Читать книгу New Rivers of the North: The Yarn of Two Amateur Explorers - Footner Hulbert - Страница 9

We pitched in too, tearing up the corduroy of a neighboring bridge, and cheerfully miring ourselves to the hips in the endeavor to "prize" her up. Pop Hopper stood by yelling and cursing at us in his own way. At one time we had five horses and four mules straining at the chains, but all to no avail; she stuck. Finally we had to unload, and then we discovered that Pop Hopper had his own way of loading too. He was taking a load of "fancy stuff" to one of the stores at the summit. He had carefully put in all the lighter things first, such as boxes of macaroni, crates of cocoanuts, oranges, onions and eggs. On this he had piled bags of sugar, bales of hay, and great chests of tea. Consequently we uncovered a horrid scramble in the bottom of the wagon box; long strings of yellow egg ceaselessly dripped through the cracks.

We finally put him on his way, taking care, however, to gain the road ahead of him. The next day we heard the sequel. A few miles beyond where we left him he drove off the side of a steep bank, and his wagon capsized, "with all four wheels turning in the air." Our informant added that he had come across Pop Hopper after the accident comfortably lunching under a tree. The whole landscape was littered with fancy groceries, and the old man was eating pickles out of a bucket that had burst against a stump beside him.

As soon as we left Mile 88 we entered among the real mountains, gigantic, naked sweeps of rock that took our breath away afresh every time we lifted our eyes. The pass is an easy one, and for the most part the valley was flat all the way through. Soon we were winding around the bases of the snow-capped mountains. Of all the works of nature surely no one could ever come to take snowy peaks for granted. To see them in the sunlight, flung up against an ocean of blue, is at once the most beautiful and the most disquieting sight of earth. For an entire day Pyramid Mountain dazzled and delighted our eyes with its regular snowy plains.

Meanwhile the tote road was as animated as a city street. All day the freighters came and went, and this is not to speak of other travelers, mounted or in wagons, and a small army afoot. It is a saying up there that there are always three construction gangs in the country, one coming, one going, and one at work on the grade. In addition, the tote road had this year for the first made the mountains accessible for prospecting, and we were continually meeting gold-hunters, those harmless madmen with their little hammers.

We walked into the camp at the Summit one Monday morning, Wingy and the blacksmith following soon after. Pat had mysteriously disappeared the day before. Wingy, with his wicked smile said we would find him at the Summit, but he was not there, nor did we ever learn what had become of him. I desire to give a plain unvarnished account of what we saw in this place. At first it seemed to us no different from the other camps we had passed through, but little by little the difference became apparent, and in the end we found ourselves looking on a little dazed, and scarcely comprehending what was happening.

I should explain that under the Canadian laws no liquor may be kept or sold along the line of construction of a railroad. East of the Summit the law was pretty well enforced by the mounted police. There were some "boot-leggers," but no "speak-easies." The province of British Columbia, however, administers its own internal affairs much the same as one of the sovereign states across the border. Consequently the mounted police had no jurisdiction, and the camp at the Summit had sprung up in their faces, not more than a hundred yards from the border of Alberta. It is true, protection by the province of British Columbia had been promised the law-abiding element, but the police had not materialized. I hope they are there by this time.

The camp consisted of perhaps fifteen log shacks roofed with canvas. There were three or four general stores, a Japanese restaurant, and four drinking places, the latter run without the slightest pretense of concealment. Before we realized what kind of a place we had struck, we were rash enough to accede to Wingy's request of five dollars on account, to enable him to buy feed for his horses. That explains our delay here.

The first thing that struck us as out of the common was the sight of several inanimate bodies sprawled in the mud of the trail. No one paid any attention. "Let 'em sleep it off," was the general sentiment. The instrument of havoc was "squirrel whiskey" at two bits a drink. One cynical traveler informed us that it was made out of gasolene: "two shots and you'll explode," said he.

Passing a little log shack we saw in the gloom within, a swollen figure like a spider sitting on a stump at the head of a rough table, idly shuffling a pack of cards with a wary eye on the open door. He had the hardest face I have ever seen, a compound of unmitigated sensuality and cunning. One would have thought the sight of it sufficient to warn an infant child to keep out of his den, but the next time we passed, each of the other three stumps around the table was occupied, and the game in full swing.

We were introduced to the mayor. This functionary we suspected had risen to his office by virtue of having the hardest head in the community. He accepted drinks from all, and betrayed no sign. His official duties so far as we observed consisted in ordering the bystanders to "roll them there corpses out of the trail so's the wagons kin pass." He also acted as a general safety deposit vault. A Swede lurched out of one of the bars, and collapsed on a bench outside. The mayor appropriated his watch, and held it up. "You see, fellers, I have his watch," he said. "I'll keep it till he comes to. Lay him out there to one side so's he won't git stepped on."

From bits of overheard conversation we learned that there had been what the newspapers call "a shooting affray" at the Summit the night before. An all-round bad man called "Baldy" on coming to town had given his roll to a lady to keep for him. On his demanding it back later, she claimed that he had drunk it up, whereupon Baldy proceeded to demolish her establishment. She shot at him and wounded a friend, who had been carried off to the hospital at Mile 116. This Baldy had a bad reputation in the country. They still tell the story of how he hitched his team to the corner of "Dirty Mag's" speak-easy and threatened to pull the whole thing over if she didn't come across with the drinks.

Presently the redoubtable Baldy was pointed out to us, drinking squirrel whiskey in the Japanese restaurant. Anything less like the bad man hero of Western romance could not be imagined. He was obese, flabby, and unclean. His aspect was as unwholesome as a piece of over-ripe fruit preserved in wood alcohol. He lacked coat and hat; his shirt was torn, and his unhallowed bald pate was covered with abrasions. He had reached the crying stage of intoxication, and was hanging on men's necks, sobbing aloud, and protesting his honesty. Yet he was as active as a lynx; he seemed to be everywhere in the camp at once, and wherever he went followed trouble.

I cannot undertake to describe seriatim all that we saw at the Summit. It remains in my mind like the phantasmagoria of a bad dream, nor is my partner's note-book any less incoherent. It was not until afterwards that we realized the significance of the happenings there. I remember with the rest of the crowd we continually moved up and down the trail from one saloon to another so as not to miss any of the "doings." We made the interesting discovery that all the drinking-places were bespattered with unmistakable ugly, dark stains. We received many invitations to partake of squirrel whiskey, but seeing the results before our eyes, we would as soon have drunk bichloride of mercury.

In the lower saloon some wag persuaded Baldy to put on the gloves with one "Curly," who was a clever boxer. It was very funny to see the boozy old creature prancing about on his toes in the pugilistic style of 1880, while he invited the other to come on, and the cabin was filled with the Homeric laughter of the crowd. This was innocent enough, but afterwards in Baldy's absence, one known as "Frenchy," who already bore the marks of several recent encounters on his face, made a disparaging remark, which Wingy, our little driver, took upon himself to resent.

One thing led to another, and presently Wingy leapt upon Frenchy, bore him to the floor, and proceeded to beat him up more thoroughly and expeditiously than I ever saw it done before. He held him down with the stump of his maimed arm, and punched him with the other. It was pure bravado on the part of Wingy; we guessed that he was doing it just to impress us. A good deal more of Frenchy's blood was spilled. When he threatened to lapse into unconsciousness his assailant was pulled off, minus a further portion of his ragged shirt. When Baldy came in and heard of the affair, he instantly bought him a new one.

Some time after this the foreman of a construction gang near by came striding into camp in a towering passion. Brandishing a fist like a ham under Baldy's nose, he ordered him out of town. "This here shootin' has got to stop!" he stormed. "How kin I keep my men at work down there with the bullets whistlin' through the trees!" The upshot of the argument was that Baldy, tearfully protesting, was loaded on a democrat that was about to start westward, and deported.

All this while at the other end of camp there was fighting going on among a crowd of Swedes. Squirrel whiskey had reduced the unfortunate creatures to a state of utter bestiality. They were men of enormous physical strength. They fought like animals, silently, blindly, heedless of friend or foe. If there was no adversary within reach, in their madness they just as lief butted their heads with frightful force against the log walls. A crowd swayed outside the door of the saloon, and we only had a brief glimpse when it parted, of what was going on within. The onlookers forebore to interfere, unless two men picked on one.

One man thus rescued fell limply across the bar, and lay there in apparent unconsciousness. But presently his hand went stealing to his hip pocket, drew out an ugly knife and opened it. Someone shouted a warning, then the crowd closed in in front of us. Presently there was the sound of a heavy fall inside the shack, and everybody came stumbling out with scared faces. We had a fleeting glimpse of a figure lying on the floor, with livid, ghastly face. The bartender hustled everybody out, and closed the shop. I do not know if the man was dead. There was no information to be had. Months afterwards we heard on the trail that a murder had been committed at the Summit during the summer, but there was nothing to show whether it was this case or another.

Between whiles we were ceaselessly commanding, urging, cajoling Wingy into making a start. He invariably promised to go after one more drink. He was a merry, little devil in his cups; he made us laugh, and then we could do nothing with him. Finally he fell in with the lady who had wielded the pistol the night before. She was a strange apparition in a freshly-starched "negligè," with two black pig-tails hanging down her back, and a face as hard as a brick and the same color. She took him into her place to tell him how it happened. Her raucous voice came through the open windows to us waiting patiently with the team in the sunshine.

When Wingy at last appeared we made final plea with him to start.

"Go ahead!" he cried gaily. "Take the team boys, and drive it to H—!"

There really seemed to be nothing better to do. We started along the trail, and we never saw Wingy again.