Читать книгу Higgins, a Man's Christian - Duncan Norman - Страница 2

A big, clean, rosy-cheeked man in a Mackinaw coat and rubber boots–hardly distinguishable from the lumber-jack crew except for his quick step and high glance and fine resolute way–went swiftly through a Deer River saloon toward the snake-room in search of a lad from Toronto who had in the camps besought to be preserved from the vicissitudes of the town.

“There goes the Pilot,” said a lumber-jack at the bar. “Hello, Pilot!”

“’Lo, Tom!”

“Ain’t ye goin’ t’ preach no more at Camp Six?”

“Sure, Tom!”

“Well–when the hell?”

“Week from Thursday, Tom,” the vanishing man called back; “tell the boys I’m coming.”

“Know the Pilot?” the lumber-jack asked.

I nodded.

“Higgins’s job,” said he, earnestly, “is keepin’ us boys out o’ hell; an’ he’s the only man on the job.”

Of this I had been informed.

“I want t’ tell ye, friend,” the lumber-jack added, with honest reverence, “that he’s a damned good Christian, if ever there was one. Ain’t that right, Billy?”

“Higgins,” the bartender agreed, “is a square man.”

The lumber-jack reverted to the previous interest. All at once he forgot about the Pilot.

“Hey, Billy!” he cried, severely, “where’d ye put that bottle?”

Higgins was then in the snake-room of the place–a foul compartment into which the stupefied and delirious are thrown when they are penniless–searching the pockets of the drunken boy from Toronto for some leavings of his wages. “Not a cent!” said he, bitterly. “They haven’t left him a cent! They’ve got every penny of three months’ wages! Don’t blame the boy,” he pursued, in pain and infinite sympathy, easing the lad’s head on the floor; “it isn’t all his fault. He came out of the camps without telling me–and some cursed tin-horn gambler met him, I suppose–and he’s only a boy–and they didn’t give him a show–and, oh, the pity of it! he’s been here only two days!”

The boy was in a stupor of intoxication, but presently revived a little, and turned very sick.

“That you, Pilot?” he said.

“Yes, Jimmie.”

“A’ right.”

“Feel a bit better now?”

“Uh-huh.”

The boy sighed and collapsed unconscious: Higgins remained in the weltering filth of the room to ease and care for him. “Don’t wait for me, old man,” said he, looking up from the task. “I’ll be busy for a while.”