Lorimer of the Northwest Part 12

We, however, shall hold on as long as we have a dollar left."

"It's a toss-up," added Johnston. "You take your chances, and get what you can, facing the music pleasantly like the rest of us if you get nothing, which seems quite probable. Now don't jump over the edge of a ravine like the giddy antelope, but put your heads together and think about it."

There was a laugh from one of the men, who conferred apart, and another said: "We're coming along. There's no work for men or horses here in winter, and we've neither money nor credit to sow in spring. Besides, we've taken your money, you have treated us fairly, and it strikes us as mean to back down on you now. So we're open to take the chances, and all we ask is that the chances should figure either way. If you're cleaned out, we get nothing; if you win we want to come in. No; we've no use for a sliding scale to fight each other on, and I guess we'll take Contractor Lorimer's word he'll do the square thing."

"I give it," I said simply.

"We thank you;" and when they went away I felt the weight of a double responsibility.

"I congratulate you on your leaders.h.i.+p of the hard-up company," said Johnston lightly. "This is the kind of thing that appeals to me--nothing to lose and all to win, and determined men who can do anything with axe and saw and horseflesh to back one. So it's loose guy, up peg, on saddle, and see what future waits us in the garden of the Pacific slope--in mid-winter."

It was seven days later, and many things had been done, when with our working beasts and few other possessions lurching before us in a couple of cattle-cars, we went clattering through the Rockies at the tail of a big freight train. It was just breaking day, and Harry leaned beside me over the platform rails of a car hooked on for our accommodation, while Lee sat on the step close by wrapped in an old skin coat Harry had given him. A shrill whistle came ringing out of the stirred-up dust ahead, then the roar of wheels grew louder, rolling back repeated and magnified from the rocks above, while half-seen through the mist that rose from a river spectral pines reeled by, and an icy blast lashed my cheeks like a whip as, with throttle wide open and the long cars bouncing behind, the great mountain locomotive thundered down a declivity.

"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 l.u.s.ter 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 debris, 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 pa.s.sed the flask on to me, while Lee groaned deprecatingly, and then, brus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.ses 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 ma.s.sy 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 s.h.i.+ngled roofs peeped out among the cedars that spread their rigid branches over its placid waters, while the roar of a frothing torrent rose hoa.r.s.ely 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 _protege_ 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 pa.s.ses into it, and I knew that while the average British Columbian is a st.u.r.dy 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 s.e.xes 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 s.h.i.+rts 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 a.s.sumed wonder, "You don't say?"

"I've the same pa.s.sions 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt-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."