CHAPTER XVOUT WEST
A NEW railroad to be called the Gold Belt Cut-off was being built in California. At a little desert town named Spur trains arrived with almost weekly regularity which bore the outfits of contractors who were to do the work. These trains and others brought many tramp laborers from all parts of the United States, for tramps are inseparably connected with big construction in dirt and rock. Many people imagine that tramps never work at honest toil. These have never seen a big railroad in the building.
All was hustle and excitement at Spur this morning, for two long freight trains, carrying the immense outfit of the main contractors, Demarest, Spruce and Tillou, had just rolled in, and a hundred tramps were at the unloading. A temporary camp was pitched until the outfit was ready for its forty-mile trip by wagon to the mountains, where lay the heaviest work. The road was to cross the San Antonio Range at an altitude of approximately six thousand feet, and there the aged hills were being torn asunder.
Hundreds of horses and mules were led from the stock cars, and turned over to the stable boss and his helpers. The cooks were busy over several great ranges, set up temporarily in the open, and the air was filled with the odors of coffee and frying ham. Knocked-down wagons and grading implements were being thrown together. The walking boss rode about on his saddle horse, fat and prancing from its long confinement on the train, bawling ordersto which no one paid attention. Bales of alfalfa hay by the ton were being opened, and mules brayed and horses whinnied.
To the stable boss came Joshua Cole, grave-eyed and slim. Joshua had just left a freight train that had come to rest at Spur, and the train crew had let him ride for a hundred miles because he was headed for this scene of intense activity.
To the stable boss he said:
“Got a job?”
“Sure—a hundred of ’em. Don’t bother me! You a skinner?”
“Yes,” said Joshua. “But I’m a hammerman, too, and I prefer to work in rock.”
“Then see the walker. Or just go to work unloadin’. Don’t bother anybody about a job, young fella. Help yourself.”
“Thanks,” said Joshua.
“Huh!” said the stable boss.
Joshua walked toward the nearest car of the train, from which men were dragging bundles of tents, heavy tent poles, and all manner of camp paraphernalia. He noticed a squat, wide-chested man with a broad-brimmed tan hat on his head, who, though undemonstrative, stood watching the unloading in a half-aloof, half-interested manner which gave him an air of commandership. Toward him Joshua directed his steps, and as he drew nearer he took note of finely chiseled features, heavy iron-gray hair, and kindly slate-colored eyes that looked out from under craggy brows as black as a campfire kettle. They made thick arches, and here and there solitary hairs that were thrice as long as the others stuck out like the spines of a cactus. A stubby gray beard covered the lower portion of his face, and the rest of it was brown as a cascara berry.
“Are you the boss here?” asked the wayfarer.
“Yep”—and the kindly slate eyes gave Joshua a keen, quizzical look that seemed to catalogue him from A to Z.
“I want to go to work.”
“Hop to it.”
Here was invitation enough, so Joshua fell in at the end of the line of men moving to and from the car, and when he reached the door took upon his shoulders the tongue of a wheeled scraper that was handed out. He carried it to where a group of men were assembling all sorts of grading implements, and returned for another load.
For about fifteen minutes he made the same round, carrying anything that was handed out, often assuming a quarter or a half of some heavy piece of freight too cumbersome for a single man. And as he worked he frequently caught the slate eyes of the squat boss upon him.
This man attracted him strangely. The odd contrast of iron-gray hair and coal-black brows made the man’s face compelling. The slate-blue eyes, too, added to the contrast, and the myriad crow’s-feet that made a fine network about them gave the face a kindly personality. He wore a gray flannel shirt, and his colorless trousers were held up by a belt. The heels of his boots were high and slender. The trousers legs covered the tops of them, but they were rolled up smoothly at the bottoms, displaying four inches of bootlegs.
At the end of the fifteen minutes a great triangle was hammered upon in the vicinity of where the cooks labored. Instantly every man dropped whatever he had in hand and hurried in the direction of the odorous ham and coffee.
No tables had been set up, and the tramp laborers formed a line, took their food in their hands from the cook’s helpers in the form of sandwiches, and sat on the ground under lofty cottonwoods. With a cup of smoking coffee in onehand, two hot fried-ham sandwiches in the other, and an enormous boiled potato in his pocket, Joshua Cole found a place. And as he seated himself he saw, likewise laden and coming toward him, the squat man who had awakened his interest. To his surprise the man came directly to his tree, squatted on his heels with a little grunt, and deposited his grub before him in a nest of clean, slick leaves.
“Hot as hell, ain’t it?” he vouchsafed. “Thought I’d like to make yer acquaintance, pardner. You ain’t a tramp, I take it?”
The last sentence was a question, and Joshua made reply: “Yes, I’ve been a tramp for over a year.”
“Uh-huh—I savvy.” The man imbedded a set of perfect white teeth in a ham sandwich to the ruination of nearly half of it. Then, with his mouth full, he talked on, thus:
“Uh-huh—I get ye, pardner. Guess I been a tramp myself. One right now, f’r that matter. But I mean a reg’lar tramp—like these here jaspers here.” He waved the doomed remainder of the sandwich in a semi-circle to indicate the squatting diners.
“Well, perhaps not,” Joshua agreed with him. “Anyway, I’m on the bum and needed a job.”
“Here, too. I drifted in here from up about Wild Woman Springs. Been drivin’ stage since the Lord knows when between Wild Woman an’ the mines up at G-string Mountain. Six-up over seventeen miles o’ the worst grade in the San Antones. Then what d’ye think they done? Built a new road and put on automobiles. Result—California Bill Fox loses his job. Broke, as always, o’ course. So I drifts down here to Spur yistiddy, and to-day when this outfit rambles in I hits the boss for a freightin’ job. Guess I got it, ’cause I know this country. An’ he took a likin’ to me, seems, for he made me a straw boss over the unloadin’ until the outfit’s ready to move. That’s me,pardner—an’ I ain’t a tramp, rightly speakin’. I know you ain’t either. But what I’m tryin’ to get at is, what are you? Course I ain’t aimin’ to be too bold.”
“Well,” Joshua replied, “I guess I’m not much of anything. I’m from the East—away back, almost on the Atlantic. I was broke, and I rambled West. I worked here and there all over the country at one thing and another, and I’ve been on the railroad grade several times. I worked for three months on a little job on the M. K. and T., and in Texas a while on the Southern Pacific. I learned how to drive a team and I worked in heavy rock a little in Colorado. I can use a striking hammer and handle powder fairly well. That’s what I like best.”
“Not here,” disagreed California Bill Fox. “Me for thecaballos. I do know horses an’ mules, but I ain’t keen f’r tearin’ up the earth. I like to get behind a ramblin’ six o’ Western ponies and tearoverthe earth, but tearin’ her up goes ag’in’ the grain. Guess I’m what ye might call one o’ these here nature lovers. I find rocks an’ trees kinda friendly, ye understand. An’ I’d rather look at the sun settin’ over a mountain-top than a three-ring circus. I’m an old nut about flowers and things like that, an’ I ain’t perticular who knows it. I c’n kill a man, but not a deer. An’ that ain’t sayin’ I don’t like venison, either. D’ye think I’m quaint, pardner?”
Joshua laughed at the suddenness of the question, which in itself was indisputably quaint. “You may be that,” he said, “but if you are, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Uh-huh—I get ye. Thought maybe you’d turn out to be like that when I was watchin’ ye this mornin’. These here stiffs get my goat, an’ I can’t tolerate ’em. I was wonderin’ if they wasn’t somebody in all this mess o’ humanity that I could cotton to, and then you come and I know immediate that you was different. That thereword ‘different’ is all-fired handy, ain’t it? I see it in every story I read, pretty near. The heroine says to the hero, ‘You’re different,’ an’ he lets out a sigh an’ shoots back, ‘You’re different, too’—an’ on the next page she’s callin’ him dear heart. Get two folks together that’s different, an’ the stuff’s all off—seems.”
Joshua laughed. “Do you read lots?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m a great reader. That’s what makes me different, I guess. I’m a character, pardner.” The keen eyes studied Joshua from under their black shelter. “On the desert and in the mountains I’m just Ole California Bill, but on the inside I’m a character. The inside is what we call the country on the other side o’ the range—where the big towns and cities are. Folks from over there would come to the desert and ride in my stage up into the mountains, an’ before we’d got to Shirt-tail Bend some skirt would whisper to another one that here was a character. Ain’t that nice? Now what would you say they mean—that I’m loco—off my nut?”
“Well, not exactly, perhaps,” ventured Joshua. “Wouldn’t you rather be called a character than to travel along through life unnoticed—just one of the herd? Seems to me that’s only a careless way of saying that you are original—have individuality.”
“D’ye think so?”
“Sure.”
“I see I’m gonta cotton to you a lot, pardner,” said California Bill. “Say, when we ramble out, you make it to ride with me on my freight wagon—if I get one. Will ye? I wonder if ye’ve got any particular hobby that maybe both of us could talk about.”
“Science? Astronomy?” suggested Joshua.
“Know anythin’ about ’em? I sure do like to talk about things—kinda wonder about things, ye understand.Me f’r the why-are-we-here business every time. The desert an’ the mountains makes a fella thataway—seems. Say, I’ve wondered about why I’m here so much that I think I’ve got the answer. But, then, ye’ll only think I’m a nut—so why bother ye? And I wonder about stars and the moon a lot, too. Sun don’t interest me much, except that, seein’ all life depends on the sun, I c’n sympathize with the sun-worshipers without half tryin’. But the sun’s too all-fired prominent to raise my curiosity. The moon and stars, now, I c’n look up at them without havin’ my eyes put out. And say—wonder! Leave it to me! D’ye know anythin’ at all about astronomy?”
“A little.”
The slate eyes studied Joshua again. “Ye was well raised, I c’n see that,” said California Bill. “Maybe ye ain’t talkin’ through yer hat. I’ve seen men an’ men—I think I know ’em pretty well. I took men to the penitentiary— That is, I mean I seen men goin’ to the penitentiary that could reel off Shakespeare an’ trigonometry an’ socialism—say! An’ one fella that I saw knew more about this here Einstein than Einstein does ’imself. ’Tleast, it sounded like he did to me. Ye can’t tell about men from th’ clothes they wear ner the job they got, ner nothin’ like that—but I’m a hog fer readin’ their face. Well, you ride with me an’ we’ll talk about astronomy. I’m harmless. Just a character.”
“Have you lived in California long?” asked Joshua.
“Longer’n that. I lived here forever.”
“Forever?”
“Fifty-three year, if ye press me, pardner. An’ I’m fifty-three year old. What call’d they have to brand me California Bill Fox if I’d ever been anywhere else? I was born here an’ ain’t ever goin’ to leave. That’s forever far’s I’m concerned.”
California Bill found it impossible to talk while he gulped down half a cup of hot coffee, so Joshua took the opportunity to shift the conversation into the channel that he wanted it to travel.
“Have you been up where the road is building?” he asked.
California Bill lowered his granite cup. “Yeah—a billion times. But that’s before a railroad was thought of. The new wagon road’s just been finished to G-string, though, an’ I drove stage up there right along until Saturday week ago. Then the Old West says, ‘Bill, I’m passin’. It’s up to you. What’re ye doin’?’ An’ I says, ‘I pass, too.’”
“Know any of the contractors up there?”
“Pretty near all of ’em—seems. Some of ’em been on the job six months, ye know. These people, the main contractors, didn’t move in until they couldn’t sub-let any more of the work. Then they hadta take holt an’ handle what was left—and they got a rarin’ tough job, too.”
“Back in Utah, as I was traveling West,” said Joshua thoughtfully, “a stiff who had been working here told me that a man called Bloodmop Mundy had a piece on the Gold Belt Cut-off. Is that so?”
“Well, it was until about three months ago, an’ then he ups and dies.”
“He’s dead?”
“Well, they planted him, anyway,” drawled California Bill. “I reckon their intentions was good. Nicehombre. His daughter is runnin’ the outfit now. That is, her and her maw; but Madge is the boss because Mis’ Mundy is retirin’ like. Some kid, this here Shanty Madge. Pretty as sunset on a mountain lake. An’ she’s makin’ good with the work, but they got a whopper of a job. One o’ these days a whole blame hill’s gonta fall down on ’em; an’ thenI’m thinkin’ somethin’s gonta go bust. Bloodmop was makin’ good for the last sev’r’l years, they tell me. Started in as a gypo man back East, with a few old skates an’ a handful o’ geed-up tools. Come West an’ branched out, and was swingin’ big jobs in Nevada an’ California. Then he took this one, subbin’ offen Demarest, Spruce an’ Tillou—biggest thing he’d so far undertook—seems. An’ then—just gettin’ a good start—he croaked. But Shanty Madge’ll swing it, if that confoun’ hill don’t come down on her an’ ruin her complete. There goes th’ blame’ triangle, an’ we gotta get to work. Say, I didn’t get yer name, ol’-timer.”