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“One Johnnie said he had a good one I could have cheap, for cash.”
“What was the man’s name?” asked Phil.
“Barney, Barney something-or-other; oh, yes! cawn’t forget it;––Barney Douthem. Hedid me, the rotter.
“Do you know him, Mister––Mister Phil?”
“I have heard of him. He left here some time ago for the other side of the Line.”
“I fawncied so,” said Hannington. “I’m looking for that miserable thieving josser.
“Well, I hired a horse and went out with the Barney fellow to see the rawnch, right away. A jolly nice place it was, too––just ten miles out. The Barney chap lived there with a Chinaman who did his housework. It was a twenty-acre place on the side of a hill, with a decent sort of a house and stables. There was a beautiful view of the lake and the Valley, and a fine fishing stream running right through the property. One could fish out of his window, lying in bed. A positive duck of a place!”
“Yes!” remarked Phil, “but a rancher can’t live on scenery and by fishing in bed. What kind of fruit trees did the place have?”
“Deuced good trees, Phil! At least, they seemed all-right. Of course, I’m not a bally expert on fruit trees.
“The Douthem chap said he could recommend it and I could have it for five thousand dollars cash. I gave him a cheque right off the reel. He gave me his receipt for the money, and the deal was closed there and then.”
DeRue Hannington stopped, as if the memory of it was somewhat painful.
“Not exactly closed, Phil! because it sort of opened up again, two days ago, just three weeks after I was done by Douthem, and he had cashed my cheque and jolly-well beat it, as they say out here.
“It was like this. I was sitting on the veranda, enjoying108a smoke and admiring my property and the view, when a collector Johnnie came up the road and asked me where Douthem was. I told him Douthem was gone, and I was now the proprietor.
“‘Didn’t know they had changed tenants,’ said he. ‘I’ve called for the rent.’
“Do you know, Phil, I fawncied the silly owl had gone balmy, but he insisted that he had to collect thirty dollars a month rent.
“Of course, I showed the fellow my receipt for the place, proving I was the owner of it. But he just looked at it and said:––
“‘Say!––who are you making a kid of? This might be all right for a bunch of groceries, or electric light, or a ton of coal, but it isn’t all right for a rawnch.’
“‘Why!––what’s the matter with it?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t it say, Received from Percival DeRue Hannington the sum of five thousand dollars for one ranch of twenty acres, with house and barns, situated ten miles from the city of Vernock and called Douthem’s Ranch?’
“‘Sure it does,’ said the chap. And he was devilish rude about it too.”
By this time, Phil had all he could do to keep from shouting with merriment. He did not dare to look at DeRue Hannington, so he kept religiously to his food.
“Well,––he told me the rawnch belonged to some other people; that Douthem only rented it, and that one had to have a deed and register it when one bought property. The blooming upshot was I had to pay the collecting fellow his thirty dollars and get out. So I landed back here to-day.
“I daresay, Phil, a man has to pay for his experience, but you know it looks as if a fellow had to do so much paying that when he does finish up by really owning something,109he will have paid such a beastly lot for it that he’ll never be able to make it up again.”
Phil showed impatience.
“Good heavens, man!––don’t you know that land is not exchanged without an Agreement for Sale, or a Deed?”
“How should I know?” answered the innocent. “I never bought land before. If I pay the price for an article, it should be mine, shouldn’t it?”
“If the man you pay is honest,” replied Phil, “but he isn’t always honest, hence Agreements and Deeds.
“Next time you buy a ranch, Mr. Hannington, take my advice and hire a lawyer to see the deal through for you.”
“No more bally rawnches for me, Phil. And it is possibly just as well I lost this one, because I have learned that one has to grub and mess among caterpillars and all those dirty little insects and worms they call bugs, which keep getting on the fruit trees, eating up the bally stuff you are trying to grow. I simply cawn’t stand the slimy, squashy little reptiles, you know!”
“I am afraid you are destined to meet them in other places besides ranches,” remarked Phil.
“I have found them on my dinner table before now!”
“How disgusting!” exclaimed the horrified Englishman.
“What are you going to tackle next? Don’t you think you had better get a job for a while, working for wages, until you get acclimatised; and so conserve your money until you have had the necessary experience?”
“Not so long as my old dad is willing to foot the bills! The least he can do is to keep me going here. It is cheaper for him than letting me gad about between London, Paris and the Riviera. Besides, my mother would110die of shame if she fawncied her boy Percy was working for wages like a common labouring bounder.”
This was a species of maternal niceness Phil had never run up against, consequently he did not feel sympathetic toward it.
“They tell me oil-wells are a jolly good thing to get into. That fellow Rockefeller made a lot out of them, didn’t he? You don’t know of any likely places around here, Phil?”
“No! I don’t think this is much of an oil country, Mr. Hannington. What we hear about oil here is more or less bunk. Better leave it alone!”
“You know,––I did meet a fellow on the train coming across. He had a jolly good thing. He was a water-diviner;––could tell you where the water was for a well just by walking over the land with a twig in his hand and doing a kind of prayer. Seemed to listen for the water, the same way as a robin does on the lawn when after worms.”
Phil laughed. “Yes!––I have met a few of that water-divining species, and some of them were pretty good at it, too. They seemed to strike it right fairly often.”
“Aw, yes, Phil!” continued DeRue Hannington, wiping his mouth with his napkin and leaning back in his chair, “but this fellow did have a good scheme. He said, you know, if a man could divine water, there was nothing to prevent him from divining oil too. So he was going to the oil-well district in California to test himself out with his idea, then he was coming back to Canada to start up oil-wells all over the bally country.”
“He’s going to let me in on it too. That’s what I call one of myfutures. Just a speculation, old chap! I gave him two hundred and fifty dollars on his note. He required it to pay his way to the Oil Wells. Don’t you think it might be a real good thing, Phil?”
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“It might!––but I don’t think I would tell many people about it,” said Phil quietly.
“Why?––Oh, yes, I see! I oughtn’t to give the chap away before he elaborates his plans. Might spoil them. Silly I didn’t think of that!”
“Just so, Mr. Hannington!”
“Meantime, though,––I intend buying a house here and settling down. I do like this Valley. It is so deuced picturesque, you know, and rural. When I’m properly established, I can go in for mining. On a hilly country like this, there ought to be good mining properties; gold, silver, etcetera. Don’t you think so, Phil?”
“There might be, if one could only hit them. I’ve never had enough time or money myself to take the matter up as a hobby.”
DeRue Hannington rose slowly from the table.
“Well, Phil, old top!––I’ve enjoyed our talk. I hope to see you again soon. Come and have a cocktail before I go!”
Phil got up, and they went into the bar together, where a number of Vernock’s seasoned bar-loungers were following their usual bent.
DeRue Hannington kept harping on his various money-making schemes, in his high drawling voice, which could be heard all over the saloon. Suddenly his eye fell on one with whom he seemed to be casually acquainted; a foppishly dressed, smooth-tongued rascal who dealt in horses, cards, bunco real-estate, insurance and anything else that brought a commission without much work. He was called Rattlesnake Jim by those who knew him, but Mr. Dalton by those who didn’t.
“Excuse me, Phil, but I would like to have a word with Mr. Dalton.”
Phil knew at once that Hannington was one of those who didn’t know Rattlesnake Jim.
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The Englishman called Dalton over.
“Say, old chap,––have a drink!”
Dalton had one.
“What about that horse, Dalton? Have you sold her yet?”
“No siree! I’ll sell her when I get my price. I ain’t in no hurry.”
“Well, you know I offered you two hundred and fifty for her.”
“And she’s yours for five hundred bucks.”
Phil interfered.
“Oh, come off the grass! What do you take my friend for?”
“Do you know the horse we’re talking about?” asked Dalton.
“Sure I do!––the white mare. She’s a good enough horse, a beauty to look at, but there aren’t any millionaires around Vernock going to give you five hundred dollars for her. A hundred and fifty is plenty for a good riding horse these days.”
“Say!––whose horse is it, anyway?”
“Yours,––I presume!” said Phil.
“Who’s buying the horse?”
“Not me!”
“All right,––keep out!”
Phil smiled.
Dalton twisted up his face and turned to Hannington.
“Well, boss,––is it a go?”
Hannington demurred, then he showed a little decision, which Phil was beginning to think he was entirely devoid of.
“No!––I’m dimmed if I’ll pay that much for her. I want the horse because she’s white all over and there isn’t another like her in colour about the bally town. I like113things different, by gad! But I simply won’t be put upon. No, dim it, dim it all,––I just won’t!”
Dalton walked away without a word, then he whirled on his heel and came slowly back.
“Want a mine––a gold mine?”
Percival DeRue Hannington, ever ready to nibble, showed interest.
“Say, Rattlesnake, forget it! Darn it all, do you think you are talking to a crazy man?”
“See here, Ralston!––why don’t you live up to your pet name and keep your trap shut? Butt out!” exclaimed Dalton, curling his upper lip in evident disgust.
“It’s an honest-to-goodness gold mine, Mr. Hannington, and I hold all the rights to it.”
Phil addressed his friend.
“Don’t be foolish now. Everybody in Vernock knows about Dalton’s mine. He can’t give it away.”
“Say, Ralston! if I was big as you and as ugly, I’d knock your face in. Mind your own dirty business and keep out. Mr. Hannington is a man-sized man, with a man-sized bean-pot and doesn’t need a wet nurse with him. He knows whether he wants a mine or not,” said Dalton sourly.
Phil’s eyes flashed anger.
“Now, Phil, please!” put in Hannington. “Really you mustn’t quarrel. And you never know, you know;––there really have been old, good-for-nothing mines and things that have turned out wonderful.”
Phil shrugged his shoulders.
“Go to it!” he said. “It’s your funeral.”
“Oh, come now! Don’t be playing the bally Dead March over me because of a silly mine.
“Mr. Dalton, what name does this gold mine go by?”
“The Lost Durkin Gold Mine!”
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Hannington’s face lit up as he caught an inward glimpse of himself as the owner.
“Lost Durkin! Deuced romantic name, you know! Isn’t it, Phil?”
Phil failed to respond.
“But why Lost Durkin, Mr. Dalton?”
“It’s like this: Durkin and another guy were the discoverers of this ere mine. It panned out,––well!––nobody knowed for sure certain how it panned out; only Durkin and his pal always had lots of nuggets and dust. Durkin’s pal went away and Durkin worked it all by hisself. They say he struck it rich in a vein and went batty over it. Anyway, he acted queer for a time. One day his hat was found in the tunnel, and no sign of Durkin from that day to this.
“Durkin’s pal, Don Flannigan, without ever comin’ back, sold out the mine to Jem Grierson. Grierson sold to me. It ain’t been worked to speak of since Durkin tried it out. The gold might be lyin’ there just for the pickin’ up.”
“Oh, say, Rattlesnake!––come off,” interposed Phil.
“Why, Hannington,––every hobo that has come to this Valley is open to have a go at it any old time he likes.”
“Not on your tin tacks! I hold the mining rights to it, and nobody else. Just let somebody try it on!” put in Dalton.
“But there must be some gold in it, Phil!” remarked Hannington.
“Sure,––about four dollars a day hard working!”
“By jove!––if there’s that, there might be more, you know.”
“Yes, and there might not!”
“If the gold was absolutely sure, Phil, you know nobody would sell. Would they? A man has got to take a chawnce.
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“What do you want for the bally thing, Mr. Dalton?”
“One thousand plunks,” remarked Dalton without a tremor.
“Plunks?”
“Yes, plunks,––bucks!”
“Bucks?”
“Yes,––plunks, bucks, greenbacks, In-God-We-Trusts, D-O-double L-A-R-S.”
“Two hundred quid!” figured Hannington roughly, who, for the proper realisation of actual values still had the habit of converting his dollars into English coinage.
“Tisn’t much for a gold mine, Phil,––is it now?”?
“I could get you a dozen for that.”
“Oh, now, Phil!”
Rattlesnake Jim was getting impatient.
“Say, mister––if you’re interested, come outside and talk. No use trying to make a deal, with this old man of the sea out playin’ buttinsky.”
“Don’t be a fool now,” interposed Phil. “Stay where you are!”
But DeRue Hannington was in the toils again, and the fever was in his blood.
Dalton walked slowly to the door.
Hannington hesitated, looked sheepishly at Phil, then exclaimed over his shoulder:
“Eh, excuse me, old chap,––won’t you!” And he hurried alongside the owner of The Lost Durkin Gold Mine.
“Couldn’t you come down a bit in your price, old dear? Your figure seems deuced steep where mines seem to be so beastly plentiful,” Phil heard Hannington say.
At the door Dalton stopped.
“One thousand for the mine, and just to show you that I’m a real sport and playin’ fair, I’ll throw the white mare in for luck.”
Hannington gasped, then slapped Dalton on the shoulder116and grabbed his hand in ecstasy at the overflow of generosity on the part of the mine owner.
“Done,––done! It’s a bally go!”
And the two disappeared outside in head-to-head conversation, to the accompaniment of a round of loud laughter from some old timers in the saloon who had overheard part of the talk and who knew that once more a sheep was about to be shorn of its wool.
Phil swung round with his back and elbows on the counter. He surveyed the crowd dimly through the haze of smoke in the bar-room.
Just then Jim Langford came in by the swinging doors.
Phil went over to him directly, led him to a table in the corner, and told him in a few, quick sentences of the thieving visit that had been made to his room at Mrs. Clunie’s.
“There’s more in this than you think,” said Langford, after Phil had concluded. “Haven’t you heard the news of the other thieving in town?”
“No,––where was it?”
“A gang must have been working on the O.K. Supply Company’s premises last night. Three days ago, Morrison unloaded two carloads of feed and flour in his No. 1 Warehouse. They haven’t sold a nickel’s worth, and this morning there aren’t fifty sacks left.”
“Was the place broken into?” asked Phil.
“Must have been, but every bolt and bar is secure, so are all the padlocks. It’s a mighty queer thing.
“I had it on the inside that the Pioneer Traders were shy last week, but they gave out no report; and Mayor Brenchfield, whose Warehouse and stables lie between the Pioneer Traders and the O.K. Supply Co. lodged a complaint with Chief Palmer this morning that he had lost forty bags of bran and oats from his place. Of course, his loss isn’t a patch on the loss of the other two.
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“You know, this darned thing has been going on for several years. Somebody is getting fat on it. The O.K. Supply Company have lost sixty thousand dollars’ worth in four or five years. They have put new locks and bolts on, but all to no purpose. The Pioneer Traders must be considerably shy, too.
“The Police don’t do a thing, and everybody seems scared to act for fear of being got back at in some way.
“The Indians are being blamed for it; so are some of the wilder element who have cattle ranches and lots of live stock to feed. Easy way to fatten your animals, eh, Phil!
“If we could lay the man by the heels who ransacked your place, we might be able to get a clue to the others.”
Phil shook his head. “No,––I don’t think so!” he answered.
“Well, old man Morrison of the O.K. Company is a decent head and these continual robberies are bleeding him white. He told me all about it this morning.
“I have made arrangements to quit the Court House for a while and take a job with him as warehouseman, just to see what I can fasten on to.”
“Won’t they get suspicious if they know you are on the job?”
Langford laughed. “Good Lord, no! I have been in a dozen jobs in this town in as many months. Besides, nobody ever thinks of me as a Sherlock Holmes. I’m just languishing for a little excitement anyway.”
“You won’t forget then to call me in to lend a hand if there is any scrapping going?” said Phil.
“Would you really come in on it?”
“You bet!”
“All right! This old burg will have something to wake it up one of these days.”
Their attention was distracted by the rattle of gravel118on the window at which they were sitting. Langford shook his fist at a disappearing figure.
“Who was that?” asked Phil.
“Don’t know! Looked like Smiler, the dummy kid. Queer little devil!”
Phil jumped up.
“Maybe he’s got some information for me. Wait here! I’ll be back directly.”
Phil went outside slowly and round the corner of the building to the back-yard. Sure enough, as soon as no one was in sight, Smiler darted up to him. He was all excitement and kept pointing to a clump of trees down a side road.
“Did you find the man with the lame horse?” Phil asked.
Smiler nodded and grinned with pleasure, catching Phil by the coat and leading the way cautiously to where stood the brown mare with the white patch over her eye. She was tethered to a tree, well hidden from view of the road.
Phil examined her legs and saw at a glance that she favoured her left fore foot. A look showed him that some gravel had worked up into an old sore.
Phil pulled the strings of a bag that hung from the saddle. The first things he came across were his own spurs. He took possession of them.
Meanwhile, Smiler was watching with deep interest.
“Where’s the man, Smiler?” asked Phil.
The boy grinned and nodded his head, as if to say:––“Come along,––I’ll show you.”
He led Phil through the back lanes to Chinatown, stopping in front of a cheap, Chinese restaurant. He pointed inside. Phil made to enter.
He encountered, of all people, Brenchfield coming out.
The suddenness of the Mayor’s appearance caused him119to catch his breath. In Phil’s mind it solved the problem at once.
Brenchfield stopped and stared at Phil, then he glared at Smiler who turned tail and ran off as if for his very life.
The Mayor appeared to be in one of his most sullen moods. He turned again and looked angrily at Phil, his eyes travelling from the young smith’s face to his boots, then back to his left hand in which he still held his recovered spurs.
Phil jingled them suggestively, and kept on into the restaurant. Brenchfield remained on the sidewalk in front of the door.
Phil knew quite well that he was taking chances, but he risked that.
There was nothing of any moment taking place in the main dining-room. Several diners were on stools at the counter. Others were at tables. A Chinese waiter was serving, while the cook was tossing hot cakes beside the cooking range. The door of the adjoining room was open. Some Chinamen were at a table, deeply interested in a game of chuckaluck. In a room still farther back, some white men were playing poker.
Phil strolled in there. No one paid any heed to him.
His eyes travelled over the players. He did not know any of them. But it did not take him a second to settle in his mind which was the man he was after.
A little, stout, narrow-eyed fellow, who did not seem to have been shaved or washed for months, was seated at the far corner, chewing tobacco viciously. Evidently he had just resumed his game, for Phil heard one of the players exclaim:––
“Aw!––get a move on, Ginger! What’n the deuce do you want to keep us here all day for, waitin’ for you and that blasted Mayor to quit chewin’ the fat?”
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None worried about the new arrival: they were all too engrossed in their game.
In the middle of it, Phil went up close.
“Men,––I hate to butt in, but I want that dirty little fellow over there.” He pointed suggestively at his man.
“Yes,––you Ginger!” he shouted, as the little man gaped.
“Aw,––get back on your base!” was all he got for answer, for the man had no idea who had challenged him, and drunks had a habit of interfering at cards, ultimately to find themselves thrown out into the street. He took Phil for one of those and left it to the man nearest to the intruder to settle the account.
With a quick movement Phil threw his body over the table, catching the little fellow smartly by the neck-cloth and shirt in a grip that there was no gainsaying. By the sheer power of his right hand and arm, he pulled the astonished Ginger––before his more astonished partners––right across the table, planting him on his feet in front of him.
The little man gasped for breath and struggled, but finding his struggling merely meant more strangling, he commenced to feel at his hip as if for a gun.
Phil struck him on the side of the head, sending him staggering against the wall. As Ginger recovered, Phil held his spurs under the man’s nose and jingled them.
“I guess you know these?”
The fellow’s narrow eyes opened wide. He let out a guttural sound and sprang for the door. Phil shot after him. But the little one’s speed was accelerated by his fear. Phil’s boot was all that reached him and it did its work uncommonly well. A nicely planted kick, just when he reached the door-step, sent Ginger in the air and seated him on the plank sidewalk. He jumped121up almost before he touched the boards and tore down the road as if the devil himself were behind him.
Brenchfield, who had been a silent spectator of what had taken place, came into the main room of the restaurant, where a crowd of low whites and curious Chinese had gathered.
“Look here, young man!––you don’t want to be doing much of that in this town or you’ll find yourself locked up.”
Phil shook his spurs in the Mayor’s face.
“Andyoudon’t want to be doing much ofthis, or you’ll find yourself my next cell neighbour.”
The Mayor had no idea how far his opponent was prepared to go, and evidently afraid to risk a scene, he turned his back on Phil with an oath.
“First time I catch that damned, sneaking little rat I saw you with I’ll thrash him within an inch of his miserable little life.”
“You just try it on,––and, God help you,––that’s all,” retorted Phil.
122CHAPTER XJim’s Grand Toot
As Phil knocked the dust from his clothes and wiped the perspiration from his face, it suddenly struck him that Jim Langford must have been waiting fully half an hour for him at the Kenora.
He hurried through Chinatown and down toward the hotel. When he got there, he found Jim in lazy conversation with some passing acquaintance, whom he immediately left.
“Did you finish what you were after, Phil?”
“You bet!”
“Tell me about it. I wish to size the thing up.”
With the exception of his encounter with the Mayor, Phil recounted all that had happened. He preferred keeping to himself that little bout he had had with Brenchfield, for he knew Jim already had suspicions that he and Brenchfield had some old secret antagonism toward each other. Some day, he thought, he might feel constrained to unburden himself on the point to Jim, but the time for that did not appear to be ripe.
“Darned funny!” remarked Langford, when Phil concluded. “I can’t recollect the man from your description and there doesn’t seem to be any connection between him and the flour and feed steal. But––what the devil could that fellow be after, anyway?”
Suddenly, as was his habit, he dismissed the subject and broke in on another.
“Say, Phil,––know who’s in the card-room?”
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“No!”
“An old pal of yours!” He commenced to sing a line of an old Scot’s song:––“Rob Roy McGregor O.”
“Yes!”
“How’s your liver?”
“Don’t know I have one––so it must be all right!”
“What do you think about paying off old scores?” Mischief was lurking in his eyes.
“Oh, let’s forget that, Jim! It is too cold-blooded for me.”
“Cold-blooded nothing! The dirty skunk didn’t look at it that way when you were as weak as Meeting-house tea and hardly able to stand on your two pins.”
“That’s no lie, either!”
“And he’d do it again if he thought it would work.”
Phil looked at Jim.
“I guess you are right,––and I feel mad enough to scrap with anybody.”
“Right! Let us work it as near as we can the way he worked it on you.”
They went over to the table near the window and rehearsed quietly their method of operation, and it was not long before a noise in the back room signalled the break-up of the card game. Half a dozen rough-looking fellows from Redmans Creek followed one another out to the saloon, headed, as usual, by McGregor, straddling his legs and swaggering, looking round with a cynical twist on his handsome face. They went over to the bar.
McGregor pushed himself in at the far end, brushing an innocent individual out of his way in the operation. The man who followed McGregor wedged himself in next. McGregor slid along and two more harmless men at the bar gave way. It was an old trick and they knew how to perform it. Still the McGregor gang pushed in, one after another, until the entire counter was taken up124by the six, who stood there, legs and elbows sprawled, laughing and jeering at the men they had displaced and at their lack of courage in not endeavouring to hold their own.
They stood in this fashion for possibly five minutes, blocking the counter and not allowing anyone else to get near it.
Suddenly Phil jumped up from his seat and walked over to the bar.
“Say, fellows! Come on all and have a drink on me!” he shouted.
The six at the bar swung round to look at the speaker.
“Come on,––ease up, you ginks!––unless you’ve hired the Kenora saloon for the night.”
No one moved, so Phil caught the man nearest to him by the belt and yanked him out deftly. Langford, who was immediately behind Phil, caught the next one and repeated the performance.
There was a scramble and some of the more aggressive bystanders joined in to Phil’s and Jim’s assistance. Then the more timid followed, with the ultimate result that five of McGregor’s gang were dislodged, as a dozen men crowded alongside and around their champion. McGregor still held his place defiantly, elbows and legs asprawl as before. Phil was close up to him, with Jim at Phil’s left hand.
“Guess you think you’re some kid!” McGregor remarked, spitting a wad of chewing tobacco on to the floor.
“Quit your scrapping,” returned Phil in assumed irritation. “Have a drink!––it’s on me. It isn’t often I stand treat. Name your poison!”
“Well,––if that’s all you’re up to, guess I might as well,” he answered, in reluctant conciliation.
“Come on, fellows! This hell-for-leather blacksmith125wants to blow in his week’s wages on drinks. We ain’t goin’ to stop him.”
The bar-tenders served as fast as they could. Phil paid the score, then turned to have a fresh look at McGregor. The latter was watching him closely out of the corner of his eyes. He took up his glass.
“Guess you think you’re puttin’ one over,” he snarled. “Well,––you’ve got another guess comin’.”
He put his tumbler up against Phil’s jacket, tilted it deliberately, sending the contents trickling all the way down Phil’s clothes right to his boot. He looked into Ralston’s eyes with a sneer on his face and slowly set his tumbler on the counter, watching every movement in the room through narrowed eyes.
Phil’s temper flared out and he swung on McGregor with tremendous quickness.
To his surprise, quick as he was, his fist fell on McGregor’s wrist.
In a second, they were in the centre of the room, tables and chairs were whirled into corners as by magic, and the two were in a ring formed by a wall of swaying bodies and eager faces, for more than a few of them had witnessed the previous encounter between the pair and had been wondering just when the return match would take place.
Phil waited with bated breath for the bull-like rush which he expected, while Langford’s voice could be heard high over the hubbub, shouting in the Doric to which he had risen in his excitement:––
“Mair room! Gi’e them mair room. Widen oot, can ye no!––widen oot!”
But instead of the rush for grips that Phil anticipated, he found himself faced by a man, strong as a lion, with arms out in the true pugilistic attitude. He guessed it for a ruse and a bit of play-acting, and sprang in. He126struck three times for separate parts of the cowpuncher’s body, but each time he struck he encountered a guarding arm or fist. This more than surprised him, for it was well known that McGregor’s strong and only point was his brute force.
In order to give himself time to think the matter out, Phil sprang away again.
McGregor’s face was sphinx-like in its inscrutable cynicism.
They circled, facing each other like sparring gamecocks of a giant variety.
Phil, determined on having another try, jumped in on his huge opponent.
He struck, once––twice. He was about to strike again, when he staggered back as if he had been hit by a sledge hammer fair on the chin. The saloon swung head over heels in a whirligig movement. Phil’s arms became heavy as lead and dropped to his side. His legs sagged under him.
In a state of drugging collapse, he felt himself seized and crushed as into a pulp; a not unpleasant sensation of swinging, a hurtling through the air and splintering,––then, well,––that was all.
When he came to, he was being carried up the stairs to his bedroom, to the accompaniment of Mrs. Clunie’s repeated regrets, in broad Scotch, that it was a pity “weel bred young chiels couldna agree to disagree in a decent manner, wise-like and circumspectly, withoot fechtin’ like a wheen drucken colliers.”
This did not prevent that good lady from washing and binding Phil’s numerous but not very deadly cuts and bruises.
It was two days before he was able to be out of bed, and during these two days he heard a number of stories, through Mrs. Clunie, of what had happened at the Kenora127Hotel after his hurried exit through the window. These stories he refused to believe, for his faith in Jim Langford’s ability was too strong to be easily shaken. But one thing he had to give credence to was, that Jim had not shown face at Mrs. Clunie’s since the night of the trouble.
Mrs. Clunie complained that half a dozen times she had chased “that hauf-witted, saft sannie o’ a daftie, ca’ed Laugher, or Smiler or something,” from the back door, and she was sure he was “efter nae guid.”
On the morning of the third day, Phil, stiff and a little wobbly, set out for the smithy, where big Sol Hanson welcomed him back with an indulgent grin.
Hanson had learned all about the affray, as everyone else in town seemed to have done.
“But has anyone seen Langford?” asked Phil in some concern, as they discussed the matter.
“Oh, Langford go on one big booze,” laughed Sol. “He turn up maybe in about one month, all shot to hell, then he sober up again for long time.”
“But doesn’t anyone know where he is?”
“Sure, sometimes!––maybe at Kelowna, then Kamloops. Somebody see him at Armstrong, then no see him for another while. Best thing you leave Jim Langford till he gets good and ready to come back. Only make trouble any other way. Everybody leave big Jim when he goes on a big toot.”
“Well,” said Phil with some decision, “I’m going after him anyway, and I’m going to stay right with him till he’s O.K.”
“All right, son––please yourself! We are not so busy now, but I tell you it no damn good. I know Jim Langford, five, maybe six year,––see!”
Phil set out to make inquiries.
At the Kenora he heard of someone who had seen128Jim the day before at the town of Salmon Arm, between thirty and forty miles away. He took the stage there, only to find that Langford had left presumably for Vernock. Back again he came, and it was late at night when he got to town. On dropping off the stage, he ran into the faithful Smiler.
“Hullo, kid! You see Jim Langford?” he asked.
Smiler nodded.
“Know where he is?”
He nodded again excitedly, hitching up his trousers which were held round his middle by a piece of cord.
“Might have known it,” thought Phil, “and saved myself a lot of running about.
“Lead on, MacDuff!” he cried. “Show me Jim Langford and I’ll give you two-bits.”
Smiler led the way in the darkness, down a side street into the inevitable and dimly lit Chinatown. Smiler stopped up in front of the dirty, dingy entrance of a little hall occasionally used for Chinese theatricals. He pointed inside with a grin, refused Phil’s proffered twenty-five cents, backing up and finally racing away.
A special performance in Chinese was being given by a troupe of actors from Vancouver and all Chinatown who could were there.
Phil paid his admission to a huge, square-jawed Chinaman at the pay-box, and pushed through the swing doors, inside.
The theatre was crowded with Orientals, who, for the most part, were dirty, vile-smelling and expectorating.
About half-way down the centre of the aisle, he took a vacant seat on the end of one of the rough, wooden, backless benches which were all that were provided for the comfort of the audience. The place was very badly lighted, although the stage stood out in well-illuminated contrast.
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Phil’s first anxiety was to locate Jim. He scanned the packed benches, but all he could see was stolid, gaunt-jawed, slit-eyed Chinamen. There did not seem to be another white man in the place.
Someone nudged him on the arm. He turned. A sleek Chinaman, whom Phil had often seen on the streets––the janitor, Phil remembered, for The Pioneer Traders,––grinned at him.
“You tly catch Missee Langfod?” he whispered.
“Yes!” nodded Phil.
“He down there, flont seat.”
Phil looked in the direction indicated and, sure enough, there was Jim––alone, in the middle of the foremost and only otherwise unoccupied bench in the hall––all absorbed in the scene that was being enacted on the platform.
Contented in the knowledge that he now had his friend under surveillance, Phil directed his interest to the stage, for he had never before been present at so strange a performance.
The opera, for such it appeared to be, was already under way. The lady, the Chinese equivalent of a prima-donna––dressed in silks emblazoned with gold spangles, tinsel and glass jewels, with a strange head-dress, three feet high, consisting of feathers and pom-pons––was holding forth in what was intended to be song. It occurred to Phil that he had thrown old boots at tom-cats in Mrs. Clunie’s back-yard for giving expression to what was sweet melody in comparison.
The actress’s face was painted and powdered to a mere mask. Her finger nails were two inches longer than her four-inch-long feet. She rattled those fingers nails in a manner that made Phil’s flesh creep, although this action seemed highly pleasing to the audience in general. The lady, Phil learned from the Chinaman at his side, was a famous beauty.
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The scenery required no description, being merely a number of plain, movable partitions, draught-screens and chairs. There was no drop-curtain, and the scene shifters worked in full view of the audience, removing furniture and knocking down partitions with hammers during the vocal rendering of some of the thrilling passages of the opera. On another platform, behind the stage, the orchestra was making strenuous, and at times, very effective attempts to drown the squeals of the Leading Lady, who did not seem to mind it a bit. The conductor, in his shirt sleeves, was laying on, alternately, to a Chinese drum and what looked like two empty cocoanut shells, whacking out a species of rag-time all on his own, while the two other members of the band were performing on high-pitched Chinese fiddles, determined evidently on keeping up the racket at all costs.
Phil noticed no evidence of sheet music, so familiar in a white man’s orchestra. These were real artists and they played entirely from memory.
In an endeavour to be enlightened, Phil touched a Chinaman in front of him––for the familiar one at his side had slipped quietly to some other part of the hall.
“John,––what all this play about––you know?” he asked.
Without turning round, the Oriental sang to him in a top-storey voice:––
“Lu-wang Kah Chek-tho, chiu-si. Tung-Kwo chi Ku-su. Savvy?”
Phil did not “savvy,” but another Chinaman, more obliging and more English, who introduced himself as Mee Yi-ow, told him the gist of the tale in pigeon English, up to the point where Phil had come in, so that he was able to follow the performance with some intelligence, from there on.
Away back in the middle ages, a bold, bad, blood-thirsty131brigand chief kidnapped the only daughter of the Empress, because of that young lady’s irresistible beauty and charm and because of his own unquenchable love for her. He, in turn, was trapped and captured by the Royal Body Guard, who brought him––manacled in chains with cannon balls at the ends of them––before the haughty Empress. He was sentenced to death by nibbling––a little piece to be skewered out of him every two hours, Chinese time.
The Brigand Chief, on the side, was a hand-cuff expert. One day he managed to slip out of his chains and away from his tiresome cannon balls. He made a daring dash for liberty, disarming and killing a sentry. Boldly, he sought out the Captain of the Royal Guard and fought a very realistic duel with him before the Empress and all the members of her retinue who came out from the wings specially to witness the sight.
The rank and file of the Royal Bodyguard––with emphasis on therank––also stood idly by enjoying the spectacle.
At last, the Brigand Chief slew the Captain of the Guard, and the latter, as soon as he had finished dying, rose to his feet and walked calmly off the stage. Then, amid the rattle of drums and empty cocoanut shells, accompanied by fiddle squeaks, the Royal Guard rushed upon the Brigand Chief, overpowering him and loading him up afresh with his lately lamented chains and cannon balls.
A number of influential people––Princes, Mandarins and things, including the recently kidnapped only daughter of the Empress––pleaded for the gallant fighter’s life.
But,––up to closing time that night––the Empress remained obdurate; this being absolutely necessary, as the play continued for six successive evenings.
Throughout the most intensely dramatic incidents, Phil132failed to hear a hand-clap or an ejaculation of admiration or pleasure from the sphinx-faced yellow men about him. Yet they seemed intensely interested in the performance.
Cabbages and bad eggs, so dear to the heart of the white actor, would have been preferable to that funereal silence.
Phil was just thinking how discouraging it must be to be a Chinese actor, when, by some signal, unintelligible to him, the play ended for the night. He rose with the audience, made quickly for the only exit and took up his position on the inside, there to await Jim’s arrival. When the greater portion of the audience had passed out, Jim rose from his seat in front, picked up a white sheet from a corner of the stage and whirled it about him, throwing an end of it over his left shoulder in the manner of the ancient Grecian sporting gentlemen.
From his looks, he had about three days’ growth of whiskers on his face. His eyes, big and dark-rimmed, glowed with an intense inner fire that would have singled him out from among his fellows anywhere.
Jim was well-known and respected among the Chinamen, the more so because of his vagaries.
Suddenly, he raised his arm in a rhythmic gesture of appeal. He uttered one word, arresting and commanding in its intonation:––
“Gentlemen!”
There were not very many gentlemen there, but each one present took the ejaculation as personal. The little crowd stopped and gathered round, gazing up with interest at the erect figure in the aisle, white robed, with hand still outstretched.
After a moment of tense silence, he commenced to recite Burns’ immortal poem on brotherly love.
Never had Phil heard such elocution. The intonation,133the fervour and fire, the gesticulation were the perfect interpretation of a poet, a mystic, a veritable Thespian. On and on Jim went in uninterrupted, almost breathless silence. Phil was anxious for his friend’s well-being, but he stood at the door listening spellbound, as did the Orientals about Jim, and the low whites who had straggled in toward the end of the Chinese performance, half-drunk and doped.
Vigorously, Jim concluded:––
“Then let us pray that come it may,As come it will for a’ that,That sense and worth o’er a’ the earthMay bear the gree, and a’ that.For a’ that, and a’ that,It’s coming yet, for a’ that,That man to man, the world o’erShall brothers be for a’ that.”
When he finished there was a round of applause, in which the Chinamen joined most noisily––an unusual thing for them who had sat throughout the entire evening’s play of their own without the slightest show of appreciation.
Phil had heard somewhere that Scotsmen and Chinamen understand each other better than any other nationalities on the globe do, but this was the first time he had had a first-hand ocular demonstration that the Chinaman appreciated the Doric of Robbie Burns, when delivered with the true native feeling.
Langford bowed his acknowledgement in a courtly manner, as Sir Henry Irving might have done before a royal audience.
Some of the maudlin white men shouted for an encore.
Nothing loth, Jim laughingly consented, and a hush134went over the crowd again, for there was a peculiar hypnotism coming from this erratic individual that commanded the attention of all his listeners.
A little, old, monkey-faced Chinaman, carrying a parcel in his hand, was standing close by. Langford caught hold of him gently and stood the bashful individual before him. In paternal fashion he placed his hand on the greasy, grey head and started impressively into the farewell exhortation of Polonius to Lærtes, out of Hamlet:
“And these few precepts in thy memory.Look thou to character. Give thy thoughts no tongueNor any unproportion’d thought his act.Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar”...
On he recited, oblivious of all but the charm of the words he uttered, careful lest a single phrase might pass his lips without its due measure of expression. He finished in a whisper; his voice full of emotion and tears glistening in his deep-set eyes, much to the amazement of the monkey-face upturned to him.
“This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Deep silence followed, until the squeaky voice of little monkey-face broke through:––
“Ya,––you bet,––me savvy!”
It shattered the spell that was on Langford. He laughed, and grabbed the parcel from the hand of the little Chinaman. He pulled the string from it and the paper wrappings, exposing a bloody ox-heart which was destined never to fulfil the purpose for which it was bought.