The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 18

Matthews had headed the horses and pack mule back from an open glade and hobbled their fore feet. Then Wayland began chopping down small trees. They saw the figures of the outlaws against the twilight of the gap ride away from the far margin of the lake. Then only did the Ranger build a little fire behind the biggest hemlocks, an Indian's tiny chip fire, not "the big white-man's blaze." On this, they cooked their supper, lake trout hauled out while they waited, and flap jacks, with a tin plate for a frying pan.

"Anyway," said the Ranger wiping the smoke tears from his eyes, "the smoke keeps off the mosquitoes."

"Mosquitoes, pah! That shows y're Yale for all y'r good work this day!

A have no seen one yet."

Wayland's answer was to light his pipe. "It's either bear's grease, or smoke between bites," he laughed.

They had unsaddled horses and were sitting on a log watching the animals crop through the deep gra.s.ses.

The frontiersman uttered a sigh. "'Tis like a taste of the good old days, the days well nigh gone for ever; the smell of the bark fire; an'

th' tang of the kinnikinick; an' the cinnamon cedars; and the air like champagne; an' the stars p.r.i.c.kin' the crown o' the h.o.a.ry old peaks like diamonds; an' the little waves lappin' an' lavin' an' whisperin' an'

tellin' of the woman y' luve. An' care? Care, man? There wasna' a care heavier than dandelion down. 'Twas sleep like a deep drink, an'

up an' away in the mornin', chasin' a young man's hopes to the end o'

the Trail! A suppose th' Almighty meant t' anchor men, or He wouldna'

permit the buildin' of toons! Once A was in New York! A did na' see but one patch o' sunlight twenty stories overhead! Th' car things screeched an' rulled an' the folks--the wimmen wi' awfu' stern wheeler hats, an' the men--hurryin'--hurryin'!--Wayland, d' they get it?

There's only twenty-four hours in a day--they can't catch any more by hurryin'--what are they hurryin' for? Do they get it--what they're hurryin' for? Do they get anywhere? D' they sit down joyous at night?

A heard some laugh--It was not joyous! Do they get anything down there in the awfu' heat?"

Wayland laughed. "I don't know," he said. "Care isn't light as dandelion fluff! I'll bet on that."

The roar of waters below the moraine softened and quieted. There was a chorus of little waves lipping and whispering among the reeds. A whole aeon of resinous sunbeams breathed their essence through the dark from the spicy evergreens. One need not attempt to guess of what Wayland was thinking. He had forgotten his companion's presence till the old man spoke.

"A suppose, Wayland, you are only one of an army of kiddie boys on the job out here?"

Wayland absently roused himself.

"Land Service and Reclamation men have tougher jobs and less glory.

All we have to do is sit tight and it's a pretty good place to sit tight in--this out-door world. Different with the other fellows!

They're hamstrung by the red tape of office, or blackguarded by some peanut politician who is scoring an opponent! There was Walker down at Durango, shot examining a coal fraud. He was a Land Office man; and his murderers have not even been punished. Then, there were the two chaps, who ran the rapids before the Gunnison Tunnel could be built; though that's been exaggerated with a lot of magazine hog-wash to make a fellow sick! Biggest job there was the engineer's work. Do you know he drove that six mile tunnel from both ends and, when the two ends met, they were not two inches off? Hog-wash and dish-water hacks spread themselves in the magazines all over those chaps running the rapids! You've run ten times worse rapids, yourself, on Saskatchewan and MacKenzie hundreds of times. Yet those chaps--not one of them--noted the wonder of a tunnel driven from both ends coming out exactly even. Why, the poor ignorant foreign workmen cried when they met from both ends, got hold of one fellow's wrist through the mud wall and pulled him through bodily, cried like kids at the victory of it!

Your town hack didn't know what it meant to be a sand hog under ground for years and come through to daylight like that. The ignorant foreigner knew. I guess a good dozen of 'em had sacrificed their lives to the work. They knew the quiet engineer fellow had conquered the earth; and that fellow doesn't get the salary of a Wall Street stenographer--a way Uncle Sam has. They'd give such a man a t.i.tle and a fifty thousand a year pension in England or Germany.

"Then, there was Fessenden, unearthed a lot of fraud in Oregon and got himself crucified--got the bounce; had broken his health in that sort of thing; got fired because he proved up that some smug politicians had caused the death of an old couple by jumping their homestead claim and driving them to penury. Then, there was Carrington. He was on the Desert Reclamation Project; took his bride in on their honeymoon; hundreds of miles from the railroad. She was delicate--lungs; poor fellow thought perhaps camp life would cure her. She died there in the heat. Two or three of the men gave up their jobs to help bring the body out." Wayland land paused, lost in thought. "They got the body out all right; but, the horror of it, Carrington went off his head!

Know an engineering chap tramped the Sierras for a hundred miles dogged by a spotter from one of the railroads--but what's the use of talking about it? These things have to be done; and these are the men on the job."

"The Men on the Job," slowly repeated Matthews, "the men we make earls and premiers of in Britain; but who of your big public cares one jot?

Time you wakened up as a Nation."

"You are using almost the same words as Moyese. He says the public doesn't care a d.a.m.n, wouldn't raise a hand to stand for the rights of one of us, pays us less than dagoes earn. I guess Moyese doesn't understand our point of view, can't take in why we keep at it."

The wind came through the trees a phantom harper. The little waves lapped and whispered. The pine needles clicked pixy castanets; and the moon beams sifted through the trees a silver dust.

"Why do you? Why do you keep on the job?" asked the old man.

"Hanged if I know," answered Wayland uncomfortably.

"A saw a man on the job to-day risk his life twice and think no more about it than if he had been out for a walk. If a man in England, if a man in Germany, if a man in Italy, yes by thunder, Wayland, if a man on the job in pagan Turkey had done what you did to-day, he'd be given a V. C. accordin' to the Turk, and a t.i.tle and a pension for life."

"I don't despair of a cross myself, when Moyese hears what happened to-day. It'll be a double cross with a G. B.; but, speaking of cross, as we have to cross the lake, don't you think you'd better s.n.a.t.c.h a little sleep?"

And so the two men, one representing the chivalry of the old West, the other the chivalry of the new, stretched out to sleep with coats for pillows, while the flood-waters went singing through the stones, and the little waves came lipping and whispering, and the low boom of the snow slides rolled through the chambered hollows of canyon and gorge.

Absurd, wasn't it, but the Ranger was not dreaming about the bevelling trowel of the t.i.tan mountain G.o.ds? He went to sleep dreaming of the star visible from the other side of the Holy Cross, dreaming dreams that men and women have dreamed since time began; of drinking, drinking, and drinking yet again, of life and love and blessedness from the fount of human lips; of the seal that should be the seal to service, not to self; of the gates ajar to a new life like the notch of sky where the rocks of the Pa.s.s opened portals to the blue valley.

Would he have dreamed less joyously if he had known that the portals of the Pa.s.s led to the avalanche and the desert and the alkali death? Who shall say that love did not pay the toll? And in him rioted the savagery of the fighter who wanted to seize his foe by the throat.

CHAPTER XIV

ON THE GAME TRAIL

The dull boom of a snow-cornice tumbling over some high cliff on the far side of the lake awakened the Ranger to the chill darkness of mountain night just before dawn. The moon had sunk behind the sky-line of the peaks; and the little lake laving among the reeds lay inky in the shadow of the heavy mist.

Wayland listened. The deep breathing of the horses round the ashes of the mosquito smudge guided him across to saddles. He placed saddles, pack trees and provisions on the raft. Then, he wakened the old man and pulled the grunting horses to their feet. A little riffle, half wind, half light, stirred the lake mist, revealing glare patches of snow reflection in the water.

"Hoh! man, but y'r old peaks have a nip in the air at three in the mornin'!" Matthews came down to the raft chaffing his hands. "That's a job worthy a woodsman," he observed, holding the halter reins while the Ranger got a couple of long poles.

A dozen saplings had been mortised to a couple of cottonwoods.

"They may take water; but they'll not sink; and they'll not tip,"

declared Wayland.

Reeds and willows had been used in place of nails. Two or three of the logs were spliced to grip the end cottonwoods firmly. The two men stepped on the raft.

"Why didn't you go round the upper end?"

"Ice," answered Wayland.

"Too deep for poling in the middle?" asked Matthews.

"That's why I'm going to creep along sh.o.r.e."

"It'ull keep y' in the shadows."

With a prod of his pole, Wayland shoved off, and the frontiersman lengthened out the leading lines for the horses. The Ranger smiled whimsically to find the reverse side of Holy Cross peak, up-side down in the water, and he set to figuring out what sort of triangular lines thought-waves must follow to connect his thought of that peak etched in the bottom of the lake with her thought on the other side of a peak up in the sky.

"Steady, man! Slow up! There's a fallen tree with its rump stuck ash.o.r.e! A' don't want to warp ye in by snaggin' round; an' that mule brute is thinkin' o' sittin' down."

The bronchos had plunged to the cold dip with deep grunts, but the mule braced his legs and brayed at the morning. The frontiersman said things between set teeth that might have been objurgations to the soul of Satan or the race of mules. Wayland shoved on the pole. The mule pulled. The logs of the raft began to creak. "Look out, sir, we're splitting! Let that doggon brute go--"

And the raft swerved out, the horses swimming, the freed mule plunging along the wooded sh.o.r.e, Wayland thrusting his long pole deep, almost to his hand-grip, to find bottom.

"There's a nasty under current from the upper river," he said.

"Let her go, there--! let her go t' th' current--tack her an' the current wull swerve ye int' the other side! More men lose their lives by poling too hard than lettin' go! Catch the current and let her go."