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“Steve’s letting her go,” said the surveyor, who came out from the car. “Got to rush her through for the side-track ahead of the west-bound mail. Say, the light is growing; stay just where you are, for presently there’ll be unrolled the most gorgeous panorama that ever delighted a sinful mortal’s eye, and you’ll see the first of what some day is going to be of all lands on this wide green earth the greatest country.”
I looked up, and already the mist was rolling back like a curtain from the great slopes of rock above, sliding in smoky wreaths across the climbing pines, while as the brightness increased we could see the torrent, whose voice now almost drowned the clash of couplings and the clamor of wheels, frothing green and white-streaked among mighty boulders in the gorge below. Then as we swung giddily over a gossamer-like timber bridge, the walls of quartz and blue grit fell back on either hand; and, for the first time, I gazed in rapt silence upon the cold unsullied whiteness of eternal snow, undefiled from the beginning by any foot of man. It stretched in a glimmering saw-edge high above us athwart the brightening east, and, below, smooth-scarped slopes of rock polished to a steely luster by endless ages of grinding ice, slid down two, or it may have been four, thousand feet, to the stately pines on the hillsides below.
There were peaks like castles, spires like the fretted stonework of Indian minarets, wrought by the hand of nature out of an awful cold purity, and mountains which resembled nothing I had ever seen or dreamed of, banded white with broken edges of green by winding glaciers; while sombered forests, every trunk in which the surveyor said exceeded two hundred feet in height, were wrapped about their knees. It was a scene of plutonic grandeur, weirdly impressive under the first of the light, with a stamp upon it of unearthly glory, and we drew in our breath when a great peak behind us glowed for a moment rosy red and then faded into saffron, just before a long shaft of radiance turned the whiteness on its shoulders into incandescence.
“What do you think of that, Lee?” Harry asked.
The old man, staring about him with a great wonder in his eyes, answered, with half-coherent solemnity: “It’s the Almighty’s handiwork made manifest;” and as we swept across a trestle and the trembling timber flung back the vibratory din, I caught the disjointed phrases, “The framing of the everlastin’ hills; a sign an’ a token while the earth shall last – an’ there are many who will not see it.”
“Just so,” said the surveyor, smiling across at me. “Now, I’m a mechanic, and look at it in a practical way. To me it’s a tremendous display of power, which is irresistible, even though it works mighty slowly. Sun, wind, and frost, all doing their share in rubbing out broad valleys and wearing down the hills, and, with the débris, the rivers are spreading new lands for wheat and fruit west into the sea. ‘Wild nature run riot, chaotic desolation!’ it says in the guide. No, sir; this is a great scheme, and I guess there’s neither waste nor riot. Well, that is not our business; it’s our part to make a way to take out ore and produce, and bring in men – this is going to be an almighty great country. Timber for half the world, gold and silver, iron, lead, coal, and copper, rivers to give you power for nothing wherever you like to tap one with a dynamo, and a coast that’s punctuated with ready-made harbors! All we want is men and railroads, and we mean to get them. I figure that if sometime our children – I’m thankful I’ve got none – move the greatest Empire’s center West, they’ll leave Montreal and Ottawa rusting, and locate it here between the Rockies and the sea. But I guess I’m talking nonsense, and there’s a little in the flask – here’s to the New Westminster, and blank all annexationists!”
Harry nodded as he passed the flask on to me, while Lee groaned deprecatingly, and then, brushing the gray hair back from his forehead with thin crooked fingers, said: “An’ by then there’ll be no more cold homes and hunger for the poor in England. It’s coming, the time we’ve been waiting, starving, and some of us praying for so long, an’ if they get their own by law, or take it tramplin’ through the blood of the oppressor, they’ll live and speak free Englishmen, spread out on all the good lands the Almighty intended for them.”
I did not answer, though Harry said aside that he did not know the whole earth was made for Englishmen. There was occasionally much in what Lee said that commanded sympathy, but he had a habit of relapsing into vague prophetic utterance, which was perhaps acquired when he ran the Stoney Clough chapel. Still, as hour by hour we went clattering through solemn forests almost untouched by the axe, or rending apart the silence that hung over great lonely lakes, and past wide rivers, while the whole air was filled with the fragrance of pines and cedars, I wondered whether either his or the surveyor’s forecast would come true, and decided if that were so England would have cause to be proud of this rich country. For the rest, Harry and I never found our interest slacken, and looked on in silence as that most gorgeous panorama of snow-peak, forest, and glacier unwound itself league after league before us, until at last amid a grinding of brakes the long freight train ran onto a side track. She was only just in time, for with the ballast trembling beneath, and red cinders flying from the funnel of the mammoth mountain engine ahead, the Atlantic mail went by. Then, as we stepped down on the track the same thought was evidently uppermost in each of us, for Harry said:
“Ralph, this land approaches one’s wildest fancies of a terrestrial paradise, and if in spite of our efforts we fail at Fairmead it’s comforting to think we can always bring up here. If I had the choice I’d like to be buried in the heart of those forests. What do you say, Johnston?”
Johnston smiled a little, but his tone was not the usual one as he answered: “I think I shall. You’ll say it sounds like old woman’s talk, but I fancy I’ll never recross those Rockies. Anyway, it won’t worry the rest of humanity very much if I don’t, and I dare say we’ll get some small excitement track-grading in the meantime. This country doesn’t lay itself out to favor railroad building, especially in winter.”
CHAPTER XIII
ADVOCATES OF TEMPERANCE
It was a month later, and we had settled down to our new task, when Lee, who had managed to make himself generally useful, took a wholly unexpected step. Our camp stood beside the partly completed track, which after climbing through the passes wound along the edge of a precipice into a bowl-shaped hollow among the mountains. High above it on the one hand the hillsides sloped up toward the snow, which now crept lower to meet them every day. It was strewn with massy boulders and bare outcrops of rock, while the pines which managed to find a foothold here and there glittered with frost crystals every morning. Below, a wide blue lake filled half the hollow, and shingled roofs peeped out among the cedars that spread their rigid branches over its placid waters, while the roar of a frothing torrent rose hoarsely from the forest behind. Beyond this, and walled off by stupendous mountains from the outer world, lay an auriferous region, and a wooden town whose inhabitants had long struggled for an existence, hampered by the cost of bringing in stores and machinery by pack-horse train.
Railroad-building in such a land is an arduous task, needing a bold conception and a reckless execution, while no line is ever driven that is not partly paid for with the adventurous legion’s blood. Our share, however, was one of the safest, for it consisted in hewing logs out of the forest for framing the spidery trestles and snow-sheds, hauling sawn lumber into position, and doing general teamster’s work. Risks there were of course – the rush of a charging boulder, or a sudden descent of shale, while occasionally a partly grubbed out trunk came thundering down before it was expected to. Comparatively few trained mechanics could be found among all the men about us, and, as usual, the hardest part of the struggle devolved upon the reckless free-lances – sailor-men deserters, unfortunate prospectors, forest ranchers whose possessions were mortgaged to the hilt, and others of the kind, who are always to the front when at the risk of life and limb a new way for civilization is hewn through the forests of the Pacific Slope.
One morning, when I rested my team a few moments, talking to Harry and the surveyor after hauling a heavy log, Johnston came up chuckling, with a strip of cedar bark on which a notice was written.
“We have an ardent reformer among our ranks, and, everything considered, I admire his pluck,” he said. “You’ll notice you’re all invited if you listen to this – ‘A temperance meeting will be held outside the Magnolia saloon to-night, when Fanny Marvin and Adam Lee will turn the flash-light upon the evils of drink and gamblin’. Every sensible man is requested to step along.’”
“I thought there was something brewing,” said Harry. “Lee has lately foregathered with certain sober-faced individuals from Ontario, and they’ve been plotting mysteriously. Well, I suppose there will be trouble over it; but who is this Marvin?”
“She’s a rising religious reformer who has taken several towns on Puget Sound by storm,” said the surveyor, “and it has cost somebody considerable to bring her here. That protégé of yours is clearly a crank, but he’s also more of a man than he looks, and, if it can be done unofficially, I’m inclined to back him. No, I’m not a teetotaler, and as a rule we’re a sober people in Western Canada, but they’re a tolerably hard crowd down at Cedar, and if once the man who runs the Magnolia takes hold with his tables we’ll have chaos in this camp. I’m not prejudiced, but if they must have excitement I’d sooner see the boys whooping round a temperance meeting than a gaming bank.”
“Are you going, Ralph?” asked Harry. “I’m not altogether fond of the man, but in a measure we are responsible for him.”
I did not answer at first as I looked down upon the roofs of Cedar Crossing. The old trail, which would be useless presently, came winding down through the passes into it, and I knew that while the average British Columbian is a sturdy law-abiding citizen, a love of excitement characterizes the miner, and after being driven out of the central town site by an energetic reform committee, a few adventurers of both sexes and indifferent morals had foregathered at Cedar Crossing, with the Magnolia saloon as headquarters.
Then I said, “Yes, I’m going”; and, as he departed, the surveyor observed dryly:
“I’d take along a few picked men with axes. They might come in handy.”
Bright starlight shone coldly on the dim white peaks when Harry and I stumbled among the boulders by Cedar Lake, in whose clear depths it lay reflected with a silvery glitter. But it was warm down in the valley, and the drowsy breath of cedars filled the air, until a reek of kerosene replaced it, and presently a ruddy glare broke out among the giant trunks. When we halted under the blinking torches and two petroleum cressets outside the Magnolia, it seemed as if all the staff of the railroad had gathered there.
“They’re both here,” said Harry, and I saw Lee standing beside a slender figure in unbecoming dress among a group of men in blue shirts and quaintly mended jackets; also that some planks had been laid across two barrels close by.
“Don’t crowd upon the lady!” said a voice. “Order! the circus is going to begin; we’re only waiting for the chairman. What’s that? Ain’t got no such luxuries; well, he can take the barrel.”
After this, to our astonishment, Johnston, neatly attired, stood aloft upon an overturned barrel.
“I’m glad to see so many of you, boys,” he said. “Now I’m not a teetotaler myself, and this is the first time I’ve occupied such a platform; but we’re all open to conviction, and I want you to remember we’ve a lady here who has traveled three hundred miles to talk to you. All we ask is that you will give her and the old man a fair show.”
He had struck the right note, for the British Columbian is a somewhat chivalrous person, and there was silence, through which the jingle of a piano in the saloon broke irritatingly, until Lee stood up.
“I’m a sinful man like the rest of you,” he began in the more formal English and high-pitched inflection I knew so well, though the effect was diminished because some one broke in with assumed wonder, “You don’t say?”
“I’ve the same passions in me,” continued the orator, unheeding, “and once I came near murder, while for six long years I was a sodden slave to this awful drink.”
“Only awful when it’s bad!” another voice said; and there was a cry, “He’s getting ahead nicely! ’Rah for the next President! Give him a show!”
“Sodden mind and body!” repeated Lee; “a-groveling on hands and knees in the pit of iniquity, and when I came out it left me what you see – a broken man who, if he’d saved his soul, was too late to save his body. That’s what you’ll remember – no one can wallow without paying for it, and you’re strong men who were meant for better. It’s all in the choice you make – health, happiness, prosperity – a jump down a precipice into eternity, or dying half-rotten in a Vancouver hospital.”
“The old thing, but he’s taking hold,” said Harry when the speaker paused a moment, and then a glow of light beat out while a tall figure stood in the doorway of the saloon. The man’s face was scornful beneath the costly wide-brimmed hat; he wore a spotless white shirt instead of a blue one, while – and this was an unusual sight – a heavy revolver was strapped about his waist, and neatly polished boots reached to his knees. This I knew was Hemlock Jim, of evil repute, who had set up a gaming table, and was supposed to have purchased an interest in the Magnolia.
“Won’t you come in, boys, instead of fooling ’round outside there in the cold?” he asked derisively. “You can have as much water as you like, and we won’t charge you nothin’ for the room.”
I wondered what Johnston, who conferred with his companions, would do.
“I think we will,” said the chairman. “Much obliged to you. File in quietly, boys, and those who can’t find room will sit on the veranda.”
Harry chuckled. “This is distinctly a new line for our partner,” he commented, “and the whole trio have pluck enough. I fancy if the other side try any tricks they’ll find their match in Johnston.”
Then, amid banter and laughter, the big bronzed men filed up the long bare room, after which all eyes were turned toward the three who sat on a little platform beside a piano. Facing them another group, who I fancied meant mischief, lounged against the bar, looking on sardonically. Then the proprietor, who wore a large diamond in his white shirt-front, came out.
“This yere discussin’ temperance is thirsty work,” he said, “and it might improve the general harmony if before you begin in earnest you had a drink with me. Ask them what they’re shouting for, Jim; and, Jess, for once you’ll rustle round with the tray.”
There was a jingle of glasses, and a damsel with very pink cheeks and lemon-colored hair, who apparently presided over the piano, went round with a tray. It was emptied several times, and I began to foresee that the temperance demonstration would fail miserably, as it might have done but for Johnston’s ready wit and the opposite party’s imprudence. Grinning derisively, Hemlock Jim led the waitress straight up to the orators’ platform, and, with the revolver showing significantly as he bent forward, he held out the tray saying:
“It will help the good feelin’ if you have a drink with me.”
This was a false step. A big man from the bush of Ontario, whose forebears had probably been Scottish Covenanters, stretched his long limbs out in front of Hemlock, while Johnston smiled as he answered:
“Not at present. Unfortunately I’m a little particular as to whom I drink with. Boys, don’t you think it would be fairer if you heard our guests first, and then paid for your own refreshment afterward if they didn’t convince you?”
Hemlock Jim deliberately set down his tray, the Ontario bushman seemed gathering himself together for some purpose, and there was an ominous glitter in Johnston’s eyes, while just as I expected the fray to begin, the proprietor called out laughingly:
“Sit right down, Jim. Pass on them glasses, Jess. I guess they won’t refuse you.”
It was diplomatic, but Johnston’s hint of fairness went further, and in spite of the frail beauty’s smiles, a number of those who listened waved the tray aside with the words “I pass!”
Then, when some one called out to ask what was the matter with the circus, and whether the clown were lost, while others demanded “The lady!” Johnston turned to Miss Marvin, and there was a hush as the slight girlish figure – and she seemed very young – stood upright before us. She thrust back the unlovely bonnet, and her thin face was flushed; but when, clenching nervous fingers upon the dowdy gown, she raised a high clear voice, every man in the assembly settled himself to listen. Perhaps it was a chivalrous respect for her womanhood, or mere admiration for personal courage, and she had most gallantly taken up the challenge; but I think she also spoke with force and sincerity, for my own pulse quickened in time to the rapid utterance. Then changing from the somewhat conventional tirade, she leaned forward speaking very gently, and one could hear the men breathe in the stillness, while, as far as I can remember, the plain words ran:
“It’s not only for you I’m pleading; there are the women, too – the sweethearts, wives and daughters waiting at home for you. Just where and how are they waiting? Shall I tell you? ’Way back up yonder tending the cattle in the lonely ranch, where the timber wolves howl along ranges on the moonlight nights; and I guess you know it’s lonely up there in the bush. Then I can see others sewing with heavy eyes and backs that are aching in a Vancouver shack. You had no money to leave them, and they had to do the best they could. Have they no use for the money you would spend in liquor here – the women who never cried out when they let you go? Don’t heart-break and black, black solitude count anything with you? You’re building railroads, building up a great Dominion, but the waiting women are doing their part, too. And I’m thinking of others still, gilt-edged and dainty, ’way in the old country. I’ve seen a few. Where’s the man from an English college that used to feel himself better after they talked to him? Is he here with the fire of bad whisky in him, betting against the banker to win a smile from Jess of Caribou?”
This woman knew how to stir them, and there was an expressive murmur, while some fidgeted. Then the proprietor beckoned across the room, and Hemlock Jim spoke:
“This is only high-tone sentiment. Most of us aren’t married, and don’t intend to. No, sir, we’ve no use for a missis rustling round with a long-handled broom on the track of us, and I’m going to move an amendment.”
“You can’t do it,” said Johnston. “You brought us in of your own will, and now you’ve got to hear us. This meeting is going on quietly to its conclusion if I hold the chair. Sit down, sir.”
“I’ll be shot if I do!” said the other, and it became evident that trouble was near, for a group of the disaffected commenced to sidle toward the platform, calling on Caribou Jessy to give them a song.
But Johnston was equal to the occasion. “If you’re wanting music we’ve brought our own orchestra along. Mr. Harry Lorraine, the tenor, will oblige you.”
Harry promptly entered into the spirit of the thing, for he sat down good-humoredly, and, though I forget what he sang, it was a ballad with a catching refrain, which he rendered well, and hardly had the applause died away when the girl commenced again, while Lee, who followed, made a strong impression this time. Then, before the interest had slackened, Miss Marvin held up a little book, smiling sweetly as she said:
“It was kind of you to listen so patiently, and now I’m asking a last favor. Won’t you all walk along and write your names down here?”
A number of the listeners did so, and when the rest refused jestingly, Johnston got up.
“The meeting is over,” he said, “but there’s one thing yet to do – to pass a vote of thanks to the proprietor for the use of his saloon. Then I should like to ask him to lay out his best cigars on the bar for every one to help himself.”
There was acclamation, and the assembly would have dispersed peaceably but that just as we went out Hemlock Jim, who had gathered the disaffected round him, said to Johnston:
“I’m glad to see the last of you. Now sail out into perdition, and take your shameless woman with you. But – I’m not particular – she’s got to pay tribute first.”
He grasped the trembling girl’s shoulder, dragged back the ample bonnet, but the next moment I had him by the throat, and he went reeling sideways among his comrades. Then, as by a signal the tumult began, for with a crash of splintered glass the nearest lamp went out, and a rush was made upon us. Something struck me heavily on the head; I saw Johnston stagger under a heavy blow; but I held myself before the girl as we were hustled through the doorway, and when a pistol-barrel glinted one of the railroad men whirled aloft an axe. We were outside now, but the pistol blazed before the blade came down, and a man beside me caught at a veranda pillar with a cry just as the door banged to.
“It’s Pete of the shovel gang!” somebody said. “It was Hemlock Jim who shot him. Where’s the man with the axe to chop one of these pillars for a battering-ram? Roll round here, railroad builders!”
A roar of angry voices broke out, and it was evident that popular sympathy was on the reformers’ side, while my blood was up. Pete of the shovel gang, a quiet, inoffensive man, sat limply on the veranda, with the blood trickling from his shoulder, and there was the insult to the girl to be avenged; while, if more were needed, somebody hurled opprobrious epithets at us from an upper window. I wrenched the axe from its owner – and he resisted stubbornly – whirled it round my shoulder, and there was another roar when after a shower of splinters the stout post yielded. It was torn loose from the rafters, swung backward by sinewy arms, and driven crashing against the saloon door, one panel of which went in before it. Twice again, while another pistol-shot rang out, we plied the ram, and then followed it pell-mell across the threshold, where we went down in a heap amid the wreckage of the door, though I had sense enough left to remove Hemlock’s smoking revolver which lay close by, just where he had dropped it on the floor. He evidently had not expected this kind of attack and suffered for his ignorance. We could not see him, but a breathless voice implored somebody to “Give them blame deadbeats socks!” and there was evidently need for prompt action, because the rest of our opponents had entrenched themselves behind the bar, which was freely strengthened by chairs and tables; also, as we picked ourselves up, an invisible man behind the barricade called out in warning:
“Stop right there. Two of us have guns!”
“Will you come out, and give up Hemlock Jim?” asked Johnston, while half a dozen men who had found strangely assorted weapons gathered alert and eager behind him, a little in advance of the rest, and Lee panted among them with the blood running down his face.
“If you want him you’ve got to lick us first!” was the answer. “We don’t back down on a partner. But I guess he’s hardly worth the trouble, for he’s looking very sick – your blank battering-ram took him in the stummick.”
“One minute in which to change your mind!” said Johnston, holding up his watch. “Bring along that log, boys, and get her on the swing;” and tightening my grip on the axe I watched the heavy beam oscillate as our partner called off the last few seconds.
“Fifty-four! fifty-five! fifty-six! – ”
But he got no further. Swinging sideways from the waist, he was only just in time, for once more a pistol flashed among the chairs; and when another man loosed his hold Johnston roared, “Let her go!”
The head of the beam went forward; we followed it with a yell. There was a crash of splintered redwood, and my axe clove a chair. Then shouting men were scrambling over the remnants of the bar, while just what happened during the next few moments I do not remember, except that there was a great destruction of property, and presently I halted breathless, while the leader of the vanquished, who were hemmed in a corner, raised his hand.
“We’re corralled, and give up,” he said. “Here’s Hemlock Jim – not much good to any one by the look of him. What are you going to do with us?”
“Are those men badly hurt?” asked Johnston.
“Not much,” some one answered. “Pete’s drilled clean through the upper arm; it missed the artery, and the ball just ripped my leg.”
“Well, we’ll settle about Jim afterward; it’s surgical assistance he wants first. As to the rest of you, he led you into this, and we’ll let you go on two conditions – you subscribe a dollar each to Miss Marvin’s society and sign the pledge.”
There was a burst of laughter, in which even some of the vanquished joined sheepishly; but as they filed past between a guard armed with shovels and empty bottles Johnston saw that they filled their names into the book, and duly handed each his ticket, while I regret to say that Harry’s selection was daringly appropriate, as with full musical honors he played them out.
“There’s a hat at the door!” said Johnston, “you can put your dollars in. You have spent an exciting evening, and must pay for your fun.” And presently that hat overflowed with money, while Lee, with his Ontario stalwarts, did huge execution with a shovel among such bottles as remained unwrecked behind the bar. We placed Hemlock Jim on a stretcher, groaning distressfully, while our two wounded declared themselves fit to walk, and before we marched off in triumph to the camp Johnston raised his hat as he placed a heavy package of silver in Miss Marvin’s hand.
“I’ve no doubt your organization can make a good use of this,” he said. “It’s also a tribute to your own bravery. I’ll leave you half a dozen men who’ll camp in the road opposite your lodgings, and see you safely back to the main line to-morrow. They’re most sober Calvinists, with convictions of the Cromwellian kind, and I don’t think any of our late disturbers will care to interfere with them.”
When we approached the tents, chanting weird songs of victory, the surveyor met us, and in answer to his questions Johnston laughed.
“The temperance meeting was an unqualified success,” he said. “We’ve broken up all the bottles in the Magnolia saloon – Lee reveled among them with a hammer. Then we made all the malcontents we could catch sign the pledge, and you’ll find the chief dissenter behind there on the stretcher.”
“Glad to hear it,” remarked the surveyor, dryly. “Judging by your appearance the proceedings must have been of the nature of an Irish fair.”
I remember that when we discussed the affair later Johnston said, “What did I do it for? Well, perhaps from a sense of fairness, or because that girl’s courage got hold of me. Don’t set up as a reformer – that’s not me; but I’ve a weakness for downright if blundering sincerity, and I fancied I could indirectly help them a little.”
The next morning we were astonished to find that Hemlock Jim had gone. “Thought he was dyin’ last night!” said the watcher, “and as that didn’t matter I went to sleep; woke up, and there wasn’t a trace of him.” This was evidently true, and where he went to remained a mystery, for we heard no more of Hemlock Jim, though there was a marked improvement in the morals of Cedar Crossing, while, and this we hardly expected, some of those who signed that pledge honestly kept it.
