Bunch Grass Part 61

The odd thing was that his name was really Dennis. In the West, Dennis stands genetically for the under dog, for the man who is left. His name is--Dennis! Why? The man in this story was christened Dennis, and, being a native son of the Golden West, he took particular pains to keep the fact a secret from the "boys." When he punched cattle on our range he was known as "Kingdom Come" Brown, because, even in those days, it was plain to tenderfeet that physically and intellectually D.

Brown, cowboy, was not likely to inherit the kingdoms of the earth.

Ever since he had been breeched ill-fortune had marked him for her own. Nevertheless, he was rich in the possession of a temperament which soared like a lark above suffering and disappointment. He believed steadfastly that his "turn" would come. "It ain't goin' to be like this yere--always," was a phrase familiar to us. To this we replied, "Not much!"

In our hearts we, too, believed that the turn would come, but that, humanly speaking, it would occur in the sweet by-and-by. Hence the nickname. The hardest nuts admitted that Brown was travelling upon the rough road which leads upwards. His golden slippers were waiting for him--sure! He set an example which none followed, but which all, in sober moments, commended. He neither drank nor swore. He remained faithful to the memory of a woman who had married somebody else. For her sake he sold his horse and saddle, and became a lumber-man. The losing of his Mamie was, of course, the heaviest of his many bludgeonings. She was a simple soul, like D. Brown, inured to hard work, and at the mercy of a drunken father, who had perilously escaped by the very skin of his teeth from the clutches of Judge Lynch. To give to Mamie a home had been the consuming desire of poor Dennis. For this he pinched and saved till, at last, the needful sum lay snug in a San Lorenzo bank. Then the bank "bust"!

Without a word to Mamie, Dennis drifted away to some distant range, and before he was seen again Tom Barker had appeared. Why Tom, a big, brutal lumberman, desired to marry Mamie, no longer young, never pretty, penniless, and admittedly fond of Dennis, must remain a mystery. Why Mamie married Tom is a question easily answered. Tom was "boss" of a logging-camp, and none had ever denied his Caesarean attributes. He had the qualities and vices conspicuously absent in Dennis. He was Barker, of Barker's Inlet. The mere mention of his name in certain saloons was enough to put the fear of G.o.d into men even bigger than himself. A sort of malefic magnetism exuded from every pore of his skin. When he held up his finger Mamie crawled to him. She believed, probably, that she was escaping from a drunken father, and she knew that Tom could and would supply many things for which she had yearned--a parlour, for instance, possibly a piano, and a silk dress.

She would have taken Dennis without these amenities, but Dennis had fled to the back of Nowhere without even saying good-bye.

Months after the marriage Dennis came back. Ajax described the wedding and the subsequent flitting to Barker's Inlet. Dennis listened, stroking his too thin, straggling moustache. Next day he sold his horse and saddle.

When he appeared at Barker's Inlet and asked for a job, Tom Barker smiled. He had heard of Dennis, and he knew that Mamie had given to Dennis what never would be given to him--the love and confidence of a simple woman. Into his savage bull-head crept the determination to torment these two unsophisticated creatures delivered by Fate to be his slaves, and as such at his mercy.

Accordingly, Dennis was engaged.

Tom's position at the inlet must be defined. Some years before he had been known as a timber-cruiser--that is to say, a man who "locates,"

during his wanderings through forests primeval, belts of timber which will be likely to allure the speculative lumberman. Barker, therefore, had discovered the inlet which bore his name, and in consideration of his services, and with a due sense of his physical and mental qualifications, he had been appointed boss of the camp by the real owners--a syndicate of rich men, who knew that logs were worth ten dollars a thousand feet, and that the man to make them so was Tom Barker. The syndicate wisely gave Tom a free hand, knowing that, in everything which concerned the working of men and machinery to the limit, Tom would begin at the point where their less elastic consciences might leave off. The syndicate, therefore, remained in Victoria, or Vancouver, or San Francisco, and said of Tom that he was a rustler from "Way back, and as lively as they make 'em."

It will be guessed that Tom's princ.i.p.al difficulty was engaging men.

Having engaged them, he was certain to get plenty of work out of them, and they couldn't leave till they had earned sufficient money to take themselves elsewhere. All the boys came to Tom stoney-broke; otherwise they would never have "signed on." To be treated like a hog, to root a.s.siduously for Tom, or to starve, stared several able-bodied men in the face. One genial Californian remarked, "It's a choice between Death and d.a.m.nation."

You will now understand why Tom smiled when Dennis Brown asked for a job.

He knew that Dennis was a cow-puncher, and not a star performer on his own pitch, and he had only to look at the man to realise how unfitted he was for the rough work of a logging-camp. A derisive chuckle gurgled from his huge, hairy throat as he growled out--

"Say! This ain't like teachin' Sunday-school."

"I know it ain't," said Dennis cheerfully. But his heart sank at the mention of the Sunday-school. Long ago he had taught in a Sunday- school. It was simply awful to think that the piety of a too ardent youth was now to be held up to the ridicule of the boys.

"I believe your name is--Dennis?" continued the boss of Barker's Inlet.

"It is," our unhappy friend admitted.

"Go up to the bunk-house," commanded Tom, "and tell Jimmy Doolan, with my regards, to take particler care of yer. I'll speak to him later."

Then, as Dennis was moving off, he added, in a rasping voice: "You an'

my wife is acquainted, eh? Wal, when you've dropped your blankets, come up to the house and say howdy."

Dennis went up to the house. There was one house at the inlet: a four- roomed frame building with three coats of paint on it and a red roof.

It stood some distance from the collection of shacks and cabins at the mouth of the Coho River, and it overlooked some of the most glorious scenery in the world. In front stretched the Sound, a silver sea just dimpled by the soft spring breeze. To right and left, and behind, lay the forest--that silent land of the North, illimitable as s.p.a.ce, everlastingly green when the snows had melted, shadowy, mysterious, terrible!

As Dennis approached the house he heard a terrific sound--the crash of a felled and falling tree--some giant who had held his own in the struggle for existence when William the Norman ruled in England. And then, from all points of the compa.s.s, the echoes, in varying cadence, repeated that tremendous, awe-inspiring sound--the last sobbing cry of a t.i.tan.

A moment later Mamie received him and ushered him into the parlour, where a small piano, a table of sh.e.l.lwork, and crimson plush curtains challenged the interest and curiosity of all who were privileged to behold them. "Let me take yer hat," said Mamie.

The hand she held out trembled slightly. Dennis perceived that she was thinner and paler.

"Yer well fixed," he murmured. "An' happy as a clam, I reckon?"

"I'd oughter be happy," said Mamie dubiously. Then she added hastily, "Never expected to see you in a logging-camp."

"No? Wal, I kinder wondered how you was makin' it. You don't look extry peart, Mis' Barker. Lonesome for ye, ain't it?"

Already he knew that except for a few squaws she was the only woman in the camp.

"I don't mind that," said Mrs. Barker.

Something in her tone arrested his attention. Stupid and slow though he was, he divined that Mamie's thin, white cheeks and trembling hands were not caused by lonesomeness. He stared at her intently, till the blood gushed into her face. And then and there he knew almost everything.

"Got a baby?" he asked thickly.

She answered savagely, "No, I haven't, thank G.o.d!"

Above the chimneypiece hung an enlarged photograph of her husband, taken a couple of days after his wedding. Mr. Barker had faced the camera with the same brutal complacency which distinguished all his actions. He smiled grimly, thrusting forward his heavy lower jaw, inviting inspection, obviously pleased to exhibit himself as a ferocious and untamed animal. Through the sleeves of his ill-cut black coat the muscles of his arms and shoulders showed bulgingly. The ordinary observer, looking at the photograph for the first time, would be likely to reflect: "Here is a ruffian who needs a licking, but he has not got it yet."

"How's paw?" said Mamie.

"Las' time I seen the old man he was paralysed drunk, as usual."

"Yes, he would be that," a.s.sented Mamie indifferently.

After this, conversation languished, and very soon the visitor took his leave. When Mamie handed to him his hat she said awkwardly, "You never told me good-bye"; and to this indictment Dennis replied laconically, "Holy Mackinaw! I couldn't."

Those who know the wilder portions of this planet will understand that all was said between these two weaklings who had loved each other dearly. Dennis returned to the bunk-house. Mamie ran to her bed-room and cried her eyes out.

Within a week the camp knew two facts concerning the newcomer. His name was--Dennis! And he had loved Tom Barker's dough-faced wife!

Tom's selection of his first instrument of torture indicated subtlety.

He bought from a Siwash Indian the most contemptible-looking cur ever beheld at the inlet, and he christened the unfortunate beast--Dennis.

There was a resemblance between dog and man. Each, in the struggle for existence, had received more than his due share of kicks, and the sense of this in any animal manifests itself unmistakably. And each, moreover, exhibited the same amazing optimism, which is, perhaps, a sure sign of a mind not quite balanced.

Dennis, the dog, followed his new master wherever he went. Tom would introduce him with the remark, "His name is Dennis, _too_." And if Dennis, the man, happened to be present, Tom would swear at the dog, calling him every evil name which came to the tip of the foulest tongue in British Columbia. Always, at the end of these commination services, Tom would say to Dennis, the man, "I an't a-speakin' to you, old socks, so keep yer hair on."

That the cow-puncher (who, in his day, must have carried a "gun") did keep on his hair became a topic of talk amongst the boys, confirming a conviction that Dennis had been aptly named. Certainly he lacked backbone and jawbone. Moreover, change of skies brought to him no change of luck. Within a fortnight he was badly hurt, and obliged to remain in bed for nearly a week.

"I got mixed up with a log," he explained to Mamie. "It bruk loose, an' I didn't quite get outer the way. See?"

"Me, too," whispered Mamie. "Same trouble here--'zactly."

Twice while he lay upon his back she brought to the bunk-house a chocolate layer cake and some broth. Upon the occasion of her third visit she came empty-handed, with her too pale eyes full of tears, and her heart full of indignation.

"I ain't got nothing," she muttered. "Tom says it's his grub."

"That's all right," replied Dennis, noting that she walked stiffly.

"But, look ye here; he ain't been wallopin' ye, has he?"

"Yes, he has. When he was through I tole him I'd sooner have his blows than his kisses any day."

"I hadn't oughter hev come here," said Dennis.