce
him to give himself up.  Then he would be hanged, and get nothing
more than he had got already as the price of his neck.  When the
second night fell he was wholly desperate.

"I fix heem to-night, or they catch me," said Pete.  "One ting or the
other, Pete, my boy!"

If he only could get a drink!  With a drink inside him he would be
equal to anything.  He wondered if he dare trust any of his old
tilikums of the Mill.  He thought of Chihuahua and of Chihuahua's
klootchman, Annawillee, and then of old Annie.  They would give him
away for a dollar; he knew that, and very likely there was a price on
his head.  If poor old Skookum hadn't been killed he would have done
anything for him.  Pete was very sorry he had killed Skookum, very
sorry indeed.

But he kept on thinking about that drink.  If there was one woman or
man in Shack-Town who always managed to have liquor in her shanty, it
was old Annie.

"I'd choke her for it," said Pete, as he shoved off in his dug-out
and paddled lightly against the last of the flood coming in from the
great Pacific.  "I'd choke her for it."

The night was moonless and cloudy and as dark as it ever gets on the
Fraser in summer.  There was even a touch of an easterly wind about,
and the faint chill of it made him shiver.  Without a drink he felt
almost hopeless.

"I try," said Pete in sudden desperation.  The lights were out all
over the town.  Hardly a solitary lamp starred the opposing darkness
of the hill above the river.  The world was asleep.  There was only a
moving lamp in the Mill.  He knew it belonged to the night-watchman,
a sleepy-headed old German, once a worker in the Planing Mill with
old Papp.  But since he lost his hand he had been made night-watchman.

"I give heem plenty light by-by," said Pete.  He slanted across the
river and came to an old deserted rotten wharf a little above the
Mill.  There in the black shadow he ran his canoe ashore and stepped
into the mud.  He crept silently to where the shore shelved, and,
climbing up, thrust his head out between some broken flooring of the
wharf.  The world was quiet as a tomb.  There was even peace in
Shack-Town.  Whether he got that drink or not he had business there
that night.  Though Chihuahua most likely wouldn't give him a drink,
Pete meant to make the Mexican help him.  For at the back of
Chihuahua's shanty, which was only a one-room hiding hole, there was
a little outhouse.  In that Chihuahua always kept some kerosene.

Pete slipped across the road like a shadow, dodging among the piles
of lumber as he went.  His senses were as alert as a cougar's.  And
the sawdust under foot made his steps soundless.  On the other side
of the road he waited to be sure that no one moved.  There was only
one light in Shack-Town, and it was at Annie's.  That meant that she
was either awake or had fallen asleep drunk on the floor, forgetful
of her lamp.  Perhaps she had a bottle, said Pete thirstily.  He felt
cold and nervous and forgot about the kerosene.  He ran lightly
across the road and came to Annie's.  He had a sheath knife in his
belt.  It had once belonged to Jack Mottram, but Pete had stolen it.
He had no intention of using it on Annie, that is unless he had to,
of course.  He carried a heavy stick in his hand.

He looked into Annie's window, which was naturally enough foul within
and without.  He saw nothing at first but the dim light of the lamp,
but as everything was quiet he rubbed the glass of one pane with his
cap.  Then he saw that Annie was lying on the floor, a mere bundle of
rags.  Was that a bottle by her?

You bet it was, tilikum!  Pete knew a bottle when he saw it.  Perhaps
by good luck it wasn't empty.  He shortened the club in his hand and
tapped lightly on the door with it.  Annie never moved.  He pushed
the door open, and still she didn't move.  He crept in like a cat
until he could reach out and touch the bottle.  It lay on its side
and the cork was out.  Nevertheless, a bottle can hold quite a good
drink in it even on its side.  It was as full as it could be in such
a position, and careless of the silent woman he drank it to its fiery
dregs.  Hot life ran through his veins.  It was fire: such fire as
makes murder light and easy.  He grinned happily and put the bottle
down again by Annie's limp hand.

His life ran warm within him and all his desire of vengeance grew in
alcohol as grass will grow in a warm rain of spring.

He found the kerosene in Chihuahua's little den, and started, not for
the Mill, but for George Quin's house.

"My klootchman, ha," said Pete fiercely.  "She have a papoose!"

The papoose slumbered in his loving mother's arms.  By her side big
George lay.  The night was so sweet and quiet.  If George could marry
her he would.  Oh, wonderful, sorrowful world that it was.  And here
was the world within her arms and within her reach.

"I just love Tchorch and baby!"

She woke and slept.  Oh, heavenly night and heavenly day when baby
slept, or waked, or stared solemnly, as Indian blood will and must,
at the strange hard world that meets its wondering eyes.

The summer had been warm and rainless, everything was dry with the
good warmth of summer.  The brush showed brown: the paths were white:
the lumber, whether in stacked piles or in framed houses, was ready
for fire.  A spark would light it: a single match might cause a
conflagration as it would in a dry forest of red cedar or the
resinous spruce.

And Pete carried kerosene.  He drenched a southern wall of boards
with it and laid against the wall dry brush and pieces of sawed
lumber that lay about from the building of the house.  He knew the
wood must flame like tinder.  If it ran unchecked for a minute it
would take the river to put it out.  And it was high above the river.
He grinned and lighted a match.

The next minute he was running down the hill like a deer.  In less
than a minute he dropped, still carrying the half-emptied kerosene
can, through the hole in the wharf.  Then he waited and saw a warm
blaze high upon the hill.

"That fix heem and her," said Pete, intoxicated with his deed and
with the alcohol.  "That teach heem, damn Shautch Quin, heh!  I kill
his blother, heh, and burn his house!"

His heart was warm within him as fire.  It seemed so good to be
revenged.  Now they would wake, and perhaps would not escape.  All
the world would wake and go up there, and then the Mill would be left
alone.  Already the flame on the hill was so fierce that many must
see it.

And, indeed, many saw it, and some came running and there was a
growing sound of men, and far off he heard men call.  And then from
up above there came the sound of firearms, used as an alarm.  By this
he knew that Quin was up.

"I fix heem and now I fix his Mill;" said Pete hoarsely.  He had
forgotten all they had told him of the scheme by which a man pays a
little so that he shall not lose all.  What did it matter?  The Mill
was Quin's, and he loved it.  Pete knew that.

As all the town woke he dropped down stream in his canoe and came to
the Mill.

It was built, as all such are when they border on a river or any
water, partly on the land and partly on great piles sunk in the river
bed.  The wharves, where scows and steamboats and schooners loaded
the lumber, were even further towards the deep water.  At high tide a
boat could pass underneath them all, and get beneath the deep shadow
of the Mill.  There fish played constantly, schools of little
candle-fish, the oolachan that the fur-seals love, that is so fat
that when it dries it drips oil.  And there were places in the Mill
that dripped oil, as there are in all works where machinery moves
swiftly, and bearings are apt to grow hot.  For many years the Mill
had never ceased to run, save when heavy frost fixed the moving river
in thick-ribbed ice, and it was saturated with all that burns.  In
every crack dry sawdust lay that was almost explosive: the bearings
of belts were fat with oil.  Pete knew it would burn like tinder,
like dry, dead resinous spruce, like the bark of red cedar.

As he moved in the darkness, over the sound of the lapping water he
heard the sound of the waking city.  Where so much was built of wood,
fire was dreadfully interesting.  He knew the world would wake and be
upon the hill.  Now he saw the glimmer of the fire he had lighted
show a gleam upon the water under the sky.  He laughed to himself
quietly, and, holding on to a pile, listened.  Was there anyone above
him on the floor of the Mill?  Or had even the watchman run to Quin's
house to help?  He knew how fire drew a man, how it drew all men.

There was no sound above him.  He ran his canoe into deeper darkness
and left it on the mud and climbed straight among crossing interlaced
timbers to the first floor, where the Shingler worked and laths were
made.  He moved lightly, his feet in silent mocassins, and entered
the dark hole under the Chinee Trimmer.  Above him was the chute by
which matched-flooring came down to the Chinamen, who carried it to
the Planers and the machines that worked it.  He heard the hum of a
far-off crowd and saw the light of the burning house.  He climbed
into the upper Mill.  And as he thrust his head out of the chute at
the left hand of the Trimmer, then idle in the casing, he saw the
house itself through the great side chute of the Mill, down which he
had fallen the day he struck Quin with the pickareen.

The Mill was empty.  He looked round cautiously and then leapt out
upon the floor.  There was sufficient light for him to see by, and he
saw that some man had at least taken precautions against him.  There
were buckets of water here and there: there was even a hose-pipe with
a pump, a force-pump.  There was another hose coming from the
Engine-Room.  These things showed him he had been feared: they showed
him it would be hard to get away.  But he had no time to think.  With
a savage grin he pulled out his knife and sliced the hose into
pieces.  He capsized the buckets as they stood.  Then he fetched his
oil-can from where he had put it, close to the Pony Saw, and emptied
it at a spot which he chose, because the oil would run upon the
sawdust carrier and go down past the fine cedar dust from the
Shingler.  Below the Shingle Mill was the water.  He knew exactly
where to find the spot where the oil would drip into the river.  He
ran back to the chute by which he had ascended and as he slipped into
the chute he heard someone call.

"Hallo, Dutchy, Dutchy!" said a voice.

But Dutchy, the old one-handed German watchman, did not answer.  Pete
heard him who spoke break out swearing.

"Goldarn the old idiot, I believe he ain't here," said the voice.  It
was the voice of Long Mac, a man to be feared, a strong man, a keen
and quick man, a man with brains and skill and grit.

Pete heard him enter the Mill and run upstairs, and he knew that in
another moment Mac would know someone had been there, although old
Dutchy had done what he should not have done, and had left the Mill
to go to the other fire.  There was no time to lose.  He went
silently for the canoe, and found it, got into it, and worked his way
to the space under the Shingle Mill.  Now the light of the burning
house was bright upon the lip of the river, running on the first of
the ebb against a warm Chinook wind.

He heard Mac burst out into blasphemy.  He had found no Dutchy, but
cut hose instead.  And then old Dutchy came running.  He heard Mac
curse him.

"What did I tell you, you old fool?  Didn't I say look out lively
here!  That swine's about now, by God!  He's cut the hose, maybe
lighted the Mill already!"

"Ach, mein Gott, mein Gott," said Dutchy, "I haf not been afay von
minute."

"Oh, to hell," said Mac.

He found the capsized buckets and burst out again.  He spoke rapidly,
and Pete, as he clutched at a pile, caught but a word or two.

"Run--police--boat!"

He understood what this meant: if he didn't do it now, he would have
no time.  At the sound of old Dutchy's steps on the boards as he ran
overhead Pete struck a match and lighted dripping kerosene.  The
flame circled on a patch of board, and burnt blue and flickered,
drawing upward through a crack.  The Mill was fired!

"I fix heem," said Pete; "if they catch me I fix heem all the same."

He thrust his canoe for the open water and then stayed aghast.  It
seemed that the world was very light.  His lip fell a little.  And he
heard a voice speak overhead, a voice which was like a bow drawn at a
venture.

"I know you're about hyar, Pete," said Mac in a roar like that of a
wild beast.  "I know you're hyar!"

He didn't know, but his instincts and his knowledge told him the
truth.  Underneath him somewhere lay the incendiary.  In some dark
hole or corner the beast of fire was hidden.  Pete's heart stood
still and he knew what a fool he had been to meddle with aught on the
upper floor.

And he heard the light crackle of his new fire.

"Come out, you hound," cried Mac.  And then the flame caught the
sawdust carrier and Mac saw the creep of light under a crack and knew
the Mill was fired--fired irredeemably and beyond hope.  He pulled
his gun and shot down through the floor at a venture, and by a
wonderful chance the bullet cleared any beam and struck the water
close by Pete.  The Siwash let go and thrust the dug-out into the
stream.

And in the Mill the fire was like an explosion.  It ran along the
carriers and the ways of the belts and reached out into inaccessible
corners where lay the warm dust of years and grew up through a
thousand cracks like red-hot weeds at the breath of spring in a
tropic garden.

"Oh, my God," said Mac.  The breath of the fire choked him: he ran
back from it: it burst up about him: to escape he leapt over it, but
before he got to the great Chute the flame spurted from beneath the
Big Hoes and licked at the teeth of shining steel.  Then it played
about the Pony Saw and far off under the Bull-Wheel it grew up and
danced.  Then it went like a fiery creeper, like a red climbing rose,
and touched the dusty roof.  In the next moment the body of the Mill
was fire.  Mac went back, missed his footing and slipped headlong
down the chute, even as Pete had once fallen.  He rose with a shout
which was half a shriek, for he had dislocated his shoulder, and
folks running in the road to the lesser fire, turned to the greater
and saw the Mill ablaze.

And out in the river Pete was paddling hard.  But the lamp that he
had lighted was a very bright one, that made the river suddenly a
golden pool and shone afar off on the other side of the white roof of
the Big Cannery.  One man on the wharf saw him and called to Mac, who
came fast.

"By the Lord, that's Pete," said Mac, "that's Pete and my shoulder's
out.  Get a boat, boys, get a boat!  There's one under the wharf at
the other end.  Get a boat and go after him!"

But to go out on the river at midnight after a killer and an
incendiary from mere love of the law or even of hunting was beyond
those who heard the man from Michigan speak.

"Oh, hell, not me!  Tain't my funeral," they said.  And then Quin
came running to them.  He was white as the ashes of his house would
be on the morrow, but he saw what Mac and the others saw.  That must
be Pete on the river!

"He's got us, Sir, he's got us," said Mas.

Even in that moment Quin saw how he held his arm.

"You're hurt?"

"I fell down the chute, Sir, the fire almost caught me."

The flames roared now.  The inside of the Mill was a furnace.  Fire
played fantastic games on the high sloping roof.

"There's a boat----"

"I know," said Quin.

"These hoosiers ain't game," said Mac.

A bigger crowd of those who weren't game to tackle wild beasts
gathered round them.  Faces were white in the glow of the fire.

"At the house, Sir----"

"They're all right.  I'll go after him," said Quin.  He ran, and Mac
cried--

"Take my gun, Sir----"

But Quin did not hear him.  He ran round the end of the Mill and was
lost.

In another moment they saw him in the boat out upon the river.  Pete
went out of sight.  The crowd watched till Quin was out of sight, too.

"What's the bettin' we'll see either of em' again?" asked a man in
the crowd.

The odds were against it.


"I fix heem all right," said Pete.




XXIII

It was Jenny who first wakened in the house on the hill, for she
slept lightly as a young mother does.  And yet when she woke, sleep
was not wholly out of her eyes and mind, and it seemed to her that it
was morning, and that Sam, her good Sam, was up betimes in the
kitchen.  She heard the fine crackling, at first a mere crepitation,
of the crawling flame, and felt comfortable as one does at the notion
of the good creature fire, the greatest servant of man.  Deep in the
hearts of men lies the love of it, for fire has served them through
the innumerable generations of their rise from those who knew it not.
A million ancestors of each have sat by brave flames in dark
woodlands and have warmed themselves and found comfort in all the
storms of the open world.  For the house is the fire, the covering of
the fire, and the hearth is the great altar, where a daily sacrifice
is made to the gods.

She fell asleep again.

And then she smelt smoke and roused herself suddenly and saw a
strange light outside in the darkness.  The fire flickered like a
serpent's tongue, and she saw it, and her heart went cold.  For the
servant becomes a tyrant, and the god is oftentimes cruel to his
people.  She clutched the child, and with her other hand caught hold
of George.  She cried to him aloud, and even before he was awake he
stood upon the floor, knowing that some enemy was at hand.  And even
then the red enemy looked in at the window and there was the tinkle
of broken glass.

"Oh, this is Pete's work," he said.  But he said it not aloud.  "Get
up, girl.  Come, tenas," he cried.  He opened the door and found the
house full of smoke.  Below, he heard the work of the fire.  And the
outer wall below the window was one flame.

"This is Pete's work," he said.  And he said to himself--

"What of the Mill?"

Jenny clutched the baby to her bosom, and he slammed the door to.  It
was not the first time he had met fire and he understood it.  He
wetted a handkerchief and tied it over his own mouth.  There were
some who would have wondered at his swiftness, and the cool courage
of him in so threatening a fight.  He bound wet rags across the brave
lifted mouth of Jenny, and the child cried as he did the same for
him.  Then he caught her in his arms and rushed the stairs, and as he
ran he called aloud, "Sam, Sam!"

The smoke was pungent, acrid, suffocating, and the heat of the air
already cracked the skin.  Out of the smoke he saw licking tongues of
flame, flame curious and avid, searching, strenuous, alive.  One
tongue licked at him and he smelt, among all the other odours of the
fire, the smell of singed hair.  He heard the crying of the child,
its outraged mind working angrily.  Jenny whimpered a little.  Her
hand was steel about him.  He rushed an opaque veil of blinding
smoke, interpenetrated by lightnings, and bull-headed burst in Sam's
door.  He heard the boy cry out.  But they were saved, if it were not
that Pete stood outside to kill those whom he had driven from their
shelter.  That might be; Quin knew it.  And yet he could not go
first.  Sam caught his arm.

"Oh, oh, Mista Quin!" he cried, "oh, oh, velly dleadful, my much
aflaid."

Sam had pluck enough, as he had more than once shown when some white
young hoodlums of the town had small-ganged him.  But when fire is
the master many are not brave.

"Open the window," said Quin.  Outside to the ground was a drop of
twelve feet.  But the ground was hard.  Quin put Jenny down by the
window and got a blanket from the boy's bed.

"Out you go first, Sam," he said.

But Sam, though not "blave" and "velly much aflaid," knew it was the
right thing for the "Missus" to go first.

"Oh, no, Mista Quin, my no go first.  Missus she go and litty chilo.
My not too much aflaid."

He trembled like a leaf all the same.

"Get out of the window chop-chop," said Quin in a voice that Sam had
only heard once before when he had dared to be insolent.  He sprang
to the window, and, clutching the blanket that Quin held, he slid to
the ground.

"Now my catchee Missus," he said exultantly.  And with the fire
beneath the boards of the room, Quin had no choice.  He tied a quilt
round Jenny's waist and lowered her and the child till Sam could
touch her.  He let go, and sliding down the blanket, which he had
made fast to the frame of Sam's bed, he, too, reached the ground
safely.  And people came running up the hill.  Whether this was
Pete's work or not they were safe.  But their house was a torch, the
flames soared above the gambrel of the roof.

Jenny sat upon a rock, clad only in her nightgown, with the quilt
thrown about her shoulders.  Her home was burning and all their
beautiful things were destroyed.  She could not cry, but her heart
wept, and the child was her only comfort.  She knew well enough that
this was Pete's work, she felt it in her heart.

And a crowd gathered.  There were many from the City: those whose
work it is to put out fires, and some of the police.  There was a fat
saloon-keeper whom she knew by sight and the old boss of the Farmers'
Home.  With them were many Siwashes from Shack-Town: among them the
wedger-off who had replaced Pete.  She saw old Papp, the German from
"California," and Chihuahua, with his beady eyes flashing, and his
teeth all a-grin.  With him came his klootchman, Annawillee, the one
who always sang the song of the mournful one, also called Annawillee.
Then there were Chinamen in wide flapping pyjamas, old Wong, the wise
man, and Fan-tan and Sam Lung, and Quong.  They made a circle about
her and the fire, and chattered in Chinese, in Chinook, in Spanish,
for now Spanish Joe, the handsome man, came up and palavered with
Chihuahua.  She felt their eyes upon her.  She had "shem" that they
should see her, for she was not Quin's wife, and his child cried upon
her knees.  She hid her bare feet under the nightgown.  Sam stood by
her.  She saw Quin speak to the police, to the firemen.  Any help was
vain.  Then Long Mac ran up the hill, as light as a wapiti on his
feet.  He said but a word and ran back.  But it was a wise word,
though too late.

"Send someone down to the Mill, Quin.  If this is Pete, it won't
satisfy him.  I'll get a boat and go on the River."

"Do," said Quin.  "I'll see this through and be with you in a minute."

But the swift minutes passed, and before they gave up all hope
(though Quin never had hope) and before he could say what should be
done with Jenny, someone cried out suddenly--

"The Mill, the Mill!"

As if they had been turned on their heels by some strange machinery
the big crowd turned and saw a running light in the Mill.  It was as
if the crowd of workers danced with lamps: as if there were some
Chinese Feast of Lanterns in its dark floors.  Then the flickering,
dancing lights coalesced and they saw flames flow out, and flow down
and climb up.

"The Mill!" said Quin.

Bad enough to lose his house, his home, which now he loved, but to
lose the Mill was a thousand times worse.  The house was but a new
thing and the Mill was old.  Thousands of days he had watched the
work and heard its song: not a board of it, not a rafter, not a stud
or beam or scantling or shingle that wasn't his delight.  It was part
of himself, the thing wherewith he worked, the live muscles with
which he toiled: his spirit extended to it: he ran it with his steam,
with his belts, with his mind, his energy.

"Oh, my Mill!"

Barefoot as he was, being clad only in his shirt and trousers, he
leapt down the hill and never felt his wounded feet.  Jenny saw him
go, saw the crowd break and waver, saw it turn and flood the lower
hillside, moving down.  Their lighted faces turned from her, she saw
them run.

"Oh, Tchorch, oh, Tchorch!"

But George never heard her feeble cry in the torrent.  He had
forgotten her and the boy.

And when she could again see for her tears she was alone save for
Sam, her faithful Sam, and Annawillee and Indian Annie, the last to
climb the hill.  Even Chihuahua had gone and all the Chinamen.  She
saw Wong departing last of all.  The fire drew even the philosopher.
She heard Annie speak to her.

"Ho, tenas Jenny, toketie Jenny, dis your man, mesachie Pete.
Evelybody savvy Pete done um, Jenny.  Oh, what peety toketie house
mamook piah, all bu'n, all flame."

"Oho, hyu keely, hyu keely," moaned Annawillee, "pletty house mamook
piah.  Mamook nanitch you' papoosh, Jenny, let me see papoosh."

These were foul and filthy hags, and now Jenny knew it.  She cried
and Sam did not know what to do.

"Missus, you no cly," he said despairingly.  But still she cried, and
Annie sat down by her.

"Where Mista Quin klatawa?  Ha, Moola mamook piah all same yo'
toketie house, tenas.  Now you got halo house, you come mine, Jenny."

And Annawillee lifted the quilt from the baby and saw it.

"Hyu toketie papoosh, hyu toketie, ha, I love papoosh, Jenny's
papoosh."

"What I do, Sam?" moaned Jenny.  The Mill was in a roar of flames.
It lighted the town and the river and the white canneries across the
wide red flood.

"Oh, you come down to sto'e," said Sam.  Where else could she go but
to the store?  Why hadn't the big boss told him what to do?  For
everything outside the house Sam was as helpless as the very papoose.
He hated and loathed the Siwashes and their klootchmen.  They were
dreadful, uncleanly people.  It was his one great wonder in life that
"Missus" was a Siwash klootchman.

"You come down to sto'e," he said.

"You come my house, Jenny," said Annie, who thought if she gave Jenny
shelter she would get more dollars from Quin, who lately had refused
her anything.  "You come my house, tenas."

But Sam held her tight and helped her on the difficult path.  Her
feet were bare and so were his.  Neither Annie nor Annawillee had
mocassins on, the soles of their feet were as hard as horn.

They went down the hill slowly, and still the old hag said--

"You come my shack, tenas, bad for papoose to be out night."

Every stick and stone of the path was lighted for them.  Jenny's
heart was in ashes for the grief of "Tchorch," who so loved his Mill
and his house.  All her beautiful clothes were burnt.  Perhaps Pete
would kill him even now.

"Oh, where is Tchorch?" she cried as they came to the bottom of the
hill.  And the wavering crowd kept on saying where he was.

"The boss is on the river."

"Went in a boat, pardner----"

"Oh, but he was mad!  I wouldn't be the Siwash----"

"I don't hanker none to be Quin if Pete gets him.  Pete's a boy,
ain't he?  Solid ideas, by gosh----"

"See, there's the Planin' Mill goin' up the flume!"

"'Tis a mighty expensive fire, this.  Eh, what?"

"Licks me Moolas don't burn mor' off'n, pard!"

"Well, we're out of a job, tilikums."

The crowd moved and swayed and moaned.  They cried "Oh!" and "Ah!"
and "See!"  The Mill was hell.  Old Dutchy sat on a pile of sawed
lumber with his lighted lamp on his knees; the poor doddering fool
trimmed the wick and cried.  Jenny heard old Papp speak to him in
German.

"Sei ruhig, alte dummkopf."

And Papp went on in English.

"Dain'd your vault, old shap, iv so be Pete wanded to purn ze Mill,
he vould purn it all same.  If I had him I vould braig him lige a
sdick, so!"

There was no pity for the man who had spiked the logs.  They would
have hung him if they had had hold of him.  They would have thrown
him on the fire.  Then the front of the Mill fell out.  The crowd
surged backwards, and Jenny was near thrown down.  Old Papp fell
against Sam, and both went down.  Annie and Annawillee caught hold of
Jenny and her papoose, and dragged her to their shack.

"That all light, tenas.  You come.  I give you a dlink, tenas.  Here,
Annawillee, you hold papoosh."

She snatched the baby from Jenny's weakening arms and Annawillee ran
on ahead with him.

When Sam recovered his feet Jenny was gone.

"Oh, where my Missus, where my Missus?" roared Sam, blubbering.

"What's the infernal Chinaman kickin' up such a bobbery about?" asked
the scornful crowd.




XXIV

The canoe in which Pete had set out in his great adventure was both
heavy and cranky, and no one but a Siwash of the river or the Lakes
would have paddled it a mile without disaster.  But he had been bred
in the sturgeon-haunted water of Pitt River, and knew the ways of his
craft and could use the single-bladed paddle with the same skill that
he showed with the maul and wedges on a great sawlog.  Now as he left
the light of the fired Mill behind him he knew (or feared) that he
had not left his enemies behind him as well.  The whole of the Mill
would be his enemies.  That he was sure of: he remembered poor old
Skookum Charlie.  He understood the minds of those he had endangered
as well as the heart of such a man as Quin.  And if Quin himself had
escaped from the fire of the house he would be on the river!  That
Pete was sure of in his heart.  And his heart failed him even as he
swept outward on the first of the ebb, which ran fast, being now
reinforced by the waters of the big river fed by the melting snows of
a thousand miles of snow-clad hills.

This was, indeed, the nature of the man, as Long Mac knew it.  He was
capable of fierce resentment, capable of secret though unsubtle
revenge, but he was not capable of standing up like a man at the
stake of necessity; not his the blood of those nobler Indians of the
Plains who could endure all things at the last.  His blood was partly
water, of a truth, and now it melted within him.

"They catch me fo' su'e," said Pete.  His muscles weakened, his very
soul was feeble.  What a fool, a thrice-sodden fool, he had been to
cut the hose in the Mill.  But for that they might not have known he
had fired it.  But Long Mac knew, and perhaps Long Mac himself, who
had nerves and muscles of steel, was out after him in the night.  Oh,
rather even Quin than that man, whom Quin himself treated with a
courtesy he denied to all the others who worked for him.

But now the light of the Mill faded.  On both sides of the river were
heavy shadows: the great moving flood was but a mirror of darkness
and a few stars that flicked silver into the lip and lap of the
moving waters.  Pete knew the ebb and current ran fastest in the
middle of the stream, and yet to be out in the middle meant that he
would be seen easier, if indeed he was pursued.  He could not make up
his mind whether to chance this or not.  He sheered from the centre
to the banks and back again.  And every now and again it seemed to
him that it would be wisest to run ashore, turn his dugout loose and
take to the brush.  And yet he did not do it.  He was weak, now that
fear was in him, and the alcohol died out of him, and he felt renewed
pangs of hunger.  To wander in the thick brush would be fatal.  They
would renew their search on the morrow: every avenue of escape would
be guarded.  And hunger would so tame the little spirit he had within
him that he would give himself up.

"They hang me, they hang me," he said piteously, even as Ned Quin had
said it.  But there was none to help him.  The very men who had been
his brothers, his tilikums, would give him up now.

He cursed himself and Jenny and Quin and the memory of Skookum
Charlie.  He took the centre of the river at last and paddled hard.
It was his only chance.  If he could but get out to sea and then run
ashore somewhere in the Territory, among some of the Washington
Indians who knew nothing of him, he would be hard to find.  The very
thought of this helped him.  He might escape after all.

And then his ears told he was not to escape so easily.  He heard the
sound of oars in the rowlocks of a boat.  Or was it only the beating
of his own heart?  He could not locate the sound.  At one moment it
seemed to him that after all it was but someone further down the
river and then it seemed behind him.  If it were down stream it might
be only some stray salmon boat doing its poor best in a bad year.
Even they would say they had met him.  He ceased to row and sheered
across towards the darkest shadow of the bank.

And, as he sheered inwards, from behind the last bend of that very
bank there shot a boat which was inshore of him.  For Quin knew the
river below the City as Pete did not, and he had kept in the
strongest of the stream, which sometimes cut its deepest channel
close to the shore.  He was but a hundred yards from Pete when the
Sitcum Siwash saw him and knew it was Quin.

Here the great river below the Island, where North and South Arms
were one, was at its widest.  And by the way his enemy came Pete knew
that his hour had arrived.  Though he paddled for awhile in sheer
desperation he knew that his wretched heavy dug-out had no chance
against a light boat, driven by the strongest arms in the City,
perhaps the strongest in the whole country.  And Quin was an oarsman
and had loved the water always.  The wretched fugitive changed his
tune even as he strove in vain.

"He fix me, oh, he fix me----!"

Hot as he was with paddling, the cold sweat now ran down his brow and
cheeks.  He felt his heart fail within him: he felt his muscles fail.
Yet still he strove and kept a distance between himself and Quin that
only slowly lessened.  For now Quin himself slackened his pace.  He
was sure he had the man, and yet it needed coolness to secure him.

To Quin, Pete had become the very incarnation of the devil, and he
was wholly unconscious now that he had ever wronged him.  The fact
that he had stolen Jenny from him was but an old story.  And Pete had
brought it upon himself.  No one but Quin in the whole world could
have known (as Quin did know) that any kindness, any decency of
conduct, in Pete would have secured Jenny to him against the world
itself.  She was pure faithfulness and pure affection, and malleable
as wax in any warmth of heart.  But Pete had been even as his
fellows.  He should have wedded some creature of the dust like
Annawillee, to whom brutality was but her native mud.  And Jenny was
a strange blossom such as rarely grows in any tribe or race of men.

It was not of Jenny that Quin thought.  He forgot her very danger
that night and forgot his own.  He even forgot his child.  He
remembered nothing but the burnt Mill, nothing but the spiked logs.
Oh, but he "had it in" for Pete!

"He's burnt my Mill," said Quin.  In spite of any help the loss would
be heavy, but it was not the loss that Quin thought of: it was of the
Mill itself.  So fine a creature it was, so live, so quick, so
wonderful.  Rebuilt it might be, but it would no longer be the Mill
that he had made: that he had picked up a mere foundling, as a
derelict of the river, and turned to something so like a living thing
that he came to love it.  Now it was hot ashes, burning embers: the
wind played with it.  It was dead!

There was no sign of red fire behind them now, but the fire burnt
within Quin.  The fire was out in Pete.  He wished he had never seen
Jenny, never seen the Mill, never played the fire.  He went blind as
he paddled, ever and ever more feebly.  If Quin had called to him
then the Siwash would have given in: he would have said----

"All right, Mista Quin, I'm done!"

That was his nature: the nature of the Coast Indians, as Long Mac
knew it.  There wasn't in him or his tilikums, pure-blooded or
"breeds," the stuff to stand up against the bitter, hardy White, who
had taken their country and their women, and had made a new world
where they speared salmon, or each other.  He knew he had no chance.

But Quin never spoke, even when he was within twenty yards of his
prey.

The terror of the white man got hold of Pete, and the terror of his
silence maddened him anew.  There was not so much as a grunt out of
his pursuer.  Pete saw a machine coming after him.  It was not a man,
it was a thing that ran Indians down and drowned them.  So might a
steamer, a dread "piah-ship," run down the dug-out of some poor wild
Siwash in some unexplored creek.  Quin was not a man, or a white man,
he was the White Men: the very race.  There had always been a touch
of the wild race in Pete: an underlying hint of the wrath of those
who go under.  He had avenged himself, but it was still in vain.  The
last word was, it seemed, with the deadly thing behind him.

Of a sudden Pete howled.  It was a horrid cry: like the cry of a
solitary coyoté on a bluff in moonlight on a prairie of the South.
The very forests echoed with it, as they had echoed in dim ages past
with the war-whoops of other Indians.  It made Quin turn his head as
he rowed.  It was just in time, for with one sweep of his paddle Pete
had turned his canoe.  The next instant it ran alongside the boat,
and Pete with one desperate leap came on board with his bare knife in
his hand.  He fell upon his knees and scrambled to his feet as Quin,
loosing his oars, got to his.  The capsized dug-out floated side by
side with the boat.

"I fix you," said Pete.  Even in the darkness Quin could see the
white of his eye, the uplifted hand, the knife.  The boat swayed,
nearly went over, Pete struck and missed, staggered, threw out his
left arm and Quin caught it.  The next moment they were both in the
river, fighting desperately.

"I fix you," said Pete.  They both mouthed water and Quin got his
right wrist at last.  But not before a blow of Pete's had sliced his
ribs and cut a gash that stung like fire.

Both of the men could swim, but swimming was in vain.  Both were
strong, and now Pete's strength was as the strength of a madman who
chooses death in a very passion for the end of all things.  He seemed
as if made of fine steel, of whip-cord, of something resilient,
tense.  There was in him that elasticity which enables the great
quinnat to overcome the awful stream of the Fraser in its narrow
Cañon.  It was with difficulty, with deadly difficulty, that Quin
held the wrist that controlled the knife.  He knew that he must do
that even if he drowned.  It was his last thought, his last conscious
thought, just as Pete's last thought was to free himself and find
Quin's heart.

They sank, as they struggled, far below the surface of the flood.
Quin held his breath till it seemed that he would burst.  His lungs
were bursting with blood: his brain fainted for it.  He struggled to
preserve his power of choice, for it appeared better to be stabbed if
even so he could breathe.  But even as he fought he was aware in some
cool and dreadfully far-off cell of his brain that though he let go
he would not yet rise.  It was a question of who could last longest.
As he was drowning he remembered (and recalled how he had heard the
saying) that the other man was probably as bad.  He even grinned
horribly as he thought this.  Then he saw Jenny and the child.  The
vision passed and he saw the burning Mill.  He heard Mac speak, heard
the roar of the flames, and the murmur of the crowd.  Then he came to
the surface and knew where he was, knew that he was alive but at
handgrips with Death himself.  He sucked in air, filled his lungs and
rolled over, and went under once again.

When consciousness is past there is a long space of organized, of
purposed, instinctive struggle for life left in a man.  So it was
with Quin.  He knew not that he slipped both hands to Pete's right
wrist: he was unaware that when they once more rose Pete howled as
his wrist snapped.  Even Pete did not know it: he knew that he was a
fluid part of nature, suffering agony and yet finding sleep in agony,
sleep so exquisite that it was a recompense at last for all the woes
of the world.  And he was all the world himself, one with the river,
one with the night and the great darkness which comes in the end to
all.  Pete sighed deliciously and sank, and rose and sank again, into
the arms of one who was perhaps his mother, perhaps his dear Jenny
whom he now loved so tenderly.

And a blind creature, still unconscious, unknowing, hung on to Pete's
wrist.  That was what Quin thought.  But what he hung to was the
boat, capsized but still floating, which had gone down stream with
them.  He was in a cramp of agony: if he could have let go he would
have done so, but something not himself, as it seemed, made him hold
on.  He still fought with the dead man who rolled below him at the
bottom of the river.

Then he came back to the knowledge that he was at least alive.  Yet
at first he was not even sure of that.  He was only sure that he
suffered, without knowing what it was that suffered.  It seemed
monstrous that he should be in such agony, in all his limbs and body
and brain.  But he could not distinguish between them for a long time
after he was able to discern, with such curious eyes as an infant may
possess, the fact that there were lights in the dim sky.  That was
the first thing he named.

"Stars!" he said doubtfully.

And then he knew that there was such a creature as a man!  He gasped
and drew in air again and with it life and more far-off knowledge.
He remembered the Mill which was burnt in some ancient day, and
Jenny, long since dust, of course.  And then the past times marched
up to him: he knew they were the present, and that he had lost Pitt
River Pete in the river, and that he hung feebly to a capsized boat.
The rest of his knowledge of himself was like an awful flood: it was
overwhelming: it weakened him and made him cry.  Tears ran down his
face as he lifted his chin above the water.

And still he floated seaward.

A huge and totally insoluble problem oppressed him.  He was aware now
that water was not his element.  This dawned on him gradually.  At
first all his remembered feelings were connected with water.  He had,
it seemed, been born in it.  It was very natural to be floating in
it.  There was at least nothing to contradict its being natural.  But
now he felt for something with his feet, for he was conscious of
them.  What he wanted was land.  Men walked on land.  Houses, yes,
houses and Mills were built on land.

That was land over there!  It was a million miles off.  How did one
get so far?  To be sure, one swam!  He shook his head feebly.  One
couldn't swim, one would have to let go the boat!  He forgot all
about the land far a very long time.  When he remembered it again
with a start it was much nearer, very much nearer.  He saw individual
trees, knew they were trees.  Branches held out their arms to him.
Though swimming, was impossible it was no longer wholly ridiculous.
He remembered doing it himself.  He even remembered learning
swimming.  He had won a race as a boy in Vermont.

"To be sure," said Quin.  The current swept him closer in shore.
Something touched his feet.  He drew them up sharply and shuddered.
Pete was down there somewhere.  Oh, yes, but he was dead!  Dead men
were disagreeable, especially when they had been drowned and not
recovered for days in hot weather.  He touched bottom again.  It was
very muddy.  It was easy to get stuck in mud.  One could drown in it.

"Why, I may be drowned yet," said Quin.  It was very surprising to
think of!

"No, I won't be drowned," said Quin.  "I'll hang on to this boat.
Why not?"

Nevertheless the water was cold.  It came down from the mountains,
from much further off than Caribou and from the Eagle Range.  There
was snow there.

"I am cold," said Quin.  "I ought to get ashore."

The boat itself touched a mud-bank.  Quin felt bottom again and just
as he was deciding to let go the boat swung off.  Quin cried and was
very angry.

"I'll do it next time," said Quin.  But he didn't.  He was afraid to
let go.  And yet the shore was very close.  Once more the boat
touched and his feet were quite firm in the mud.  But there was a
bottom six inches down.  He thought he prayed to something, to God
perhaps, and then he saw the boat swing away from him.  He was quite
alone and very solitary.  To lose the boat was like losing one's
home.  He staggered and fell flailing and found bottom with his
hands.  He hung to the very earth, but was dizzy.  He waited quite a
while to be sure of himself and then scrambled with infinite and most
appalling labour to the shore.  His limbs were as heavy as death, as
lead.  He dragged them after him.  He ached.

But at last he came out on the land.

It was earth: he had got there.  Was there ever in all human
experience such a pleasant spot to lie down on, to sleep in?  He just
knew there wasn't.  He forgot he was wet, that he was cold, that Pete
was dead, that he was alive, and he went on his knees and scrabbled
like a tired beast at the ground.  And then he went to sleep, holding
himself with his arms and making strange comfortable little noises.

Sleep rolled over him like a river.  Artillery would not have
awakened him, nor thunder, nor the curious hands of friends or the
hostile claws of creatures of prey.

And within a few minutes of his going to sleep other boats came down
the river and passed him.

They picked up the capsized boat.

"Quin's dead then," they told each other.

It was quite possible Quin's body believed that, too.  But his warm
mind knew better, of course.  He had got earth under him, and he
warmed it.




XXV

"Oh, oho, the toketie papoosh: I love the papoosh, Jenny's papoosh,"
said Annawillee, as she held the baby.  The shack was lighted by the
burning Mill rather than by the stinking slush lamp on the foul
table.  Jenny cried for her baby, but Annawillee was after all a
woman and loved children in her own way.  For years she hadn't
handled one.  Her only child had died.  Its father was not Chihuahua.

"Oh, give him me, Annawillee," said Jenny.  He was George's child,
and now she knew that "Tchorch" was out on the great lonely river,
hunting unhappy Pete.  Men said they would never come back.  Her soul
was burning even as the Mill burnt.  "Tchorch" loved her and yet had
forgotten her.

"Give him to me."

But Annawillee sat on the floor and sang about the papoosh, a song of
a poor Klootchman deserted by her man and left with her child:

  "Oh, nika tenas
  Hyas nika klahowyam,
  Hyu keely,
  Konaway sun,
  Nika tenas.

  "Ah, my little one,
  Sad am I----
  I mourn and weep,
  Ah, still must cry,
  Ah, my little one, every day!"


Annie screamed at her.

"Pelton Annawillee, halo mamook Jenny keely, make her not mournful,
pelton, oh, fool!"

"I love papoosh," said Annawillee.  She burst into tears.

"Take heem, Jenny, take yo' papoosh.  Mine mimaloose, is dead."

Jenny took the baby to her bosom, and sat down desolately on the edge
of Annie's bed.  Her body shivered at the foulness of things, even as
her soul shivered for fear about George.  An hour ago she had been
happy, happy, happy!  Now----

"Oh, God," she prayed.  But she could not weep.

"Jenny, you have dlink, you tak' one dlink, tenas toketie?" said
Annie.  What else was there but "dlink" for misery, for the loss of a
home, for the loss of her man?

But Jenny shook her head.

"I got one," said Annie.  For she remembered she had not finished the
bottle before she went to sleep by the fire.  She hunted for the
bottle and found it.  It was empty!

"Some dam' tief stealum," screamed Annie.  Who could it have been but
Annawillee?

"I never takum," yelled Annawillee when the old hag got her by the
hair and tugged at it.  "You old beast, leggo me.  I never tak' um."

Jenny cried out to Annie.  It was awful to see this in her agony of
grief.

"I get mo'," said Annie.  "I got dolla.  I find Chihuahua, he buy
bottle whisky!"

She went out.  Annawillee wrung her hair into a horrid coil and
knotted it clumsily at the back of her neck.  She cried about her
dead papoosh.  The tears ran down her dirty face.

Outside the hum and murmur of the crowd still endured.  Every now and
again there was a crash, as some of the great Mill fell in.  Piles of
lumber caught: they roared to the skies in wavering columns.  The
crowd laughed and moaned and roared and was silent, as the sea beach
is silent between great breakers.

And George was on the river hunting Pete!  Jenny clutched her baby to
her bosom.  Annawillee went on crying.  Then the door opened and
Annie came back.

"I send Chihuahua.  He get dlink.  Dlink velly good for you, Jenny.
By-by Shautch Quin come back and say I good to you, and he be good to
poor old Annie, who get you for heem, tenas!"

But Jenny only heard her words as part of the sounds of the night.
If George did not come back!  She moaned dreadfully, and shivered in
spite of the heat of the great fire, which made itself felt even in
the shack.

"Tchorch, Tchorch!"

She felt him in her arms, as she had held to him when he bore her
through the fire.  He was a man, a real man.  She saw poor Ned, who
wasn't one.  She saw Mary.  But Mary had no child.  Poor Mary and
poor Annawillee!

The door opened and Chihuahua came in with a bottle.

"You dam' thief, you open um and dlink," said Annie furiously.
Chihuahua laughed.

"Hey, hermosa Annie, why you tink I no do dat?"

He was half drunk already.  He saw Jenny.

"Hallo, Jenny, peretty Jenny!  Peretty womans make mischief.  All for
dis Pete burn the Moola, and we all out of jhob!"

That was true enough, and Jenny knew it.  But Chihuahua was a beast.
He came over to her and put his arm about her waist and hugged her.

"I love you, peretty," he whispered; "if de boss no come back, I kick
Annawillee out and have you for klootchman!"

It was as if he had struck her down and dragged her in the mud.  She
turned cold with horror.  Oh, if George didn't come back what would
she do: what would she do?

"I love you, peretty Jenny!" said the hot breath of the beast.  And
Annawillee mourned upon the floor, but heard not.  Annie took a drink.

"Now, toketie, my own tenas Jenny, you have dlink," said Annie.  She
spoke in Chinook, and Jenny answered in it.  It was the first time
she had used the Jargon since she went to George.

"Nika halo tikegh, I no want it," said Jenny.

"You have it, pelton," said Annie.  "What for, kahta you so fool?
Him velly good whisky."

"Take it, Jenny," said the hot breath in her ear.

"I won't," said Jenny.  She knew all it meant now.  Again Chihuahua
put his arm about her.  She wrenched herself away from him and
Annawillee saw what her man was doing, and scrambled to her feet.

"Oh, you dam' man you do dat," she screamed jealously, forgetting her
dead child and its dead father.

"You s'ut up, dry up," said Chihuahua, "or I keek you, Annawillee."

He took the bottle from Annie and drank.

"I lov' Jenny, toketie Jenny; Jenny mia hermosa muchacha, and she
lov' me."

He caught at her again, and Annawillee came at him with her claws.
He knocked her down, and she lay where she fell.  Annie screamed at
him.

"You no do dat, Chihuahua.  You leave Jenny alone, man.  When Shautch
Quin come back he keel you----"

Chihuahua grinned.

"He no come back no more.  Pete fix him on the river, I sure of dat,
Annie.  Jenny she be my klootchman, eh, Jenny!"

Jenny was as white as death.  She had lived for more than a year with
George and this was hell for her.  And if George didn't come back!
Chihuahua came staggering to her.  She caught the empty bottle by the
neck and stared at him with blazing eyes.  He stopped.

"You peretty devil!" said Chihuahua.  "I lik' kees you all same,
Jenny."

"I'll keel you," she whispered.  There was murder in her eyes, and
drunk as he was he knew it.  And Annie had picked up a burnt bar of
iron that served her as a poker.  Chihuahua quailed before them.

"I on'y jhoke," he said.  "My klootchman she Annawillee, very good
woman, Annawillee.  You geeve me one mo' dolla I get mo' whisky,
Annie."

But all Annie had to give him was the iron bar.

"You bad man, you beas', you go!"

And Chihuahua whitened, as he had done more than once before when
Annie got mad.  He went out like a lamb, and Jenny sat down on the
bed, and sobbed for the first time as if her heart would break.

And the fire still burnt, but without great flames.  Some of the
crowd went home.  It was past two o'clock and soon would be dawn.

"You no tak' my man, Jenny?" moaned Annawillee.

"No, no, no," said Jenny.

"Chihuahua him a beas' to me," said Annawillee.  "I hat' heem, but I
hav' no other man now and I no more a pretty klootchman.  What I do
if he tak' other klootchman?"

"I rather die, Annawillee," said Jenny.

"Him no so velly bad," said Annawillee, "but easy for young and
toketie gal lik' you fin' nodder man."

She murmured, snuffling, a song that the Siwash women often sing:

  "Kultus kopet nika,
  Spose mika mahsh nika,
  Hyu tenas men koolie kopa town,
  Alkie wekt nika iskum,
  Wake kul kopa nika."

  "'Tis naught to me,
    If you act so,
  For I can see,
    Young men who go
  About the town, and when I can
  I soon will take another man."


"You soon fin' a man, you," said Annawillee.  "All men say you
toketie.  S'pose Shautch Quin mimaloose any man tak' you, Jenny."

"Dat so," said Annie soothingly.  "I fin' you Shautch, Jenny, and I
queek fin' other one, my pretty Jenny!"

And Jenny's heart was cold within her.  For her child's sake
perhaps----

And then there came a knock at the door, and her heart leapt again
like a babe.  Annie opened the door, and outside stood Sam.

"My Missus here, oh, where my Missus?" he cried dolorously.  "My
loosee my Missus in the clowd!"

Jenny cried out to him.

"Oh, Sam, Sam!"

He had always been good and kind and was clean and bright.

"Oh, Missus here, my heap glad, Missus.  What for Missus stay inside
house like t'is, no good for Missus, no clean, bah!"

She cried out for George, and Sam shook his head mournfully.

"Boss no come back, Missus, Moola-man say Boss low boat in liver,
looksee t'at tief makee fy in Moola and house.  Bymby boss catchee.
You come, Missus."

But Annie had no mind to let her go.

"Dam' Shinaman, klatawa, you go.  Jenny she stay wit' Annie."

She stood in the doorway, and Jenny was behind her.  Annawillee went
on with her song.  "Soon Jenny get another man.  That easy for Jenny!"

"Oh, where I go, Sam?"

"My tinkee you go Wong's, Missus.  Him velly good man, house heap
clean."

"She no go dam' Shinaman," roared Annie.

"I will go," said Jenny.

But Annie slammed the door in Sam's face.  The boy was furious.

"All light, Missus!  One Moola-man, him Long Mac, wantshee you.  My
tellee Wong and him.  Bymby my comee back.  Yah, old cow-woman,
Annie!"

He ran to Wong's shack and told the old man he had found the
"Missus."  By the time they came again to Annie's, Chihuahua and
Spanish Joe had gone there and, being more drunk than ever, Chihuahua
had burst the door in.  Joe tackled Annie and took the iron bar from
her.  She screamed like a wild-cat in a trap.  Both the men went for
Jenny, who stood in the corner and shrieked for George and Sam.

"'Ole your tongue, peretty one," said handsome Joe.  "I always lov'
you; now you be my woman----"

Chihuahua trampled over Annie to get to Jenny.

"She mine, Joe, she mine!"

Joe turned on Chihuahua with a very evil smile, and spoke to him in
Spanish.

"I take her, see, Chihuahua!"

Outside, Wong knocked at the door.  Perhaps he was not a very brave
man.  It is not wise to be very brave in an alien country, but he
owed a good deal to George Quin and liked him.  Sam stood behind him
wringing his hands and crying out, "Missus, Missus!"

Joe had her round the waist.  Annawillee screamed and held to
Chihuahua's legs.  He kicked her hard, and panted furiously at Joe.

"You say you help me, Joe!"

"I help myself, you fool," said Joe.  Chihuahua had been a mat for
him to wipe his feet on for years.  "I wait for her; now I have her."

Chihuahua kicked Annawillee again and got free.  Annie got up and ran
to their end of the room.  She caught Joe by the arm: he sent her
headlong and she fell against the table.  It went over and the lamp
fell on the floor.  The only light in the room came from the live
embers of the great dead Mill.

And suddenly Jenny felt Joe loose her.  He made an awful sound, which
was not a cry, and something hot and warm gushed upon her bosom.  She
saw him stagger, saw his arms go up in the air, and heard a growl
from Chihuahua.

"Fool," said the Mexican.  He had sliced Joe's throat right open and
cut his voice and his cry asunder.  The Castilian reeled again and
fell, and then the door was burst open.  Long Mac stood in the
opening.

"Jenny, my girl," he cried; But Jenny did not answer.  She lay
insensible on the bed: she was dyed crimson.  Her child screamed, but
she heard nothing.

"Long Mac!" said Chihuahua.  He feared him always, and now feared all
men.

"Jenny here," he said in a quavering voice.  And Mac strode in.  He
stepped across Joe and found Jenny and her child.  He took them in
his arms, though he ached dreadfully in his set shoulder, and carried
them out.

"Missus, oh, Missus," said Sam.  Chihuahua crept out after them and
then ran into the shadows, casting away his stained knife.
Annawillee had lost her man, and the police found him the next day.
A poor fool of a white woman in the City shrieked about the dead
Castilian.  No one but that poor fool was sorry.




XXVI

Mac carried Jenny into Wong's shack, and laid her on the bed.  Though
the house smelt of China and of opium it was clean as fresh sawdust.
They washed the blood from her and the child, while Sam cried,
fearing she was hurt.  And she came back to consciousness.  Mac was
very solemn.

"Where the boss, you tink?" asked Wong.

The men who had followed George Quin down the river were home again
by now.  They brought back with them the empty boat.

"I reckon he's dead," answered Mac.  Sam cried, for he was "heap
solly."  Quin had been a good boss to him and there are many Chinamen
who understand that after all, whatever we may say about them.

"Oh, the Missus, the Missus," said Sam.  He sat down and sobbed.
Jenny opened her eyes and saw old Wong, with a million wrinkles on
his kindly face, inscrutable in every feature.

"Tchorch," she murmured.  The tears came to Mac's eyes, though he was
hard to move and knew much of the bitterness of life.

Wong's face was like that of some carved god who sits in the peace
which is undisturbed by human prayer.  And yet his hands were kind
and his voice gentle.  He murmured to himself in his own tongue.

"Where is Tchorch?" asked Jenny.  Now she saw Long Mac, whom Quin
trusted.  She appealed to the strong man.

"He has not returned, ma'am," said Mac.  She was no longer a little
Siwash klootchman to him, but a bereaved woman.

She looked at him long and steadfastly, and read his face.  She was
an Indian, after all, and could endure much.

"My baby," she said.  Sam had the boy.  He gave it her.  She murmured
something to the fatherless, and lay back with him in her arms, She
motioned to Mac and he came nearer.

"Is Tchorch dead, Mister Maclan?"

She could not speak his name.

"I'm afraid so, ma'am," he answered.

"Have they found him?"

"Only the empty boat."

Then no one spoke.  She turned her head away, Outside the dawn came
up and looked down on ashes.  In the distance they heard Annawillee
mourning.  She sat in the road with dust upon her head, like an
Indian widow.

"I loved Tchorch," said Jenny.  Then she rose in the bed and shrieked
awfully.

"I want Tchorch, I want Tchorch!"

She was like steel under the powerful hands of the man who sat by her.

"Oh, ma'am," said Mac.  He said--"I've lost many."

The tears ran down his face.  Sam was like a reed shaken by the wind.
Old Wong stood by the window and stared across the river, now open to
the view, since the Mill was gone.

"My poor girl!"

She held his hand now as if it was life itself.  And yet it might
have been as if he were Death.

"He was so good," she said.

It wasn't what many would have said.  But Mac understood: for he had
lost many, and some said that he, too, was a hard man.

She lay back again.  Wong still stood by the window without moving.
He, too, had lost one he loved; she, who was to have brought him
children who would have honoured his ashes and his ancestral spirit,
was dead in child-birth far away across the long, long paths of ocean.

But now he looked across the river as the dawn shone upon its silver
flood.  Perhaps he looked at something.  It seemed so to Sam, who
rose and went to him.  The old man spoke to him very quietly.  They
both went outside.

"Tchorch is dead," said Jenny.

But Tchorch was not dead.  Something spoke of hope to Mac, something
he didn't understand.  Perhaps the wise old Wong could have explained
it.  He and Sam stood by the wharf and looked across the river to the
further bank.  His eyes were strong, they were the eyes of an old man
who can see far.  Now he saw something on the other bank, something
moving in the half darkness of the dawn.  As the day grew, even Sam
saw that a man came stumbling along the bank of the shore.  Who was
it?

"Oh, even yet he may not be dead, Jenny," said Mac.  It was as if
some dawn grew in him because the dawn grew in the East: some hope
within him because there was hope in the heart of a poor serving boy
and a wise old man.  She clutched his hand.

"Tchorch was very strong," she said.

And Sam came walking to the door.

"Wong wantchee see you, Sir," he said.  He came in without raising
his eyes.  Mac pressed Jenny's hand and went out.

"Oh, Missus," said Sam.

His heart was full.

Though the river was wide the day was now bright.  A strong man's
voice might reach across it in a windless time.  But strong men may
be weak, if they have struggled.

Wong stood still as Mac came up to him.  Though he could see so well
he was a little deaf.

"What is it, Wong?" asked Mac.  Even as he spoke it seemed to him
that he heard a faint far-off call.

"My tinkee t'at Mista Quin," said Wong as he pointed across the
river.  He spoke as quietly as if he had said that he thought he
could see the rosy cone of Mount Baker shining in the rising sun.

"You think--oh, hell!" said Mac.

He smote Wong on the shoulder and the old man turned to him.  There
was something like a smile upon his face at last.

"Ta't the boss fo' su'," he said; "my can see."

Mac ran a little way up-stream, past the burnt wharves, and came to
one where there was a boat.  He thrust it down the shore into the
water and forgot his aching shoulder, bad as it was.

"Oh, poor Jenny, poor Jenny!" he said.  He heard the call again.

"That's Quin's call.  By the Holy Mackinaw that's him," said Mac.
Now that he knew, the ache came back to him.  He pulled in one oar
and sculled the boat from the stern with the other.

And George Quin sat down on the edge of the water and waited.

"If he says 'How's Jenny?' first of all, I'll recken he's worth the
little klootchman," said Mac.  He saw Quin rise up and stand waiting.
He was torn to rags and still soaking, but his face was strong and
calm.

"That you, Quin?" asked Mac.

"That's me," said Quin.  Then he spoke aright.

"How's Jenny, old man?"

"All hunkey," said Mac.  "But we tho't you was mimaloose."

"Pete is," said Quin.  He climbed into the boat stiffly.  His wound
smarted bitterly, but he said nothing of it.

"You must have had a close call, Quin."

"Tol'rable," said Quin.  "Where's the little woman?"

"Old Wong's lookin' after her.  'Twas him spotted you over here."

"Wong's all right," said Quin.  "'Tis a clean sweep of the old Moola,
Mac."

"That's what," said Mac.  They came to the shore.  When they were
both on dry land Mac held out his hand.

"Shake," he said.

They "shook," and walked up to the road.

"You and the little gal kin hev my house till you've time to look
araound," said Mac.  "It's not dandy, but I reckon you can make out
in it."

Quin nodded.

"Right," he said.  He stood still for a minute and looked at the open
space where the Mill had been.

"You and me and the boys will build the old Moola up again, Mac,"
said Quin.

"Oh, I reckon," said Mac.

And Quin went across the road to Shack-Town and came to Wong's.  The
old man saluted him gravely.

"You're all right," said Quin.  What more could any man say?

He heard a cry inside the shack, and Sam came out with the papoose in
his arms.

"Oh, Mista Quin, my heap glad you not dead, my heap glad!"

"You damn fool," said Quin with a smile.  He went in and found Jenny.

"Tchorch!" she said.

"Jenny, my girl!"

He held her in his arms and she laid her head upon his heart.

"Tchorch!" she murmured.

"Oh, but you've had a time," said George.

"I jhoost want Tchorch," said Jenny.



THE END



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