The Trail of 98 (2 page)

Thus our home was an ideal one; Garry, tall, fair and winsome; myself, dark,
dreamy, reticent; and between us, linking all three in a perfect bond of love
and sympathy, our gentle, delicate Mother.

So in serenity and sunshine the days of my youth went past. I still
maintained my character as a drone and a dreamer. I used my time tramping the
moorland with a gun, whipping the foamy pools of the burn for trout, or reading
voraciously in the library. Mostly I read books of travel, and especially did I
relish the literature of Vagabondia. I had come under the spell of Stevenson.
His name spelled Romance to me, and my fancy etched him in his lonely exile.
Forthright I determined I too would seek these ultimate islands, and from that
moment I was a changed being. I nursed the thought with joyous enthusiasm. I
would be a frontiersman, a trail-breaker, a treasure-seeker. The virgin prairies
called to me; the susurrus of the giant pines echoed in my heart; but most of
all, I felt the spell of those gentle islands where care is a stranger, and all
is sunshine, song and the glowing bloom of eternal summer.

About this time Mother must have worried a good deal over my future. Garry
was now the young Laird, and I was but an idler, a burden on the estate. At last
I told her I wanted to go abroad, and then it seemed as if a great difficulty
was solved. We remembered of a cousin who was sheep-ranching in the Saskatchewan
valley and had done well. It was arranged that I should join him as a pupil,
then,
when I had learned
enough, buy a place of my own. It may be imagined that while I apparently
acquiesced in this arrangement, I had already determined that as soon as I
reached the new land I would take my destiny into my own hands.

I will never forget the damp journey to Glasgow and the misty landscape
viewed through the streaming window pane of a railway carriage. I was in a
wondrous state of elation. When we reached the great smoky city I was lost in
amazement not unmixed with fear. Never had I imagined such crowds, such houses,
such hurry. The three of us, Mother, Garry and I, wandered and wondered for
three days. Folks gazed at us curiously, sometimes admiringly, for our cheeks
were bright with Highland health, and our eyes candid as the June skies. Garry
in particular, tall, fair and handsome, seemed to call forth glances of interest
wherever he went. Then as the hour of my departure drew near a shadow fell on
us.

I will not dwell on our leave-taking. If I broke down in unmanly grief, it
must be remembered I had never before been from home. I was but a lad, and these
two were all in all to me. Mother gave up trying to be brave, and mingled her
tears with mine. Garry alone contrived to make some show of cheerfulness. Alas!
all my elation had gone. In its place was a sense of guilt, of desertion, of
unconquerable gloom. I had an inkling then of the tragedy of motherhood, the
tender love that would hold yet cannot, the world-call and the ruthless,
estranging years,
all the
memories of clinging love given only to be taken away.

"Don't cry, sweetheart Mother," I said; "I'll be back again in three
years."

"Mind you do, my boy, mind you do."

She looked at me woefully sad, and I had a queer, heartrending prevision I
would never see her more. Garry was supporting her, and she seemed to have
suddenly grown very frail. He was pale and quiet, but I could see he was vastly
moved.

"Athol," said he, "if ever you need me just send for me. I'll come, no matter
how long or how hard the way."

I can see them to this day standing there in the drenching rain, Garry fine
and manly, Mother small and drooping. I can see her with her delicate rose
colour, her eyes like wood violets drowned in tears, her tender, sensitive lips
quivering with emotion.

"Good-bye, laddie, good-bye."

I forced myself away, and stumbled on board. When I looked back again they
were gone, but through the grey shadows there seemed to come back to me a cry of
heartache and irremediable loss.

"Good-bye, good-bye."

It was on a day of early Autumn when I stood knee-deep in the heather of
Glengyle, and looked wistfully over the grey sea. 'Twas but a month later when,
homeless and friendless, I stood on the beach by the Cliff House of San
Francisco, and gazed over the fretful waters of another ocean. Such is the
romance of destiny.

Consigned, so to speak, to my cousin the sheep-raiser of the Saskatchewan, I
found myself setting foot on the strange land with but little heart for my new
vocation. My mind, cramful of book notions, craved for the larger life. I was
valiantly mad for adventure; to fare forth haphazardly; to come upon naked
danger; to feel the bludgeonings of mischance; to tramp, to starve, to sleep
under the stars. It was the callow boy-idea perpetuated in the man, and it was
to lead me a sorry dance. But I could not overbear it. Strong in me was the
spirit of the gypsy. The joy of youth and health was brawling in my veins. A few
thistledown years, said I, would not matter. And there was Stevenson and his
glamorous islands winning me on.

So it came about I stood solitary on the beach by the seal rocks, with a
thousand memories confusing in my head. There was the long train ride with its
strange pictures: the crude farms, the glooming forests, the gleaming lakes that
would drown my whole
country, the aching plains, the mountains that rip-sawed the
sky, the fear-made-eternal of the desert. Lastly, a sudden, sunlit paradise,
California.

I had lived through a week of wizardry such as I had never dreamed of, and
here was I at the very throne of Western empire. And what a place it was, and
what a peoplewith the imperious mood of the West softened by the spell of the
Orient and mellowed by the glamour of Old Spain. San Francisco! A score of
tongues clamoured in her streets and in her byways a score of races lurked
austerely. She suckled at her breast the children of the old grey nations and
gave them of her spirit, that swift purposeful spirit so proud of past
achievement and so convinced of glorious destiny.

I marvelled at the rush of affairs and the zest of amusement. Every one
seemed to be making money easily and spending it eagerly. Every one was happy,
sanguine, strenuous. At night Market Street was a dazzling alley of light, where
stalwart men and handsome women jostled in and out of the glittering
restaurants. Yet amid this eager, passionate life I felt a dreary sense of
outsideness. At times my heart fairly ached with loneliness, and I wandered the
pathways of the park, or sat forlornly in Portsmouth Square as remote from it
all as a gazer on his mountain top beneath the stars.

I became a dreamer of the water front, for the notion of the South Seas was
ever in my head. I loafed in the sunshine, sitting on the pier-edge, with eyes
fixed on the lazy shipping. These were care-free,
irresponsible days, and not, I am now convinced,
entirely misspent. I came to know the worthies of the wharfside, and plunged
into an under-world of fascinating repellency. Crimpdom eyed and tempted me, but
it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I rubbed
shoulders with eager necessity, scrambled for free lunches in frowsy bar-rooms,
and amid the scum and debris of the waterside found much food for sober thought.
Yet at times I blamed myself for thus misusing my days, and memories of Glengyle
and Mother and Garry loomed up with reproachful vividness.

I was, too, a seeker of curious experience, and this was to prove my undoing.
The night-side of the city was unveiled to me. With the assurance of innocence I
wandered everywhere. I penetrated the warrens of underground Chinatown,
wondering why white women lived there, and why they hid at sight of me. Alone I
poked my way into the opium joints and the gambling dens. Vice, amazingly
unabashed, flaunted itself in my face. I wondered what my grim, Covenanting
ancestors would have made of it all. I never thought to have seen the like, and
in my inexperience it was like a shock to me.

My nocturnal explorations came to a sudden end. One foggy midnight, coming up
Pacific Street with its glut of saloons, I was clouted shrewdly from behind and
dropped most neatly in the gutter. When I came to, very sick and dizzy in a side
alley, I found I had been robbed of my pocketbook with nearly all my money
therein. Fortunately I had left
my watch in the hotel safe, and by selling it was not entirely
destitute; but the situation forced me from my citadel of pleasant dreams, and
confronted me with the grimmer realities of life.

I became a habitue of the ten-cent restaurant. I was amazed to find how
excellent a meal I could have for ten cents. Oh for the uncaptious appetite of
these haphazard days! With some thirty-odd dollars standing between me and
starvation, it was obvious I must become a hewer of wood and a drawer of water,
and to this end I haunted the employment offices. They were bare, sordid rooms,
crowded by men who chewed, swapped stories, yawned and studied the blackboards
where the day's wants were set forth. Only driven to labour by dire necessity,
their lives, I found, held three phaseslooking for work, working, spending the
proceeds. They were the Great Unskilled, face to face with the necessary evil of
toil.

One morning, on seeking my favourite labour bureau, I found an unusual
flutter among the bench-warmers. A big contractor wanted fifty men immediately.
No experience was required, and the wages were to be two dollars a day. With a
number of others I pressed forward, was interviewed and accepted. The same day
we were marched in a body to the railway depot and herded into a fourth-class
car.

Where we were going I knew not; of what we were going to do I had no inkling.
I only knew we were southbound, and at long last I might fairly consider myself
to be the shuttlecock of fortune.

I left San Francisco blanketed in grey fog and besomed by a roaring wind;
when I opened my eyes I was in a land of spacious sky and broad, clean sunshine.
Orange groves rushed to welcome us; orchards of almond and olive twinkled
joyfully in the limpid air; tall, gaunt and ragged, the scaly eucalyptus
fluttered at us a morning greeting, while snowy houses, wallowing in greenery,
flashed a smile as we rumbled past. It seemed like a land of promise, of song
and sunshine, and silent and apart I sat to admire and to enjoy.

"Looks pretty swell, don't it?"

I will call him the Prodigal. He was about my own age, thin, but sun-browned
and healthy. His hair was darkly red and silky, his teeth white and even as
young corn. His eyes twinkled with a humorsome light, but his face was shrewd,
alert and aggressive.

"Yes," I said soberly, for I have always been backward with strangers.

"Pretty good line. The banana belt. Old Sol working overtime. Blossom and
fruit cavorting on the same tree. Eternal summer. Land of the
manana
, the
festive frijole, the never-chilly chili. Ever been here before?"

"No."

"Neither have I. Glad I
came, even if it's to do the horny-handed son of toil stunt. Got the
makings?"

"No, I'm sorry; I don't smoke."

"All right, guess I got enough."

He pulled forth a limp sack of powdery tobacco, and spilled some grains into
a brown cigarette paper, twisting it deftly and bending over the ends. Then he
smoked with such enjoyment that I envied him.

"Where are we going, have you any idea?" I asked.

"Search me," he said, inhaling deeply; "the guy in charge isn't exactly a
free information bureau. When it comes to peddling the bull con he's there, but
when you try to pry off a few slabs of cold hard fact it's his Sunday off."

"But," I persisted, "have you no idea?"

"Well, one thing you can bank on, they'll work the Judas out of us. The
gentle grafter nestles in our midst. This here's a cinch game and we are the
fall guys. The contractors are a bum outfit. They'll squeeze us at every turn.
There was two plunks to the employment man; they got half. Twenty for railway
fare; they come in on that. Stop at certain hotels: a rake-off there. Stage
fare: more graft. Five dollars a week for board: costs them two-fifty, and they
will be stomach robbers at that. Then they'll ring in twice as many men as they
need, and lay us off half the time, so that we just about even up on our board
bill. Oh, I'm onto their curves all right."

"Then," I said, "if you
know so much why did you come with us?"

"Well, if I know so much you just bet I know some more. I'll go one better.
You watch my smoke."

He talked on with a wonderful vivid manner and an outpouring knowledge of
life, so that I was hugely interested. Yet ever and anon an allusion of taste
would betray him, and at no time did I fail to see that his roughness was only a
veneer. As it turned out he was better educated by far than I, a Yale boy taking
a post-graduate course in the University of Hard Luck.

My reserve once thawed, I told him much of my simple life. He listened,
intently sympathetic.

"Say," said he earnestly when I had finished, "I'm rough-and-ready in my
ways. Life to me's a game, sort of masquerade, and I'm the worst masquerader in
the bunch. But I know how to handle myself, and I can jolly my way along pretty
well. Now, you're green, if you'll excuse me saying it, and maybe I can help you
some. Likewise you're the only one in all the gang of hoboes that's my kind.
Come on, let's be partners."

I felt greatly drawn to him and agreed gladly.

"Now," said he, "I must go and jolly along the other boys. Aren't they a
fierce bunch? Coloured gentlemen, Slavonians, Polaks, Dagoes, Swedeswell, I'll
go prospecting, and see what I can strike."

He went among them with a jabber of strange terms, a bright smile and ready
banter, and I could
see
that he was to be a quick favourite. I envied him for his ease of manner, a
thing I could never compass. Presently he returned to me.