The Bail Jumper Part 16

They were now nearing a town on the other line of railway, where Dr.

Millar lived.

"Come right in with me," said the doctor. "We will go right to my house and have dinner, and then we will diagnose your case further."

Burton gladly agreed, and when dinner was over Dr. Millar took him into his consultation room.

"The first thing I do with a patient, especially a country patient"-his eye twinkled-"is give him a bath. We will start at the beginning. Step into the bathroom here and slip your clothes out to me. They may need some attention, too."

Burton did as he was bidden, and the refres.h.i.+ng delight of a good bath went far to restore his confidence in himself.

"I'll take my clothes now, if they're ready for me," he called to the doctor.

A bundle of clothes was slipped in through the door. Burton opened them out and saw at a glance that they were not his. The suit, although of no better quality, was dry and pressed, and there were clean s.h.i.+rt, underwear and hose. Even a clean collar and tie had not been overlooked.

"These are not my clothes," he called. "You have made a mistake."

"They are what the doctor ordered," came the answer, with a laugh, "and you put them right on, or stay where you are."

There was nothing for it but to obey, and in a few minutes Burton, well and dryly clad, was back in the consultation room, expostulating with the doctor.

"Sit right down here," said the doctor, disregarding his protestations.

"Do you know what is the matter with you?"

"No," said the young man, in surprise.

"You have eczema!"

"Eczema! Nonsense, doctor. I am quite well, physically."

"Now look here, young man, this is my case, and if I say you have eczema you have eczema, and you have it bad. So bad I'll have to send you to a town I know in the far West for treatment."

"Doctor! I don't understand you, but even if I had eczema, or any such trouble, why should I go to the far West for treatment? Are there specialists there?"

"No, but-well, you see, it's in the new homestead country."

"Doctor!"

"Not a word. There's a train leaving in two hours, and you're going on it. By the time I dress up that face for eczema your own father wouldn't know it, and a good sousing with iodoform will keep the pa.s.sengers from getting too curious."

"But doctor, I cannot have you do this thing. You are a.s.sisting a fugitive. You may be held responsible. You are running a risk."

"Not much. I have no evidence that there is a warrant out for you. If I make a mistake in treating you for eczema that is simply a professional misjudgment. A doctor is permitted to make mistakes-and bury them."

"But it is at least an evasion of the spirit of the law. Of course, I'm not trying to defend the law, I'm evading it myself, but I don't want you to be mixed up in it."

"I've been thinking of that, too. I studied your case while you were making your toilet. I'm a good Canadian, and I obey the law. Society is founded upon obedience. But if laws conflict, which am I to obey?"

"The higher law, I suppose," said Burton, not just clear to what the doctor referred.

"Very well. That is just the way I figured it out. The law of man says, 'Hand him over to the police.' The law of G.o.d says, 'Do unto others as ye would-.' When the law of man conflicts with the law of G.o.d, the law of man is _ultra vires_. We must obey the higher law, and if men generally would do so fewer jails would be needed. So you see how you happen to have eczema."

"I can't thank you enough," said Burton, the moisture gathering in his eyes. "I will repay-when I can."

"That's all right," the good doctor a.s.sured him, but he turned his face away a little. "I helped you into the world, and I guess it's my privilege to help you through it."

CHAPTER XII-LOVE-OR LAW?

"They say there is wealth in the doing, That royal and rich are the gains, But 'tisn't the wealth I am wooing, So much as the life of the plains; For here in the latter day morning, Where Time to Eternity clings, Midwife to a breed in the borning, I behold the Beginning of things!"

_The Empire Builders._

Thirty hours later, in a forward seat of a colonist car, sat a young man with his face in bandages. A strong odour of disinfectants pervaded that section of the car, and other pa.s.sengers avoided it as much as possible, but a doctor's certificate that the trouble was not of a dangerous nature satisfied conductors and trainmen. For thirty hours the young man had fasted, and the interminable journey across the broad vest of the prairie country wore on in dull monotony. Villages, towns and cities had flashed by, and now they were in the great unsettled ranching country, where one may travel many towns.h.i.+ps without seeing sign of human life.

Here and there, at great intervals, the eye caught a glimpse of numberless herds grazing on the rolling uplands; and at intervals greater still a horseman loomed high against the distant horizon. The two slender threads of steel seemed the only connecting link with modern civilization, and as they strung far into the endless West the very minds of the pa.s.sengers underwent an evolution, a broadening, a disa.s.sociation with Established Things, and a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of receptiveness toward That Which Shall Be. Here, at last, was the new West, the manless land, its bosom bared for a thousand miles to the hungry embrace of landless man.

Through his little window Burton watched it, and with the eye of faith and optimism saw all this boundless country checkered into farms; towns and cities rising where now were flag-stations and water-tanks, telephones and telegraphs where now were fences and buffalo runs; electric railways groaning with wheat across the now trailless prairie.

Here was a chance to be in at the beginning; to lay new foundations of business, government, and society, unchecked by tradition, unhampered by convention, undaunted by the arrogance of precedent. How well those foundations must be laid; a variation of a thousandth of a principle, projected through a thousand years, might swing the centre of gravity of society beyond its base! And who were the men to lay this foundation? To whom had Fate entrusted such responsibility? He glanced about the car, foul from its long journey, saturated in tobacco smoke, reeking with alcoholic fumes and the nameless odours of unwashed humanity. Across the aisle sat a mother from Central Europe, crowded in the seat with her three children, clad in shawls and blankets, sweltering in the July heat. Once he caught their eye; they looked at him through the eye of the hunted thing, the croucher, the oppressed; the eye where hate serves for pa.s.sion, where strength means tyranny, where love has only an animal significance. Was it from this that the ideal State should rise; from this sad flotsam of the seas of oppression and vice? And yet as he looked he saw in that same eye another element, deeper, perhaps, and less p.r.o.nounced, as though only rising into being. It was the element of wonder; and whoso wonders is not without hope. And there was ambition!

This little frightened family had dared to cross an ocean and half of two continents-for what? Surely only to share in a possibility impossible at home. Likely enough the husband was already a homesteader in the new land; he would meet them at one of these little flag-stations with his ox-team and wagon, and they would trek away, fifty, sixty, a hundred miles into the wilderness to rear their home, to lay the foundations of their future, to bring up a family of free-born Canadians. The whole car was filled with such foreigners; rough and vicious-looking many of them; sad-eyed and wondering a few, with here and there a son of that jocund hilarity which knows no restraint and whose current runs fullest where is most to dry it up.

And yet, who should set bounds to their future? What "mute, inglorious Miltons," what "village Hampdens" might be here, waiting only the saving grace of environment to bring them surging into the fulness of a life unknown, undreamt, and yet the lure of whose prophetic vision had fired their dark eyes in the far fields of their unhappy ancestry! How far from the civilisation of the past, how far even from the civilisation of the present, had they thrown themselves in this wild projection into the unknown and the unlimited!

The train stood, waiting, on a side-track. With his head out of the window Burton saw a black cloud of smoke far to the westward; steadily it grew until the muzzle of a locomotive could be distinguished, and in a few minutes the eastbound express roared past them in its down hill run to evening dress and music and conventions made for the fascination of disregarding them! But even as it swept by from the open windows of the dining car came the scent of fresh-cut roses and carnations, and a moment later the "newsy" hurried through the car with a bundle of morning papers. Burton stopped him and bought a copy, somewhat to the vendor's surprise, and settled down to read, verbatim, the speech of the Prime Minister of England delivered in London the evening before!

As the train approached the young man's destination he quietly slipped into the washroom and removed his bandages. With soap which the doctor had supplied him he erased the salve and grease, and after a good wash, with his hair combed and his collar and tie adjusted, he felt more like a civilized being than at any time since he had left the consultation room of Dr. Millar. As the crowd swept out at the station he mingled, unnoticed, among them.

He rushed first into a lunch-room, and after satisfying his long hunger he had scarce set foot on the station platform until a friendly hand grasped him by the arm and led him to one side.

"Come this way, Jack," said a young man, little older than himself, but with that alert, active manner which is as distinctive of the country as the chinook. "Let's get out of this bunch before they get wised up.

Lucky I saw you in time. Jimmy Reid, a chum of mine that came in here homesteadin' last year, has just got word tuh go home tuh I-o-way, where his father's most all in, an' he says to me last night-no longer ago than last night-he says, 'Frank, slip down tuh the station to-morrow an'

if yuh see a likely lookin' fellow 'at 'ud appreciate a bit of a start in this country put him next tuh my homestead. I got tuh let her go,' he says, 'Dad's all in an' I'll have tuh coop up under Old Glory for awhile, anyway. Put some decent fellow next it,' says he. Talk about luck--"

"But I am afraid I don't understand," said Burton. "A man can't sell a homestead unless he has the patent, can he?"

The new acquaintance looked Burton in the face for five seconds, and then burst into a sudden guffaw.

"No, of course he can't," he declared, slapping his leg and laughing hilariously. "Not any more than he can travel on a train without a ticket. Oh, you wise one," he exclaimed, giving Burton a friendly nudge in the ribs, and dropping his voice, "what are you travellin' colonist fer? Oh, don't tell me," he went on, without waiting for an answer.

"It's easier 'an b.u.t.ter. My chum has the best homestead outa doors, an'

I can't take it, 'count o' havin' exhausted my rights already, an'

that's the only reason you get in easy. All you got tuh do is stick around until notice o' cancellation is posted, an' then get in your application. He's sixty days to get back on the job, an' unless he sees it's goin' your way back he'll come, an' spoil the game of any one that tries tuh b.u.t.t in. It's done ev'ry day in the week, an' you're as safe as a dollar."

"What's this information going to cost me?" Burton interrupted.

Jimmy Reid's chum hesitated for a minute. "I wouldn't hardly like to say just what Jimmy was settin' on that place," he said at last, slowly, as one who is deliberating every word. "It's easy worth twenty dollars an acre, which is thirty-two hundred fer the quarter, an' when a man is lookin' fer a farm to achually go out an' live on a homestead's as good as railway land. The duties don't cut no figure if your goin' to live there anyway. Course, Jimmy was expectin' whoever got it 'ud use him decent-say about two thousand." The last word was uttered with an inflection as though the speaker asked a question.

"I'm afraid it's out of my cla.s.s," said Burton. "I've only a few dollars with me, and I intend to work out for a while to get enough to start me on a claim of my own."