“Won’t you-all come in?” Ma Snow, recovering a little from her surprise, asked hospitably.
He pitched forward and would again have gone down but that he threw out his hand and caught the door-jamb.
“Bruce Burt! Hell’s catoots! Bruce Burt!” Uncle Bill was on his knees outside in an instant, jerking and tugging at the snow-clogged buckles.
Chairs came down on their forelegs with a thump and Ore City shambled forward in curiosity and awkward congratulation. Mr. Dill did not move. He was gazing at the scene in mingled resentment and consternation. Was this the Bruce Burt whose claims he was sent to survey? It was plain enough that Bruce Burt “now deceased” was very much alive, and he, Dill, had crossed three summits on a wild goose chase, since it was obvious he could not relocate a man’s ground while he was actually living upon it. Why didn’t Sprudell find out that he was deceased before he sent a busy engineer on such a trip in winter? Mr. Dill sat frowning at Bruce, while willing hands helped him out of the coat his fingers were too stiff to unbutton.
“I’ve been coming since daylight.” He spoke thickly, as though even his tongue were cold. “I played out on the last big hill and sat so long I chilled.”
“And I guess you’re hungry,” Uncle Bill suggested.
Hungry! The word stabbed Ma Snow to the heart and her heels went clickity-click as she flew for the kitchen.
Divested of his coat Bruce looked a big, starved skeleton. The cords of his neck were visible when he turned his head, his cheeks were hollow, his wrist-bones were prominent like those of a fever convalescent.
“You’re some ga’nted up,” Uncle Bill commented as he eyed him critically. “Don’t hardly look as though you’d winter.”
The shadow of a smile crossed Bruce’s dark face.
“Toy and I proved just about the length of time a man can go without eating, and live.”
“You made it then? You got to Toy—he’s all right?”
“Yes,” briefly, “but none too soon. The snow had broken the tent down, so we made it over the ridge to an old tunnel . . . I killed a porcupine but we ran out of matches and there was no dry wood or sticks to make a fire.”
“I et raw wolf onct in Alasky,” Yankee Sam interjected reminiscently. “’Tain’t a dish you’d call for in a restauraw, and I reckon procupine’s got much the same flavor of damp dog. How did you get the Chinaman down?”
“I rigged up a travois when he could travel and hauled him to the cabin, where’s he’s waiting now. We are nearly out of grub, so I had to come.”
Of the fierce hunger, the wearing, unceasing fight against Arctic cold, and, when weakened and exhausted by both, the dumb, instinctive struggle for life against the combination, Bruce said nothing; but in a dozen commonplace sentences described physical sufferings sufficient for a lifetime—which is the western way.
He walked to the desk, where the gifted tenor, clerk and post-master stood pleased and expectant, pen in hand, waiting for him to register.
“Is there any mail for me?” He tried to speak casually but, to himself the eager note in his voice seemed to shriek and vibrate. Making every allowance for delays and changed addresses he had calculated that by now he should have an answer from Slim’s mother or sister. He did not realize how positively he had counted on a letter until the clerk shook his head.
“Nothing?” Bruce looked at him blankly.
“Nothing.” The answer seemed to take the last scrap of his vitality. He moved to the nearest chair and sat down heavily.
The thought of assuming Slim’s responsibilities, of making up for his own futile years, and bringing to pass at least a few of his mother’s dreams for him, had become a kind of obsession since that first night of horror after his quarrel with Slim. It had kept him going, hanging on doggedly, when, as he since believed, he might have given up. It seemed to have needed the ghastly, unexpected happening in the lonely cabin to have aroused in him the ambition which was his inheritance from his mother. But it was awake at last, the stronger perhaps for having lain so long dormant.
Failures, humiliating moments, hasty, ungenerous words, heartless deeds, have a way of coming back with startling vividness in the still solitude of mountains, and out of the passing of painful panoramas had grown Bruce’s desire to “make good.” Now, in the first shock of his intense disappointment he felt that without a tangible incentive he was done before he had started.
“Mistah Bruce, if you’ll jest step out and take what they is,” announced Ma Snow from the doorway. “And watch out foah yoah laig in this hole heah.” She called over her shoulder: “Mistah Hinds, I want you should get to work and fix that place to-morrow or I’ll turn yoah ol’ hotel back on yoah hands. You heah me?”
The threat always made Old Man Hinds jump like the close explosion of a stick of giant powder.
Bruce looked at the “light” bread and the Oregon-grape “jell,” the steaming coffee and the first butter he had seen in months, while before his plate on the white tablecloth at the “transient” end of the table, sat a slice of ham with an egg! like a jewel—its crowning glory.
Ma Snow whispered confidentially:
“One of the hins laid day ’fore yistiddy.” The prize had been filched from Mr. Snow, one of whose diversions was listening for a hen to cackle.
From his height Bruce looked down upon the work-stooped little woman and he saw, not her churn-like contour nor her wrinkled face, but the light of a kind heart shining in her pale eyes. He wanted to cry—he—Bruce Burt! He fought the inclination furiously. It was too ridiculous—weak, sentimental, to be so sensitive to kindness. But he was so tired, so lonely, so disappointed. He touched Ma Snow’s ginger-colored hair caressingly with his finger tips and the impulsive, boyish action made for Bruce a loyal friend.
In the office, Mr. Dill was noticeably abstracted. His smiling suavity, his gracious manner, had given place to taciturnity and Ore City’s choicest bon mots, its time-tested pleasantries, fell upon inattentive ears. As a matter of fact, his bones ached like a tooth from three long, hard days in the mail-carrier’s sledges, and also he recognized certain symptoms which told him that he was in for an attack of dyspepsia due to his enforced diet en route, of soda-biscuit, ham, and bacon. But these were minor troubles as compared to the loss of the fee which in his mind he had already spent. The most he could hope for, he supposed, was compensation for his time and his expenses.
He sat in a grumpy silence until Bruce came out of the dining-room, then he stated his intention of going to bed and asked for a lamp. As he said good-night curtly he noticed Uncle Bill eyeing him hard, as he had observed him doing before, but this time there was distinct hostility in the look.
“What’s the matter with that old rooster?” he asked himself crossly as he clumped upstairs to bed.
“I know that young duck now,” said Uncle Bill in an undertone, as Bruce sat down beside him. “He’s a mining and civil engineer—a good one, too—but crooked as they come. He’s a beat.”
“He’s an engineer?” Bruce asked in quick interest.
“He’s anything that suits, when it comes to pulling off a mining deal. He’d ‘salt’ his own mother, he’d sell out his grandmother, but in his profession there’s none better if he’d stay straight. I knowed him down in Southern Oregon—he was run out.”
“Have you heard yet from Sprudell?”
“Yes,” Uncle Bill answered grimly. “As you might say, indirectly. I want you should take a look at this.”
He felt for his leather wallet and handed Bruce the clipping.
“Don’t skip any,” he said acidly. “It’s worth a careful peruse.”
There was a little likelihood of that after Bruce had read the headlines.
“I hopes you takes special note of tears of gratitude rainin’ down my withered cheeks,” said Uncle Bill savagely, “I relishes bein’ published over the world as a sobbin’ infant.”
Bruce folded the clipping mechanically many times before he handed it back.
There was more in it to him than the withholding of credit which belonged to an obscure old man, or the self-aggrandizement of a pompous braggart. To Bruce it was indicative of a man with a moral screw loose, it denoted a laxity of principle. With his own direct standards of conduct it was equivalent to dishonesty.
“You didn’t git no answer to your letter, I notice,” Griswold commented, following Bruce’s thoughts.
“No.”
They smoked in silence for a time, the target of interested eyes, Bruce unconscious that the stories of his feats of strength and his daring as a boatman had somehow crossed the almost impassable spurs of mountain between Ore City and Meadows to make a celebrity of him, not only in Ore City but as far as the evil reputation of the river went.
“You’ll hardly be startin’ back to-morrow, will you, Burt?”
“To-morrow? No, nor the next day.” There was a hard ring in Bruce’s voice. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going outside! I’m going to Bartlesville, Indiana, to see Sprudell!”
“Good!” enthusiastically. “And if you has cause to lick that pole kitty hit him one for me.”
Wilbur Dill, who had not expected to close his eyes, was sleeping soundly, while Bruce in the adjoining room, who had looked forward to a night of rest in a real bed, was lying wide awake staring into the dark. His body was worn out, numb with exhaustion, but his mind was unnaturally alert. It refused to be passive, though it desperately needed sleep. It was active with plans for the future, with speculation concerning Sprudell, with the rebuilding of the air castles which had fallen with his failure to find mail. In the restless days of waiting for Toy to get well enough to leave alone for a few days while he went up to Ore City for mail and provisions, a vista of possibilities had unexpectedly opened to Bruce. He was standing one morning at the tiny window which overlooked the river, starting across at Big Squaw creek, with its cascades of icicles pendant from its frozen mouth.
What a stream Big Squaw creek was, starting as it did all of thirty miles back in the unknown hills, augmented as it came by trickling rivulets from banks of perpetual snow and by mountain springs, until it grew into a roaring torrent dashing itself to whiteness against the green velvet boulders, which in ages past had crashed through the underbrush down the mountainside to lie forever in the noisy stream! And the unexpected fern-fringed pools darkened by overhanging boughs, under which darted shadows of the trout at play—why he had thought, if they had Big Squaw creek back in Iowa, or Nebraska, or Kansas, or any of those dog-gone flat countries where you could look further and see less, and there were more rivers with nothing in them than any other states in the Union, they’d fence it off and charge admission. They’d—it was then the idea had shot into his mind like an inspiration—they’d harness Big Squaw creek if they had it back in Iowa, or Nebraska, or Kansas, and make it work! They’d build a plant and develop power!
The method which had at once suggested itself to Sprudell was slow in coming to Bruce because he was unfamiliar with electricity. In the isolated districts where he had lived the simpler old-fashioned, steam-power had been employed and his knowledge of water-power was chiefly from reading and hearsay.
But he believed that it was feasible, that it was the solution of the difficulty, if the expense were not too great. With a power-house at the mouth of Squaw creek, a transmission wire across the river and a pump-house down below, he could wash the whole sand-bar into the river and all the sand-bars up and down as far as the current would carry! In his excitement he had tried to outline the plan to Toy, who had more that intimated that he was mad.
The Chinaman had said bluntly: “No can do.”
Placer-mining was a subject upon which Toy felt qualified to speak, since, after a cramped journey from Hong Kong, smuggled in his uncle’s clothes hamper, he had started life in America at fourteen, carrying water to his countrymen placering in “Chiny” Gulch; after which he became one of a company who, with the industry of ants, built a trestle of green timber one hundred and fifty feet high to carry water to the Beaver Creek diggings and had had his reward when he had seen the sluice-box run yellow with gold and had taken his green rice bowl heaping full upon the days of division.
Those times were quick to pass, for the white men had come, and with their fists and six-shooters drove them from the ground, but the eventful days surcharged with thrills were the only ones in which he counted he lived. He laundered now, or cooked, but he had never left the district and he loved placer-mining as he loved his life.
Bruce had found small comfort in discussing his idea with Toy, for Toy knew only the flume and the ditch of the days of the 60’s, so he was eager to submit his plan to some one who knew about such things and he wished that he had had an opportunity of talking to the “Yellow-Leg.” If it was practicable, he wanted to get an idea of the approximate cost.
Bruce was thinking of the “Yellow-Leg” and envying him his education and knowledge when a new sound was added to the audible slumbers of the guests of the Hinds House and of the Snow family, who were not so musical when asleep. Accustomed to stillness, as he was, the chorus that echoed through the corridor had helped to keep him awake, this and the uncommon softness of a feather pillow and a cotton mattress that Mr. Dill in carping criticism had likened unto a cement block.
This new disturbance which came through the thin partition separating his room from Dill’s was like the soft patter of feet—bare feet—running around and around. Even a sudden desire for exercise seemed an inadequate explanation in view of the frigid temperature of the uncarpeted rooms. Bruce was still more mystified when he heard Dill hurdling a chair, and utterly so when his neighbor began dragging a wash-stand into the centre of the room. Making all due allowance for the eccentricities of Yellow-Legs, Bruce concluded that something was amiss, so, slipping into his shoes, he tapped upon the stranger’s door.
The activity within continuing, he turned the knob and stepped inside where Mr. Dill was working like a beaver trying to add a heavy home-made bureau to the collection in the middle of the floor. Shivering in his striped pajamas he was staring vacantly when Bruce lighted the lamp and touched him on the shoulder.
“You’d better hop into bed, mister.”
Mr. Dill mumbled as he swung his arms in the gesture of swimming.
“Got to keep movin’!”
“Wake up.” Bruce shook him vigorously.
The suspected representative of the “Guggenheimers” whined plaintively: “Itty tootsies awfy cold!”
“Itty tootsies will be colder if you don’t get ’em off this floor,” Bruce said with a grin, as he dipped his fingers in the pitcher and flirted the ice water in his face.
“Oh—hello!” Intelligence returned to Mr. Dill’s blank countenance. “Why, I must have been walking in my sleep. I always do when I sleep in a strange place, but I thought I’d locked myself in. I dreamed I was a fish freezing up in a cake of ice.”
“It’s not surprising.”
“Say.” Mr. Dill looked at him wistfully as he stood on one foot curling his purple toes around the other knee. “I wonder if you’d let me get in with you? I’m liable to do it again—sleeping cold and all.”
“Sure,” said Bruce sociably, leading the way. “Come ahead.”
The somnambulist chattered:
“I’ve been put out of four hotels already for walking into other people’s rooms, and once I got arrested. I’ve doctored for it.”
While lamenting his inability to discuss his proposition with the engineer, the last thing Bruce anticipated was to be engaged before daylight in the humane and neighborly act of warming Wilbur Dill’s back, but so it is that Chance, that humorous old lady, thrusts Opportunity in the way of those in whom she takes an interest.
Bruce was so full of his subject that he saw nothing unusual in propounding his questions in Mr. Dill’s ear under the covers in the middle of the night.
“How many horse-power could you develop from a two-hundred-feet head with a minimum flow of eight hundre
d miners’ inches?”
“Hey?” Mr. Dill’s muffled voice sounded startled.
Bruce repeated the question, and added:
“I’m going out on the stage in the morning and it leaves before you’re up. I’d like mightily to know a few things in your line if you don’t mind my asking.”
He was leaving, was he? Going out on the stage? Figuratively, Mr. Dill sat up.
“Certainly not.” His tone was cordial. “Any information at all——”
As clearly as he could, Bruce outlined the situation, estimating that a flume half a mile in length would be necessary to get this two-hundred-foot head, with perhaps a trestle bridging the cañon of Big Squaw creek. And Dill, wide awake enough now, asked practical, pertinent questions, which made Bruce realize that, as Uncle Bill had said, whatever doubt there might be about his honesty there could be none at all concerning his ability.
He soon had learned all that Bruce could tell him of the situation, of the obstacles and advantages. He knew his reason for wishing to locate the pump-house at the extreme end of the bar, the best place to cross the river with the transmission wire, of the proximity of saw-timber, and of the serious drawback of the inaccessibility of the ground. Bruce could think of no detail that Dill had overlooked when he was done.
“Transportation is your problem,” the engineer said, finally. “With the machinery on the ground the rest would be a cinch. But there’s only the river or an expensive wagon-road. A wagon-road through such country might cost you the price of your plant or more. And the river with its rapids, they tell me, is a terror; so with the water route eliminated, there remains only your costly wagon-road.”
“But,” Bruce insisted anxiously, “what would be your rough estimate of the cost of such a plant, including installation?”
The Man from the Bitter Roots Page 9