54
He feinted round Phil, then ran in on him. Phil had no alternative. He put up his arms, jumped aside and dealt the cattleman a stiff blow on the mouth.
The crowd gathered round and made a ring. For a time, Phil more than held his own, getting in blow after blow, while McGregor tried his best to come to grips.
“Don’t ever let him get his arms round you,” cautioned a friendly voice, the owner of which Phil had no time to note.
The stout-chested cattleman had no science, but he possessed an unlimited amount of vital energy and strength. Phil had science, but nothing else to back it up.
The ultimate issue was beyond all question and Phil knew it, for five minutes had not gone ere he was gasping for breath and had black specks floating in hundreds before his vision. He sprang aside and circled time and again, trying to avoid his antagonist’s determination to get to grips, but at last, just after a particularly close escape, someone pushed him suddenly from behind and, before he was aware of it, two great arms were round him crushing the life out of him. He struggled frantically, but felt like a puppy-dog in the paws of a grizzly. He was whirled round and round till he grew dizzy. He was crushed and hugged until he became faint. When his bones were cracking and the very life seemed oozing out of him, he felt himself suddenly catapulted somewhere in glorious release, then his senses gave way and he remembered no more for a time.
When he came to, he was lying on the bar-room floor. Someone, whose face he recollected, was bending over him, holding up his head and mopping his brow with a wet cloth. He looked into the face and remembered it. It was the long-legged man with the mop of wavy, auburn hair, whom he had noticed sitting by the window in abstraction a short time before.
55
“Getting better, old man?” said the young fellow good-naturedly, grinning and showing his great, strong, prominent teeth.
Phil muttered a few inarticulate words of thanks and tried to rise. The lanky man helped him up, led him over to a bench, set him down and then sat down beside him.
“Sorry I didn’t interfere sooner. Might have saved you that rough handling,” said the stranger. “But to tell you the truth, I thought you were going to eat Rob Roy McGregor up. Guess you could, too, for you handle your fists better than any man I have ever seen;––but you’re just as weak as a half-drowned kitten. What’s the matter; been boozing?”
“No!” replied Phil. “I seldom drink.”
“Lucky you!” put in the big fellow. “Sick then?”
“Yes!––I––I’m just recovering from a severe illness,” answered Phil, for want of a better excuse.
“Just come into town?”
“I came in off the noon train.”
“Any friends?”
“No!”
“Say!––you don’t mind me cross-examining you this way, old man? I––I kind of like your looks.”
A big smile went over the face of the stranger, wrinkling and puckering it amusingly.
“What’s your name? Mine’s Jim Langford. They call me Wayward,––because I am. I’m a B. Sc. of Edinburgh University; a barrister, by profession only; lazy; fond of books and booze; no darned good; always in trouble; sent out here for the good of my health and for the peace of mind of the family, after a bit of trouble; had ten thousand dollars to start with; spent it all before I woke up. I get fifty dollars a month to keep away from the Old Land.
56
“Have you a place to sleep to-night? Got any baggage?”
“No!” said Phil, in answer to the second last question. “I haven’t had time to look around yet. My baggage is at the station.”
“Come then! Let’s get your stuff. My landlady has a spare room. I guess she’ll be glad to let you have it. She’s a decent sort, too.”
Phil hesitated a moment.
“If you haven’t got the money, that won’t matter.”
“I have a little;––a very little,––enough for a few days. I’m up here to find work.”
“Well,––come along with me for the time being,” said Langford.
“All right!” assented Phil. And the two walked up Main Street together, up toward the railway tracks, past the barn Phil had hidden in on his first, unofficial visit to Vernock.
“How,––how did you manage to beat off those cowpunchers?” asked Phil.
“Easy as breathing! I once punched the heart out of that rotter McGregor. Beat a man once, good and plenty, and it isn’t hard beating him again. And that doesn’t only refer to fighting, either. But say! if I didn’t know you were a stranger hereabout, I would have said Rob Roy’s picking on you was a put up job.”
A pang shot through Phil at the suggestion, and it set him wondering.
“First thing you’ve got to do, young fellow, is to get up your strength and go back and lick the stuffing out of that scum. If you don’t, your life won’t be worth living in Vernock.”
Phil laughed.
“That’s straight goods!” returned Langford, his Scottish burr turning the Western phrase strangely.
“Well––I don’t mind if I do,” said Phil.
57
They called in at the railway depot, and Phil got his two grips.
“Ralston!––what kind of business do you follow? Hope you aren’t a pen-pusher, because pen-pushing isn’t for you for some time to come. What you need is something out in the open. You seem to have played merry hell with your constitution. I’m skin and bone myself, but I’m not the fattening kind. I’m built for speed. Now your frame’s made for muscle and flesh, and you haven’t a pick of meat on your entire carcass.”
Phil smiled in an embarrassed kind of way.
“Don’t mind me,” continued Langford. “You’ll get on to my way after a bit. What’s your line of trade?”
“Well, to be honest,” said Phil, “I haven’t any. I came out here to try anything. I’m an M.A. of Toronto University; have substituted in school; can clear land if I get my own time to it; have a pretty fair knowledge of accounting; but haven’t done much of anything so far. I used to be a good athlete.”
It was Langford’s turn to smile.
“Another poor, hand-fed chicken out of the University incubator, who can do everything but what he is meant to do––lay eggs, golden ones. Say, Ralston, the world is full of us and we’re little or no damned good. We know too much, or think we do, to be contented with the pick and shovel game, and we don’t know enough––because we think we know it all already––to get down to the steady grind year in and year out, at some business that might ultimately bring us to an armchair job. So we go along with our noses to the ground snuffing for a convenient hole to crawl into.
“Oh, well!” he exploded, “who the devil wants to be tied up body and soul to some corporation all his life, for the sake of making a little money that somebody else is going to go to the dogs over after you have gone?”
58CHAPTER VThe Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Far enough up the hill to view the blossoming orchards all over the Valley and the distant blue of the lake between the hills, Langford stopped at a large, two-storied dwelling house set in expansive grounds and almost hidden among shade trees.
He walked right in, and Phil followed him.
A matronly woman, of portly dimensions, met them in the hallway.
“Mrs. Clunie,” cried Langford, “I’ve caught you a new, live lodger fresh off the train to-day. He will just fit the spare room over the way from mine.”
Mrs. Clunie looked her prospective tenant over critically.
“Mrs. Clunie,––Mr. Ralston,” continued Langford.
Phil bowed, and Mrs. Clunie nodded in a strictly non-committal way.
“His father is Lord Athelhurst-Ralston of Ecclefechan, Mrs. Clunie. He has come out here for his health.”
“Mr. Langford,––that’ll do,” said the landlady severely. “There was no’ a Ralston in the whole o’ Ecclefechan let alone a Lord What-ye-call-him Ralston, when I left twenty years syne, and I ha’e my doots if there’s one there noo. Don’t be makin’ a fool o’ the young man.
“Where do ye come frae, laddie?”
“I come from Campbeltown, Mrs. Clunie.”
59
“What?––Campbeltown on the Mull o’ Kintyre,––then you must ha’e left there before you were shortened,” she returned quickly.
“Campbeltown, Ontario!” corrected Phil.
“Oh,––ahee!––You’re sober, respectable, law-abiding, and attentive to your work?”
“I hope so.”
“As upright as Mr. Langford?”
“Oh, yes!” laughed Phil, remembering Langford’s autobiography as he had heard it a short time ago.
“I hope so,” she returned pointedly, repeating Phil’s own words.
“And he can say the Shorter Catechism and repeat the Psalms of David by heart,” put in Langford sonorously.
“Mr. Langford,––that’ll do. Scotsmen shouldna be flippant ower such serious subjects,” the goodly Mrs. Clunie chided.
“Come up stairs and I’ll show ye your room.”
She showed Phil into a comfortable little place, fixed a price that suited his scanty purse, collected a month’s rent on the spot––lest haply Phil might run into temptation by having that much more money in his possession––and left the newcomer to his own devices.
Half an hour later, Langford shouted to him from the hallway.
“Come on over, Ralston, if you’re awake.”
Phil obeyed.
“We’ve all had to go through what you did,” said Langford, “but Mrs. Clunie is worth it;––she’s a crackerjack. How do you like the lay-out?”
Phil was busy taking in the physical features of Langford’s room.
But for the bed and the bureau, the room was more60like a study than a bedroom. It contained bookcases from floor to ceiling, packed with literary treasures.
“My pals,” said Langford, pointing to two of them containing the classics of fiction, poetry and essays.
“My enemies,” he continued, nodding at the third bookcase, packed with books on law.
“Friends of mine,” he went on, pointing to a pen and inkwell on a small writing table.
He went over to one of the trunks that graced the window as seats. He raised the lid. It was filled to overflowing with rolls of paper, loose sheets and scraps, all closely written upon.
“My babies,” he laughed. “Behold in me the most prolific mother in all literature!”
“What are they?” inquired Phil.
“The offsprings of fancy,” returned Langford, grandiloquently; “essays, short stories, dramas, poems––all of no financial value. Dime novels worth fifty dollars a time, but all cashed. Advice to the Love Sick––five dollars a column––alas also unconvertible.”
Phil stood before him a little nonplussed, while Langford grinned and smoked on.
“I suffer continually the mental pangs of literary childbirth.”
He sat in a chair and lounged dreamily as he puffed out clouds of smoke, his long legs sprawling out in front of him.
“You’re lucky to have such a talent,” put in Phil at last.
“Lucky! Talent!” exclaimed Langford.
“I always understood literature was a lucrative pursuit.”
“Pursuit,––yes;––but lucrative! Ye gods!
“You see, Ralston, I suffer with my thoughts until I relieve myself by getting them down as best I can on61paper, then I bury them in my trunk along with their elder brothers. I know I ought to burn them, but I haven’t the heart to murder my children born in such travail. Some day, however, it will have to be done, otherwise they’ll crowd their father-mother out of house and home.”
“Don’t you try to market your work?”
“I did once––many times once––but they would have none of my high-faluting flights, although as Captain Mayne Plunkett, the writer of penny dreadfuls for the consumption of England’s budding pirates and cowpunchers, I am not without a following, and I have a steady contract for one per month at fifty dollars straight. To a New York girls’ journal, I am not unkindly thought of as Aunt Christina in the Replies to the Love Lorn column,––five dollars per––.”
He laughed reflectively.
“But don’t you work?” asked Phil innocently.
“Work! Lord, isn’t that work a-plenty?”
“Yes, but work that pays in real dollars and cents.”
“Ah!” Langford’s eyes swept the ceiling. “Meantime, I am what you might call Assistant to the Government Agent. God knows how long he will suffer me. He is a real good sort, and doesn’t expect too much for his money either in time or in ability. I knock about fifty dollars a month out of him when I work, and that, with the fifty with which my old dad so benevolently pensions me, together with fifty for every ‘penny horrible’ I write, I contrive to eke out a scanty living.
“You’ve got to work, too, Ralston; haven’t you?”
“Work or starve!” answered Phil.
“I hate to think of any man having to work,” mused Langford, “but if starve is the only alternative, why, I guess you’ve got to find a job. Got anything in view?”
“No!”
62
“Particular about what you tackle?”
“Not at all!”
“All right! I’ve to be at the Court House at five o’clock. Kick your heels around this little burg for a few hours and I’ll try to scare up something for you. But don’t get into mischief.”
He rose, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the heel of his boot at the stove, and put on his hat.
He turned at the door.
“Say, Ralston! It won’t be any pen-pushing job, mark you. You have to get your muscle up, for there’s something I want you to do when you are good and fit.”
“And what is that?”
“Tell you later. So long!”
A few minutes later Phil got his hat from the hall-rack and strolled leisurely out, taking the road down the hill toward the main street of the town.
He passed a red brick building which bore the aristocratic title on a large painted sign over the doorway, “Municipal Hall.” He looked at the windows. Hanging on one of them, in the inside, was a black card with gilt letters, “Mayor Brenchfield.”
Phil’s under lip shot out and his brow wrinkled. His hand travelled to his hip pocket, as a nervous man’s does when he sees a sign in a railway station, “Beware of Pickpockets.”
He swung on his heel and walked up the wooden steps into the main office, as calm and collected as could be.
“Is the Mayor in?” he asked one of the officials.
“Yes! Wish to see him? What name, please?”
“Oh, just tell him it’s an old friend.”
The office man went into the inner room and soon returned.
“He is very busy on some special work. Would you mind calling in again?”
63
“Anybody with him?”
“No!”
Phil brushed past the man and walked straight into the Mayor’s office, closing the door behind him.
Brenchfield was sitting in an armchair, behind a desk, smoking a huge cigar and blowing clouds in the air; the very picture of municipal overwork.
“Thought it might be you! Heard you were in town. Sit down, Phil!”
“Thanks, no!” returned Phil brusquely.
Brenchfield reached over, opened a cheque book, took up a pen, dipped it in an inkwell, turned his cigar savagely to a corner of his mouth and looked up at his visitor inquiringly.
“How much do you want?”
Phil smiled on him, half-pityingly. Physically, he was tremendously weak, but he despised the man before him so much that it gave him courage and strength.
“How much have you?” he asked.
“None of your damned business!”
“Oh!––I guess you’ve forgotten that our five years’ partnership is up:––a pool and a fair divide, wasn’t it? Share and share alike! Well,––there’s mine!”
He threw a few bills and a little silver on the table.
Brenchfield pushed back his chair.
“So that’s your game, you poor miserable––you know the name!”
“Poor and miserable, all right,––like the fool I was. But I’m not a fool any more. I know you. I know the world just a little better than I did five years ago.”
“Shut up, man! Do you wish the whole town to hear?”
“What if they do hear? I’ve nothing to hide;––I’m not like you.”
“And you’ll be getting a little more of what you have64already had, if you don’t go easier than you are doing. See here!––I’m busy, but I’m willing to start you off. What’s your price to get out of here for good and forget you ever knew me, and to forget me for all time to come?”
“One-half of all you have, and interest to date,––I to stay here as long as I please.”
The Mayor looked at Phil as if he were looking at a lunatic, then he smiled and started in to fill up a cheque.
“I owe you five hundred. I’ve tacked on a thousand more. There! The train leaves at 3:15p.m.to-morrow. You get out on it. Do you understand?”
“Thank you!––but this place suits me. I like it and I’m going to stay.”
“You are,––eh! If you don’t get out with to-morrow’s train you’ll go out the day following, in a box, feet first.”
“Yes! Judging from what happened early this afternoon, I daresay you are quite equal to that kind of thing,” said Phil quietly. “But I’m going to stay all the same.”
“You won’t get a job within twenty miles of Vernock. If you do, you won’t hold it, for every man in the district will know you for what you are,––an ex-jailbird.”
“Who will tell them?”
“I will.”
“No, you won’t!”
“Won’t I? Try it out and I’ll show you quick enough.”
Phil went over to Brenchfield’s desk.
“I suppose you think your tracks are pretty well covered up after five years.”
“I have none to cover,” retorted Brenchfield. “I don’t know you personally; never did know you;––don’t want to know you. I do know you by reputation for an escaped jailbird and a would-be blackmailer, who will be back where he belongs before he is much older. Get that?”
65
“Yes,––I got it,” answered Phil, desperate, and almost beaten, when an imp in his mind set him busy.
“I’m going to stay here, Graham, and you’re not going to try to prevent me or say a word that would injure my standing. If you do, then God help you.”
Brenchfield laughed up at the ceiling.
“Five years ago,” went on Phil, “you wrote a little note in cypher and left it with me when you turned tail and ran away. Maybe you have forgotten about that note. Well,––written things have a habit of turning up.”
Brenchfield’s bravado oozed away. His hard face grew pale.
“You’re lying. You burned that note.”
“Did I?”
“If you didn’t, it would have been found and would have come out in the evidence.”
“Perhaps!”
Phil put his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket, as if to bring out the paper, then he appeared to change his mind, for he desisted and made as if to leave.
Brenchfield jumped up quickly, sprang for the door and stood with his back to it.
“Damn you! How much do you want?”
“Nothing!”
“Name your price and give me that note.”
“It is priceless.”
“Good heavens, man!––you need money. You’re a pauper. I can make you comfortable. I can get you a position that will make you secure for life.”
Phil slowly picked up his own money that he had thrown on the desk and put it in his trouser pocket.
“Much obliged!” he remarked, “but I have no intention of remaining a pauper for long. I wouldn’t insult my conscience by taking any position you could find for me. Do you mind letting me out?”
66
For answer, Brenchfield was on him like a wild-cat. Phil wriggled, but the Mayor got behind him, with an arm pressing his throat and a hand over his mouth. With a quick movement and without the slightest noise he bore Phil backward full length on the thickly carpeted floor. He moved his grip and, half strangling him with one hand as he knelt heavily on Phil’s chest, he went through Phil’s inside pocket.
The pocket was empty.
Phil could not cry out, and would not have done so had he been able.
Slowly Brenchfield searched every pocket in turn. He failed to find a document of any kind.
He released him at last, rose and brushed the dust from his trousers, breathing heavily.
“Damn you!––I knew you lied.”
Phil got up also.
“Guess you take me for a fool such as I used to be,” he panted. “I don’t carry my valuables with me now when I visit your kind. I have more sense. Now, do you mind letting me out?”
Brenchfield made as if he were going to strike Phil in his anger.
“If I thought you had that paper, I’d kill you for it.”
“And, if you thought I hadn’t, you’d hound the life out of me. Well,––do your darnedest.”
“The money offer still holds good,” said Brenchfield in a more conciliatory tone. “Keep your mouth shut and I’ll do the same. Let me know when you are ready to name your price for that paper.”
“When I need the money, I’ll let you know,” replied the other.
Brenchfield opened the door, and smiling an urbane mayoral “Good afternoon,” that all in the main office could hear, he ushered Phil out.
67CHAPTER VIA Bird to Pluck
As he walked down Main Street toward the Kenora Hotel, where it was his intention to have a bite to eat, Phil congratulated himself inwardly, on the one side, on the more than ordinary success of his gigantic bluff––for he knew that so long as he was able to hold this bogey of a confession as a club over the head of Brenchfield, he was safe from open interference:––on the other side, he cursed his arrant stupidity and childlike simplicity in destroying a document which, even if he never used it, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt his innocence of the crime for which he had been imprisoned.
He tried hard to recollect exactly what had happened that fatal morning after Brenchfield had left the shack on the side of the road at Carnaby, but all was more or less hazy and indistinct. He remembered deciphering the note and crumpling it up in his despair and worry. Later, he recollected gathering up the loose papers and other material evidences of Brenchfield’s guilt, stuffing them into the stove and setting them alight.
As he walked along his musings were brought to an abrupt stop, as his eye caught sight of a tall, straight, picturesque-looking individual coming toward him. The man was dressed in what at one time had been an immaculate sporting suit, but which, in its now battered and tattered state, gave the wearer the look of a bookmaker who had been dragged through a mud puddle and then hung out to dry.
68
The man’s wide sombrero was battered, his stock around his neck was dirty, the brass buttons on his robin-redbreast waistcoat were dull and tarnished, his riding breeches and leggings seemed sworn enemies of brush and polish. But despite all this, one could not get away from the fact that everything the man wore was of the very best and most expensive materials.
He stepped up in front of Phil apologetically. His voice was attractively musical and exceedingly English.
“Excuse me, old chap! I’m a stranger here. I’m deuced dirty and devilish hungry. Do you mind directing me to a good hotel where I could get a wash and a jolly good tuck in?”
“Certainly,” said Phil. “I think the Kenora’s all right. I’m going that way myself for a snack, if you care to come along.”
“Thanks! Jolly decent! Don’t mind if I do!”
He turned with Phil, and as they went on together he took a little silver case from his pocket and handed a card to Phil.
“My name! What’s yours?”
Phil scanned the card and smiled.
Percival DeRue HanningtonThe Oaks Mount RaeburnHants
“Sorry I haven’t a card,” he said. “My name’s Ralston, Phil Ralston.”
“Don’t mention it, old chap! They don’t cotton much to cards out here, I notice.”
He wrung Phil’s hand heartily.
A little cord was hanging round Percival Hannington’s neck and led to a top pocket of his vest. Phil felt positive it terminated in a monocle and, as the stranger’s fingers wandered down the cord, Phil, in his dread69of what was about to happen, laid his hand restrainingly over the travelling fingers.
“Don’t!” he pleaded. “They don’t cotton to that, either, out here.”
The stranger flushed a little.
“By jove,––you’re right. Thanks! Habits are beastly things, you know. Better rid myself of all my old ties if I’m to start afresh, eh!”
He pulled out the monocle, jerked the cord from his neck, snapped the glass between his fingers and tossed the lot into the roadway.
Something in the spontaneous act went to Phil’s heart and he felt from that moment that here was a man he could like despite his strange exterior.
They passed through the bar of the Kenora, which was the only way one could get admittance to that hotel unless by the back door among empty cans and kitchen garbage. The strange apparition of the Englishman reduced everyone in the saloon to funereal silence. Phil bravely led the way, however, without mishap, except for a distant shout of laughter which reached them at the dining-room.
Phil spoke to the hotel clerk, who shouted for the bell boy.
“Follow that boy,” said Phil. “He will fix you up.”
“Thanks! If you don’t mind, I should like to have my bite with you, old chap. I won’t be a jiffy.”
And off he strutted after the grinning boy, while Phil sat in five minutes’ dreamy contemplation.
Back came Percival DeRue Hannington, spick and span as far as a clothes-brush and soap and water could make him.
“By jove! It’s a corker how much dirt can stick to a fellow without falling off,” he remarked. “What are you having?”
70
Phil named something light.
“That all?” asked Hannington. “I’m hungry as a blooming hawk. I haven’t had a decent bite for three months.
“Everything on the blessed calendar for me, miss, frills and extras included,” he went on, addressing the waitress, who went away with the end of her apron in her mouth.
“You know, Mister––Mister–––”
“Phil Ralston!”
“Ah, yes! Mister Phil–––”
“Just plain Phil!”
“Phil––yes, excuse me! You know, I came out to this bally country on false pretences, as it were. Oh,––the country’s all right! Don’t misunderstand me. It’s a regular ripper, but, damme, I got done, you know.”
The soup came along, and DeRue Hannington fumbled for his monocle but suddenly seemed to remember that it was no longer a part of him. He blundered awkwardly a while, as if he had suddenly been deprived of one of his active members.
“It’s this way, Mister, eh, Phil. The guv’nor thought I was going the pace too hard and becoming a bally rotter, so he said I had to go out West and be a rawncher. He said it just like that,––as if being a rawncher was as easy as being a rotter.
“Are you a rawncher?”
“No! It takes money to be that.”
“You’re a foreman, or a cowboy, or something?”
“No,––I’m not anything yet,” smiled Phil. “I’m just starting in. I’ve lately finished my college training.”
The irony in his voice was lost on DeRue Hannington who was too full of his own troubles to worry about those of anyone else.
71
“Well, you see,––when the dad and I had that tiff, I just took him on.
“I saw an advertisement of a rawnching chap in a London journal, offering to take on an Englishman as an apprentice and teach him everything about rawnching for three years for five hundred dollars a year. I just cabled that fellow and got his answer to come right away. And here I got three months ago.”
All the time he was speaking, Hannington was eating ravenously but with the ease and daintiness of one whose table manners were an eternal part of him.
“The rawncher met me at the station with two horses. Not a blessed wagon or a thing to carry my luggage did the bounder have. It is lying at the station yet;––at least it was last time I called in there. The fellow took my five hundred dollars, then took me twenty miles up over these everlasting hills. A thousand miles in the bally wilderness!
“Of course, you know, Phil, I will admit I was deuced raw.”
Phil laughed. DeRue Hannington’s good nature asserted itself and he laughed, too.
After a while, he went on.
“This rawnching Johnnie’s name was Duff. You don’t happen to know him?”
Phil shook his head.
“Well,––he put me in the charge of Mrs. Duff, and she set me to paring potatoes, washing the floors, scouring pots and pans, wringing clothes and all that sort of rot; till, one day, I just said to Duff that I’d come West to rawnch, not to skivvy.
“Of course, I’ll admit, I didn’t know an apple tree from a cauliflower, but, damme, I was game to learn, Phil. Don’t you think I did right to jolly-well remonstrate?”
72
“You certainly did!”
Thus encouraged, DeRue Hannington continued:
“He then put me to digging, and digging, and digging, till the cows came home, then to weeding, and weeding, and weeding, miles and miles of rows and rows of beastly carrots and things until I can’t look an honest carrot in the face or a potato in the eye without feeling faint.
“I really didn’t seem to be learning anything, but I stuck it gamely until three days ago, when Mr. and Mrs. Duff went off to visit a neighbour five miles up the Valley. They left me to look after the blooming squawking baby. That just got me real mad, so when it started in to bawl, I sat down and wrote a note saying I was through. I pinned it to the baby,––and, here I am.
“Don’t you think I did the right thing?”
“You bet!” answered Phil, striving hard to suppress his bubbling merriment.
“They cawn’t make me serve my three years out, can they, Phil?” queried DeRue Hannington, anxiously.
“Not they! Why, all they wanted was your five hundred dollars. They’ll be glad to be quit of you.”
The Englishman perked up.
“They’re welcome to the money. But I’m not through rawnching, you know. You see I’ve got the worst over now and I’m feeling quite a Westerner. You don’t happen to know anyone who has a good rawnch for sale?––one with a decent sort of a house and stables, and lots of fruit trees on it. I’ve got the money in the bank, you know, and could pay cash for it. I really think I could run a rawnch now.”
“No,––I haven’t the slightest idea!” returned Phil. “But it shouldn’t be a hard job getting a ranch, if you have the money. There are always lots of people ready to sell goods for cash. Take my advice, though; don’t be in too great a hurry.”
73
Phil rose to go.
DeRue Hannington followed him to the saloon, where Phil shook hands and left him.
As he passed out at the door he heard the voice of the stranger raised above the general conversation of the saloon.
“Excuse me, but have any of you good fellows any idea where a chap could buy a good rawnch for cash?”
Phil threw up his hands in despair and walked on, knowing that Percival DeRue Hannington had still a lot to learn about ranching and about those who had ranches to sell.
74CHAPTER VIIWild Man Hanson Goes Wild
Jim Langford was waiting for Phil at Mrs. Clunie’s.
“Where the Sam Hill have you been, Phil? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Got a job yet?”
“No,––not even the scent of one!”
“Want one?”
“You bet!”
“Hard work and start to-morrow?”
“Sure thing! Where is it? what is it? who is it? Tell me quick! I’m aching to work for real money, for more reasons than one.”
“Royce Pederstone, the blacksmith, is quitting being an active blacksmith any more. He is putting Wildman Hanson in charge, and Hanson’s job is going a-begging.”
“Wildman Hanson! That sounds good for a start, Jim.”
“And it’s as good as it sounds, too, young fellow, my lad. I’m not going to tell you anything about his ‘wildman’ tricks. You’ll find that out for yourself in good time. But he’s a crackerjack blacksmith and can show you all of the trade that is worth showing.”
“I haven’t the strength to be a smith.”
“Not now;––but you have the frame and you’ve got to build on it.
“The job’s worth twenty dollars a week to start, and it’s yours for the taking. I did the asking from Hanson this morning. Are you on?”
75
“Of course I’m on.”
“All right!––six o’clock to-morrow morning at Pederstone’s shop, one block down the hill and two blocks to the left.”
Langford chuckled.
“What are you grinning at?” asked Phil.
“Oh,––just thinking what you’ll be able to do with that rusty-headed, son-of-a-gun McGregor after a month or two under Hanson.”
“Thanks! I’ve had some McGregor, and I’m not greedy. I’m not at all anxious for more.”
“What? See here, Phil,––you’ve got to beat that lobster stiff if it takes you a year. It took me all I knew to turn the trick, and I had to keep off drink for six months to do it, but there was something inside of me that just wouldn’t stay quiet till I licked the stuffing out of him. He’s a bully. He’s the craftiest, sneakiest, most underhand skunk in the Valley. He’s at the bottom of most of the trouble with cattle and feed hereabout, but he’s too damned wary to be caught.
“I’m surprised at the Mayor having anything to do with him. But, of course, the Mayor’s a cattleman himself, and, give Rob Roy McGregor his due, there isn’t a better man on stock this side of Calgary.”
“And I’ve to go blacksmithing with the set purpose of eating this fellow up?”
“No, you’re going blacksmithing for the purpose of setting yourself up, you rickle of bones! Licking McGregor can be your side line. When you beat him, you’ll know you are in pretty good shape.”
“All right,––I’m on!” agreed Phil. “But who is this Royce Pederstone? Why is he giving up his work?”
“Who? why? and wherefore? At times you’re a regular bairn for asking questions, but when you’re wanted to talk you’re as silent as the tomb.
76
“Royce Pederstone has been here since the flood. He’s a good blacksmith, only he never finishes a job. If he is making a gate, he stops at the last rivet and Hanson has to drive it home. If he is shoeing a horse, he forgets a nail. If he is making a fish hook, he omits the barb. It is the same with his land deals; he buys land and, for the time being, forgets he owns it so far as selling again is concerned. Then he buys some more whenever he has the ready cash. It is all working for him,––so he says. He owns more earth than he has any idea of. He doesn’t know how much stock he has; doesn’t even knows what happens to his farm implements once he pays for them; in some cases doesn’t know if they have been delivered to him. Often he finds some of them when the snow goes away in the spring time. There are many things he doesn’t know; all the same it isn’t safe to take too many chances on what he passes up.”
“Then he has got too rich for blacksmithing?”
“Not he! Royce Pederstone is not that kind of a man, Phil. He is just too busy. He is going to be the next member of parliament from the Valley. Watch and see!
“The new election comes off in three months’ time. Last week the Association met to elect their representative. Some were for Barrington of Armstrong, others for Brenchfield the Mayor. They couldn’t agree. Royce Pederstone was chairman of the meeting. At midnight they were as far off a decision as ever. Someone proposed John Royce Pederstone, and it carried without a dissenting voice.
“He’s a cracking good man, is Pederstone, on the platform. He is straight, honest and more or less of a farmer. Ben Todd, the editor, is hand and glove with him, so he will haveThe Vernock and District Advertiserat his back.
77
“The old government is sure to be kicked out of office, if only to give the people a change; so, who is going to keep Royce Pederstone from being the Valley’s representative at Victoria, I should like to know?”
“And that’s why he’s stepping out of the blacksmith’s shop?” put in Phil.
“Yes!––that’s the why, boy.”
Next morning at six o’clock Phil, in the company of Jim Langford, presented himself at Pederstone’s forge.
“Hullo!” cried Jim, “that’s funny. Not open yet!”
The front door was heavily barred across. They went to the back entrance. It also was firmly secured.
Langford shielded his face with his hand and peered through the narrow, barred windows.
“Well, I’ll be darned!” he exclaimed. “And on your first morning, too! Hard luck, Phil!”
“Why,––what is it?”
“Oh, nothing much! Only I fancy you’re going to see why your new boss is called Wildman Hanson.
“Look in there.”
Phil did so.
“What did you see?”
Phil puckered his face in disgust.
“Not much wildman there,” he remarked. “As far as I can see Hanson is sound asleep on a pile of coke. There are two empty bottles at his side. Seems to me he might be dead drunk.”
“That’s what he is, too.”
“Then let’s go in and throw a bucket of water over him and wake him up.”
“Not on your life! Then therewouldbe a funeral. I guess you had better postpone your start till to-morrow. Only one man in Vernock can handle Hanson after he’s had a night of it, and that man’s the Mayor. Man to78man, Hanson has him shaded. With a rope in his hand, the Mayor is the best man.”
Voices behind them made them turn round.
Royce Pederstone and Mayor Brenchfield were riding down the side road as if on some definite bent. They were equipped as for a round-up.
“How do, Jim! Is this Hanson’s new apprentice?” asked Pederstone, bending over his horse and shaking hands genially with Phil.
“Glad to meet you, young man, and sorry this has happened on your first day. Hanson only goes on the toot once in a long while. You must just forget what you are going to see in a few minutes and think later only of what he shows you of blacksmithing.”
Brenchfield completely ignored Phil’s presence.
The two men got off their horses.
Royce Pederstone turned the water on at the tap at the trough, to which a hose was already attached. He directed the nozzle through a broken window pane, squirting a thin, strong stream directly on the upturned face of the open-mouthed and heavily-breathing Swede.
With a grunt the huge fellow spread himself.
The Mayor jerked off the water, then he and Royce Pederstone sprang on their horses and took up positions at different sides of the yard.
Jim and Phil in curiosity kept their eyes glued to the dirty window.
Growling fiercely, Hanson scrambled to his feet. His usually handsome and childlike face was contorted with rage and horrible to see. His eyes, bloodshot and bleared, stood out wildly in his head, his teeth showed like the teeth of a snarling puma and a foamy lather slithered from his mouth down on to his huge, hairy, muscle-heaving chest. He stood over six feet––a man of79gigantic proportions, with every inch of him tuned and in perfect symmetry.
But he seemed madness incarnate.
With a fierce oath, he wiped the water from his face. He staggered and bumped into an anvil, striking his knee against the metal. He swore again and, in his mounting anger, he seized the anvil in his great hands, lifted it bodily from its stand and heaved it into a corner––a feat which four strong men, at any time, would have experienced difficulty in performing.
“Great Cæsar!” whispered Phil in awe.
“After a booze, he’s as strong as a railway engine,” returned Jim, “and he goes plumb daffy. Murder or anything else doesn’t matter a hill of beans to him at a time like this.”
“That sounds exceedingly pleasant.”
“Pshaw!––you needn’t mind. You’ll know in lots of time, for he’s happy and gentle as a lark when he’s really boozing. It is only when he wakes up the morning after––after a ten hours’ sleep––that the fun begins.
“He killed a horse once with his bare hands. Got on its back and strangled it somehow. He half-killed the old Police Chief. He got a year in jail for that. They were going to send him to an asylum afterwards, but he was such a fine workman and so decent at an ordinary time, that Royce Pederstone and the Mayor gave their guarantees and promised to attend to him any time he tried his monkey-doodle business again.”
Meantime, Hanson walked over to the front door and tested it. Then he came toward the back one.
“Run!” shouted Langford, suiting prompt action to his word.
Phil remained a moment or two longer, trusting to his nimbleness of foot for emergency.
He saw Hanson stoop and pick up a great, heavy,80sledge, then spring madly to the back door, swinging the big hammer above his head. With a shivering crash the woodwork splintered.
Phil turned to run.
Another great crash and the whole door and its fastenings tumbled outward, and that giant piece of infuriated humanity stood looking about him, framed in the broken woodwork.
Phil heard a warning shout, as he rushed headlong.
But his toe caught on an iron girder and he came down heavily on his face. As he sprang to his feet again he heard further shouting all about him. He turned his head. Hanson was springing toward him and making on him with a speed Phil could not realise in a man so weighty; a speed he could not begin to emulate.
The great hairy hands were almost on his coat, when something happened.
He staggered, balanced himself and stood up sheepishly.
Hanson was on the ground, struggling, cursing and kicking viciously at a rope which Royce Pederstone had cast smartly round his left foot.
Pederstone tugged with all his strength, and his horse lent her weight, but together they could do no more than hold their own with the fallen Vulcan. Hanson brought out a clasp-knife from his clothes, opened it and slashed at the rope. He had it almost cut through, when Brenchfield, who had been sitting on his horse an inactive and silent spectator––in response to Pederstone’s urgent call, whirled his rope around his head several times and dropped it deftly over Hanson’s shoulders, pinning his arms helplessly to his side.
Brenchfield then tugged in one direction and Royce Pederstone in the other, each tying the end of his rope tightly to a stake at his side of the yard, with the result81that the madman was half hamstrung and reduced to impotence.
Langford came round the side of the building with fresh ropes. These were quickly bound round Hanson, until he was unable to move hand or foot, although he still struggled violently, the veins in his neck and head standing out in blue knots, the perspiration running over his shapely forehead and the frothy slither again oozing from his lips.
“Say, Graham!––what went wrong? Why didn’t you rope him? Thought you said you would take first throw.”
“Did I?” asked Brenchfield calmly.
“Sure you did! It might have been a serious accident. It isn’t often you make a forget like that, old man.”
“Oh, pshaw!––what’s the odds anyway? Everything was all right.”
“Was––yes! But it might have been all day with the new man.”
“No chance! I had that cinched. Anyway, he had no right dawdling at the window as long as he did.”
“Here, you two scrapping schoolboys––forget it!” interposed Langford. “I fancy Phil knows how to look after himself without either of you.”
On the instructions of Pederstone, the four men carried the trussed Hanson into a nearby stable, where they made him fast with fresh ropes to some heavy stanchions.
When all was secure, Hanson was left to regain his normal, Pederstone turning the key in the lock for further security.
“Guess that’s all this time, Ped,” said Brenchfield.
“All through––thanks, Graham!” returned Pederstone, and Brenchfield rode off in deep thought. As a blacksmith, the Mayor felt that Phil was easy and safe for him, although he did not like the intimacy that seemed to have sprung up so soon between Phil and Jim Langford,82for Langford was a strange composite, capable of anything or nothing; clever; altogether an unknown quantity, but one well worth the watching closely.
“Do you want Phil to-day now this has happened?” asked Jim of Royce Pederstone.
“Sure thing!––if he hasn’t changed his mind about working?”
“Not me!” answered Phil.
“All right!” said Jim. “Me for the Court House. I’m only a couple of hours late now. See you later, Phil!”
Royce Pederstone went into the forge, doffed his coat, rolled up his sleeves and put on his leather apron.
Phil followed suit with an apron of Hanson’s, and soon the doors were wide open, the fires blowing and the anvil ringing, drowning the groans and shouts that came from Hanson as he lay like a trussed fowl in the adjoining stable.
“I’m sorry this has taken place on the first day of your apprenticeship, young man, but it has been pending for some time. After this is over, you won’t be afraid to be left with Hanson, I hope. He’ll be all right in a few hours, and very much ashamed of himself you will find him.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Phil. “I am just beginning to discover that fear is the greatest devil we have to contend with and that the less we worry about it the less real and the more a mere bogey it becomes.”
“True for you, Phil. And the older you grow the more you’ll realise the wisdom of what you say.
“Well, it is just a year since Hanson had his last drinking bout. I was beginning to think he had got completely over it. He is not likely to break out again for ever so long.”
“What is it exactly that gets him?” asked Phil.