The Trail of 98 (3 page)

"Say, partner, got any money?"

There was something frank and compelling in his manner, so that I produced
the few dollars I had left, and spread them before him.

"That's all my wealth," I said smilingly.

He divided it into two equal portions and returned one to me. He took a note
of the other, saying:

"All right, I'll settle up with you later on."

He went off with my money. He seemed to take it for granted I would not
object, and on my part I cared little, being only too eager to show I trusted
him. A few minutes later behold him seated at a card-table with three
rough-necked, hard-bitten-looking men. They were playing poker, and, thinks I:
"Here's good-bye to my money." It minded me of wolves and a lamb. I felt sorry
for my new friend, and I was only glad he had so little to lose.

We were drawing in to Los Angeles when he rejoined me. To my surprise he
emptied his pockets of wrinkled notes and winking silver to the tune of twenty
dollars, and dividing it equally, handed half to me.

"Here," says he, "plant that in your dip."

"No," I said, "just give me back what you borrowed; that's all I want."

"Oh, forget it! You staked me, and it's well won. These guinneys took me for
a jay. Thought I was
easy,
but I've forgotten more than they ever knew, and I haven't forgotten so much
either."

"No, you keep it, please. I don't want it."

"Oh, come! put your Scotch scruples in your pocket. Take the money."

"No," I said obstinately.

"Look here, this partnership of ours is based on financial equality. If you
don't like my gate, you don't need to swing on it."

"All right," said I tartly, "I don't want to."

Then I turned on my heel.

On either side of us were swift hills mottled with green and gold, ahead a
curdle of snow-capped mountains, above a sky of robin's-egg blue. The morning
was lyric and set our hearts piping as we climbed the canyon. We breathed deeply
of the heady air, exclaimed at sight of a big bee ranch, shouted as a mule team
with jingling bells came swinging down the trail. With cries of delight we
forded the little crystal stream wherever the trail plunged knee-deep through
it. Higher and higher we climbed, mile after mile, our packs on our shoulders,
our hearts very merry. I was as happy as a holiday schoolboy, willing this
should go on for ever, dreading to think of the grim-visaged toil that awaited
us.

About midday we reached the end. Gangs of men were everywhere, ripping and
tearing at the mountain side. There was a roar of blasting, and rocks hurtled
down on us. Bunkhouses of raw lumber sweated in the sun. Everywhere was the
feverish activity of a construction camp.

We were assigned to a particular bunkhouse, and there was a great rush for
places. It was floorless, doorless and in part roofless. Above the medley of
voices I heard that of the Prodigal:

"Say, fellows, let's find the softest side of this board! Strikes me the
Company's mighty considerate.
All kinds of ventilation. Good chance to study astronomy.
Wonder if I couldn't borrow a mattress somewhere? Ha! Good eye! Watch me,
fellows!"

We saw him make for a tent nearby where horses were stabled. He reconnoitred
carefully, then darted inside to come out in a twinkling, staggering under a
bale of hay.

"How's that for rustling? I guess I'm slowhey, what? Guess this is
poor!"

He was wadding his bunk with the hay, while the others looked on rather
enviously. Then, as a bell rang, he left off.

"Hash is ready, boys; last call to the dining-car. Come on and see the pigs
get their heads in the trough."

We hurried to the cookhouse, where a tin plate, a tin cup, a tin spoon and a
cast-iron knife was laid for each of us at a table of unplaned boards. A great
mess of hash was ready, and excepting myself every one ate voraciously. I found
something more to my taste, a can of honey and some soda crackers, on which I
supped gratefully.

When I returned to the bunkhouse I found my bunk had been stuffed with nice
soft hay, and my blankets spread on top. I looked over to the Prodigal. He was
reading, a limp cigarette between his yellow-stained fingers. I went up to
him.

"It's very good of you to do this," I said.

"Oh no! Not at all. Don't mention it," he answered
with much politeness, never raising his
eyes from the book.

"Well," I said, "I've just got to thank you. And look here, let's make it up.
Don't let the business of that wretched money come between us. Can't we be
friends anyway?"

He sprang up and gripped my hand.

"Sure! nothing I want more. I'm sorry. Another time I'll make allowance for
that shorter-catechism conscience of yours. Now let's go over to that big fire
they've made and chew the rag."

So we sat by the crackling blaze of mesquite, sagebrush and live-oak limbs,
while over us twinkled the friendly stars, and he told me many a strange story
of his roving life.

"You know, the old man's all broke up at me playing the fool like this. He's
got a glue factory back in Massachusetts. Guess he stacks up about a million or
so. Wanted me to go into the glue factory, begin at the bottom, stay with it.
'Stick to glue, my boy,' he says; 'become the Glue King,' and so on. But not
with little Willie. Life's too interesting a proposition to be turned down like
that. I'm not repentant. I know the fatted calf's waiting for me, getting fatter
every day. One of these days I'll go back and sample it."

It was he I first heard talk of the Great White Land, and it stirred me
strangely.

"Every one's crazy about it. They're rushing now in thousands, to get there
before the winter begins. Next spring there will be the biggest stampede
the world has ever seen. Say,
Scotty, I've the greatest notion to try it. Let's go, you and I. I had a partner
once, who'd been up there. It's a big, dark, grim land, but there's the gold,
shining, shining, and it's calling us to go. Somehow it haunts me, that soft,
gleamy, virgin gold there in the solitary rivers with not a soul to pick it up.
I don't care one rip for the value of it. I can make all I want out of glue. But
the adventure, the excitement, it's that that makes me fit for the foolish
house."

He was silent a long time while my imagination conjured up terrible,
fascinating pictures of the vast, unawakened land, and a longing came over me to
dare its shadows.

As we said good-night, his last words were:

"Remember, Scotty, we're both going to join the Big Stampede, you and I."

I slept but fitfully, for the night air was nipping, and the bunkhouse nigh
as open as a cage. A bonny morning it was, and the sun warmed me nicely, so that
over breakfast I was in a cheerful humour. Afterwards I watched the gang
labouring, and showed such an injudicious interest that that afternoon I too was
put to work.

It was very simple. Running into the mountain there was a tunnel, which they
were lining with concrete, and it was the task of I and another to push cars of
the stuff from the outlet to the scene of operations. My partner was a Swede who
had toiled from boyhood, while I had never done a day's work in my life. It was
as much as I could do to lift the loaded boxes into the car. Then we left the
sunshine behind us, and for a quarter of a mile of darkness we strained in an
uphill effort.

From the roof, which we stooped to avoid, sheets of water descended. Every
now and then the heavy cars would run off the rails, which were of scantling,
worn and frayed by friction. Then my Swede would storm in Berserker rage, and we
would lift till the veins throbbed in my head. Never had time seemed so long. A
convict working in the salt mines of Siberia did not revolt more against his
task than I. The sweat blinded me; a bright steel pain
throbbed in my head; my heart seemed to
hammer. Never so thankful was I as when we had made our last trip, and sick and
dizzy I put on my coat to go home.

It was dark. There was a cable line running from the tunnel to the camp, and
down this we shot in buckets two at a clip. The descent gave me a creepy
sensation, but it saved a ten minutes' climb down the mountain side, and I was
grateful.

Tired, wet and dirty, how I envied the Prodigal lying warm and cosy on his
fragrant hay. He was reading a novel. But the thought that I had earned a dollar
comforted me. After supper he, with Ginger and Dutchy, played solo till near
midnight, while I tossed on my bunk too weary and sore to sleep.

Next day was a repetition of the first, only worse. I ached as if I had been
beaten. Stiff and sore I dragged myself to the tunnel again. I lifted, strained,
tugged and shoved with a set and tragic face. Five hours of hell passed. It was
noon. I nursed my strength for the after effort. Angrily I talked to myself, and
once more I pulled through. Weary and slimy with wet mud, I shot down the cable
line. Snugly settled in his bunk, the Prodigal had read another two hundred
pages of "Les Miserables." YetI reflected somewhat sadlyI had made two
dollars.

On the third day sheer obstinacy forced me to the tunnel. My self-respect
goaded me on. I would not give in. I must hold this job down, I
must
, I
MUST
. Then at the noon hour I fainted.

No one saw me, so I
gritted my teeth and once more threw my weight against the cars. Once more night
found me waiting to descend in the bucket. Then as I stood there was a crash and
shouts from below. The cable had snapped. My Swede and another lay among the
rocks with sorely broken bones. Poor beggars! how they must have suffered
jolting down that boulder-strewn trail to the hospital.

Somehow that destroyed my nerve. I blamed myself indeed. I flogged myself
with reproaches, but it was of no avail. I would sooner beg my bread than face
that tunnel once again. The world seemed to be divided into two parts, the rest
of it and that tunnel. Thank God, I didn't
have
to go into it again. I
was exultantly happy that I didn't. The Prodigal had finished his book, and was
starting another. That night he borrowed some of my money to play solo with.

Next day I saw the foreman. I said:

"I want to go. The work up there's too hard for me."

He looked at me kindly.

"All right, sonny," says he, "don't quit. I'll put you in the gravel
pit."

So next day I found a more congenial task. There were four of us. We threw
the gravel against a screen where the finer stuff that sifted through was used
in making concrete.

The work was heart-breaking in its monotony. In the biting cold of the
morning we made a start, long before the sun peeped above the wall of
mountain.

We watched it crawl,
snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its heat. We saw it drop again
behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky gorgeously barred with colour from a
tawny orange glow to an ice-pale greena regular
pousse cafe
of a sunset.
Then when the cold and the dark surged back, by the light of the evening star we
straightened our weary spines, and throwing aside pick and shovel hurried to
supper.

Heigh-ho! what a life it was. Resting, eating, sleeping; negative pleasures
became positive ones. Life's great principle of compensation worked on our
behalf, and to lie at ease, reading an old paper, seemed an exquisite
enjoyment.

I was much troubled about the Prodigal. He complained of muscular rheumatism,
and except to crawl to meals was unable to leave his bunk. Every day came the
foreman to inquire anxiously if he was fit to go to work, but steadily he grew
worse. Yet he bore his suffering with great spirit, and, among that nondescript
crew, he was a thing of joy and brightness, a link with that other world which
was mine own. They nicknamed him "Happy," his cheerfulness was so invincible. He
played cards on every chance, and he must have been unlucky, for he borrowed the
last of my small hoard.

One morning I woke about six, and found, pinned to my blanket, a note from my
friend.

There was a hue and cry after him, but he was gone, and a sudden disgust for
the place came over me. For two more days I worked, crushed by a gloom that
momently intensified. Clamant and imperative in me was the voice of change. I
could not become toil-broken, so I saw the foreman.

"Why do you want to go?" he asked reproachfully.

"Well, sir, the work's too monotonous."

"Monotonous! Well, that's the rummest reason I ever heard a man give for
quitting. But every man knows his own business best. I'll give you a
time-cheque."

While he was making it out I wondered if, indeed, I did know my own business
best; but if it had been the greatest folly in the world, I was bound to get out
of that canyon.

Treasuring the slip of paper representing my labour, I sought one of the
bosses, a sour, stiff man of dyspeptic tendencies. With a smile of malicious
sweetness he returned it to me.

"All right, take it to our Oakland office, and you'll get the cash."

Expectantly I had been standing there, thinking to receive my money, the
first I had ever earned (and to
me so distressfully earned, at that). Now I gazed at him very
sick at heart: for was not Oakland several hundred miles away, and I was
penniless.

"Couldn't you cash it here?" I faltered at last.

"No!" (very sourly).

"Couldn't you discount it, then?"

"No!" (still more tartly).

I turned away, crestfallen and smarting. When I told the other boys they were
indignant, and a good deal alarmed on their own account. I made my case against
the Company as damning as I could, then, slinging my blankets on my back, set
off once more down the canyon.