CHAPTER XIIDan Quinlan
IN the years of Lightning’s service at the Marton farm he had only penetrated the greater foothills to the south-west as far as Dan Quinlan’s homestead on two or three occasions.
His real reason for avoiding Dan Quinlan was his cold opinion that the man was unfit for white man’s association. The thing that was anathema to his ideas of manhood was that Dan lived with a squaw. There were always to be found loafing about his place a number of his wife’s coloured relations; and then there were offspring which he claimed no white man had the right to bring into the world—little dusky, happy, laughing, wild creatures, with all the potentialities for evil resulting from the mixture of colour.
Then his farm was such as no white man need take joy in. A log dug-out on a hillside, overlooking a poor corral that was just sufficient for his ten mean cows; a ramshackle barn which stabled a small bunch of saddle choyeuses; and a patch of ploughing that barely provided sufficient feed, with a few cabbages, and a supply of potatoes thrown in. And, added to the rest, the whole place was completely overrun by savage trail dogs.
In Lightning’s view, whatever he might choose to call himself, there was only one designation to which Dan Quinlan was entitled. The man lived by trapping and pelt-hunting, and any other means that offered itself. He had become a white Indian. In short, he had “taken the blanket,” and was no longer entitled to associate with white men or claim their respect. Lightning’s opinionwas characteristic, and in consequence of it he had not been near the Irishman since the death of George Marton.
Had he done so, the scene he would have discovered would still have been, to all outward appearance, much about the same. There stood the dishevelled dug-out, that was sufficiently stout, and supplied all the man’s needs and those of his dusky family. The barn looked to have been slightly enlarged, but had gained nothing else by the change. The corral still accommodated the ten mean cows which grazed over the flat of grass which filled the valley below. The wolfish dog pack still beset the place.
But the change was there, and he would no doubt have discovered it. It lay within the forest which clothed the whole hillside about the dug-out. Less than half a mile from the Irishman’s home a clearing had been made. It had a winding roadway cut through the trees. Four ring corrals had been set up, and in connection with them was all the paraphernalia of the cattle-raiser. There was the branding “pinch.” There was the smith’s forge, and the searing-irons. There were great stackings of hay for feed. And several soundly built huts of log and thatch dotted the outer ring of the clearing for use in the work amongst the cattle.
The place was basking under a blaze of spring sunshine that was only little short of the full heat of summer. The forest had already set forth its paler shades of green, and the stark arms of deciduous trees were donning their delicate spring costumes. The mountain stream, in the heart of the valley, was a boisterous, rushing torrent, and the grass in the open was leaping by inches with every passing day.
Two men were standing near by, overlooking the work of branding the cattle with which the corrals were teeming. The men in the corrals, and at the forge, and working thecumbersome “pinch,” were not ordinary cattlemen. They were not even white men. They were relatives of Cama, the wife of Dan Quinlan, and the Irishman had pressed them into his service without scruple.
Standing with his white-haired companion, Dan’s eyes were alight with humour. His big body was clad in the buckskin which the faithful Cama prepared for it. The only thing with which to distinguish him from his dusky relatives by marriage was his white face, rugged and weather-beaten, his enormous size, his mass of curling, fair hair, and his laughing blue eyes.
“Say, Jim,” he cried, as he watched one of his many “in-laws” struggling furiously with a roped steer, “I want to laff. I surely do. Say, look at that guy hanging to that pore critter’s stumps of horns. Now, how in hell does he guess that beast’s to reckon he wants it to move ahead while he’s smotherin’ its fool head with his darn sight more foolish body? Can you beat it?”
He moved off on the run, and laid a hand on the top bar of the corral opening. The next moment he had vaulted it, and became lost amidst the teeming throng.
Jim Pryse smilingly awaited his return. The Irishman amused him almost as much as did his “in-laws.” And when Dan came back to him his face was beaming with good-nature.
“Gee! They’re an outfit!” he cried, with a great laugh. “Did you ever see such a play? They got a Dago bull-fight skinned to death. Get a look at ’em. They’re the whole darn tally of Cama’s brothers, an’ cousins, an’ uncles. I feed the bunch, an’ talk Blackfoot to ’em from daylight to dark. They’d eat that bunch of steers in a week, but it takes their whole darn combination o’ brain to handle ’em right. I surely want to laff. They guess they’re showing the white man. They’re the queerestcrowd of darn-foolishness you could locate outside a bughouse.”
Pryse laughed delightedly.
“It’s no wonder they’re a dying race,” he said.
Dan nodded and chuckled.
“They’re Reserve-raised,” he said significantly. “They know all about doctors’ dope an’ pie-faced religion. They can talk and read ‘white.’ They can count dollars to beat the band, but cents better. They got a hell of a notion for soap they fancy looking at, but ’ud hate to use. But set em to the work their old folk reckoned was natural to ’em, an you’ve got ’em hatin’ it like the devil hates holy water. But they’re a good crew, an’ I’ve got no kick comin’. They’d commit murder fer me, an’ I sort o’ feel they’re like a bunch of silly kids that need beating over the head with a club when they do wrong. Ther’ it is. It’s the civilisin’ play of our races—the old dames who sit around in steam heat figgerin’ out the best med’cine fer their own useless souls. I’m tryin’ to make men of ’em. But it’s mighty hard work after the missioners are through with ’em. I tell you, civilisation beats out of a boy all those things God A’mighty set out as right fer him. An’ it drives home a bunch of sloppy junk that any man worth the name gets worryin’ around to lose quick.”
“It was something of that set me yearning for Alaska seven or eight years back,” Pryse chuckled quietly. “But you couldn’t lose it there. The townships, even there, are up to their necks in automobiles, and ’phones, and wireless, and all the rest. Why, they got societies up there for every darn thing, from a Chink Labour Union to an Anti-Natural Fur Society. I guess the anti-fur bunch has tough work ahead in Alaska.”
Dan drew a deep breath, and his eyes sobered.
“Give me these hills,” he cried. “It’s peace here, Jim. It’s peace an’—if you ain’t yearning for fancy feeding—plenty. We’re out of it all, an’ up against all the thingsGod A’mighty reckoned was good fer us. Taste the mountain air, look at the sun, see the grass grow, an’ the woods packed with every pelt and feed a boy needs. There’s no by-your-leave here. Ther’s no crazy say-so. Act the man or go plumb under. If ther’s any kickin’ get after it quick. It’s peace here, the only peace I’ve ever known. Ther’s folks in Hartspool an’ Calford, when I get around with cattle, pass a whisper all the time. I know it. I bin told. I’ve ‘taken the blanket.’ I’m ‘white Injun.’ An’ all because I married Cama right, an’ she’s raised a dandy bunch of kids to me. I don’t care a curse. Why shouldn’t I? Ain’t haf the whole world mongrels of colour? If they ain’t they were oncet. Psha! I ain’t lookin’ fer no halo. I got some three-score an’ ten to put in on this crazy old earth, an’ I’m goin’ to do it the best way that suits me. I ken scratch a livin’ right here fer myself an’ my whole bunch. I got Cama, an’ I’m happy. Ther’ ain’t a saloon fer miles, which is God’s blessin’ to a crazy Irishman like me. An’ then, things bein’ so, I’ll go down when the time comes singin’ thanks to the good God who’s passed me the peace an’ happiness I never found under the electric sky signs of civilisation. Say, I’ll hold up this bunch till fall, an’ then run ’em right over the border into Montana without making any pow-wow with the United States border folk. We got to go slow Calford way. Folks there are pushing their noses our way.”
Pryse’s interest in the branding had passed. Dan Quinlan had absorbed it all. The man’s philosophy suited his own mood. Somehow he felt that deep inside that burly ruffian dwelt a great, strong, human spirit—a reckless, untamed spirit, whose genuine good almost completely smothered the weakness he sometimes saw peeping out.
“I was wondering that way, Dan,” he said quietly. “The curiosity of folk was one of the things I didn’t search closely enough. Yes, we must surely spread ourmarket. I’ve been thinking hard. Our bluff isn’t all it needs to be. We’ve got to bluff harder. You’ve got your brand registered. That’s all right. Now we must play right up to it with a ‘full house.’ Do you get me? We got to set up a swell sort of ranch place right here for you, and your Cama, and her folk to live in. It must be big and good. And we’ll need bloodstock ranging this valley. Then, when folks get around, as they surely will, they’ll see the meaning of things as we want ’em to see. You’ve built yourself into a swell stock-raising proposition. Then they’ll rub their foolish eyes and forget their talk of ‘taking the blanket,’ and they’ll lift their hats to Dan Quinlan, and we can trade our stock all we please down at Calford and Hartspool.”
Dan hawked and spat. He was watching an Indian approaching the “pinch” from the forge. The man was flourishing a nearly white-hot branding-iron. He let out a shout.
“What in hell?” he cried. “Quit it, Ash-te! Quit it, you seven sorts of darn fool! Are you lookin’ to roast the poor crittur? Cool it down, you crazy son of a goat. Fer the sake of Holy Mary! Ah, to hell wid ye!”
His moment of angry disgust passed, and his smile broke out at once. And, as the Indian scuttled back to the forge, he turned again to the man beside him.
“Sure an’ you’re right, Jim,” he cried, with a laugh. “You’ll set Cama crazy fer joy building her a swell home. And these boys, too. Gee! I wish I could lick ’em into the things they were before the missioner got after ’em,” he added regretfully. Then: “How’s things going inside?”
Pryse laughed.
“Why, fine,” he said. Then he added significantly: “I got more hands than I can pass work to. They come from the cities east, and west, and south. They’re all sorts, from crook politicians right down to the boys who’veskidded on the main trail. It’s just wonderful. There’s a great estate there, and well-nigh a settlement. And I’ve just had to case-harden myself to hold a discipline of sheer steel. We’ll be shipping grain this year as well as stock. And if nothing goes amiss I’d say it’ll come in a flood. I must get right back now. It needs me all the time.”
“Yep. I guess that’s so. Well, so long, Jim,” Dan said, as the other turned to go. “I’ll start right in building—out in the open. We can’t be too quick with it. I’ll stop right here now. I can’t leave these fool boys. You’ll look in on Cama an’ the kids before you quit?”
“I surely will. So long Dan.”
“So long.”
Dan watched the white-haired figure till it was swallowed up by the forest. Then he turned again to his hopeless task of guiding, instructing, and blaspheming his dark-skinned relatives.