Читать книгу The Painted Cliff - Alex Philip - Страница 6
ОглавлениеCHAPTER III.
HE long rest, the application of a wet towel in lieu of a bath, and a brisk rub-down, wrought a wonderful change in Peter. The strained, hungry look was gone from his eyes and his pale face held a healthier glow.
A curiously warm feeling of gratitude flamed through him as he ravenously devoured the lunch prepared by Dorothy. How could he ever repay her kindness? If this quest for gold should prove successful, if they “hit her” as Shorty had said, then he would find a way to compensate her four-fold. He finished the meal to the last crumb, rolled a cigarette from Shorty’s ample supply of makin’s, and with blue wreaths of smoke circling about his head, revelled in delectable imaginings.
As far back as Peter could remember, the spirit of romance had beckoned to him. In early childhood it had given colour to his life, and in later years made him more a dreamer than a doer. As a boy he would roam about the grounds of his father’s country estate, peopling each copse of woods with weird wild beasts, princesses, tilting knights, giants and fairies. Every overhanging ledge was a deep, dark cavern where brigands held princesses in durance vile, and in his dreams Peter was the knight in shining mail who with keen sword swept aside all obstacles and rescued the beautiful maidens.
As he grew older, he read eagerly every book he could find dealing with the Great West, Australia and Africa. In his mind’s eye he saw himself as a pioneer in a strange land, living in a log cabin and braving the dangers of the wild open places. The spirit of the gipsy in his veins, he welcomed the war which freed him from the drudgery of office work, for which he was temperamentally unfitted. Like thousands of disillusioned adventurers, he found that in modern warfare there is nothing of glamour or romance.
His present pitiable condition was not wholly physical. There was a deeper hurt. His aesthetic soul had revolted, his fine sensibilities shocked by the indescribable horrors of four years of trench warfare. A shock that had depressed his vital forces, left him a legacy of shattered nerves, twitching muscles, and a victim to sudden attacks of melancholia that plunged him into sloughs of despondency sapped his energy and weakened his power of decision.
Peter came to his feet and paced the floor excitedly. The virgin mountains and this glamorous Indian Valley called to him. In his fancy he breathed the ozone-laden air of the deep forests, heard the soft whisper of wind in the pines and the roaring of mighty rivers. He would be a woodsman, an explorer in a strange land, a seeker of gold in the Great West. The anticipation of adventure to come sent the blood coursing through his veins and he laughed aloud from joy of the thought that his dreams seemed coming true.
Peter’s rapt musing was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall. The door swung open to admit Shorty and Slim—but what a changed Shorty. His cleanly-shaved face was mottled with patches of white where the dense growth of whiskers had excluded the sun. His neatly trimmed hair showed a line of lighter coloured skin around the edges at temple and neck. These pale patches contrasted oddly with the heavy tan of cheek and nose.
A suit of ultra-fashionable cut, checked and barred with colours that would excite the envy of a negro minstrel, fitted his huge bulk so tightly that there seemed imminent danger of bursting the seams, with every movement of his body. A wide-brimmed hat with a band of bright yellow leather and nickeled rings, sat high on his grizzled head. A blue flannel shirt with collar upturned about his brawny neck, shiny patent leather shoes, and a necktie of brilliant red, completed a sartorial display equally as startling as the woodsman’s garb he had worn that morning. A bottle protruded from each side pocket of his coat and under each arm he carried a bulky package.
“Klahowya, ol’ sport,” he roared in greeting. “Say, you look like a million dollars: an’ this mornin’ you resembled ten cents’ worth o’ dog meat. Brought you a few bottles o’ stout,” he went on as he deposited his bundles on the dresser. “Got to put some beef on our pardner before we hit the trail. Bought me a new music box, too. Lost the one I’ve had for ten years, when our canoe kelipied on the river. Ain’t she a peach?” he chortled as he held a shiny accordion for their inspection.
Shorty kept up a running fire of talk as he moved about the room preparing the drinks, all the while stealing glances at himself in the mirror.
“Ain’t them some glad rags?” he asked as he stopped before the glass. “What I’d call class, speed and distinction,” he answered his own query. His big frame rotated before the mirror as he inspected himself from every angle. Evidently pleased with his appearance, he smiled broadly. “Pretty slick lookin’ ol’ scout after all,” he bragged.
Slim winked slyly at Peter, his eyes dancing with merriment. “Say,” chuckled Shorty, “you know a lot o’ city people think that a guy that goes prospectin’ has to run to shoulders an’ away from brains, but I showed one o’ them smart-Alec restaurant men that there’s one prospector that has a little grey matter in his nut.
“I went into this hash emporium, and I’ll be darned if they didn’t make me wait on myself. Had to pick up a tray an’ carry my vittles to a table. But I slipped it over on ’em when I went out. Can’t make a fool out of me. I just walked out without washin’ the dishes. I get enough o’ that when I’m in the hills, without doin’ it in city restaurants.”
“Where did you eat?” asked Peter.
“Don’t know what street it was on, but the name of the feller that runs it is Cafeteria.”
Slim leaned forward in his chair, his shoulders shaking violently. Shorty turned to him quickly. “What’s eatin’ you, Slim?”
With a struggle, Slim composed his features. “You’re sure too much for them,” he drawled.
“You bet I am, Slim,” Shorty agreed. He sat down, stretched out his legs and rubbed his new shoes gingerly. “Them new boots look classy, but they make my feet feel like a cooked bacon.” He sipped his whiskey and water meditatively for a few moments.
“You know that to-day in quenchin’ this year’s drought, I got pretty well lickered up, an’ it gave me the gumption to go to one o’ them lady barber shops. I busts through the door an’ yells out: ‘Any you gentler-sex-female-tonsorial-artists got a kind heart, a bush-scythe an’ an afternoon to spare?’ The boss dame at the first chair spots me for a bum rough-neck, an’ gives me the cold an’ fishy lamp.
“ ‘Say,’ she pipes, ‘what you’re lookin’ for is a mattress factory or a seat on the Bolsheviki Soviet Council. I seem to hear a human voice, but there ain’t nothin’ human ’bout that movin’ bunch o’ alfalfa I see. Come outa your ambush an’ tell me if you got the price; an’ in case you ain’t, just close the door as you go out.’
“I seen hyak that I ain’t got no chance o’ gettin’ the best in an exchange o’ gay reparty with a jane that slings the wau-wau like she does. So I says—very cold-like: ‘Madam, I’m Shorty McCrae, an’ I got more pil chicamin than a salmon’s got scales. I’m lousy with it, an’ I wouldn’t be surprised if my whiskers was properly assayed, they’d run about ten dollars to the pan.’ With that, I pulled out my poke an’ waved it under her nose. I seen right away that she liked me better, ’cause her face changed so quickly. She looked as though she was suckin’ a lemon when she first spoke to me, an’ now the lemon had turned to honey. She give me a smile that fairly dripped. ‘Set down, Mr. McCrae,’ says she, ‘I’ll be through in a minnit.’ An’ then you should have seen the hair fly off the poor guy that was in her chair. ‘Say, sister,’ the victim squawks, ‘I just want a haircut. Leave my ears.’
“When I come in the place I saw a little girl at the second chair who give me an admirin’ glance—in spite of my whiskers—the minnit I come in. Talk about bright eyes an’ rosy cheeks! Oh mamma! She was a darb! An’ her eyelashes were the blackest an’ heaviest I ever seen. Her neck made me think o’ Annie Laurie’s, it was so different; bein’ not so long an’ crooked as a swan’s, but just the right length an’ thickness. She give me a look that made me feel that she really liked me. She tipped the chair so quick that the feller she was shavin’ fell on his face; looked right at me, an’ yelled: ‘Next!’
“I fell over a hat-rack an’ a coupla spittoons, but got in just ahead of a skinny guy who said, ‘I’m next’. I looked him right in the eye—none too peaceful-like, an’ said: ‘If you’re ‘next’ to what’s good for you, sonny, you better walk backwards.’ He did. The look the boss dame with the codfish eye give me was sharper than the razor she held in her hand.
“Well, I said ‘sure’ to everythin’ the little barber girl asked me. I got a face rub, hair tonic, shampoo, an’ lots of other things I don’t know the name of. An’ look at that!” He spread his fingers to show highly polished nails. “It seems that she is supportin’ her mother an’ they are havin’ a pretty hard time o’ it. I threw her a ten-spot an’ give her a nugget for a keepsake ’cause I felt sorry for her. I’m goin’ to take her out for an automobile ride to-morrow—that is, if her mother’ll let her.”
For a long interval Shorty sat looking into nothingness, a gentle light in his eyes. He sighed deeply. “Peter,” he said softly, “to-day was the first time since I was a kid that a woman brushed my hair. I remember when I was a boy goin’ to school, my mother used to—” he broke off suddenly. “Oh, what’s the use. Guess I’ll solace myself with a little music.” He picked up the accordion, tested the keys, then began to sing.
Shorty’s songs were usually a mixture of Chinook and English and many were of his own improvisation. He slowly expanded and contracted the bellows, and his not unmusical bass voice boomed a chanting accompaniment to the plaintive, doleful sound of the instrument.
“Come, klootchman, fly with Shorty
An’ leave your bark canoe.
We’ll take a hyas Klattawa
Into the Cariboo.
Where there’s plenty grouse an’ mowitsh,
Where the silver rainbows play;
We will iskum tenas moosum
When daylight fades away.
No more am I to wander
A’lookin’ for a stake.
We’ll build a tenas cabin
On the shore of Canim Lake.”
“Now that I’ve got that off my chest, we’ll talk a little business.” He grinned at Peter. “Guess our mascot ain’t started to work yet ’cause we run up agin a snag to-day.”
Peter glanced at the speaker questioningly.
“We got to have a thousand bucks for a grubstake, so we went up to see J. B.; but the son-of-a-gun tells us he’s quit stakin’ prospectors. We run into a guy by the name o’ Ross Morlock, who is a kind of one-horse minin’ broker an’ bootlegger combined. As far as I can find out, he don’t amount to much; his only distinction bein’ that he’s a swell dresser an’ a hellion with the wimmen. He says he has the money an’ will listen to our story. We’re goin’ to meet him in the restaurant downstairs at seven o’clock.”
Slim twisted uneasily in his chair.
“Come on, Slim! Spit it out! What is it?” encouraged Shorty.
Instead of the usual soft drawl, Slim’s voice held a sharp tone: “Don’t like him!”
“I ain’t stuck on him, neither,” concurred Shorty. “But what we goin’ to do? Men with a thousand dollars to hand over to a coupla ol’ sourdoughs like us are scarcer’n hen’s teeth.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s have another shot an’ then go an’ eat.”
