The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 5

"Saw 'Macbeth' in Smelter City Theatre last night. 'Member the place where he says 'Thou canst not say I did it?' Well, that's the beginning of the end for that old boy; fooled himself that time. If he'd remembered that, though he didn't do it with his own hand, he did do it all the same, he wouldn't have believed his own lie and got all tangled up. One of the first things Moyese told me when I went on his paper was never to monkey with the dee-fool who wastes time justifying himself: do it and go ahead! Fact is, d.i.c.k, I look on a newspaper man same as I do a lawyer: he has his price; and he finds his market for his wares; and it's none of his business what his private convictions are of the right or wrong. He's paid to defend or attack like a lawyer; and he goes ahead--"

"And doesn't pretend he's fooling the public by giving news, eh, Bat?

Brydges, if you argue that fas.h.i.+on, you must excuse me if I grin."

"Who's the old party talking to your road gang down by the white tent?"

asked Brydges, pointing where the Range sloped down to the Homestead Settlement and a long canva.s.s bunk house marked the domicile of the road hands for the Forests.

"Oh, no, you don't get away from the argument so easily, Bat! You make the Senator's job and your job and public service all round a bunco game, a bunco game with marked cards; while we Service and Land fellows act the decent sign for a blind pig--"

"Hullo, he's coming up," interrupted Brydges. "Seems your night for deputations, Wayland! Looks like a parson! By George, I didn't know Senator had his drag net out for parsons as dummy entrymen! Nothing like imparting quality! By George, hanged if I know--he looks like a peddler--has a pack horse--"

"Peddler o' th' Gospel, Son! Good ee-vening to you, Gentlemen."

The newcomer sang out greeting in a high thin falsetto that belied the ruddy youth of shaven cheeks and accorded more with his ma.s.ses of white hair.

"Is this the Ranger place perched on top o' th' warld? Y'r workmen in the white tent told me A'd find a short trail here-by t' th' next Valley. 'Tis y'r Missionary Williams A'm seekin'; A thought if A'd push on, push on, an' cat-er-corner y'r mountain here, A'd strike y'r River by moonlight! So A have! So A have! But it's Satan's own waste o' windfall 'mong these big trees! Such a leg-breakin' trail A have na' beaten since A peddled Texas tickler done up in Gospel hymn books filled wi' whiskey--"

"Well--I'll--be--hanged," slowly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Bat Brydges. "Come far?" he asked aloud, fumbling his brain for a clue.

The old man, emerging from the timbers, took off his hat and swabbed the sweat from his brow. Then he righted the saddle on his broncho.

"Eh, woman, do A scare y'?" This to Calamity, just turning down the Ridge trail with a dun gray blanket filled with odds and ends on her shoulders, when the padded thud of the pack horse coming through the heavy timber was followed by the stalwart form of the newcomer. Face and form were frontiersman; vesture, clerical; but Old Calamity trotted back to the Range cabin.

"Come far, did y' ask? More or less, more or less. A've come farther on unholier missions. We'd call it a nice bit snow-shoe run in the old days. Two months since A left Saskatchewan! We've taken our time, Bessie an' me--" caressing the mare with resounding slaps. "We're not so young as we were, Bessie an' me, when we sarved Satan hot-foot back an' forth these same trails till by the Grace o' G.o.d we broke halter from h.e.l.l for holier trail--"

"Better loosen up and berth here for to-night," suggested the Ranger.

"The Ridge trail is steep going, down grade, after dark for a stranger--"

"Stranger?" The old man trumpeted a laugh that would have done credit to a megaphone. "Stranger, my kiddie boy? A've known these Rocky Mountain States when, if ye owned these pairts an' had a homestead in h.e.l.l, y'd rent y'r residence here and take up quiet life the other place! A knew these trails before y' were born, from Mexico to MacKenzie River, wherever men had a thirst. A've travelled these trails wi' cook stoves packed full o' Scotch dew, an' the Mounted Police hangin' t' m' tail till A scuttled the Boundary. Good days--rip roaring days for the makin' of strong men! We were none o' y'r cold blooded reptile calculatin' kind! May we fight valiant for G.o.d now as we wrestled for the Devil then! Oh, to be young again an' not spill life in wa.s.sail! to give the blows for right instead of wrong! Man, what a view y' have here--what a view! Minds me of the days A was bridge building in the Rockies--"

"Then you've been in these mountains before?" asked Brydges; but the old frontiersman refused to take the bait and rambled on in his reverie.

"What a view! Th' vera kingdom of earth at y'r feet! The river wimplin'--wimplin'--wimplin' wi' a silver laugh over the stones, an'

the light violet as a Scotch la.s.s's eye! An' the green fields of alfalfa--Have y' ever noticed how th' light above the alfalfa turns purple? An' y'r Rim Rocks roasted fire red by the heat. 'Tis the same view A've gazed on many a time when A was young." He drew a deep sigh of the longing that only the pa.s.sing frontiersman knows. "'Tis like if the Devil came tempting to-day, 't would be such a place as this!

Many's the time He came to us in them old days, lawless days! 'Tis different to-day. He'd not bait men savage naked now. The kingdoms of the earth, he'd offer--wealth an' success--wealth an' success--the fetish o' sons o' men to-day. 'Twould not be simple cards for drink y'd play! Bigger stakes--bigger stakes, boys! He'd bait men's souls wi' bigger stakes! If I were young I'd take his bet an' play for the biggest stakes outside o' h.e.l.l--"

"Hey? What is that?" queried Brydges; and he winked at Wayland. "We'd been talking of a bunco game when you came up."

"Y' had, had you?" The old frontiersman measured Brydges through and through. "Well, judging from y'r bra.s.s an' the up-and-coming kind of it, A'm thinking y'r stakes would be pea-nuts under little sh.e.l.ls!

'Tis bigger stakes I'd play for if I had m' life to live over--"

"What?" asked Wayland curiously.

Mr. Bat Brydges was revising his inventory of the old "duffer."

Wayland was laughing openly. The old man had become oblivious of both, with a triangling of sharply intersected lines between his brows and tense compression of the lips--

"The--fate--o'--this--land," he ripped out in hammer raps, "the fate of this land, boys, with all time lookin' on since ever Time began! Y're the fiery furnace of all the world's hopes and fears, of all earth's people, of all poets' dreams; an' G.o.d only knows what a mess o' slag y're turning out! Y'r muck rakers are belching y'r failures to the four corners of earth! Justice perverted! Courts in fee to the highest bidder! More murders--murders in this fresh new clean land than all the stew pots o' filth the old nations have brewed in a thousand years; and murders unpunished! Y'r Government--the great world experiment--is it the wull o' the people, or the wull of a gilded clique o' tricksters?"

The old man stretched out his hands above the Valley. "What are ye doing with y'r freedom, the freedom that the children o' light prayed for and fought for and died for? When there's one law for the rich and another for the poor, when ye have to bribe y'r own self-elected rulers to do y'r wull, where is y'r freedom different from the freedom in France before the Revolution? Is it not written 'my house shall be for all nations; but ye have made it a den of thieves?' Ye have what all the nations of the earth have bled for, what prophets have prayed for, and patriots died for; and all the world is looking on asking, sneering, scoffing, saying ye pervert the Ark o' the Covenant of G.o.d, saying lawlessness stalks under y'r banners, saying y' wrest the judgment to the highest bidder, aye to the supreme fountain head o' y'r courts! The fate o' this land, boys! Them's the stakes I'd play for, if I had l.u.s.ty blows to spare. I'd up--I'd up--I'd strip me naked of every back-thought and expediency and self-interest and hold-back! I'd hurl the lie--in the teeth--of a scoffing world--I'd show all nations o' time that the people, the plain common good people, can keep the law sound as the Ark o' the Covenant of G.o.d; and--and--I'd hurl y'r traitor leaders--y'r Judas Iscariots huckstering the land's good for paltry silver--I'd hurl y'r grafters an' y'r heelers an' y'r bosses an' y'r strumpet justices, who sell a verdict like a harlot, I'd hurl them to the bottom of h.e.l.l! An' may h.e.l.l be both deep and hot--old fas.h.i.+oned extra for the pack of them!"

He shook his trembling fist at the vacuous air. "Fight--right--might!

I'd paint the words in letters o' blood till they awakened this land like the fiery cross of old! I'd fight--fight--fight till they had to kill every man o' my kind before I'd down! Before I'd see y'r law outraged, y'r courts perverted, y'r justice bartered and hawked and peddled from huckster to trickster, from heeler to headman, from blackmailer to high judge--but A didna mean to break loose. Y'r fair scene stirred m' blood; and A'm an old man; and A love the land. A was born West. A'm none of y'r immigration boomsters who goes in a Pullman car, then tells the world all about--Now, which way to y'r Missionary Williams?"

Bat flushed; but he did not laugh. Oddly enough, he forgot the feature-story. Wayland rose and came forward and involuntarily held out his hand.

"I wish you'd stay for the night," he said. "A good many of us feel the way you do; but like you, we're all up in air. Sawing the air doesn't saw wood. A good many of us are in the fight right now; but, unless we get somewhere, we're going to feel as if we were carving wind mills. Suppose you put up here for the night? Besides, it's pretty late to go down. Trail switches sharply--"

The old frontiersman heard absently.

"An old man's broodings," he ruminated.

"I'd call 'em D. T.'s," muttered Brydges.

"Don't fear for my bones on the trail." He came back from his reverie as from a journey. "A'm the old breed that doesn't break. 'Tis you young brittle fellows all bred to pace and speed and style needs look to y'r goin's. Which way do A turn at the foot of the Ridge?

One--two--three--A see four lights. Which is the Mission?"

"If you insist on leaving, Sir, there is an Indian woman here going down to the MacDonald ranch--"

"MacDonald, did you say?"

"The next place along the River is the Mission. Here, Calamity, show this stranger which way to go, will you?"

But Calamity had already bolted for the Ridge trail.

"Stranger? She doesn't look to me exactly like a stranger. Looks precious like one of our Saskatchewan half-breeds! Haven't A seen you before, my good woman? A'm Jack Matthews, who carried the mail for the Company at the Big House; by an' by contractor, then by the Grace o'

G.o.d missionary to the Cree! Haven't A seen you, girl? Was it '85 at the Agency House when Wandering Spirit--"

"Non sabe," snapped Calamity, setting off down the trail at a run paced to keep the reverend traveller behind till she reached the last loop.

Drawing her shawl over her face, she paused with her back to the frontiersman. To the left blinked the lights of the sheep ranch house and the Mission, to the right the cow-boy camp and the dead glare of the white buildings belonging to the Senator.

"Viola! dat vay!" The woman deliberately pointed to the cow-boy camp; then vanished in the darkness.

"Mighty quick wench! A have seen you before, my sly minx, and A'll see you some more," he said staring after the fading form.

Then he headed his mare for the cow-boy camp below the cliff. Half a dozen men lounged round a smudge fire. The old man paused to sort out the scene; the box of a gramaphone laid out for a card table, a bottle of whiskey in the centre, two empty bottles with candles stuck in the necks for lights, a dull smudge fire, four rough fellows sprawling on the ground, one with corduroy velveteen trousers, an old white pack horse nosing windward of the smoke; one figure with sheepskin chaps to his waist, thumbs in his belt, standing erect with back to the trail; and face in light, a shaven face with a strong jaw and oily geniality, a corpulent form in a white vest, putting a pocket book in a breast pocket.

The old frontiersman took hold of his mare's bridle.

"'Tis hardly what you'd look for in a Missionary outfit, Bessie."

"You'll leave for the South at once?"

The question commanded. The old frontiersman listened.

"Hoof express, Sir," promised the sheep-skin leggings.

"And mind you I know nothing about it, Jim. I'm not to be told. I take care of you without you knowing about it. I _expect you_ to take care of us--" the white waist coat became at once impressive and anxious.