Читать книгу Wild Honey - Frederick Niven - Страница 6

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We had just finished shaving when we saw a couple of Indian women on the edge of our bit of jungle, coasting it at a quick walk from east to west. They peered once between the leaves at us when making that detour, and did not so much as glance again. There was something in this transit, I gathered from the manner of Hank and Slim, that was not normal. It did not seem normal to me, though I thought perhaps the semicivilized of a certain order might have a different way of attracting attention from that of the civilized.

Suddenly they appeared again, having made the end of their detour of us out of sight, appeared from the same direction as before and passed round our patch of jungles, east to west, once more, with the same fussy gait as on the first transit. It was rather spooky, or as though we were demented, had an aspect of hallucination.

"If they come again like that I'll think I'm bug-house," said Hank, and laughed.

Slim advanced a step or two, peering after them, a set smile on his face.

"Don't you, now!" cautioned Hank, looking grimly at him, without saying what he was not to do.

"I ain't going to," replied Slim. "I ain't moved that way early in the day; and anyhow it don't look right to me. There's something funny about it. Looks to me as if they was kind of daring us, wanting to make some trouble."

Having completed that semicircle they did not return. Instead, there strolled past, in the same direction as the women had taken, several Indian men, talking quietly among themselves and looking slant-eyed now and then in at us. There are truly all manner of worlds within the world. Here were we within a stone's throw of the railway track, on which at that very moment a comfortable train was spinning not far off, people sitting down to breakfast in it, pondering menu-cards, spreading napkins on their knees, attended by white-coated stewards. Not near us, but after all in the same province, and by that very railway track, were affluent sporting men and mountain-climbers, from all over the world, Himalayas and Alps, up at the Glacier Hotel; and eastward a bit was the Lake Louise Château, not the grand one of to-day to be sure, but even then a place where a hobo would be the last creature in the world expected; and on a bit further east again, the Banff hotel, with Indians only as picturesque and often highly majestic human beings (they are Stoney Indians there), to be photographed at their dances and their fall fair. Worlds within worlds! Even at that hotel close by, the one with the cropped lawn, every guest would "pshaw" aside, as the product of a hectic mind, any talk of "trouble with the Indians."

"Oh, to hell with them!" said Hank, "whatever they are after. Come on, we'll get over to the office and present our time-checks."

Arrived at the office we had other trouble. The man there looked at the date upon the time-checks, and then at us. He must, we decided, have come from the East. He had not the spirit of the West in him. "Sufficient unto a man his own personal job" was not his motto. He glared at us indignantly. To be shrewd and a fool is very tedious; and this fellow was a shrewd fool, hard to suffer gladly, with a leaning toward being autocratic.

"These time-checks," he said, with the air of being specially observant and astute, "have yesterday's date on them. How did you get down here so soon?"

We, of course, knew what he was thinking. The passenger train had not yet come in from east, only the night freight. On the principle that his question was neither here nor there, but might as well be answered, Slim said, in that insouciant way of his:

"We walked."

The man in office, at that, peeped sidelong at him.

"Didn't you know," Slim continued, "that there hasn't been a passenger train down for us to ride in?"

Once he got started with people of that kind (I was to see him thus baiting others who tried to bait him before we parted) he derived considerable enjoyment. One corner of his mouth twisted up slightly, his eyes danced in genial fashion. He did not get angry. He became amused.

"Well," said the man in office, "I'm not going to pay you until the passenger train from east comes in."

"Why not?" asked Slim gently, or ingenuously one might have said, had one not noted the twinkling in his eyes of that controlled hilarity over this inquisitor and little tyrant with the exaggerated view of his duty to his company!

The man met his gaze.

"Because I won't have the money till then," he replied.

"Oh, I see," said Slim, suavely, and the way that he looked was equivalent to calling the man a liar. "Oh, well, that's all right. Don't you worry about not having the money till then. I thought at first, from the way you were going on, that maybe you weren't going to pay till the passenger came in for spite, because of hus coming down—" he paused, leant against the counter and grinned, "on the freight."

"You acknowledge you came down on the freight," said the man in office—shrewdly.

Slim's head went upon one side and he smiled in that delicious manner of his.

"Ain't acknowledging anything," he said. "I'm discussing what started you on the line of talk you adopted. But that's all right, Mr. Clerk, we'll come back after the train is in. See that you have it."

Hank had taken no part in this talk, even with an aside, had left all to Slim to meet and enjoy; but when we got outside he started one of his perorations, a sociological monologue, a lecture upon capital and labor, tyrants, their creatures and their prey. It began with the sheer facts of our case and ended in hectic and general blasphemy, Slim and I listening in rapt attention.

"Well," said Slim, when he came to an end, "we'll go down and set on the depot platform in a piece of shade somewhere till the west-bound comes in."

But a total stranger passing by, who had overheard a part of Hank's harangue—who had stopped, indeed, at a respectful distance to absorb it—stepped over to us.

"Excuse me," he said, "I couldn't but hear what you were saying. I ain't a shark, or anything like it, trying to throw the con into you fellows. I work over at the hotel here. That man in the office you were—er—making comments upon is awful arrogant with you fellows who come in from working on the railroad. He'd be a powerful big man if he got on horseback. It kind of flatters him to hold up paying you. He's got money enough to pay in the safe all the time, unless you been working a year apiece, or something like that, without drawing wages. Where were you working?"

"Penny's Pit."

"That's up the other side of Ashcroft?"

"Yes."

"Well, he has the authority to issue checks for your time-checks, even if he don't have cash."

"Thank you," said Hank. "We'll give him as we said. We'll give him till the west-bound comes in, seeing we said it. Thank you."

The man nodded and walked on.

"Now that's a damned fine fellow," said Hank. "Yes, sir," he nodded at Slim as though he expected him to doubt it. "It does a man good when he's been talked to the way that plug in there talked to us, to have somebody else talk the way that man did. And it's not for anything he can get out of us. He's not looking for anything from us. Thank God for a human being and an honest man."

This may sound an odd remark from one such as Hank, this expression of joy over an honest man, but despite the fact that my friends were not beyond stealing a ride, yes, and robbing a hen-roost in summer-time (as I was to see), or knocking the legs from under some soused citizen crossing a back-lot in town in winter (as I was to hear), kneeing the wind out of him before he could rise, and abstracting from his pocket what coin or paper of the realm he might have, they had a streak of honesty too. With me they were honest from beginning to end of our strange partnership. There is a point of view, indeed, I think, from which one might hazard that their honesty as well as their dishonesty stood in their way towards worldly success.

"Hell of a lot of Indians prowling around here," remarked Slim as we sat in what "piece of shade" on the platform we could find.

Hank, who had been smoking and brooding and not noticing, said: "Where?" looking left and right.

"Why," said Slim, "there are little groups of them all along through the bushes on the other side where we were. Seem to be waiting for something."

Hank looked up casually, stretching and yawning, rolled another cigarette, ruefully, his tobacco near an end.

"Yes," he said. "Well, to hell with them. Here's our train."

The passenger train came gliding to a standstill. People got out to stretch their legs, walked to and fro; the baggage-truck trundled; the intermittent clip of the hammer of a man testing the wheels sounded. Then "All aboard!" We let it go, its hoots for curves dying away off to west, before we returned to the office; and on arriving there were informed by a clerk that the boss was out. No, no idea when he would be back; hadn't said. We produced our time-checks, but the clerk shook his head. He couldn't do that for us; we must see the boss.

We went outside rather subdued, and there Hank again favored us with a sociological peroration. We wandered aimlessly about, went down to the end of the platform, the sun scorching our necks, and watched the sprinkler play. We walked on and looked at the water-tank, came back and stared at the sprinkler.

"What's the matter with eating?" suggested Slim.

"Only that we don't know if this is a good town," replied Hank.

"And we have no money," said I.

Slim laughed.

"Well, there must be houses where we could get a hand-out for sure," he said. "We might even get a sit-down."

Hank looked at me. I think he wondered if the significance of hand-out and sit-down had dawned on me and, if it had, what was my opinion. Whether too priggish or too proud, whatever be your view, I was for incontinently annulling partnership if there was to be any of that side of the hobo element introduced, that eleemosynary meniality. Begging as a profession, to be cheerfully resorted to (or even as an adjunct, one of the irons in the fire), I could not view, have never been able to view, with the pleasure of the author of "The Autobiography of a Super Tramp." I was away at the other pole in that matter, adread lest some day I might be forced by bitter necessity to beg, instead of having as part of my creed a determination not to work. I speak here less as moralist than emotionalist! I had rather be a hold-up man than a beggar. In those days, too, when Hank and Slim and I came to North Bend, work was plentiful in the West. Slim had the W. H. Davies outlook, however, saw begging as an amusing profession, was even at times slightly ashamed of working at all, though the more or less earned dollars of Penny's Pit in his pocket (when eventually he got them) gave him, shreds of other views remaining in him, a certain pleasure, I believe. But Hank understood my scruples. When our eyes met I saw something in his that meant he would be on my side if I spoke what was in my mind.

"Well, boys," I said, "we may as well split partnership altogether right now, before we've even commenced this trip of ours back south, if there's to be any of this bumming business. You didn't mention that to me. Stealing a ride on the trains is the only bit of hobo-life I'm going to have anything to do with."

"All right, all right," said Slim.

"I've no objection to not working," I explained, that he might know I could share some of his joys in life. "I like to sit in the shade and meditate. If nobody had to work it would be different, if the meals fell in all our mouths off the trees; but I cannot live on other people's labor. Stealing a ride off a big corporation like a railway is another matter altogether from going to houses cadging a meal."

"All right, all right," said Hank. "I quite understand the point of view and I'd be obliged if you wouldn't say more. For it's true talk, and makes me feel ashamed, and I hate like hell to feel ashamed. I can talk to myself just the way you're talking."

"Why, man, it's all part of the fun!" exclaimed Slim, and then, throwing back his head slightly: "Oh, all right, have it that way. That's a deal, then, while hus are together."

We saw our man going up to the office and pursued him.

"What do you want?" he snapped at us as we followed him indoors.

"Guess you've forgotten us," said Slim. "Quite a while since we was here. 'Way back this morning."

"Well, I can't attend to you just now."

Then I saw another side of Hank. The man in office was holding the door open for us to depart. Hank had an unlit cigarette in his hand. He lit it, lifting his left leg and striking the match on the inside, blew a column of smoke towards this fellow, who seemed to hate us deeply, so that he had to hold back his head and blink against the volume of it. When he opened his eyes again it was to meet the blaze in Hank's.

"We'll wait inside here, till you're ready," said Hank, and I never heard one speak with such an edge to the voice, and only once before saw such a look in a man's eyes.

The man fluttered a moment, then recovered.

"You can't wait here," said he.

Slim looked around the place.

"Why not?" he asked. "Because there ain't no chairs?"

There was a quick glance between him and Hank and I knew they understood each other. They were going into action. They strolled to the counter, jumped upon it, there seated themselves. The man shut the door with a slam, passed behind the counter. Hank lay back, leisurely blowing smoke.

"Here, let me see your time-checks," came the voice of our vigorous contemner suddenly, as he burst back again into the office from his partitioned-off room.

We surrendered these and he dashed away.

For a moment Slim looked at Hank, a worry showing in his eyes, worried (so he told us later when all was over and they could laugh at the episode) lest we should not have given up our time-checks but kept hold of them by one corner at least while they were examined, till we had our payment checks, at least grasped by a corner, in the other hand! Quaint picture of office dealings as conceived in the mind of Slim; but then he had reason, bedeviled as we were by that man.

In a few minutes there came from the inner room a yelp for the assistant, who replied to the summons at the double. We did not see the man in office again. The assistant completed the transaction, an intermediary, anon presenting a big ledger-like book to us and laying three checks before us with the information:

"You'll have to take these. We haven't the cash here."

As well as giving us our payment-checks he returned to us our time-checks, and I wondered if he should not have retained these, and perhaps was hectored later for not having done so. I have that time-check of mine still. It reads:

"This is to indentify Fred Niven who workt in my gang. . . ."

then the dates and the boss's signature.

"You haven't the cash?" inquired Hank grimly.

"Well, so he says," the assistant replied in a low voice, and thereby became a friend of Slim and Hank.

They felt sorry for him, a poor boob, a poor guy hanging on to a job under a swine like that (thus they discussed him later) just because he thought he must hold down a job instead of realizing that the world was wide, and that the door into it was not locked anyhow.

"The agent should be able to cash them for you," the youth further informed us, sotto voce.

"Well, so-long, Mr. Man!" called Slim, for the partition to the private room did not reach the ceiling.

There was, of course, no reply.

"To hell with him," growled Hank.

Pathetic fellows in a way. Slim did not know the word "indorse." Hank had once known it—there was no doubt whatever of that, from other words that he did know well.

"We've got to what-do-you-call-it these checks," said Hank when we got out, "back 'em up, or something. Damn it all, what do you call it?"

"Search me," said Slim. "You write your name on the back, anyhow."

We went to the depot where our financial troubles were over. The agent could just do it for us, but couldn't understand, he grumbled, counting the money for us out of his store, how the man in office could not do it. That over——

"I should like to eat," I said.

"I should like to drink," said Hank. "Come on up to the hotel."

We did not go to the one with the revolving sprayer on the lawn. We went to the other.

A long, lean, cadaverous, blue-eyed man was leaning against the side of the door into the saloon portion, watching us coming. He looked at us tenderly, but without speech, as we passed in.

What I expected Hank to say, of course, was: "What will you have?" I did not realize that when he drank, he drank by the bottle. He stepped up to the bar.

"A bottle of whisky," said he.

"A bottle? I'm afraid I can't serve you," replied the bar-man, looking worried.

On the instant, eyes blazing, Hank flung his hand round to his hip.

"Take a look at that, will you?" he snapped.

His intention was to produce his new wad of bills, thinking the barkeeper doubted, by his apparel, if he had the price for a bottle of whisky; but the barkeeper, with another explanation for that movement in his mind, at once ducked down behind the counter.

It seems all very queer to me now, the years having passed and I, instead of shaving in the jungle opposite, having stopped over there for a sentiment and slept in the hotel behind the watered lawn, seems all so foreign to me, indeed, now that I can excuse anyone who has never slept anywhere but in a hotel behind a cropped lawn for thinking this little incident fabricated.

But there is no doubt that the barkeeper thought Hank was about to pull a gun after that glance of rage; though that does not mean, of course, that guns were at all frequently pulled in North Bend. He may have come from some tougher place where guns were nonchalantly pulled, or from some tranquil place where the opinion was that in the West they were always being pulled.

The long, lean gentleman at the door certainly saw it as we saw it, realized that his barkeeper thought a gun was being drawn—for it chanced that he was the proprietor. He came lolling over to us.

"Man, what's the matter with you!" he said to his barkeeper.

Up came the barkeeper then like a jack-in-the-box, and to Hank the proprietor gently explained this odd reception.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen" (he called us "gentlemen") "but I had a message from the Indian agent yesterday, and I have to obey these messages. I ain't even allowed to use my own discretion. It's government order. And the message is to sell no alcohol in bottles to any but residents whom I personally know."

"Oh—I—see," said Hank slowly, greatly mollified.

"Seeing you've been put out this way," went on the proprietor, "let me stand the three of you a drink. Let it be on the house. Or perhaps you would prefer cigars?"

"Well, that's awful good of you," drawled Hank, with the most sentimental gaze upon the long, lean one of the blue eyes.

Slim, to my astonishment, did prefer a cigar, so I followed his example. It was a blazing day and our bellies were empty. They didn't measure the whisky for us in those days. They put the bottle on the bar, but Hank reciprocated the courtesy by taking below the minimum instead of the maximum, which said much for him considering how he could pour that liquor down his throat. I was to see him do so. According to the formality, when he and the proprietor raised their glasses, Slim and I elevated our cigars. We looked at each other. We looked at each other stonily over glasses and cigars, at attention. Then the proprietor and Hank having drunk, Slim said: "Smoke it later," and put the cigar in his vest pocket.

"Now, sir, have one on me," said Hank, the tot imbibed.

"No, thank you," replied the proprietor, and then he called us boys instead of gentlemen. "Now, boys," said he, "I'm a hotel proprietor, but I just hate like hell to sell drink to you. You don't get paid a heap of money; you got to work dam' hard for your money; and I just hate like hell when you boys come in and force me to sell you liquor, and drink it by the bottle at that."

"That's right, too," said Slim. "That's right, too"; but there was a slightly combative look in his eyes, not at all due, I think, even to a suspicion that there might be other considerations than for his welfare influencing the proprietor to speak thus, but because of the lurking thought that he was his own master. He resented the hortatory tone, however gentle it might be.

With Hank it was far otherwise. This paternal-like solicitude made him maudlin in sentimental admiration. The idea did not come to him at all that there might be more in this seemingly tender interest than was superficially apparent. He suspected no arričre pensée. Of course he did not see himself. Had he done so, in his knowledge of men, he might well, had he been that hotel proprietor, have thought: "Here's the sort that makes a rough-house when he has a few jolts." It is not beyond possibility that the long, lean gentleman, seeing him, welcomed the excuse of the agent's order, and then pulled out that other stop of paternal-like solicitude, desirous to be rid of such a guest at his house, whether drinking by the bottle or the glass. The thought that we had possibly, diplomatically, tactfully, with "sob-stuff," been got rid of did not dawn, however. Hank looked as though on the verge of tears.

We moved towards the door, the proprietor tapping a hand gently on Hank's shoulder as he went out, and then taking up his old position, leaning against his hotel. We walked quite a way without any speech, and then Hank began a harangue, this time not passing into chasms of blasphemy but into the depths of the maudlin, moved to the core by that hotelkeeper's talk.

When he was in the full flow of it Slim looked sidewise at him, and in that glance was a touch of such pity as I had seen Hank bestow upon the ignorant little navvy at Penny's Pit. Yes, it was maudlin; but I think there must be something rather supercilious and arid in the heart of one who can see him (whether caring to invite him in to afternoon tea or not) only as ridiculous, piffling on so about "that fine fellow, even if he is a hotel proprietor"; and a lack of imagination too, for behind that gratitude what bitterness over other treatment must have lain, what depths of disappointment there must have been in men, and in himself too, perhaps. I think in himself, too.

I thought when I started out with them that I was, chiefly, going to see some new places, dip into another way of life in their company. I had no idea that they were going to bulk so large, such queer characters, against the scene.