The Border Boys in the Canadian Rockies
Page 2
CHAPTER I.
THE BOY FROM NOWHERE.
“Hold on there a minute! Don’t you think you’re being unnecessarilyrough with that boy?”
“Naw, I don’t. And if I am, it ain’t none of your business that I cansee.”
“Perhaps I mean to make it so.”
“Aw run along and play, kid. Don’t bother me.”
The brakeman glared angrily at the tall, well-built lad who hadaccosted him. In so doing, he for an instant ceased belaboring adust-covered, cowering lad in pitifully ragged clothing whom, a momentbefore, he had been cuffing about the head without mercy.
“Take that, you young tramp!” he had hurled out savagely, as each blowfell on the quivering form.
The boy receiving this unmerciful punishment had been discovered ridingthe blind-baggage on the long, dust-covered train of Canadian Pacificcoaches that had just come to a stop.
Of course the boy had been summarily ejected, and the brakeman wasnow engaged in what he would have termed “dusting the young rascal’sjacket.”
It was a pitiful sight, though, to see the slender, emaciated lad,whose rags hardly covered his thin body, and who could not havebeen much above sixteen, cowering under the punishment of the burlytrainman. The brakeman was not of necessity a brute. But in his eyesthe lad was “a miserable tramp,” and only getting his just dues. Tomore humane eyes, though, the scene appeared in a different light.
Some of the passengers, gazing from the windows, had ventured to cry,“Shame,” but that was all that had come of it till Ralph Stetson, whohad been standing with a group of his friends at the other end ofthe platform of the Pine Pass station, in the heart of the CanadianRockies, happened to see what was going forward. Without a word hehad hastened from them and come to the rescue. Ralph was a boy whoseblood always was on fire at the sight of cruelty and oppression,and it appeared to him that the brakeman was being unnecessarilyrough. Besides, there was something in the big, appealing eyes ofthe sufferer, and his ragged, ill-clad form, that aroused all hissympathies. So it came about that he had tried to check the punishmentwith the words quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
Now he stood facing the brakeman who appeared quite willing for aminute to drop the lad he was maltreating and turn on the newcomer.Perhaps, though, there was something in Ralph’s eye that held him back.Old “King-pin” Stetson’s son looked thoroughly business-like in hisbroad-brimmed woolen hat, corduroy jacket and trousers, stout huntingboots and flannel shirt, with a handkerchief loosely knotted about theneck. Evidently he had come prepared to rough it in the wild country inthe midst of which the train had come to a halt.
His life and experiences in the strenuous country along the Mexicanborder had toughened Ralph’s muscles and bronzed his features, and helooked well equipped physically to carry out the confidence expressedin his cool, clear eyes.
“Who are you, anyhow?” the brakeman hurled at him, growing moreaggressive as he saw some of his mates running toward him from the headof the long train where the two big Mogul locomotives were thunderingimpatiently.
“Never mind that for now. Drop that boy and I’ll pay his fare towherever he wants to go.”
“Well, you are a softy! Pay a tramp’s fare? Let me tell you,mister----”
“Say, going to hold this train all day?” demanded the conductorbustling up. “What’s all this?”
“This kid got on the train in the night some place. Bin ridin’ theblind baggage. I was giving him ‘what for’ when this other kid buttsin,” explained the brakeman.
“I said I was willing to pay this boy’s fare rather than see himabused,” struck in Ralph, flushing slightly.
“Well, that’s fair and square,” said the conductor, “so long as he payshis fare, that’s all I care. But I ain’t goin’ to hold my train. Whered’ye want to go, boy?”
“This is Pine Pass, ain’t it?” demanded the ride stealer, whom thebrakeman had now released.
“This is the Pass,--yes. Come, hurry up.”
“Then I’ve come all the fur I’m goin’.”
As if to signify that his interest was over, the conductor waved hishand to the engineers peering from their cabs ahead. The brakemenscampered for their cars. The locomotives puffed and snorted and thelong train began to move. As the conductor swung on he called backsarcastically:
“Sorry we couldn’t wait while you fixed it up. Wish you joy of yourbargain.”
In another instant the train was swinging around into a long cutbetween deep, rocky walls. In yet another instant it was gone, andRalph Stetson, with a rather puzzled expression on his good-lookingface, stood confronting the scarecrow-like object he had rescued fromthe brakeman. In the tenement-house district of any large city thepitiful figure might not have looked out of place.
But here, in the Canadian Rockies, with a boiling, leaping torrentracing under a slender trestle, great scraps of rocks and pine andbalsam-clad mountains towering above, and in the distance the mightypeaks of the Selkirks looming against the clean-swept blue, thespectacle that this waif of the big towns presented seemed almostludicrous in its contrast. Ralph felt it so at least, for he smiled alittle as he looked at the disreputable figure before him and asked:
“What are you doing at Pine Pass?”
The question was certainly a natural one. Besides the tiny station,no human habitation was in sight. Above it, threatening to crush itseemingly, towered a precipice of dark colored rock. Beyond this rosemighty pines, cliffs, waterfalls and, finally, climbing fields of snow.Everywhere peaks and summits loomed with a solitary eagle wheeling farabove. In the air was the thunderous voice of the torrent as it tumbledalong under the spidery trestle beyond the station, and the sweet,clean fragrance of the pines.
“What’m I doin’ at Pine Pass?” The ragged youth repeated the question.“I-I’m sorry, mister, but I can’t tell yer.” He paused, and a strange,wistful look came into his eyes as he gazed at the distant peaks, “Ithought some time I’d get up among them mountains; but there’s a heapmore of ’em than I calculated on.”
“How did you get here? Where did you come from?” pursued Ralph.
“Frum Noo York.” And then, answering the unspoken question, hecontinued, “You kin call me Jimmie, and ef you want ter know how I gotyere, I jes’ beat it.”
“Beat it, eh? Tramped it, you mean?”
“Yep. Stole rides when I could. Walked when I couldn’t. Bin two muntser more, I reckin. Steamboats, freights, blin’ baggage, anyting.”
“And what did you think you’d do when you got here?”
“Work till I got some coin togedder. But it don’t look much as if therewas any jobs fer a kid aroun’ here, does it?”
“It does not. What can you do?”
“Anyting; that’s on the level.”
“Hum; you wait here a minute, Jimmie. I don’t quite understand whatbrought you here, and if you don’t want to tell me I won’t ask you. Butyou wait here a minute and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Say, you will? Kin you put me to woik? Say, you’re all right, you are,mister. I’ll bet you’d have put that braky away in a couple of punches,big as he wuz.”
And the boy gazed admiringly after Ralph’s athletic form as the latterhastened toward the group at the end of the platform. They werestanding beside what appeared to be a small mountain of baggage andthey had just noticed his absence.
“Well, what under the sun----?” began Harry Ware, whose full name, H.D. Ware, was, of course, shortened at Stone fell College to Hardware.
“Simpering serpents, Ralph,” broke in Percy Simmons, who, equally,of course, was known to his boyish chums as Persimmons, “grinninggargoyles, we knew this was to be a collecting trip, but you appear tohave started by acquiring a scarecrow!”
“Hold on a minute, boys,” cried Ralph, half laughingly, for Persimmons’odd way of talking and explosive exclamations made everyone who knewhim smile. “Hold on; listen to what happened.”
The eldest member of the group, a tall a
nd angular, but withalgood-natured and kindly looking man with a pair of shell-rimmedspectacles perched across his bony nose, now struck in.
“Yes, boys; let us hear what Ralph has been up to now. I declare, sinceour experience along the Border I’m prepared for anything.”
“Even what may befall us in the Canadian Rockies, eh, ProfessorWintergreen?” asked Ralph. “Well, that lad yonder, if I’m not muchmistaken, is our future deputy cook, bottlewasher, and midshipmate.”
They all stared at him. Persimmons was the first to recover his voice.
“Giggling gophers,” he gasped, “as if Hardware hadn’t broughtalong enough patent dingbats without your adding a live one to thecollection!”