THE PREY OF THE STRONGEST

BY

MORLEY ROBERTS

LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED,
Paternoster House, E.C.
1906

PREFACE

To Archer Baker,
European Manager of the Canadian
Pacific Railroad

MY DEAR BAKER,

Of all the men I worked with on the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the Kicking Horse Pass and on the Shushwap, when you and men like you were hustling to put it through, I am not, nowadays, in touch with one. They are, doubtless, distinguished or have gone under. Some of them, perhaps, lie in obscure graves beside the track of other roads, which, in their parlance, "broke out" when the C.P.R. was finished: when End of Track joined End of Track: when the very bottom of their world fell out because two Worlds, East and West, were united by our labour, yours and theirs and even mine. Others of them are perhaps famous. They may have some mighty mountains and a way station named after them, as you may have, for all I know: they may even be Managers! And what so great as a Manager of a Through Continental Road, after all? There are Ministers and Monarchs and other men of note, but to my mind the Managers top them all. That is by the way, and you shall not take it as flattery: the humble worker with the pick and shovel and hammer and drill and bar, like myself, cannot but think with awe of the cold clear heights in which they dwell.

Years ago, when I was toiling on another grade, in another sort of rock-cut, hewing out a trail for myself in the thick impenetrable forests of which the centre may be Fleet Street or where Publishers dwell, I came across you. And it is to my credit that I never let you go. Most men represent other men or shadows, but you represented yourself and a great part of my old life: you stood for the Grade, for the Mountains, and the Passes, for the steel rails, for the Contractors with whom I worked, for the Road, for all Railroads, for Canada and British Columbia, linked and made one at last. You know what Colonial fever is: that disease of desire which at intervals afflicts those of us who have come back out of the Wilderness. You were often the cause of it and the cure of it. Perhaps I owe you one: perhaps but for your giving me a chance of vicarious consolation in our talk, I might have laid my bones by some other railroad in the West on the illimitable fat prairies of our Canada. Therefore I offer you this book. I offer you only a sketch, a rough and incomplete sketch, of certain obscurer aspects of life in one of the finest countries in the world, a country for which I have as much hope as I have affection. I have not tried to put the Pacific Slope into a pannikin. To cram British Columbia into a volume is as easy as trying to empty Superior with a spoon. For it was a full country when I knew it: when your Big Bosses came along with drills and dynamite and knocked the Rockies and the Selkirks into shape to let your Railroad through. In those days the World emptied many thousand of its workers into your big bucket, and in that bucket I was one drop. I had as partners, as tilikums, men from the Land of Everywhere: not a quarter, hardly a country, of the round world but was represented in the great Parliament of the Pick and Shovel and Axe that decreed the Road, the Great Road, the one Great Road of all!

I have seen many countries, as you know, but none can ever be to me what B.C. was when I worked there. It fizzed and fumed and boiled and surged. It was in a roar: it hummed: it was like the Cañon when the grey Fraser from the North comes down to Lytton and smothers the blue Thompson in its flood. We lived in those days: we worked in those days: we didn't merely exist or think or moon or fool around. We were no 'cultus' crowd. We lit into things and dispersed the earth. Some day, it may be, I shall do another book to try and recall the odours of the majestic slain forests and the outraged hills when your live Locomotives hooted in the Passes and wailed to see the Great Pacific. In the meantime I offer you this, which deals only incidentally with your work, and takes for its subjects a Sawmill and the life we lived who worked in one on the lower Fraser, when we and the River retired from the scene that to-day ends in busy Vancouver and yet spreads across the Seas.

It is possible that you will say that there is too much violence in this story, seeing that it is laid in British Columbia and not South of the Forty Ninth Parallel. Well, I do not hold you responsible for the violence. Even in law-abiding B.C. man will at times break out and paint the Town red without a metaphor. There is a great deal of human nature in man, even when suppressed by Judge Begbie: and Siwashes will be Siwashes, especially when "pahtlum," or drunk, as they say in the elegant Chinook with which I have adorned a veracious but otherwise plain story. Take it from me that there is not an incident, or man, or woman in it who is not more or less painted from real life. That amiable contractor for whom we all had quite an affection, whom I have thinly veiled under the name of Vanderdunk, is no exception. He will, I feel sure, forgive me, but some of the others might not and they are veiled rather more deeply. This I owe to myself, for I may revisit B.C. again and I cannot but remember that, for some things I said of folks out there many years ago, I was threatened with the death, so dear to the Western Romancer, which comes from being hung by the neck from a Cottonwood. If ever I do see that country again, I hope it will be with you. As my friend Chihuahua would have said, "Quien sabe?" My best regards to you, tilikum! Here's how!

Your sincere friend,
MORLEY ROBERTS.

THE PREY OF THE STRONGEST

I

"Klahya, tilikum."

As Pitt River Pete spoke he entered the humming Fraser Mill by the big side door chute down which all the heavier sawed lumber slid on its way to the yard. He had climbed up the slope of the chute and for some moments had stayed outside, though he looked in, for the sun was burning bright on white sawed lumber and the shining river, so that the comparative gloom of the Mill made him pause. But now he entered, and seeing Skookum Charlie helping the Wedger-off, he spoke, and Skookum, who could not hear in the uproar, knew that he said "Klahya."

The Mill stretched either way, and each end was open to the East and the West. It was old and grimed and covered with the fine meal of sawdust. Great webs hung up aloft in the dim roof. In front of Pete was the Pony Saw which took the lumber from the great Saws and made it into boards and scantling, beams and squared lumber. To Pete's right were the Great Saws, the father and mother of the Mill, double, edge to edge, mighty in their curved inset teeth, wide in gauge and strong whatever came to them. As they sang and screamed in chorus, singing always together, the other Saws chimed in: the Pony Saw sang and the Great Trimmer squealed and the Chinee Trimmer whined. Every Saw had its note, its natural song, just as naturally as a bird has: each could be told by the skilled hearer. Pete listened as he stepped inside and put his back against the studs of the wall-plates, out of the way of the hive of man, he only being a drone that hour. And the Big Hoes, Father and Mother of the Mill, droned in the cut of logs and said (or sang) that what they cut was Douglas Fir, and that it was tough. But the Pony Saw said that the last big log had been Spruce. The smell of spruce said "spruce" just as the Saw sang it. And the Trimmers screamed opposing notes, for they cut across the grain. Beneath the floor where the chorus of the Saws worked was the clatter of the lath-mill and the insistent squeal of the Shingle Saw, with its recurrent shriek of pride, "I cut a shingle, phit, I cut a shingle, phit!"

The whole Mill was a tuned instrument, a huge sounding board. There was no discord, for any discord played its part: it was one organic harmony, pleasing, fatiguing, satisfying; any dropped note was missed: if the Lath Mill stayed in silence, something was wanting, when the Shingler said nothing, the last fine addition to the music fell away. And yet the one harmony of the Mill was a background for the soloes of the Saws, for the great diapason of the Hoes, for the swifter speech of the Pony, for the sharp cross note of the Trimmers. The saws sang according to the log, to its nature, to its growth: either for the butt or the cleaner wood. In a long log the saws intoned a recitative: a solemn service. And beneath them all was the mingled song of the belts, which drove the saws, hidden in darkness, and between floors. Against the song of the Mill the voice of man prevailed nothing.

When any man desired to speak to another he went close to him and shouted. They had a silent speech for measurements in feet; the hand, the fingers, the rubbed thumb and finger, the clenched hand with thumb up, with thumb down, called numbers for the length of boards, of scantling, what not.

"Eleven feet!" said the rubbing thumb and forefinger.

If any spoke it was about the business of the Mill.

"Fine cedar this," said Mac to Jack, "fine cedar—special order—for——" a lost word.

But for the most part no one spoke but the saws. Men whistled with pursed lips and whistled dumbly: they sang too, but the songs were swallowed in the song of the Saws. They began at six and ran till noon unless a breakdown happened and some belt gave way. But none had given this day and it was ten o'clock. The men were warm and willing with work, their muscles worked warm and easy. It was grand to handle the lever and to beat in the iron dogs: to use the maul upon the wedges as the Saws squealed. They worked easy in their minds. They looked up and smiled unenvious of idle Pitt River Pete. They knew work was good, their breath felt clean: their hearts beat to the rhythm of the Mill.

As mills go it was a small one. It could not compete with the giants of the Inlet and the Sound who served Australia, which grows no good working wood, or South America. It sent no lumber to Brisbane, no boards to Callao or Valparaiso. It served the town of New Westminster and the neighbouring ranches: the little growth of townships on the River up to Hope and Yale. Sometimes it sent a cargo to Victoria or 'Squimault. A schooner even now lay alongside the wharf, piled high with new sawed stuff, that the saws had eaten as logs and spewed as lumber.

As logs! Aye, in the pool below, in the Boom, which is a chained log corral for swimming logs, a hundred great logs swam. Paul (from nowhere, but a tall thin man) was the keeper and their herder. He chose them for the slaughter, and went out upon them as they wallowed, and with a long pike stood upon the one to be sacrificed and drove it to the spot whence it should climb to the altar: a long slope with an endless cable working above and below it. He made it fast with heavy dogs, with chains may be, and then spoke to one above who clapped the Friction on the Bull-Wheel and hove the log out of the water, as if it were a whale for flensing. It went up into the Mill and was rolled upon the skids, and waited. It trembled and the Mill trembled.

"Now, now, that log, boys. Hook in, drive her, roll her, heave and she's on! Drive in the dogs and she goes!"

Oh, but it was a good sight and the roar was filling. Pete's eyes sparkled: he loved it: loved the sound and the song and itched to be again on the log with the maul. Those who speak of sport—why, let them fell a giant, drive it, boom it, drag it and cut it up! To brittle a monarch of the forest and disembowel it of its boards: its scantlings: its squared lumber: posts, fences, shingles, laths, pickets, Oho! Pete knew how great it was.

"Oh, klahya, tilikum, my friend the log."

He spoke not now to Skookum, but strong Charlie, and lazy Charlie, understood him. At one hour of the day even the lazy surrendered to the charm of the song of the work and did their damnedest. So Skookum understood that his old friend (both being Sitcum Siwashes, or half breeds) loved the Mill and the work at that hour.

White, the chief Sawyer, the Red Beard, was at his lever and set the carriage for a ten inch Cant when the slabs were off and hurtling to the lath mill. Ginger White no one loved, least of all his Wedger-Off, Simmons (a man, like silent Paul of the Boom, from nowhere), for he too was gingery, with a gleam of the sun in his beard and a spice of the devil in his temper. He was the fierce red type, while White was red but lymphatic, and also a little fat under the jowl and a liar by nature, furtive, not very brave but skilled in Saws. Simmons took a wedge and his maul and waited for the log to come to him. The carriage moved: the saws bit: the sawdust squirted and spurted in a curve with strips of wood which were not sawdust, for they use big gauges in the soft wood of the West and would stare at a sixteenth gauge, to say nothing of less. Now Simmons leapt upon the log and drove in the wedge to keep the closing cut open for the saws. The lengthening cut gave opening for another and another. Simmons and Skookum played swiftly, interchanging the loosened wedge and setting it to loosen the last driven in. The Wedgers-Off on the six-foot log were like birds of prey upon a beast.

"Oh, give it her," yelled Skookum. It was a way of his to yell. But Ginger drove her fast, hoping to hear the saws nip a little and alter their note so that he could complain. Simmons knew it, Skookum knew it. But they played quickly and sure. They leapt before the end of the cut and helped to guide the falling cant upon the skids. Chinamen helped them. The Cant thundered on the skids and was thrust sideways over to the Pony Saw.

"Kloshe kahkwa," said Pete. "That's good!"

And as he sent the carriage backward for another cut, Ginger White looked up and saw Pete standing with his back to the wall. Ginger's dull eye brightened, and he regarded Simmons with increased disfavour. Pete he knew was a good Wedger-Off, a quick, keen man very good for a Siwash, as good as any man in the Mill at such work. He had seen Pete work at the Inlet. Oh, he was good, "hyas kloshe," said White, but as for Simmons, damn! He was red-headed, and Ginger hated a red man for some deep reason.

It was a busy world, but even in the rhythm of the work hatred gleamed and strange passions worked as darkly as the belts, deep in the floor, that drove the saws. Quin, the manager (and part owner), came in at the door by the big Saws, and he saw Pete standing by the open chute. He smiled to himself.

"Back again, and asking for work. Where's his wife, pretty Jenny?"

She was pretty, toketie klootchman, a pretty woman: not a half breed: perhaps, if one knew, less than a quarter breed, tenas Sitcum Siwash, and the blood showed in the soft cheeks. She was bright and had real colour, tender contours, everything but beautiful hands and feet, and they not so bad. As for her face, and her smile (which was something to see), why, said Quin, as he licked his lips, there wasn't a white woman around that was a patch on her. Jenny had smiled on him. But Pete kept his eye on her and so far as it seemed she was true to him. But Quin——

In the busy world as it was Quin's mind ran on Jenny.

"Yes, Sir," he used to say, "we're small but all there. We run for all we're worth, every cent of it, every pound of beef. If you want to see bigger, try the Inlet or Port Blakeley. But we cut here to the last inch. Thirty thousand feet a day ain't a hell of a pile, but it's all we can chew. And, Sir, we chew it!"

He was a broad heavy man, dark and strong and much lighter on his feet than he looked. If there hadn't been Skookum Charlie it might have been Skookum Quin. He was as hard as a cant-log.

"We're alive," said Quin the manager. They worked where he was, and, hard as they had worked before, White set a livelier pace and made his men sweat. Quin smiled and understood that Ginger White was that kind of a man. Now Mac at the Pony Saw always took a breather when Quin came in. Just now he walked from his saw, dropped down through a trapdoor into a weltering chaos of sudden death and threw the tightener off his saw's belt. The Pony Saw ceased to hum and whined a little and ran slow and died. The blurred rim of steel became separate teeth. Long Mac stood over the saw and tightened a tooth with his tools and took out one and replaced it with a better washleather to keep it firm. He moved slow but again descended and let the tightener fall upon the belt. The Pony Saw sprang to valiant life and screamed for work. Quin smiled at Mac, for he knew he was a worker from "Way Back," and the further back you go the worse they get! By the Lord, you bet!

So much for Quin for the time. The Stick Moola, as the Chinook has it, is the theme.

It was a beast by the water, that lived on logs. It crawled into the River for logs, and reached out its arms for logs. It desired logs with its sharp teeth. It hungered for Cedar (there's good red cedar of sorts in the ranges, and fine white cedar in the Selkirks), and for Spruce (the fine tree it is!) and Douglas Fir and Hemlock or anything to cut that wasn't true hardwood. It could eat some of the soppy Slope Maple but disdained it. It was greedy and loved lumber. Men cut its dinner afar off and towed it around to the Mill, to the arms, the open arms of the Boom with Paul helping as a kind of great kitchen boy.

At early dawn its whistle blew, for in the dark (or near it) the underlings of the Engineer stirred up the furnaces and threw in sawdust and woke the steam. At "half after five" the men turned out, came tumbling in for breakfast in the boarded shack by the Store and fed before they fed the Mill. The first whistle sounded hungry, the second found the men hungry no more, but ready to feed the Beast.

In winter it was no joke turning out to begin the day early, but when frost had the Fraser in its arms the Mill shut down and went to sleep. One can't get one's logs out of eighteen inches of ice and then a frozen log cuts hard: it shines when cut. But at this season, it was bright at five and sunny at six. The men came with a summer willingness (that is, with less unwillingness than in frost time, for, remember, it takes work to make work easy and your beginner each day hates the beginning) and they were drawn from all ends of the earth.

There were British Canadians:

And Americans: from Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas, Iowa and the Lord knows where.

And Spaniards: one a man of Castile, and one from Mexico.

There were two Kanucks of the old sort from the East or there was one at any rate.

There were Englishmen. Well, there was one Jack Mottram and he a seaman.

There was one Swede, Hans Anderssen, in the Mill. There were two Finns outside it.

And one Lett (from Lithuania, you understand).

There was a Scotchman of course, and, equally of course, he was the Engineer.

There was a French Canadian, not by any means of the habitant type but very much there, and he knew English well, but usually cursed in French as was proper.

There were two Germans. One was as meek as one German usually is unless he is drunk. But one was not meek. More of him anon.

It was an odd crowd, a mixed crowd at meal times in the Mill hash house. To add to everything Chinamen waited: Chinamen cooked.

"Now then, Sing, chuck the chow on!"

"Sing-Sing (that's where you ought to be), where's the muckamuck?"

"Sacré chien——"

"Der Teufel——"

"By the great Horn Spoon——"

"Holy Mackinaw!"

"Caramba—Carajo——"

"By Crimes——"

"Oh! Phit!"

"Oh, where's the grub, the hash—the muckamuck, you Canton rats! Kihi, kiti, mukha-hoilo!"

And the hash was slung and the slingers thereof hurried.

The hash-eaters talked English (of sorts), American (North and South), Swinsk, Norsk, Dansk, true Spanish (with the lisp), Mexican Spanish (without it and soft as silk). They interlarded the talk (which was of mills, lumber, and politics, and Indian klootchmen, and the weather, and of horses and dogs and the devil and all) with scraps of Chinook. And that is English and French and different sorts of Indian fried and boiled and pounded and fricasseed and served up in one jargon. It's a complete and God-forsaken tongue but Easy, and Easiness goes. It is as it were brother to Pidgin English.

The grub was "muckamuck" and luckily was "kloshe." But as it happened (it usually did happen) there was salmon.

"Cultus slush, I call it," said one. "Cultu muckamuck."

"That's Ned Quin's nickname up to Kamloops," said Jack Mottram.

"Our man's brother?"

"Him," said Jack. He picked his teeth with a fork and Long Mac eyed him with disgust.

"I know Ned, he's tough."

But Jack was tough himself: he had been salted in all the seas and sun-dried on all the beaches of the rough round world. He made short stays everywhere: passages not voyages: skippers were glad to give him his discharge, for after sixty days at sea he sickened for the land and became hot cargo.

"Oh, I'm tough enough," he would prelude some yarn with.

Now Shorty Gibbs spoke, he of the Shingle Mill. Lately the Shingle Mill had annexed half a thumb of his as it screamed out to him. "He's a son of a——"

He completed the sentence in the approved round manner.

They all admitted that Quin the Manager was Tough, but that Ned Quin of Kamloops was tougher admitted not a doubt.

They swept the food from the table. Just as the logs were divided by the Saws and fell into various Chutes and disappeared, so the food went here. Most of the men ate like hogs (the better Americans least like): they yaffled, they gurgled, they sweated over the chewing and got over it.

"I'm piled up," said Tenas Billy of the Lath Mill. He too was minus a thumb and the tops of some fingers, tribute to the saw. Especially do the Shingle Saw and Lath Saw take such petty toll. When the Hoes ask tribute or the Pony Saw it's a different matter.

"I'm piled up."

As to being piled up, that was a Sawmill metaphor.

"You've put the tightener on your belt!"

To be sure they all had.

But as to piling up, when things were booming and men were warm and feeling the work good, and when nothing went wrong with the belts or with the Engines and the logs came easy and sweet, it was the ambition of the Chief Sawyer to pile up the Skids of Long Mac who had the Pony Saw. Then it was Long Mac's desire to pile up the skids for the Chinee trimmer (not run by a Chinee) and it was that Trimmer's desire to pile up the man opposing. To be piled up is to have bested one's own teeth, when it comes to chewing.

"My skids are full," said the metaphorical.

At six the whistle blew again, with a bigger power of steam in its larynx. The Mill said:—

"Give me the logs, the boom is full and I'm in want of chewin'! Nika tiki hyas stick! Give me logs: I've new teeth this morning! I'm keen and sharp. Hoot—too—oot—too—oot! Give me Fir and Pine and Spruce—spru—ooce!"

The Hash-Room emptied till noontime, when next Hash-Pile was proclaimed, and the men streamed across the sawdust road and the piled yard to the open Mill. Some went in by the door, some by the Engine-Room, some climbed the Chutes. The sun was aloft now and shining over the Pitt River Mountains (where Pete came from) and over Sumach. The river danced and sparkled: scows floated on its tide: the Gem steamer got up steam. The Canneries across the big River gleamed white. The air was lovely with a touch of the breath of the mountains in it. The smell of the lumber was good.

The men groaned and went to work.

They forgot to groan in twenty minutes.

It was good work in an hour and good men loved it for a while.

But it was work that Pitt River Pete saw as he leant against the wall. It wasn't an English pretence, or a Spanish lie, or an Irish humbug: it was Pacific Slope work, where men fly. They work out West!

"Oh, Klahya!"

"I wonder if I can get a jhob," said Pete. And the job worked up for him under his very eyes, for Quin had a quick mind to give him work and get pretty Jenny near, and Ginger White was sore against Simmons.

Yes, Pitt River Pete, you can get "a jhob!" Devil doubt it, for you've a pretty wife, and White drove the carriage fast and faster still, drove it indeed faster than the saw could take it, meaning to hustle Simmons and have present leave to burst out into blasphemy. Things happen quick in the Mill, in any mill, and of a sudden White stopped the carriage dead and yelled to Simmons on the log:

"Can't you keep her open, damn you? Are you goin' to sleep there? Oh, go home and die!"

Simmons, on the log on his knees, looked up savagely. Though the big Hoes were silent there was row enough with the Pony Saw and the Big Trimmer and Chinee Trimmer and the Lath Mill and the Shingle Saw and the Bull Wheel and the groaning and complaining of the planing machines outside. So Simmons heard nothing. He saw Ginger's face and saw the end had come to work. He knew it. It had been coming this long time and now had come. But Simmons said nothing: he grinned like a catamount instead, and then looked round and saw Quin. He also saw Pete.

"To hell," said Simmons.

As he spoke he hurled his maul at White, and Ginger dodged. The head missed him but the handle came backhanded and smote Ginger on the nose so that the blood ran.

"Oh, oh," said Ginger as sick as any dog. Simmons leapt off into the very arms of Quin.

"I'll take my money, Mr. Quin," said Simmons.

"Take your hook," said Quin. "Look out, here's White for you with a spanner!"

White came running and expected Simmons to run. But Simmons' face was red where White's was white. He snatched a pickareen from the nearest Chinaman, and a pickareen is a useful weapon, a sharp half pick, and six inches of a pick.

"You——" grinned Simmons, "you——"

And White stayed.

"Yah!" said Simmons, with lips set back. And Ginger White retreated.

"Here, sonny, take your pick," said the Wedger-Off that had been to the Chinaman; "fat chops don't care to face it."

He turned to Quin.

"Shall I go to the office, Mr. Quin?"

"Aye," said Quin carelessly enough.

He beckoned to Pete, whose eyes brightened. He came lightly.

"You'll take the job, Pete?"

Would he take it?

"Nawitka," said Pete, "yes, indeed, Sir."

Nawitka! He took the job and grinned with Skookum, who fetched the maul and gave him the wedges with all the pleasure in the world, for Skookum had no ambition to be Chief Wedger-Off. White came forward, dabbing at a monstrous tender nose with a rag.

"I've seen you at the Inlet?" he asked.

"Yes," said Pete, "at Granville."

"You'll do," said White. He dabbed at his huge proboscis and went back to the lever. Pete leapt upon the log and drove in the first wedge.

"Hyas, hyas! Oh, she goes!"

She went and the day went, and Pete worked like fire on a dry Spruce yet unfelled. He leapt on and off and handled things with skill. But when he looked at White's growing nose he grinned. Simmons had done that.

"If he ever talk to me that away," said Pete, "I'll give him chikamin, give him steel!"

He didn't love White, at the first glance he knew that. But it was good to be at work again, very good.

At twelve o'clock the whistle called "Hash," and the engine was shut down. The Saws slackened their steady scream, they grew feeble, they whined, they whirred, they nearly stopped, they stayed in silence. Men leapt across the skids: they slid down the Chutes: they clattered down the stairs: they opened their mouths and could hear their voices. They talked of White (he grubbed at home, being married), and of Simmons and of Pete (he being a Siwash, even if not married, would not have grubbed in the Hash House) and heard the story. On the whole they were sorry that Simmons had not driven the pickareen through White. However, his nose was a satisfaction.

"Like a beet——"

"A pumpkin——"

"A water melon——"

A prodigious nose after contact with the Maul Handle.

"I knew Mr. White," said Jenny to Pete, "Mr. White bad man, hyu mesahchie."

"Sling out the muckamuck," said Pete calmly.

He fell to with infinite satisfaction, and Jenny came and sat on his knee as he smoked his pipe.

"She is really devilish pretty," said Quin, who had no one to sit on his knee.

The whistle suddenly said that it was half after twelve and that it would be infinitely obliged if all the working gentlemen from everywhere would kindly step up in a goldarned hurry and turn to.

"Turn to, turn too—toot," said the whistle as brutally as any Western Ocean bo'sun.

The full fed reluctant gentlemen of the Mill went back into the battle, waddling and sighing sorely.

"Wish to God it was six o'clock," they said. There's no satisfying everybody, and going to work full of food is horrid, it really is.

What happened in the morning happened in the afternoon, and all the saws yelled and the planers complained and the men jumped till six, when the Engines let steam into the Whistle high up against the Smoke Stack and made it yell wildly that work was over for the day. Mr. Engine-man played a fantasia on that pipe and hooted and tooted and did a dying cadenza that wailed like a lost soul in the pit and then rose up in a triumphant scream that echoed in the hills and died away across the waters of the Fraser shining in the peaceful evening sun.

And night came down, the blessed night, when no man works (unless he be in a night shift, or is a night watchman or a policeman or, or—). How blessed it is to knock off! But there, what do you know about it, if you never played with lumber in a Stick Moola? Nothing, I assure you. Go home and die, man.

II

There were times when the Mill ate wood all night long, but such times were rare, for now the City of the Fraser was not booming. She sat sombrely by her bright waters and moaned the bitter fact that the railway was not coming her way, but was to thrust out its beak into the waters of the Inlet. The City was a little sad, a little bitter, her wharves were deserted, dank, lonely. She saw no great future before her: houses in her precincts were empty: men spoke scornfully of her beauty and exalted Granville and the forests whence Vancouver should spring.

But for such as worked in the Mill the City was enough. They lived their little lives, strove manfully or poorly, thinking of little things, of few dollars, of a few days, and of Saturdays, and of Sundays when no man worked. And each night in Sawmill Town, in Sawdust Territory, was a holiday, for then toil ceased and the shacks lighted up and there was opportunity for talk. Work was over. 'Halo Mamook,' no work now, but it might be rye, or other poison and gambling and debauchery. The respectable workers (note that they were mostly American) went off up town, to the Farmers' Home or some such place, or to the City library, or to each other's homes, while the main body of the toilers of the Mill 'played hell' in their own way under the very shadow of the Mill itself. For them the end of the week was a Big Jamboree, but every night was a little one.

Pete was back among his old tilikums, his old partners and friends, and it was an occasion for a jamboree, a high old jamboree of its order, that is; for real Red Paint, howling, shrieking, screaming Jamborees were out of order and the highly respectable rulers of the City saw to it that the place was not painted red by any citizen out on the loose with a gun. British Columbia, mark you, is an orderly spot: amazingly good and virtuous and law-abiding, and killing is murder there. This excites scorn and derision and even amazement in American citizens come in from Spokane Falls, say, or elsewhere, from such spots as Seattle, or even Snohomish.

But even without Red Paint, or guns, or galloping cayuses up and down a scandalised British City, cannot a man, and men and their klootchmen, get drink and get drunk and raise Cain in Sawdust Town? You bet they can, tilikums! Nawitka, certainly! Oh, shucks—to be sure!

Pete and Jenny (being hard up as yet) lived in a room of Indian Annie's shack, and had dirt and liberty. In Sawdust Town, just across the road and on the land side of the Mill, were squads of disreputable shacks in streets laid down with stinking rotten sawdust and marked out with piles of ancient lumber. All this had one time been a swamp, but in the course of generations sawdust filled it to the brim. Sawdust rots and ferments and smells almost as badly as rice or wheat rotting in a ship's limbers, and the odour of the place in a calm was a thing to feel, to cut, even with an axe. It was a paying property to Quin and Quin's brother, for lumber costs next door to nothing at a mill, and the rent came in easily, as it should when it can be deducted from wages. It was a good clean property as some landlords say in such cases, meaning that the interest is secure. Life wasn't; and as to morality, why, what did the Quin Brothers care about their renters of the shacks, shanties, and keekwilly holes? They cared nothing about their morals or their manners or the sanitation.

Chinamen lived there: they were Canton wharf-rats mostly, big men, little men, men who lived their own odd secret racial lives hidden away from the eyes of whites. White boys yelled—

"Oh, Chinkie, kihi, kiti mukhahoilo——"

And it was supposed to be an insult. The Chinkies cursed the boys by their Gods, and by Buddha and by the Christians' Gods. "Oh, ya, velly bad boy, oh, damn." Stones flew, chunks of lumber, and boys or Chinamen ran. The Orientals chattered indignantly on doorsteps. If a boy had disappeared suddenly, who would have wondered?

It was a splendid locality for nature, the nature of Man, not for the growth of other things. There were few conventions green in the neighbourhood, a man was a man, and a hound a hound there, and a devil a devil without a mask. It had a fascination.

The Chinamen mostly worked in the yard: handling lumber as it came out, stacking it, wheeling it, carrying it. But there were others than Chinky Chinamen about. There was Spanish Joe in one shack which he shared with Chihuahua, who was a Mexican. Be so good as to pronounce this word Cheewawwaw and have done with it. Skookum Charlie and his klootchman (he was from S'Kokomish and was a Puyallop and she from Snohomish and was a Muckleshoot) lived in another. There's no word for wife in Chinook but only Klootchman, woman, so though there's one for marry, malieh, the ceremony is not much thought of. When a man's klootchman is mentioned it leaves the question of matrimony open for further inquiry, if necessary. But is it worth while?

A dozen Sitcum-Siwashes camped in other shanties; they were from all along the coast, even Metlakahtla and from inland, one being nearly a full-blooded Shushwap. But the only pure-blooded Indian about the place was Indian Annie. She was a Hydah from the Islands and had been as pretty as a picture once, as so many of the Hydah women were. Now she was a hag and a procuress and as ugly as a burnt stick and as wicked as a wild-cat. If she was ever washed it was when she was dead drunk in a rainstorm: she was wrinkled like the skin of a Rambouillet ram: she walked double and screeched like a night-hawk. As to her clothes and the worth of them, why, anyone but an entomologist would have given her a dollar to burn them—Faugh! Nevertheless it was in her shack that Pete camped with Jenny.

About nine o'clock that night, the night of Pete's getting a job, it was wonderful at Indian Annie's. If you don't believe it come in and see, tilikum! There are tons of things you don't know, tilikum, the same as the rest of us.

Oh, hyah, oho, they were enjoying themselves!

Such a day it had been, clear, clean-breathed, splendid, serene, and even yet the light lingered in the cloudless heavens, though the bolder stars came like scouts over the eastern hills and looked down on Mill and River.

But shucks, what of that in Indian Annie's? The room that was kitchen, dining room, hall and lumber room was reeking full. A wood fire smouldered on the hearth: a slush lamp smoked in the window against the dying heavenly day. Pete was there and Annie, and Jack Mottram, an English sailorman. He lived next door with a half-breed Ptsean (you can't pronounce it, tilikum) who was scarcely prettier than Annie, till she was washed. Then she was obviously younger at any rate.

Everyone was so far very happy.

"Hyu heehee," said Indian Annie. By which she meant in her short way that it was all great fun, and that they were jolly companions everyone. Besides Annie there were three other klootchmen in the room and their garments were not valuable. But it was "hyu heehee" all the same, for Jack Mottram brought the whisky in; Indians not being allowed to buy it, as they are apt, even more apt than whites, the noble whites, to see red and run "Amok."

"Here two dollah, you buy mo' whisky, Jack," said Pete, who was almost whooping drunk by now and as happy as a chipmunk in a deserted camp, or a dog at some killing, perhaps.

"Righto," hiccupped Jack, and away he Went. Pete sang something. There's bawdry in Chinook even.

Pete was a handsome boy if one likes or does not dislike the Indian cheekbones. For the features of the Sitcum-Siwash were almost purely Indian; his colour was a memory of his English father. He was tall, nearly five foot ten, lightly and beautifully built. He was as quick on his feet as a bird on the wing. His hands, even, were fine considering he was one who would work. His eyes were reddish brown, his teeth ivory: his moustache was a scanty Indian growth. Not a doubt of it but that Pete was the best-looking "breed" round about Westminster. And he wasn't as lazy as most of them.

Take his history on trust. It is easy to imagine it. He had half learnt to read at an Anglican Mission. His English was not bad when he talked to white men. In truth it was better and heaps cleaner than Jack Mottram's. But talk on the American side of the water is always cleaner. "If you don't like bawdry, we'll have very little of it," said Lucio to the Friar, who was perhaps American. Pete was a nice boy of twenty-three. But he had a loose lip and could look savage. His mind was a tiny circle. He could reach with his hand almost as far as his mind went. He had a religion once, when he left the Fathers of the Mission. He then believed in the Saghalie Tyee, the Chief of Heaven: in fact, in the Head Boss. Now he believed in the head boss of the Mill and in whisky and in his wife: all of them very risky beliefs indeed.

So far Jenny, Pete's little klootchman (and a sweet pretty creature she was) hadn't yet showed up in the shebang. She had been out somewhere, the Lord alone knows where (Quin would have wished he knew), and she was now in the inside room, dressing or rather taking off an outside gown and putting on a gorgeous flowered dressing-gown given her by a lady at Kamloops. Now she came out.

She was a beauty, tilikum, and you can believe it or leave it alone. She was little, no more than five feet three say, but perfectly made, round, plump, most adequate, which is a mighty good word, seeing that she was all there in some ways. She had a complexion of rosy eve, and teeth no narwhal's horn could match for whiteness, and her lips were red-blooded, her ears pink. She had dimples to be sworn by: and the only sign of her Indian blood (which was obviously Hydah) came out in her long straight black hair, that she wore coiled in a huge untidy mass. But for that she was white as far as her body went. As for her soul—but that's telling too soon.

Now she came out of the inner chamber in her scarlet gown, which was flaming with outrageous tulips, horribly parodying even a Dutch grower's nightmare, and she looked like a rosebud, or a merry saint in a flaming San Benito with flower flame devils on it in paint. And not a soul of her tilikums knew she was lovely. They envied her that San Benito!

Jenny was sober enough this time (and so far), and if no one knew she was lovely she knew it, and she eyed some of the drunken klootchmen disdainfully. This was not so much that they were pahtlum but because they had but ten cents worth of clothes and were not toketie or pretty.

"Fo!" said Jenny, stepping lightly among the recumbent and half-recumbent till she squatted on her hams by the fire.

"Where you bin, Jenny?" asked Pete, already hiccupping. And Jenny said she had been with Mary, or Alice, or someone else. May be it was true.

"Have a drink," said her man, handing her a bottle. She tilted it and showed her sweet neck and ripe bosom as she drank and handed it back empty.

Then Jack Mottram, English sailorman and general rolling stone and blackguard, came in hugging two bottles of deadly poison, one under each arm.

"Kloshe," said the crowd, "kloshe, good old Jack!"

The "shipman" dropped his load into willing claws and claimed first drink loudly.

"S'elp me, you see, pardners, I bro't 'em in fair and square: never broached 'em. I know chaps as'd ha' squatted under the lee of a pile o' lumber and ha' soaked the lot. S'elp me I do!"

It was felt on all hands that he was a noble character. Indian Annie patted him on the back.

"'Ands off, you catamaran," said Jack. In spite of being a seaman he believed the word was a term of abuse.

He was a seaman, though—and a first-class hand anywhere and anywhen. To see him now, foul, half-cocked, bleary, and to see him when three weeks of salt water had cleaned and sweetened him, would surprise the most hopeful. He went passages, not voyages, and skipped ashore every time he touched land. There wasn't a country in the round world he didn't know.

"I know 'em all from Chile to China, from Rangoon to Hell," said Jack, "I know 'em in the dark, by the stink of 'em!"

Now he jawed about this and that, with scraps of unholy information in his talk. No one paid attention, they talked or sucked at the whisky. The more Indian blood the more silence till the blood is diluted with alcohol. Every now and again some of them squealed with poisonous happiness; outside one might hear the sound of the screams and singing and the unholy jamboree. The noise brought others. Someone knocked at the door. The revellers were happy and pleased to see the world and they yelled a welcome.

"Come in, tilikum!" they cried, and Chihuahua opened the door against one klootchman's silent body and showed his dark head and glittering eyes inside.

"Where my klootchman? You see my klootchman? Ah, I see!"

She was half asleep by the fire, and nodded at him foolishly. He paid no attention for he was after liquor and saw that the gathering welcomed him. He knew them all but Pete, but he had heard of the row in the Mill and had seen the head that Simmons put on Ginger and he knew that a tilikum of Skookum's had been made wedger-off.

"You Pete, ah, I tinks."

"Nawitka, tilikum, that's me, Pitt River Pete. You have a drink. Ho, Jenny, you give me the bottle. She's my klootchman."

Chihuahua took the bottle and drank. He looked at Jenny and saw that she was beautiful.

"Muchacha hermosa," he said. She knew what he meant, for she read his eyes.

"Your little klootchman hyu toketie, Mister Pete, very peretty, oh, si," said Chihuahua.

"Mor'n yours is," hiccupped Jack Mottram. "But—'oo's got a smoke?"

The beady-eyed man from Mexico had a smoke: a big bag of dry tobacco and a handful or pocket full of papers. He rolled cigarettes for them all, doing it with infinite dexterity. Drunk or sober Chihuahua could do that. His own klootchman clawed him for one of them and without a word he belted her on the ear and made her bellow. She sat in the corner by the fire and howled as lugubriously as if her dog or her father had just died.

"Halo kinootl, halo kinootl, mika tiki cigalette!"

"Oh, give the howler one," said Jack, as she kept on howling that she had no tobacco and that her man was angry with her. Pete gave her his, which was already lighted. She giggled and laughed and began crooning a Chinook song:—

"Konaway sun
Hyu Keely
Annawillee!"

It was a mournful dirge: she sang and smoked and wept and giggled and tried to make eyes at Jack who must love her or he could never have given her a "Cigalette." He was heaps nicer than Chihuahua.

She set them off singing and more drink was brought in, and still Annawillee said she was very "keely" or sad. Indeed, she was weeping drunk and no one paid any attention to her, least of all Chihuahua. Jack sang a chanty about Dandy Rob of the Orinoco and a pleasing meal of boiled sawdust and bullock's liver, "blow, my bully boys, blow!" and wept to think of Whitechapel. An encore resulted in "My rorty carrotty Sal, who kems from W'itechapal," and then Jack subsided amid applause, and slept the sleep of great success.

But Pete was now "full" and could speak to Chihuahua and to Spanish Joe and Skookum Charlie who had come in together.

"Why you come here, Pete?" asked Skookum. "They say you have a good jhob up to Kamloops."

"I tell you, tilikum," said Pete. "Me and Jenny here was with Ned Quin, Cultus Muckamuck we call him up alound the Dly Belt. Ain't he a son of a gun, Jenny?"

Jenny nodded and took a cigarette from Chihuahua with a heavenly smile. They were all lying around the fire but Pete and Jenny. The other klootchmen were mostly fast asleep: Indian Annie was insensible. Pete went on talking in a high pitched but not unpleasant voice. His English was by no means so bad though not so good as Jenny's.

"Mary, my sister, she's Ned Quin's klootchman," said Pete, "and has been with him years, since his white woman died. I forget how long: nika kopet kumtuks, it's so long. So me and Jenny work there: she with Mary, me outside with the moos-mooses, wagon, plowin', harrowin', and scraper team. Oh, I work lika hell all one year, dollar a day and muckamuck: and old Ned he was Cultus Muckamuck, oh, you bet, tilikums: mean as mud. Him and me don't hit it off, but I lika the place, not too wet, good kieutans to ride, and, when I get sick and full up of Cultus, Jenny here she fond of my sister and when she was full up of Mary I just happen to pull with Cultus, so that's why we stay. Sometime the old dog he allow a dollar a day too much for me, and me workin' lika a mule. Oh, I work alla time, by God, velly little dlunk only sometime in Kamloops. And I say 'Look here, Cultus, I not care one damn, I can go. I can quit:—you pay me!' But when it came to pay out dolla he very sick, for sure. So I say, 'You be damn,' and he laughed and went away, for I had a neck-yoke in my hand, ha!"

Pete showed his teeth savagely, and the others grinned.

"We do that often: he damn me, I damn him, and mebbe Jenny and me would be there yet if he had not hit Mary with a club while I was away over to Nikola bringin' in the steers that was over the range. I come back, and I find Jenny cryin' and Mary sick and cryin', and sore all over, and Cultus hyu drunk. So I ups and say to Cultus, 'You swine, you hit my poor sister once mo' and I quit.' Then he began to cry and fetch mo' whisky and we both get drunk and very much friends, and I go to sleep, and he get ravin' and fetch a long-handled shovel and frighten Jenny here to death and he hit Mary with the flat of the shovel, and say, 'You damn klootchman, next time I give you the edge and cut hell out of you.'"

"He say those same words," said Jenny.

"And when I wake up," Pete went on, "they tell me, and I say it no good to stay for if I stay I kill Cultus and no taffy about it. So next day I say 'Give me my money,' and he give me an order on Smith over to Kamloops, and we came down here, and now I get the job wedging-off again and that's better'n workin' for old Cultus. Gimme the bottle, Skookum, you old swine."

They all had another drink.

"George Quin heap berrer'n Cultus," said Skookum.

"'E lika peretty girls," said Chihuahua, leering at Jenny. "'E look after klootchman alla day, eh, Joe?"

Spanish Joe said that was so. "Spanish" was a real Castilian, as fair as any Swede and had golden hair and lovely skin and the blue eyes of a Visigoth, and he was a murderous hound and very good at songs and had a fine voice and could play the guitar. He had no klootchman, but there was a white woman up town who loved him and robbed her husband to give him money.

"All klootchman no good," said Joe scornfully.

"You're a liar," said Jenny, "but men are no good, only Pete is good sometimes, ain't you, Pete?"

"Dry up," said Pete thickly, for the last drink had done for him. "You dry up. All klootchmen talk too much. You go to bed, Jenny."

"I shan't," said Jenny, sulkily.

So he beat her very severely, and blacked her eye, and dragged her by the gorgeous dressing-gown into the next room. As he dragged her she slipped out of the gown and they saw her for an instant white as any lily before he slammed the door on her and came out again. Joe and Chihuahua yelled with laughter, and even Skookum roused up to chuckle a little. He had been asleep, lying with his head on the insensible body of an unowned klootchman, who was a relative of Annie's. His own klootchman still sat in the corner, every now and again chanting dismally of the woes of Annawillee. Joe and Chihuahua spoke in Spanish.

"She's a beauty, and George Quin will want her," said Chihuahua.

"And he'll have her too, by the Mother of God," said Joe. "But klootchmen are no good. My woman up town she cries too much. And as for her husband——"

He indulged in some Spanish blasphemy on the subject of that poor creature's man.

They slapped Pete on the back when he sat down again, and said he knew how to serve a saucy muchacha. And Joe sang a beautiful old Spanish love song with amazing feeling and then went away. But the melancholy of the song haunted poor Pete's heart, and he went to his wife and found her crouched on the floor sobbing and as naked as when she was born. And Pete cried too and said that he loved her.

But she still cried, for he had torn the lovely dressing-gown with its gorgeous garden of tulips. She hugged it to her beautiful bosom as if it were a child.

In the outer room they all slept, and even Annawillee ceased moaning.

The night was calm and wonderful and as silent as death.

III

Nah Siks, ho, my friend, let me introduce you to George Quin: Manager and part owner of the Mill, of the Stick Moola which ate logs and turned out lumber and used (even as sawdust) the lives and muscles of high-toned High Binders from Kowloon and the back parts of Canton, and hidalgos from Spain with knives about them, and gentlemen from Whitechapel who knew the ways of the sea, and many first-class Americans from the woods, to say nothing of Letts, Lapps and Finns and our tilikums the Indians from the Coast.

Quin was two hundred pounds weight, and as solid as a cant of his fir, and his mind was compact, a useful mind when dollars were concerned. He was a squaw-man and was always in with one of them, for there are men who don't care for white women (though indeed he had cared very much for one) and so run after klootchmen just as water runs down hill. It is explicable, for the conduct of (or the conducting of) a white woman for the most part takes a deal of restraint. Quin hated any form of it: he was by nature a kind of savage, though he was born in Vermont and bred up in lower Canada. He went West early (even to China, by the way) and only kept so much restraint as enabled him to hang on and make dollars and crawl up a financial ladder—with that wanting he might have been:—

A Hobo,
A Blanket Stiff
or
A mere Gaycat,

and have ended as a "Tomayto-can Vag!" These are all species of the Genus Tramp, or Varieties of the species, and the essence of them all is letting go. We who are not such vagabonds have to hold on with our teeth and nails and climb. But the blessedness of refusing to climb and the blessedness of being at the bottom are wonderful. We all know it as we hang on. Now Quin, for all his force and weight and power of body and of mind was a tramp in his heart, but a coward who was afraid of opinion, where want of dollars was concerned. He turned himself loose only with the women. He hated respectable ones. You had to be civil and gentlemanly and a lot of hogwash like that with ladies.

"Oh, hell," said Quin. "Great Scott, by the Holy Mackinaw, not me!"

The devil of it all is that we are pushed on by something that is not ourselves, and for what? It's by no means a case of "Sic vos non vobis" but "sic nos non nobis," and that's a solid fact, solid enough to burst the teeth out of any Hoe that can cut teak or mahogany, to say nothing of the soft wood of the Coast.

Quin compromised with the Mournful Spirit of Push and gave his soul to dollars on that behalf, and his body to the klootchmen.

It wasn't often that he slung work and took a holiday, but in latitude 49.50 N. and longitude 122 W., which is about the situation of New Westminster, so far as I can remember, Mills themselves take holidays in frost time, and when the Mill was shut down the Christmas before, he had taken a run up to Kamloops to see his brother Ned or Cultus Muckamuck.

There he saw Jenny, the sweet little devil, who hadn't been married to Pete for more than six months and was just nineteen. He made up his mind about her then, but there were difficulties. For one thing Ned was always wanting him, and Indian Mary, Ned's klootchman, was a good woman and heartily religious in her own way, and she had a care for the pretty little girl when the Panther, or Hyas Puss-Puss, called George Quin, came nosing around. And Pete was but newly wed and hadn't beaten Jenny yet. And Jenny, the pretty dear, was fond of her Sitcum Siwash and loved to see him on horseback, all so bold and fine with one hand on his hip and a quirt in the other. Given favourable circumstances and enforced sobriety there's no knowing what the two might have been.

I shall have to own it wasn't all George Quin after all: I couldn't help liking George somehow. It's the most mixed kind of a world, and though the best we know, it might have been improved by a little foresight one would think. There's always something pathetically good in blackguards, something that redeems the worst. What a pity it is!

George Quin loved one woman who lived in far off Vermont. She was his mother. He sent her dollars and bear skins more than twice a year. He had his portrait taken in his best clothes for her. He looked so like a missionary that the good old lady wept.

There was something good in George one sees. But he kissed Jenny behind Ned's old shack before he went away. It might look like a coincidence for Pete to come down to the Mill to work for George after getting the Grand Bounce by Ned, if it hadn't been for the kiss. Women are often deceitful.

"I'll tell Pete," said Jenny in the clutches of the Panther.

Hyas Puss-Puss laughed.

"You tell him, you sweet little devil, and I'll blow a hole through him with a gun!" said he.

If he played up, that is! Sometimes they don't, you know.

"You give me a kiss without a fight, and I'll give you a dollar," said the Panther. Jenny still kicked. But she didn't squeal. Mary was inside the shack and would have heard her, if she wanted help.

"Not for two dolla," said Jenny, hiding her mouth with the back of her hand, with her nails out claw fashion.

"Three then," said Hyas Puss-Puss. He was as strong as the very devil, said Jenny's mind inside, three times, four times, ever so many times stronger than Pete.

"Oh, no, not for three, nor four, nor five," said Jenny, laughing.

He got it for nothing. But he got no more. Indian Mary came outside and called—

"Jenny!"

George sat down on a log and filled his pipe while Jenny went back. She ran fast so that her colour and her tousled appearance might be accounted for. George Quin saw it.

"The deceitful little devil, but I kissed her!"

He got no more chances. When he had hold of her with that immense strength of his she was as weak as water, as was only natural, but she wanted to be good (Mary and the missionary had told her it was right to be good, and Mary said that Ned was going to marry her some day, so she was all right) and she was really fond of Pete.

However, when Quin was going down to the Coast again he got a moment with her.

"If you want to come down my way, I'll always give a first-class job to Pete, my dear. Don't forget. He's a good man in a Mill. I saw him over at the Inlet before he married you. I wish I'd seen you before that, you little devil. Ah, tenas, nika tikegh mika! Oh, I want you, little one!"

When she and Pete pulled out from Cultus Muckamuck's six months afterwards, they naturally went on a Howling Jamboree in Kamloops, and it ended in their being halo dolla, or rather, with no more than Jenny had secreted for a rainy day. She was a little greedy about money, it must be owned. Some wanted Pete to go up to the Landing at Eagle Pass as the Railroad was getting there from East and West, though he wasn't a railroad man by nature, but a lumber man. The railroader is always one and so is the lumber man. Jenny suggested the Coast and New Westminster.

In the meanwhile Pete had beaten her several times and many had told her she was very pretty. She wasn't quite the little girl she had been at Cultus Muckamuck's ranche. She missed Mary, and her morals did, too. She remembered all about George Quin's, "I'll give you two dollars for a kiss!" For a kiss only, mind. She could take care of herself, she said. But they went to the Coast by way of the only way, Savona and the Cañon. At Savona, Jenny's eyes got a pass to Yale out of Mr. Vanderdunk, who had beautiful blue eyes and was a very good chap, take him all round. Jenny lied to him like sixty and said her mother was dying at Yale. Her mother was as dead as Washington long years before. She died, poor thing, because Jenny's father became respectable and renounced her and married a white woman in Virginia. He was a shining light in a church at that very time, and was quite sincere.

"Give the pair a pass down," said Vanderdunk, "of course they're lying but——"

Eyes did it as they always will. So they went down to Yale and by the Fraser steamboat to New Westminster, and they put up at Indian Annie's as aforesaid and the row in the Mill happened and Quin saw Pete and he knew Jenny had come, and he smiled and licked his lips.

The very next day after Pete's swift acceptance of that noble position in the hierarchy of the Mill, the Wedger-Off-Ship, and after the drunken jamboree at Indian Annie's, Pete and Mrs. Pete moved the torn dressing-gown, etc., into Simmons' vacated shack. For Simmons had gone to Victoria in the S.S. Teaser, that old scrap-heap known to every one on the Sound, or in the Straits of Georgia or San Juan de Fuca, by her asthmatic wheezing. Pete's and Mrs. Pete's etc. comprised one bundle of rags, and a tattered silk of Jenny's, and two pairs of high-heeled shoes (much over at the heel) and a bottle of embrocation warranted to cure everything from emphysema to a compound fracture of the femur, and a Bible. Pete had knocked Jenny over with that on more than one occasion.

The traps that Simmons left in his shack he sold to Pete for one dollar and two bits, and they were well worth a dollar, for they comprised two pairs of blankets of the consistency of herring-nets and a lamp warranted to explode without warning. He threw in all the dirt he hadn't brushed out of the place during a tenancy of eight months, and made no extra charge for fleas. But Jenny was pleased. It was her first home, mark you, and that means much to a countess or a klootchman. Pete had wedded her at Kamloops and taken her to Cultus Muckamuck's right off, for there were no other men around there but old Cultus, and his Mary looked after him if he needed it.

So now Jenny grew proud for a while, and felt that to have a whole house to herself and her man was something. She forgave him her black eye, the poor dear, and she mended the tulips carefully in a way that would have given the mistress of a sewing school a fatal attack of apoplexy. She worked the rent together with gigantic herring-boning like the tacking of a schooner up some intricate channel with a shifting wind.

Then she swept the shack and set out her household goods the boots and the Bible. The boots had been given her by a Mrs. Alexander, sister to the donor of the dressing-gown, and the Bible (it had pictures in it) was the gift of a Methodist Missionary who saw she was very pretty. So did his wife, so everything was safe there.

The bed belonged to the shack, that is, to the Mill, to the Quins, and as it was summer there was no need to get better blankets. Jenny laid the precious tulips on it and the bed looked handsome enough for Helen, she thought, or would have thought if she had ever heard of her, and Pete admired it greatly.

They set out to be happy as people will in this world. Jenny had a piece of steak cooked for Pete's dinner and she laid the newspaper cloth very neatly, and put everything, beer, bread and so on, as well as some prunes, quite handy.

"By gosh, I'm hungry, old girl," said Pete, as he marched in at noon.

"It's all ready, Pete," she said, smiling. The smile was a little sideways, owing to last night. "Sit down and be quick."

There was need, for the Mill only let up for the half hour.

"This is work here, Jenny," said Pete, "by the Holy Mackinaw, I almos' forgot what work was at old Cultus'. Now she goes whoop!"

But he felt warm and good and kind.

"I'm sorry I hurt you, gal," he said, "but you was very bad las' night. Drink's no good. I won't drink no more."

"You very good to me," said Jenny meekly. "Whisky always makes me mad. I'm glad we're here. Indian Annie's bad, Pete."

"Cultus' ole cow," said Pete, with his mouth full, "but now we have our home, Jenny, my gal, and plenty work and forty dollar a month. I'm going to be a good man to you, my dear, and buy you big shelokum, lookin' glass."

Jenny's eyes gleamed. There was only a three-cornered fragment of glass nailed up against the wall, and it was hardly big enough to see her pretty nose in.

"Oh, Pete, that what I like. Oh, yes, Pete, a big one."

"High and long," said Pete firmly.

"Very high," screamed Jenny joyfully.

"So you see all your pretty self," smiled Pete. "I see one two yard high. I wonder how much."

"One hundred dolla, I tink," said Jenny, and Pete's jaw dropped.

"Never min', we get a good one for five dolla," said Jenny, and she kissed Pete for that five "dolla" one just as he filled his pipe. Then the whistle of the Mill squealed "Come out, come out, come out o' that, Pete, Pe—etc!" and Pete gave his klootchman a hug and ran across the hot sawdust to the Mill.

"Pete very good man, I won't kiss no one but Pete," said Jenny. "I almos' swear it on the Bible."

She was a human little thing, and Pete was human, poor devil. And so was George Quin, alas! And the worst of it is that we all are.

"I almos' swear it on the Bible!"

The sun burned and the water glared, and the Mill, the Stick Moola, howled and groaned and devoured some twenty thousand feet of logs that afternoon, and over the glittering river rose the white cone of Mount Baker and up the river shone the serrated peaks of the Pitt River Mountains, where Pete came from, and all the world was lovely and beautiful.

And that poor devil of a Quin sat in his office and tried to work, and had the pretty idea of Jenny in his aching mind.

"I almos' swear it on the Bible!"

Even George wanted to do the square thing, very often. But Jenny's "almos'" was hell, eh? Tilikum, we both know it!

IV

But for the fact that there was too muchee pidgin for everyone, as the Chinaman said, or hyu hyu mamook as the Siwashes said, many might have run after Jenny.

"One piecee litty gal velly hansum, belongy Pitt Liber Pete," said Wong, who was the helper at the Chinee Trimmer. He said it with a grin, "Velly nicee klootchman alla samee tenas Yingling gal my know at Canton, Consoo's litty waifo."

She was as pretty as any Consul's little wife, that's a solid mahogany hard wood fact. But with twelve hours work of the sort of work that went on in the Mill who could think of running after the "one litty piecee hansum gal" but the man who didn't work with his hands?

Wong was a philosopher, and, like all real philosophers, not a good patriot—if one excepts Hegel, who was a conservative pig, and a state toady and hateful to democrats. Wong had fine manners and was a gentleman, so much so that the white men really liked him and never wanted to plug him, or jolt him on the jaw or disintegrate him, as they did most of the Chinkies. He returned the compliment, and sometimes quarrelled with his countrymen about the merits of the whites, as one might with Americans and others about the children of the Flowery Kingdom.

"My likee Melican man and Yingling man," said Wong. "Velly good man Melican: my savvy. Some velly bad, maskee oders velly good. If Chinaman makee bobbely and no can do pidgin, Melican man say 'sonny pitch'; maskee my can do, my savvy stick-mula mamook, so Melican man and Yingling man say, 'Good Wong, no sonny pitch, velly good.' Melican gentleman velly good all plopa. What ting you tinkee?"

Wong was an enigmatic mask of a man, wrinkled wondrously and looking sixty, though nothing near it, as hard as solid truth, fond of singing to a mandolin, great at Fan tan, but peaceable as a tame duck.

He had a kind heart, "all plopa that one piecee man" from Canton, and one day (not yet) he has his place here, all out of kindness to the "litty hansum gal belongy Pitt Liber Pete." May his ashes go back to China in a nice neat "litty piecee box" and be buried among his ancestors who ought to be proud of him. Blessed be his name, and may he rank with Konfutse! I preferred him to Hegel. And if any of you want to know why I refer to him, you must draw conclusions.

But, as we were saying, who could have full time to run after the "litty gal" but Quin?

To make another excursion, and explain, it may be as well to let Pappenhausen talk. There were two Germans in the Mill, and both worked in the Planing Shed. One was a man of no account, a shuffling, weak-kneed, weak-eyed, lager-beer Hans, with as much brains as would have qualified him to be Heir Apparent to some third-rate Teutonic Opera-House Kingdom. But Pappenhausen was a Man, that is to say, he didn't compromise on Lager or weep because he drank too much. And he could work like three, and he wasn't the German kind as regards courage. German courage is very fine and fierce when the Teutons are in a majority, but when they aren't their courage ranks as the finest discretion, that is, as cowardice nine times out of ten. Pappenhausen would fight anyone or any two any time and any where. He could fight with fists or a spanner, or a pickareen or a club, and he took some satisfying. He was an amazing man, had been in America thirty years. He said he was a "Galifornian" and fought you if you didn't believe it. Once he stood up to Quin and was knocked galley-west, for besides Long Mac there wasn't a man in Saw-Mill Town that could tackle the Boss. Quin got a black eye, but Papp had two and lay insensible for an hour. Quin was so pleased with that, that he put him to work again and stood him drinks. He actually did. After that Papp, as he was called, stood up for, and not to, George Quin, and said he was a man, and he asked what it mattered if he did run after the klootchmen?

"Dat's der Teufel," grunted the native "Galifornian," "dat's der Teufel, we all run avder der klootchmen, if we don'd avder trink. I'm a philozopher, I, and I notizzes dat if it arn'd one ding it's anoder. And no one gan help it, boys. One man he run avder dollars, screamin' oud for dollars, and if you zay a dollar ain'd wort' von 'ondred cents of drubble he tink you grazy. I zay one dollar's wort' of rest wort' a dollar and a half any day. On'y I cain'd help workin'. If I don'd I feel I braig somedings mit mein hands. Oders run avder klootchmen; if dey don'd dey feels as if dey would also braig somedings. I tinks the welt a foolish blace, but in Shermany (where my vater game from) I dinks it most foolish. And Misder Guin he run avder Pete's klootchman and bymby Pete gill her as like as nod and then Mr. Guin very sorry he spoke. I dell you I knows. Life is a damn silly choke, boys."

But it was (and is) only a joke to a Democritus of Papp's type. Even Papp said:—

"Bymby I ged a new sood of glose and fifdy dollars and I go back home to California."

He said it and had said it.

"Bymby——"

Poor Papp!

It was no joke to Jenny presently that "Misder Guin" ran after her. But then it is no joke at any time to be the acknowledged belle of any place, even if it is a Saw-Mill Sawdust Town, and the truth is that Jenny shone even among the white women, gorgeous in their pride and occasional new frocks from San Francisco, the Paris of the Coast. There wasn't a white "litty gal" in the City who was a patch on her: she was the "slickest piece of caliker" within long miles. Folks who were critical and travelled, said that there was her equal over at Victoria, but that was far off, and much water lay between. From the mighty white-peaked summit of the Rockies, and the wonders of the Selkirks, down through the Landing and Kamloops and Yale at the end of the Cañon away to Westminster, she was the prettiest.

Think of it and consider that she lived in a two-roomed shack with a decent-looking wedger-off who was a Sitcum Siwash! She got compliments on the street as she went up and down town.

"Great Scott, she's a daisy!"

"By the Great Horn Spoon, and also by the Tail of the Sacred Bull, she knocks spots off of the hull crowd."