For the workers, these Bees in a Wood Hive, the days passed swiftly. Oh, it was wonderful how they passed! The dawn broke up night's massed army and chased it into the Pacific Ocean, and round the quick little world, and again fled. The days went round like a wheel, like a saw. They came up and flowered: they died down and were not. Only Sunday stayed like a monstrous month, an oppression as all workers find it, an unnecessary day when every muscle and nerve ask for the habit of big work. We cursed and groaned on Sunday, tilikum, and if you don't like to believe it, there's no one will plug you for doing the other thing. Sunday wasn't an Oasis, it was a desert. On Monday it was, however, desirable: Tuesday pined for it: Wednesday yearned for it: Thursday screamed for it: Friday sickened for it and Saturday hallooed joyfully with it in sight. And by ten on Sunday the Workers loathed it.
But the swift days of work were the days. They streamed past like a mountain torrent. Even sad and sorry Pete found it so. He smote his wedges with his maul and, lo and behold! a day was dead; and the stars sang above the hills and the starlight gleamed on the Fraser's shining flood. He laid his head, his cabeza, on a pillow (unwashed) and it was day. Again it was night.
Yet for one the hours were strange and slow. She looked out from the house on the hill-side and saw the slow sun wheel his team into the West, as if his horses drew innumerable thousands and hundreds of the world's big freight. Poor Jenny, now plump and sweet and beautifully clad, and learned in the delights of hot water (of which Sam was a kind of prophet, for he loved baths as if he were a Japanese), found the days slow in spite of baths and clothes and cleanliness. The poor dear pined a little, as one might who had lived wildly, for the ruder joys of her earlier life. Things were onerous. She wanted at certain hours to sit down, to "squat upon her hunkers" and suck at a pipe, perhaps. A yarn with wretched Annie or Annawillee would have been pleasing. She even thought of Pete, though she was getting very fond of her conqueror Quin, who dominated her wonderfully. That was her nature; for if some conqueror of Quin had come along she would have gone with him, very likely, as a wapiti hind will follow a conquering wapiti. And yet who can say? I cannot; for I think she loved Quin very well indeed, though he denied her the trivial consolations of Indian bawdry with Annie or mournful Annawillee.
Somehow I think Jenny was very good. One can't say. She grew prettier and gentler every day, every hour. Sam admired her frankly and was very polite. It was his nature. He told Quin quite openly what he thought, and sometimes gave him good advice.
"My tinkee Missus heap pletty, Mista Quin," said Sam, "evely day mo' pletty, maskee my tinkee she velly sad, hab noting to do. Missus wantche flin, Mista Quin, t'at what she wantchee. No can lead, no can lite, my tinkee, no can makee dless allo tim'. T'at velly sad. No likee cookee chow-chow, she say."
He shook his head. She wanted a friend ("wantchee flin"), that was a fact, and all Quin could do was to order her more dresses and linen from Victoria. He got her picture-books (for, as Sam said, "she no can lead") and talked to her about what she saw there. When he was with her she was happy.
"I velly happy at night-time, Tchorch," she said meekly. "But daytime velly keely, very sad."
"Tchorch" Quin picked her up in his arms and set her on his knee.
"Litty gal, I love you, tenas," he answered, mixing the lingoes. Perhaps he did love her. Quien sabe?—as Chihuahua said about everything uncertain.
"You love me, Tchorch?" she asked flushing, "velly much?"
"Tenas, hyu, hyu, very much indeed, little one."
"I not mind if the day is sad, then," said Jenny. She regarded him with big sad eyes, and then looked down.
"But I not a good woman, Tchorch."
Quin frowned and grumbled.
"Damn nonsense, tenas."
But it wasn't damn nonsense to Jenny. And most especially it wasn't so on Sundays, though on that day she had George Quin all to herself and the greedy Mill stood quiet. On Sundays she heard the tinkling church bells, and when the wind blew lightly from the east the sound of distant singing came up to her as she stood at the open window. She remembered what the good Missionary, the "kloshe leplet," had said about goodness, and badness, and the Commandments. There were ten of them, Jenny remembered, though she had been to no service ever since she lived at Cultus Muckamuck's ranche.
"I velly wicked, Tchorch," she said mournfully. "I blake the Commandments!"
"Humph," said George Quin, "don't cry about it, kiddy. I've kicked 'em all to flinders myself. If you go to Lejaub's hyas piah, I go with you, tenas."
He kissed her. His bold and ready undertaking to go to hell with her was really very consoling. His statement that he had broken all the Commandments comforted her: it showed his good faith. Jenny had a wonderfully material view of hell, and her imagination showed it to her as a sawmill in flames. She had seen the Mill at Kamloops on fire, that is why. Now George Quin was the Manager of the Mill and the owner and a big strong man. She had a kind of dim notion that he would be able to manage a good deal even in hell.
And besides she loved him really. There's no doubt about it, and even he knew it.
The big strong brute of a man was very gentle with her, and let her "cly" a little when she thought of the good missionary (who happened to have been a very bad man, by the way, though many of them were splendid) and the wood fires of the diabolical saw-mill of which Lejaub the devil was manager.
But he never knew how her feelings worked on her when he was away, and indeed if he had known there might not have been the trouble that there was. And he had entirely forgotten that he had a Bible in the house: the gift of his old mother who still lived in Vermont, far away to the East.
The Bible was the source of all the woe that followed when a big deal in lumber took Quin over to Victoria and kept him there three days. He had more than half a mind to take her with him, and if her speech hadn't betrayed her origin he would have done it like a shot. And when he went Jenny cried as if he were going to cross the Big Salt Chuck or the Pacific. Though her mother had been a Hydah she knew nothing of the waters.
"I much aflaid of Pete," she thought.
But Quin gave great directions to Sam and he believed he could trust him.
"My look see evely ting," said Sam. "Missus all light: my givee good chow-chow, hot wata, blush dlesses, t'at all light. My no lettee Missus go out? No, good, my no lettee."
But he played Fan-tan of course, and couldn't be expected to stay in all the time, or to understand that the Missus was upset in her mind about morality. And he knew nothing and cared less about the Bible. There wasn't the making of a rice Christian in him unless rice was very scarce indeed, and now he lived on the fat of the land of British Columbia.
So the day after she had cried herself to sleep, she came across the Bible.
It was not quite a family Bible, and only weighed a pound or so, but it had a biblical cover of sullen puritanical leather which suggested that the very bookbinder himself was of the sourest disposition, a round-head, a kill-joy, with ethics equal to the best Scotch morality. This binding alone, however, would have had comparatively little effect on the childish mind of Jenny. But the book had in it dour and savage pictures of so surprising a lack of artistic merit that they struck her down at once, poor child. In spite of the lack of colour the dreadful draughtsman made very effective curly-whirly flames in a hell which was remarkably like a study of a suburban coal-cellar, and the victims of his fire and ferocity expressed the extremest anguish as they fried on eternal grids! Oh, horrors, but the pictures brought back to the fearful mind of the tenas klootchman all the dread with which the good (or bad) minister, Alexander Mickie, had inspired her when she attended Sunday School at Kamloops and heard him preach in Chinook. For Chinook is no more than a few hundred words and most of them are very material. So was Mickie's mind, whether he preached openly or drank in secret, and the hyas piah of Lejaub, or the great fire of the Devil (Lejaub being equal to Le Diable), was a hot wood fire to Jenny. She believed naturally enough in Lejaub much more than in God, for her Indian blood helped her there, or rather hindered her, and the English God was a far-off notion to a mind not given to high abstractions.
So Jenny when she got the picture Bible sat with it in her lap and trembled.
"I a bad woman, I go to hell; very wrong for me to love Tchorch!" was her mind's commentary as she turned the blind pages for some other picture.
And every now and again she turned back to the curling flames and elaborate grids of hell. She traced in some anguished lineaments a remote likeness to herself. Then she fell to weeping, and weeping Sam found her. He was sympathetic. On the whole Sam was a very good sort.
"Why you cly, Missus?"
It was in vain for her to say she wasn't crying.
"Oh, yes, you cly, Missus, but what for you cly? Mista Quin he come back to-molla."
He might even be back that night, as Sam knew, though he would not be till late. But Jenny sobbed and the Bible slipped from her knees upon the floor. Sam picked it up and recognised it at once. He snorted as he gave it her back.
"My tinkee no good lead dis," he said solemnly. "My tinkee all the stolies in it lies, Missis. My savvy one, two, tree, piecee Joss-pidgin-man Chinaside, what you callee leplet, my savvy Yingling word, miss'onary, and he talkee no good. My tinkee him got wata topside, clazy, pelton you say."
Out of this difficult hishee-hashee of words Jenny extracted the notion that in Sam's opinion missionaries were fools, for "leplet" and "pelton" put together mean that. She shook her head and sobbed.
"My tinkee no good makee littee Missus cly," said Sam. "T'at book makee nicee litty gal cly allo time. My see um. No good littee gal cly: my say it damn foolo book. Mista Quin him velly good man: plenty chow-chow, dlesses and Sam for washee evelyting. Missus, you no lead Bible. Him no good. Damn foolo stoly, my savvy."
But what good was it for a Chinaman to tell her that?
"Him velly good book, I tink, Sam," she said earnestly.
"My no tinkee," returned Sam.
"It belongs to Mista Quin," urged the "Missus."
"Him never lead him," said Sam triumphantly. "My putty him away and Mista Quin him never savvy."
Perhaps that was true. But then was not "Tchorch" wicked too?
Her lips trembled and she opened the book again at the fiery picture.
"What t'at picture?" asked Sam, quite eager to see.
"It's hell," said Jenny, trembling.
"Ah," said Sam, "t'at Debelo's house. T'at all light. Wong him velly clever man, him say Debble-Debble here all light, but only China-side belong God. My tinkee too. Wong say one time no food, no licee, and evelybody hungly, and makee player to Posa, allo same God, and nex' day one foot licee all over. T'at China-side, galaw. But my no can stay: my cookee chow-chow: Missus no cly, Debble-Debble never take litty gal, Missus."
But the fact remained that even Sam believed the devil was in British Columbia (and all America, of course), even if God only thought of China. On the whole Sam's cheerful intervention did harm rather than good. Jenny did put the book away and tried not to think of the "hyas piah," but as the evening came on there was a gorgeous sunset and even that brought fire to her timid mind. When it was dark she shivered and was glad to see a light. Then she got out the book again.
She was living a very wicked life, oh, yes, the missionaries would say that. She was Pete's wife and was living with Tchorch! That was very wrong, it was against the Commandments.
What ought she to do?
What was right?
If only George were back! That is what her heart said, for now she hungered for him very bitterly, because she felt she would see him no more. The little girl had gone so far on the burning path of repentance. Shemustsee him no more: and what she saw in the gloom was the glow of the Pit itself. She ran to the window and looked down on the quiet world and the few shining lights of the quiet city and the star-shine on the great river. But all these were as nothing to her loneliness and her sudden fear and all the awful threats of hell that came back to her in such an hour. She fell upon her knees and tried to pray and found herself murmuring, "Tchorch, dear Tchorch." He was coming back to her that night and was glad to come back, for he had no notion, no adequate notion of what a bad man he was. He loved the tenas klootchman, loved her far better, perhaps, than the white woman who had scorned him because of dead Lily's predecessors.
But Lily was now no more than a dead flower unremembered in some spring garden. He was going back to Jenny.
She cried as she prayed to God and said "Tchorch!" George was the little foolish woman's prayer, and it may be a good one. The name of the Beloved is for ever a prayer, tillikum.
It was nearly ten o'clock when Sam looked in. He did not think Quin would come now. It was late for the S.S.Yosemite.
"You all light, Missus?" he asked.
And she said that she was all right and Sam went away down to Wong's shack for an hour's Fan-tan. He hoped to make a few dollars easily, so that he could go back China-side and buy one "litty piecee waifo" for himself so that he could have children to attend to his ashes and his kindly paternal spirit.
But Jenny saw her spirit, her soul, her body, in the flames.
She must go back to Pete, and ask him to forgive her. He would beat her badly, she knew, and he would tear her "dless" from her and speak things of shame.
"I have shem," she said. She heard Sam go down the path singing a high-pitched quavering Chinese song. When he was quite gone she began to weep, and wept until she was ill. She stumbled blindly round the room, and went into the bedroom and kissed things of George's, and the very bed itself, and then went out into the darkness. In that hour, the poor child forgot how beautifully she was dressed. She stumbled in light shoes down the path, and as she went she wished she were dead. For Pete would be cruel. He would beat her and take her back.
"I'm very wicked," she said, weeping. George would be unhappy. She turned with her empty arms outstretched to the hill above her, to the empty house. George had been very good to her.
She passed Wong's shack. Sam was in there with half a dozen others, and they were hard at it gambling. After Wong's came Skookum Charlie's and then Indian Annie's. The next shack was Pete's. She sank down in the darkness between the two shanties in a state of fear and stupor. In front of her was shame and cruelty and behind her the fires of hell. But she wanted to be good.
There was no light in Pete's shack. When she saw that, she hoped for one despairing moment that he had gone away. Yet she knew that if he had gone George would have told her. Most likely he was with Indian Annie. He would be at least half-drunk. She felt dreadfully beaten. There was a roar of bestial silly laughter from Indian Annie's.
From down the river almost abreast of Lulu Island there came the sound of a steamer's whistle. It meant nothing to her and Sam did not hear it. Annie's door opened and Annawillee ran out reeling. She was going home to Chihuahua and had to pass Jenny, crouching on the sawdust in silks and fine linen.
"Oh," groaned Jenny as Annawillee came along crooning in mournful tones her old ballad that said she was "keely." When she was close to Jenny she reeled and recovered and stood for a moment straddle-legs. She hiccupped and in the clear darkness saw Jenny without knowing her.
"Who you?" she hiccupped.
Then she saw who it was, and burst into idiotic laughter.
"Oh, Jenny klootchman," she screamed. And Pete came out of Annie's to go home.
"What's that, Annawillee?" he asked in the thick voice of liquor. "What you say, eh?"
Annawillee forgot there was money and drink in Pete's not knowing, and she stood there laughing—laughing as if her sides would split.
"Your klootchman Jenny she come home," said Annawillee. And Jenny groaned as Pete came running.
Before he spoke a word, he kicked her.
"You damn klootchman," he said. He took her by the hair and dragged her along the ground while Annawillee still laughed. And Jenny screamed.
"Where's your man now, ha?" said Pete, thickly. "I tink I kill you now."
TheYosemitecame alongside her wharf as if it were bright day and Quin leapt ashore.
As Pete dragged her, Jenny got upon her knees and fell. And again she half-rose and again fell, and under his brutal grip of her hair her scalp seemed a flame of agony. She was sorry she had determined to be good and to repent. She screamed dreadfully and many heard. Some shrugged their shoulders, for screams in Shack-Town were only too common. Yet some came out of their houses. Among them was Chihuahua. Indian Annie came too, and before Pete had got his wife to his own door, there were others, among them two Chinamen from an overcrowded shanty further up the road. And still they did not interfere. Jenny was Pete's klootchman and she had run away. Like a fool she had come back, and must suffer. There was none among them that dared to interfere: for they feared a knife.
And as George Quin came ashore he heard Jenny's screams. "Another drunken row," he said carelessly as he faced the hill to his lonely house. He was very glad to get back home to his tenas klootchman, for he hated loneliness. He said "poor little Jenny" as he walked.
There was now a crowd about poor Jenny, for more came running, more Siwashes, among them Skookum Charlie, and more Chinamen. But still no one interfered, though Annawillee shrieked even more than Jenny. She implored Chihuahua to kill Pete. But Chihuahua booted Annawillee and made her howl on her own account.
"She run way and come back," said Chihuahua. "If she mine I kill her, carajo!"
And Pete started kicking Jenny. Once and again she cried out, and then the last of all who looked on came like a fury at Pete. The bleared and haggard and horrible old Annie was the one who had the courage, and the only one.
"Aya, you damn Pete," she screamed. She got her claws in Pete's long black hair and pulled him down. She was a bundle of flying rags with a savage cat in them. If Jenny were killed she would be nothing to Annie, but while she lived she was worth drinks. And perhaps Annie loved the little klootchman. Who can tell?
She and Pete rolled together on the dusty road, and the onlookers shrieked with laughter. Quin heard it as he climbed.
"The row's over," said Quin.
More came out of the huts, and this time Wong, old Wong, the philosopher was among them. And with him came Lung and Wing, and at last Sam. The Chinamen stood outside the circle of the Siwashes and chattered. The first told the others that Pete had killed his wife, and now was killing someone else. The devilish twisting bundle in the dusty road revolved and squealed. But Annawillee howled by the side of Jenny, who lay insensible. Skookum struck a light, and it shone upon the poor girl. It showed her dress of scarlet, and Sam's quick eyes saw it. He ran in quickly towards her, though the wise Wong held him back. Chinamen never join in alien rows if they can help it. It is wisest not to, and they have much wisdom. Skookum's match went out. Sam lighted another and knelt beside Jenny.
"'Ullo, Chinaman," grinned Skookum, "you tink she dead, you tink mimaloose?"
Oh, said Sam, this was Mista Quin's Missus right enough. What did she want here? He called to Wong, who came calmly, unhurriedly. Sam spoke to him in their own tongue, and then Sam, who was as quick to catch as Wong was wise to suggest, cried out suddenly that the tenas klootchman was dead. He took her in his arms and ran with her to Wong's shack. And as he ran Pete got up from Annie, whom he had choked into stillness. But his torn face bled and one eye was nearly on his cheek. He kicked Annie as she lay, and then turned to where he had left Jenny.
"Where my klootchman go?" he demanded.
They told him in a dreadful chorus that she was dead, and he staggered back against his shack.
"Where is she?"
"Wong take her."
They believed wise old Wong a physician, for Chinamen have strange gifts.
"I go see," said Pete.
"No, you run 'way," said Skookum urgently. He believed Jenny was dead.
"Mus' I run?" asked Pete with a fallen jaw.
"Dey hang you, Pete," screamed Annawillee joyfully. Old Annie sat up in the road.
"Where I go?" asked Pete. "I wis' I never see Jenny."
He burst into tears. They brought him a bottle, and told him to "dlink." They gave him advice to go down the river, up the river, to the Inlet, to the Serpentine, oh, anywhere from the Police.
"I go," said Pete. He drank.
"I—I—go," said Pete. He drank again, and fell and lay like a log.
"Now they catch Pete and hang him," screamed Annawillee. Annie staggered across to him and kicked him in the face.
"Pig Pete," said Annie.
Quin came to his empty house and called to tenas Jenny. And then to Sam. When no answer came he ran through the hall into the empty room where the lamp was. On the floor he saw the Bible. He understood. He quite understood.
There was no doubt at all in George Quin's mind as to what had happened, and perhaps he was not wholly surprised. What did surprise him was his own ferocious anger, and the wave of pity that even swallowed up his wrath.
"My God!" said Quin.
There wasn't a man in the City who knew him a little but was prepared to swear that Quin was a brute, and a devil without any feeling to speak of. It was said that he had killed Lily, the Haida girl, when, as a matter of fact, it was his brother, Cultus Muckamuck as the Siwashes called him, who had done a deed like that. He had treated Lily well. Her people said so. He had treated them well, the greedy brutes!
Now Quin was full of pity, and of jealousy. This Bible had hurt her poor weak mind, no doubt of that: and it had driven her back to Pete, perhaps.
"My God," said Quin again, "where else?"
He remembered the screams he had heard coming from Shack-Town as he landed. And as he remembered he found himself running down the hill in the starlit gloom. He wasn't a very young man either. Quin was nearly forty: hard and set: at times a little stiff. Now he went recklessly.
"If Pete——"
It didn't bear thinking of, so Quin wouldn't think of it. He was jealous, hideously jealous. He could have torn Pete asunder with his powerful hands. He felt his nerves in a network within him, and in his skin. They thrilled like fire.
"My poor little Jenny!"
Why, the fact was that he loved her! When one comes to think of it, this was a monstrous discovery for him to make. He had really never loved anyone, certainly not dead Lily, more certainly not that white woman over in Victoria, though he thought he had. What he felt for Jenny was a revelation; it made him a saint and a devil at once, as passion does even the best and worst of men. And Quin had force and fire, and bone, and muscle and a big heavy head and hands like clip-hooks. Now passion shook him as if he were a rag in the wind.
He came down to Shack-Town, and stopped. He was hot but again he sweated ice. He looked down the road and saw figures moving.
"Which is the shack?" he asked himself.
He went past Wong's house, where Jenny lay on a table with ten jabbering Chinamen around her. He heard a high-low sing-song of their chatter and cursed his boy Sam for leaving the house as he had done.
"I'll kick the damn stuffin' out of him," said Quin savagely.
He passed Indian Annie's and saw the group beyond it, standing about Pete's recumbent body. Skookum Charlie was almost in tears to think that Pete would be hanged. Annie wiped her bloody face with her skirt. Annawillee, howling curses at Pete, sat by her.
"What's all this?" said Quin, coming out of the darkness. He saw Pete, or rather saw a body. He spoke hoarsely.
"Mista Quin, oh!" said Skookum, scrambling to his feet.
"What is it?" asked Quin again. "Kahta mamook yukwa? What do you do here?"
"Pete him kill Jenny," screamed Annawillee. Quin staggered back.
"He, he——"
He pointed at the drunken man.
"Not mimaloose, him dlunk," said Annawillee, "Jenny with Chinaman."
Skookum led Quin, the big Tyee, to Wong's shack.
"If she's dead——" said Quin, looking towards Pete. He opened Wong's door.
The room was eight feet by twelve by ten: it reeked of fierce tobacco and the acrid fumes of "dope." Some of them "hit the pipe," smoked opium. The smell was China; Quin, who had been there, knew it. With the odours of Canton were the odours of bad oil. Three lamps ate up the air. Quin saw a row of whitish masks about the table: some excited, some stupid, one or two villainous. At the head of the table was the quiet majestic head of the old philosopher Wong. He had a great domed skull and a skin of drawn parchment over wide bones. With a sponge he wiped blood from Jenny's face. Sam held a bowl of water. He looked anxious and strange. And Jenny's body, in white linen and crimson silk, fouled with sawdust and blood, lay there quietly.
"Is she dead?" asked Quin.
The philosopher, whose shiny skin declared his love of opium, said she was not dead.
"My tinkee she all light bymby," said Wong, "She belongy you, Tyee?"
"Turn the others out," said the Tyee, and at Wong's word they fled out of the door, and stood in the dark jabbering about Quin having taken Jenny.
Quin turned on Sam.
"Why did you leave the house, Sam? My tell you stop, you damn thief!"
Sam, now as pale as Jenny, threw out his hands in urgent deprecation of Quin's anger.
"My no go out," he lied, "my stay allo tim' with Missus, maskee she go out and my no findee. I lun down here, Mista Quin, lun queek, findee damn Pete hurtee Missus. T'at tlue. My tellee Missus no cly: maskee she lead Bible and cly. My no can do."
He wrung his hands. Perhaps what he said was true. Quin felt Jenny's pulse and found it at last. He saw she breathed.
"I'll have her home," he said.
They took the door off its hinges, and Sam with the others carried her up to the house. Wong went into town to ask the doctor to come to Quin's at once "chop-chop," and Dr. Jupp came. He found Jenny on the bed moaning a little.
"What's this, Quin?" asked Jupp, who knew Quin well enough.
Quin answered sullenly and told the truth.
"Tut," said Jupp, "some day you'll get knifed, Quin; why can't you get married and leave the klootchmen alone?"
He was a white-bearded old boy, who knew how ignorant he was of medicine. But he knew men. He went over Jenny carefully.
"Two ribs broken," he said, "and the small bone of the left arm. And a little concussion of the brain. I think she'll do, Quin."
"Thank you," said Quin.
Between them they made her comfortable after Jupp had sent for splints and bandages.
"She's very pretty," said Jupp, For Pete hadn't kicked her face. "She's very pretty."
"She's as good as gold, by God!" said Quin.
"Humph," said Jupp. "I'll come in to-morrow morning early. Shall I send you a nurse?"
"I'll sit up with her," said Quin. "You'd only send some cursed white woman with notions."
"Maybe," said Jupp, "they frequently have 'em incurably."
Quin's face was white and hard. He stood up and looked across the bed.
"I tell you this little girl is as good as any white woman in town, Jupp."
Jupp took snuff habitually; he took some now.
"Who the devil said she wasn't?" he asked drily. He left the room.
It was early morning before Jenny became conscious, and even then Quin had great trouble with her. For she was very sick. There was no end to his patience. Nor was there any to Sam's. The boy sat outside on the mat all night.
"My askee Missus no tellee Boss my go playee Fan-tan," he said nervously.
At bright dawn Jenny found Quin half-dozing with his head on the quilt under her hand. She touched his hair tenderly, and he woke up.
"Tchorch," she said feebly, with a heavenly smile, "Tchorch!"
"Yes, little girl," said George.
"I tink I no go away again, Tchorch. I no want to be good, I want to stay with you. What you tink, Tchorch?"
The tears ran down George's face. That's what he thought.
"I'll kick that damn Pete's head in," said George to himself.
"I no want to be good. I jus' want Tchorch," said Jenny.
She closed her eyes and slept.
His friends, even including Skookum Charlie, left Pete where he lay. If a man killed his klootchman and then got pahtlum, or "blind-speechless-paralytic" on something cousin-german to methylated spirit, what could be done with him but let him alone till the police came for him by daylight? Don't forget, tilikums, that none of the officers of the law could come in Sawdust Shack-Town after dark. They would as soon have gone to Cloud Cuckoo Town. It was as much as their cabezas were worth, and that's a hard-wood truth, without knots or shakes. The last time a constable (under the influence of a good but uninstructed superior and some bad whisky) did go into Shack-Town after dark he stayed there in a pool of blood (or what would have been a pool but for the convenient sawdust) till it was broad daylight, and he took much patching-up before he got into running again. After dark we had it to ourselves, Whites, Reds, and all colours who were of the order of the Mill, or the disorder of it. The "bulls" or "cops" or "fingers," as hoboes say, kept order in the orderly uptown streets.
Skookum "quit" and went home. So did Annawillee, whom Chihuahua hauled off as he was doubtful of her morals in the dark. But Annie, whose windpipe was exceedingly sore, went out several times and booted Pete in the ribs where he lay, as a kind of compensation or cough lozenge. However, she let up on him at last and went home to "pound her ear" in the sleep of the just and virtuous. It never even occurred to her that Pete didn't know anything whatsoever about Quin being the man who had kapsuallowed or stolen his dear Jenny. Everybody else knew, Chinamen, Swedes, Lapps, Letts, Finns, Spaniards and a number of whites of the rougher kind who camped in Shack-Town. I knew myself. But the man who ought to have known didn't. It was a sign that life is the same everywhere.
Pete woke up before dawn, as it seems to be a revenge of nature to make drunken men wake when they can't find a drink, and when he woke he hadn't the remotest notion of what had happened to him. He knew that he had a thirst on him of a miraculous intensity, and when he moved he was aware that he had a pain in his side which almost made him forget his thirst. For Annie wore a man's shoes, with heavy soles to them. And when a man is helpless and his ribs open even a woman's kicks can do mischief.
"Oh," said Pete, "ah!"
He rolled over and groaned, poor devil. And, just as the secret dawn began to flame, so the red deeds of the night before began to come up to him. He sat up and his jaw fell.
"Ah," said Pete, "I tink I—I kill Jenny!"
There's a crowd of virtuous ones who will imitate Annie and boot him in the ribs, poor devil. He drank and gambled and played hell and beat his wife and drove her into the arms of Quin. Even a missionary, who ought to know something about such humanity, would disapprove of him. And those whites of high nobility and much money and great station, who are ready, in like cases, to drag their own wretched women by the hair of the head through the bloody sawdust of the Divorce Court, and who hire (at so many guineas and one or two more) some gowned ruffian to boot her in the ribs, will objurgate Pete perhaps, poor chap. He had no chance to know better and now the terrors of the rope and the gallows had hold of him.
Pete was brave enough, even if he did kick klootchmen. As Ginger White knew, he was the best wedger-off thereabouts, and could have got a job at any of the big Mills of the Sound or the Inlet. He could ride a horse and fight a man of his own weight quite well enough. Indeed there was nothing wrong with him but the fact that he was a Sitcum Siwash and given to drink when it was handy. Up at Cultus Muckamuck's, where it wasn't handy, he was as sober as any judge and a deal more sober than some out West. He was brave enough.
But when he thought of being hanged he wasn't brave. He sat up and wondered why he wasn't in the Calaboose or cooler or jail already. He looked round fearfully as if he expected to see Jenny's body there. Then he groaned and felt his ribs. It was odd he should be so sore. But the oddest thing was that he wasn't already jailed.
"I don' b'lieve I kill Jenny after all," said Pete. And as soon as he didn't believe it, he very naturally determined to do it as soon as possible. He staggered to his feet, and made for his shack, thinking that Jenny perhaps was there. Of course it was as empty as an old whisky bottle, and Pete scratched his head. Then the dawn came up, and just about the time that Jenny was murmuring that she didn't want to be good but only wanted "Tchorch," he went out again and ran against Annie, who had also waked up with a thirst and with an idea that it would ease her throat and her mind if she went out and had another go at Pete's ribs.
"Yah, you pig Pete," she said with her jaw out at him and her skinny throat on the stretch.
"Why you call me pig, you damn Annie?" demanded Pete, savagely.
"Because you halo good, no good, damn bad man, try to kill you tenas klootchman," yapped Annie raucously as she spat.
"You a damn fool," said Pete. "Jenny she been away from me——"
"Yah," yelled Annie, "she find a good man, and Mista Quin, he give her good dlesses, he velly kind to Jenny."
It was a blow between the eyes for Pete, and he staggered as if he had been struck. His jaw dropped.
"Mista Quin, kahta mika wau-wau, what you say?" he stammered.
"I say she now Mista Quin's klootchman: he velly good to her. By-by he come and kill you, because you kick his klootchman. Las' night he say he mamook you mimaloose, kill you dead, you pig Pete," she squealed, withdrawing into her house, so that she could slam the door on him if he made a rush. But truly it was the last thing he thought of.
"The Tyee take my klootchman!" he said with a fallen jaw, "the Tyee——"
The boss had taken Jenny!
"Dat tlue, Annie?" he asked weakly.
"Dat tlue, you pig," said Annie.
Pete made a horrid sound in his throat like a strangled scream and Annie slammed and bolted her door and got a bar of iron in her hands as quick as she could move.
"I kill Mista Quin," screamed Pete. "I kill heem!"
He ran to his shack on the instinct to find something then and there to kill the boss with. But he had no weapon, not even a good knife.
"I kill him all same," said Pete. As the men in the South would have said he was "pretty nigh off his cabeza."
He started to work on his shack, and smashed the windows and their frames and then all the wretched furniture in both rooms. By the time the house was an utter wreck he felt a little calmer. But though many heard him none came near. It might be dangerous. Then at last it was daylight: there was a pleasant golden glow, and the river was a stream of gold. The tall Mill chimneys began to smoke, for Scotty's helper fed the fires early.
"I go to work all same," said Pete, "and I see Quin."
He ground his teeth and then took a drink of water, and spat it out. There was nothing that he wouldn't have given for some whisky, but who ever had whisky in Shack-Town early in the morning? He had to do without it. And at last the whistle spoke and the sun shone, and the working bees came out of their hives and went to the Mill.
There was a devil of a wau-wau going on that morning in the Engine-Room, for the place was crowded. Some Chinamen even were allowed to come inside, for they had news to give. The patriarch and philosopher Wong was interrogated by Mac and Shorty Gibbs and Tenas Billy (white man in spite of Tenas).
"Quin—eh, what?" said Tenas Billy with open eyes.
"He took Jenny! Well I'm damned," said Gibbs.
"I never reckoned that slabsided cockeyed roust-about Jack Mottram took her," said Long Mac. "But I own freely I never gave a thought to Quin."
"Oh, he was always a squaw-man," said Ginger White. "What was that talk of a gal called Lily? Wasn't she from Coquitlam?"
"She was a Hydah, but I never seen her," said another. Papp the German intervened.
"She was a bretty gal. I zeen her mit Quin at Victoria; no, at Nanaimo. She died of gonsumption, boys."
They had heard Quin had killed her, kicked her when she was going to be a mother.
"It ain'd drue," said Papp. "Thad was the odder Quin, him dey galls Gultus Muckamuck. When I was ub to Gamloops I saw her grave. Gultus kigged her in the stomag, poor thing, and she died."
"Is it true Pete killed Jenny last night?" asked young Tom Willett, who had just come in.
Wong had told Long Mac all about it and he had told the others. They all told Tom Willett all about it at once.
"Pete hadn't better run up agin Quin this day," said Ginger. "I've lost the best wedger-off I ever struck."
He saw Skookum Charlie grinning in a corner.
"And now I've got to put up with Skookum. I guess Pete has lighted out."
"Pulled his freight for sure," said Tenas Billy. Then Scotty yanked the whistle lanyard and the men sighed and moved off.
And as they moved Pete came in.
"Oh, hell," said those that saw him. They scented trouble quick.
There was no doubt there would be trouble. By all accounts Pete had only just failed to kill the little klootchman, and that he showed up afterwards, when he knew that Quin had cut him out, was proof enough of coming woe.
Ginger White didn't like it. He had no nerve for rows, in spite of his nasty temper, and to have a murderous struggle between the wedger-off and Quin, with guns shooting it might be (though gun-play is rare in B.C.), made him shake. Even if no "guns" came in there would be blood and hair flying, and mauls and wedges and pickareens, and perhaps a jagged slab or two. Ginger remembered the huge nose with which outraged Simmons had decorated him.
"I ain't goin' to let Quin come in ignorant," said Ginger. At the very first pause, while they were rolling a mighty five foot log on the carriage, he shoved his head through the wall to the Engine-Room.
"Say, Scotty, send over to the Office and let Mr. Quin know that that swine Pete has turned up to work."
Scotty nodded.
"And say he looks mighty odd, likely to prove fightable," added Ginger. He went back to the lever.
It was one of his off-days, when he couldn't drive the Mill or the Saws for sour apples. It's the same with everyone. It's no sacred privilege of artists to be off colour. And yet in his way Ginger was an artist. He played on the Mill and made an organ of it: pulled out stops, made her whoop, voix celeste, or voix diabolique. Or he waved his bâton and made the Stick Moola a proper old orchestra, wind and strings, bassoon, harp, lute, sackbut, psaltery and all kinds of raging music. Now he was at a low ebb and played adagio, even maestoso, and was a little flat with it all.
The quick men of the Mill loafed. Long Mac flung off the tightener and put new teeth into his saw with nicely-fitting buckskin. He took it easy. So did everyone. The very Bull-Wheel never groaned. Down below the Lath Mill chewed slowly. The Shingle Mill, though it had all the cedar it could eat, said at slow intervals, "I cut-a-shingle, ah," ending with a yawn instead of a "Phit."
The truth was that everyone was waiting. They loafed with their hands but their minds were quick enough. Tenas Billy of the Lath Mill every now and again climbed up the chute to see if bloodshed was imminent. Shorty Gibbs, the Shingle Sawyer, did the same. The very Chinamen sorting flooring underneath bobbed up like Jacks out of Boxes.
Only Pete never raised his head from his work. When he drove a steel dog into a log he did it with vim and vice.
He smashed Quin's big head every stroke. Quin's head was a wedge under the maul. And it was nine o'clock. Before ten Quin always came into the Mill and stood as it were on deck, looking at his crew as they sailed the Mill through forests, making barren the lives of the green hills fronting the Straits.
As ten drew on the work grew more slack and men's minds grew intense. But a big log was on the carriage, one nigh six foot in diameter. The slab came off, and Pete and Skookum Charlie handled it. Ginger set her for a fifteen-inch cant and sent her at it. Just as the log obscured the doorway Quin came in and no one saw him but Skookum. Pete drove a wedge, and reached out his hand for a loose one. Then he saw Quin. As he saw him he forgot his work, and the saw nipped a little and squealed uneasily. Ginger threw up his angry head and stopped her and saw that Pete saw Quin.
"Here's trouble," said the men. The Pony Saw stopped dead. The Trimmers ran back into their casings. There was silence. The Lath Mill stayed and the Shingle Saw and men's heads came up from below. They heard Quin speak.
"Get off that log," said Quin.
Pete dropped off on the side away from Quin, as quick as a mud-turtle. As he fell upon his feet he grabbed a pickareen lying on the skids and ran round the end of the carriage.
"Look out, Sir," yelled Ginger. A dozen men made a rush.
Long Mac came over two skids at a time. The only man who was near enough to do anything was Skookum Charlie, but he feared Pete and had no mind for any trouble. He was safer on the top of the log. Ginger took a heavy spanner in his hand and went round the other end of the log. He was in time to see Pete rushing at Quin, who had nothing in his hands. Quin was the kind of man who wouldn't have, so much can be said for him.
Now Quin was standing at the opening of the great side chute, down which big cants and bents for bridge-work were thrown sideways. It was a forty-foot opening in the Mill's wall. It was smooth, greasy, sharply inclined. At the foot of it were some heavy eighteen-foot bents for bridge repairing.
"Ah," said Pete. It seemed to Quin that Pete came quick and that the other men who were running came very slow. Perhaps they did, for Pete was as quick on his feet as any cat or cougar. He weighed a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and light bone. Quin weighed two hundred at the least. He wasn't quick till he was hot.
But Pete's quickness, though it caught Quin, yet saved him.
Had he been less quick Quin would have stopped his sharp downward pickareen. But Pete delivered his blow too soon. He aimed for Quin's head, but Quin dodged and the blow was a little short: instead of catching him inside the collar-bone and penetrating his lung, the steel point grazed the bone and came down like fire through the pectoral muscle. And Quin struck out with his right and caught Pete on the point of his left elbow. The Sitcum Siwash went back reeling and Ginger White flung his spanner at him. It missed him by a hair's breadth and Pete recovered. Before he could make another rush Mac was within a yard of him. But something passed Mac and struck Pete on the side of the head. It was an iron ring from an old roller. The philosopher Wong had flung it. Pete went over sideways, grabbed at nothing, lost his pickareen, caught his feet on the sill of the chute and pitched out headlong. He shot down the ways into the bents below and lay there quiet as a dead man.
"Are you hurt?" asked Ginger White. Quin's hand was to his breast.
"A bit," said Quin, as he breathed hard.
"It was a close call," said Ginger. The men stood round silently.
Skookum clambered down from the log. He was a dirty-whitish colour, for he wasn't brave.
"Pick that chap up," said Quin, "and see if he is hurt. If he is some of you can carry him up to the hospital."
Though he pressed his hand tight to the open wound in his breast he bled pretty fast, and presently sat down on one of the skids.
"I'll help you over to the Office," said Ginger White, ever ready to be of service to the Tyee. They went across together while Long Mac and some of the boys picked up Pete. If it had been a close call for Quin it had been even a closer one for the Sitcum Siwash. He was as near a dead man to look at as any man could be. The iron ring had only caught him a glancing blow and cut his scalp, but when he slid down the chute head-foremost his skull came butt on solid lumber. Then he had turned over and struck the edge of a bent with his arm. It was broken. When Long Mac and three Chinamen carried him to the hospital, on a door borrowed from the Planing Mill, the surgeon there found his left collar-bone was in two pieces as well. He had serious doubts as to whether his skull was fractured or not. On the whole, when he had made his examination, he did not think so. But he had every sign of severe concussion of the brain.
"How did it happen?" asked Dr. Green when they had turned Pete over to the nurses.
Mac told him.
"Humph," said Green, who knew something about Quin, "it is lucky for Quin that the chap went for him first."
"You think he'll die then?" asked Mac.
"He might," said Green. "But he has a skull that's thicker than paper. They can stand a lot, some of em'. And others peg out very easy. It's diseases fetch 'em, though, not injuries."
So Mac went to the Mill again, leaving Pete on his back in a fine clean bed for the first time in his life. He was very quiet now.
While Mac was at the hospital they had sent for Dr. Jupp to look after Quin. When the old doctor heard what had happened he shook his head.
"What did I tell him?"
He found Quin pretty sick, but smoking all the same. He was partially stripped and he had plastered the wound till help came with a large pad of blotting paper, which was nearly as primitive as spiders' webs.
"Well, I got it, doc'," said Quin.
Jupp shook his head again.
"You'll never learn sense, I suppose. Let's look. What was the weapon?"
They showed him a pickareen, a half-headed pick of bright steel some six inches long.
"Lucky for you it wasn't an inch nearer," said Jupp, "or you would have had froth in this blood!"
Quin knew what he meant. In any case it was a nasty wound, for part of it was ripped open. Nevertheless Quin smoked all the time that Jupp washed and dressed it, and said "Thank you" pleasantly enough when the job was over.
"Go home and lie down," said Jupp. "I'll be up in an hour and see the cause of the war."
So Quin, with the help of a clerk in the office, found his way home to Jenny. As he went he saw Mac coming down the road with long strides and waited to hear what they said of Pete.
"Will he go up the flume?" asked Quin, using a common Western idiom.
"Mebbe," said Mac. "The doc' allowed he couldn't give me a pointer. He said it was a case of might or mightn't."
"Damn," said Quin.
When he got back to Jenny he never told her he was hurt. He didn't even squeal when she rose up in bed and put her arms about his neck and hurt his wound badly.
"I love you, Tchorch. You are velly good to me," said Jenny.
In a place like the City on the Fraser, the time being years ago, years I count mournfully, one can't expect to run against genius in the shape of surgeons and physicians. But most of the medicine-men had queer records at the back of them, even in B.C. Now Green, for instance, though he had some of a doctor's instincts, didn't really know enough to pass any English examination. He read a deal and learnt as men died or got well under his hands, and the hands of the nurses. As a result of this Pete had a long solid time in bed. Even when he apparently came to there was something very wrong with him. He didn't know himself or anything else. It took Green part of a month to discover that he had better ask old Jupp to come and see his Siwash patient.
As the result of the consultation they put Pete on the table and shaved his head and trephined him and raised a depressed patch in his skull. It was the bit with which he had put a depressed place in a bridge bent. And then true intelligence (of the Sitcum Siwash order) came back into Pete's dark eyes, and he was presently aware that he was Pitt River Pete, and that Jenny his klootchman had run away with Quin and that he had gone for Quin in the Mill. So far as Pete was concerned this had happened a minute ago and he was very much surprised to find himself opening his eyes on two strange gentlemen in white aprons, and his nose to the scent of chloroform, when an instant before he had seen Quin in front of him among the finer odours of fresh sawdust. Pete made a motion to get up and finish Quin, but somehow he couldn't and he closed his eyes again and went to sleep.
When he woke once more he was in a nice bed with a white lady looking after his wants. He wondered vaguely what a white klootchman was doing there and again went to sleep. On the whole he was very comfortable and didn't care about anything, not even Jenny.
When he woke again, he made the white klootchman explain briefly what had happened to him. The white klootchman did her best to follow his wau-wau and gave him to understand that he had had an accident in the Mill and an operation. And it gradually dawned on Pete that all these occurrences had caused a lapse of time almost miraculous. Nothing that the white klootchman said convinced him, however: it was the scent of the keen autumn air coming down the river from his own home mountains, the Pitt River Mountains. It was now October and nearly the end of it, and there was already a winter garment on the big hills. From his window he could see the far cone of Mount Baker, white and shining. When he looked a little round the corner he saw his own hills. The air was beautiful and keen, fresh as mountain water, tonic as free life itself. To smell it brought him strength, for there is great strength in the clean scent of things. He snuffed the air of the upper river and recalled the high plateaus of the Dry Belt.
"By-by I go back to Kamloops," said Pete, as he sat in a chair by the window with a blanket round him. He was still weak, and didn't feel jealous about Jenny. "By-by I go to Pitt River or Hallison Lake."
He used to work when a boy for an old storekeeper at Harrison Lake. That was before he took to the Mill: before he had been to Kamloops. Old Smith was a pioneer, one of the Boston Bar Miners, one of those who had hunted for the mother and father of Cariboo gold in Baldy Mountain. He had been rich and poor and rich again, and even now, though poor enough, he grub-staked wandering prospectors on shares of the Dorado Hole they set out to find.
"Not a bad old fellow, old Smith," said the grubstaked ones. Pete said the same.
"Jenny she can go to hell," said Pete. And when he was well enough to leave the hospital he took a month's wages from the Mill, or nearly a month's, and went up-river to Harrison Lake. He never asked for Quin, and didn't even know that he and Jenny had both been laid up.
"She can go to hell," he told himself. "I go to Hallison Lake and by-by to Kamloops, see my sister Maly. Cultus Muckamuck much better man than Shautch Quin."
After all Cultus had never stolen his klootchman and smashed his skull.
Pete was still very weak when he left New Westminster behind and paid a dollar or so to go upstream to the mouth of Harrison River's blue waters. And Smith gave him "a jhob" at small wages but with good hash.
Then the East wind blew out of the hills, from the serried dark Cascades, and from the monarchs of the Selkirks on the Big Bend of the Columbia and from the giant Rockies beyond that swift clear stream. Nature closed up her wonderful store, and the Mills shut down, for the Lower Fraser was fast in heavy ice from way-up down to Lulu Island and even beyond, and no man and no Bull-Wheel, though it grunted in its frictions, could get logs out of the Boom. So Long Paul of the Boom as well as Long Mac of the Pony Saw and Ginger White of the Great Hoes and all the whole caboodle shut up shop and took to winter work, which meant growling and groaning and gambling and grumbling and playing Old Harry, and raising Cain and horrid crops besides, till frost unlocked the stream and booms again.
Oh, but the days when the East wind held up and the frost was clean and clear! The cold clean sun shone like pale fire in a pale blue sky and the world was hard and bright and white with fierce snow. It was fine enough in the City, and the boys went coasting down the hill streets across the main one, and the kiddies thought of Christmas with such joy as those elders, who had heaps of kids and little cash, could not feel. Nevertheless even a burdened father of many hoped while he could when the frost burned in the still air and fetched the blood to his face. There was health in it: health for Jenny, determined to love "Tchorch" always, and health for "Tchorch," whose poisoned wound healed up though it left a horrid scar on his left pectoral. If only it hadn't meant health for Pete too!
But it did. If it was fine in the City, how much finer, how much cleaner, how much more wonderful it was by the edge of a frozen lake, full of trout, and under the snowy feathery foliage of the firs and pines and the high pagodas of the majestic antique spruces. Pete sucked in health and strength like a child and ate his muckamuck with the determination of a bear at a discovered cache. He put on muscle and fat, and could leap again. And as he fattened, his mind grew darker. He missed his klootchman and woke of nights to miss her. The smile, that was his when he was weak, left him; it was put out by darkness. And under old Smith's wing in a little shack there was another Sitcum Siwash, one called John, who had a young klootchman of his own, and his young klootchman had a young papoose, and they were all as fat as butter and as happy as pigs in a wallow. This hit lonely Pete very hard. He was "solly" he hadn't killed Quin, and took to telling John his woes.
These woes on being told grew bigger, till they became huge once more. They were like a drift in a bitter norther, where a log can begin a mountain that stays all progress.
"I tink I burn his Mill," said Pete as he lay awake. It was a great idea. It grew like a fire, and would have come to something undoubtedly if by an accident old Smith hadn't put a pail of cold discouragement upon the flame as it twisted and crackled in the hot mind of Pete. The news came that Thomas Fergusson's store at Yale had been burnt down, and Smith explained to John and Pete and some store loafer (there always are store loafers everywhere: if there's a cracker cask at the North Pole some loafer holds it down against any South wind) that possibly Fergusson had made money out of the fire by the means of some very queer magic known as insurance, or "insoolance" as John and Pete said. They scratched their heads, for they knew nothing of "fire-bugs," not having read the comic New York papers. But the fact remained that according to old Smith, to burn down the Mill might mean to make Quin richer.
"I won't burn down his damn Moola," said Pete crossly.
Yet couldn't he do something else? Pete lay half one Sunday thinking over it, and came to the conclusion that there was a very reasonable revenge to be had fairly cheap. When he worked at the Mill at Kamloops he had been told of what one man had done at Port Blakeley.
"I do it," said Pete savagely. He heard John's klootchman laugh, and thought again of Jenny. The stronger he grew the more bitterly he missed her. And yet if she had come back to him now he would have thrust her out into the frost.
In this unhappiness of his heart it was natural he should turn to his sister Mary, up at Kamloops or the back of it, who was Cultus Muckamuck's klootchman. And after all old Cultus wasn't such a bad sort. Hadn't they got drunk together, as "drunk as boiled owls in a pan of hot water"? Cultus was a mean old hunks, and a bit rougher than his younger brother, but there was none of the high-toned dandy about Cultus. He would sit on a log with a man, and yarn and swap lies, and fetch out a bottle and say, "Take a drink, Pete." Oh, on the whole Cultus was a good sort. If he did whack Mary, perhaps Mary deserved it. The klootchmen wanted hammering at intervals and a good quirting did them good.
"Firs' I go down to the Moola," said Pete, "and I go back to Kamloops. I make it hot for George Quin when the Moola starts up. I spoil heem, ah, I spoil heem and Shinger White."
The hard frost lasted a month and then a quiet and insidious Chinook came out of the Pacific, a wandering warm West wind, and the ice relented and released the River. It was not very thick and soon departed on the ebb and flood of the tides, swaying in loose floes back and forth. And then the rain began and it looked like a strange soft winter for a little while.
"I go now," said Pete. He spoke to old Smith, asking for a day or two to go down to the City.
"You ain't thinking of killing Quin or your klootchman, sonny?" said Smith, who knew all about it.
"Not me, Mista Smith," said Pete. "She no good, by-by he velly solly he have her."
He got an old dug-out and paddled down to the City, and past it in the dark, when the town was nothing but a gleam of lights in the heavy rain. In the dugout Pete had a few things borrowed from Smith's store that Smith did not know he had borrowed.
"I fix heem," said Pete savagely, as he touched a bag which, held many pounds weight of ten-inch spikes. "I fix heem and his logs!"
He went past the City with the ebb, and taking the South Arm was soon abreast of Lulu Island. There he knew that a big boom of logs for the Mill was anchored to the shore, ready to tow up when the Mill boom was cut out. Besides his spikes he had a heavy sledge-hammer.
"Dat fix heem," said Pete. He knew what he was about.
"I hope it cut Shinger's beas'ly head off."
He knew that Ginger had thrown a spanner at him that last day in the Mill, and, indeed, he believed that it was Ginger, and not old Wong, who had keeled him over and chucked him down the chute.
Now the rain let up and some stars shone out. He got close inshore and felt his way in the shadow of the trees. He let the canoe float, for he came near where the boom should be. A big patch of sky cleared and a wedge of the new moon glimmered under rack. His eyes were keen, and presently he saw the darker mass of the assembled boom of logs anchored in a little bay. He grinned and went alongside and made the canoe fast. Then he filled his pockets with spikes and, taking the sledge, scrambled on the boom.
Outer log was chained to outer log with chains and heavy clamps. Inside, an acre of water was covered with round logs, all loose, logs of fir and pine and spruce. Some were six feet and more in diameter: some less than a foot. As he trod on one it rolled a little and then rolled more: he stepped upon it lightly, balancing himself beautifully, as if he had been a driver on the Eastern Rivers of wooded Wisconsin or Michigan. The motion he gave to one log as he sprang communicated itself to others. The logs seemed uneasy: it was as if he had waked them. He looked for the best, the biggest, with a pleasure akin to that of the hunter, or some trapper sorting peltry. He found a splendid spruce and stood on it in triumph.
"I make heem bad," grinned Pete. He took a spike and set it into the log with a light tap of the sledge held close to the heft. Then he stood up and swung the sledge double-handed. He had driven spikes on a railroad once, though he hated railroading, being by nature a millman or a ranche hand. The sledge fell on the spike clean and plumb. The dim forests echoed and he stood up as if the sound startled him. But after all no one could be near and the City was far off. He drove the deadly spike home into the beautiful log and smiled.
Into that one he put three spikes, then he leapt lightly on another, a Douglas Fir, and spiked that too. He grew warm and threw off his jacket. It was a great pleasure to him to work, to feel that his strength had come back, to feel himself active, lithe, capable. And revenge was very sweet.
"Mebbe the saw cut off Quin's head," he murmured. He knew what he was doing and what would happen. He saw it quite clearly, for once in a saw-mill, when he was a kiddy, he had heard what happened when a saw cut on a hidden spike. The wedger-off had told the others how the great saw struck fire with a horrid grinding squeal. With the sawdust from the cut came fiery sparks, and then the saw, split in huge segments, hurtled from the cut. One piece went through the roof, another skimmed through the Mill like a piece of slate hurled by some mighty arm.
Pete knew what he was doing as he killed the logs. He spiked two dozen before he let up upon them.
"I fix heem," said Pete. "I fix heem lik' hell!"
He put on his jacket again and with the sledge in his hands went towards the dug-out. There were still many spikes in his pockets, for twice he had renewed his supply of them.
"I think I drive one more," said Pete, who was drunk with pleasure. "I tink one more for luck."
He set the spike in and started to drive it home. Now he was careless and suddenly he slipped. As he tried to recover himself, the sledge flew one way and he flew the other. He dropped between two logs: the one he had been standing on, and one on the boom of logs. That is, one of the boom logs saved his life, for the heavy spikes would have pulled him down if he had had to swim for a minute. As he let a yell out of him and felt a sudden fear of death his hands caught a chain between two of the outer boom logs. He pulled his head out of the water and hung on. The stream was bitter cold, for there was still ice in it. He gasped for breath, but presently got a leg across the chain. With a great effort he clawed the upper edge of the log and clambered back to safety.
"Oh," he grunted, as he lay flat and caught his breath, "that a very near ting, Pete."
It was a very near thing indeed.
But before dawn, as he paddled hard on the flood tide, he was back at Smith's and fast asleep.
Next day there was a mighty row about the missing sledge-hammer.
"I tink some damn thief kapsualla heem," said Pete.
That week the frost returned once more. This time it lasted till the early spring.