Cy Warman - The Last Spike

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"Jim Bradford," the millionnaire repeated, still holding the engineer's
hand.

"Yes, Judge Manning, I'm Jim Bradford," said the bearded pathfinder,
trying to smile and appear natural.

Suddenly realizing that some explanation was due the General, the Judge
turned and said, but without releasing the engineer's hand: "Why, I know
this young man--knew his father. We were friends from boyhood."

Slowly he returned his glance to Bradford. "Will you come into my car in
an hour from now?" he asked.

"Thank you," said Bradford, nodding, and with a quick, simultaneous
pressure of hands, the two men parted.

VI

Bradford has often since felt grateful to the Judge for that five years'
sentence, but never has he forgotten the happy thought that prompted the
capitalist to give him this last hour, in which to get into a fresh suit
and have his beard trimmed. Bradford wore a beard always now, not
because a handsome beard makes a handsome man handsomer, but because it
covered and hid the hideous scar in his chin that had been carved there
by the Sioux chief.

When the black porter bowed and showed Bradford into Mr. Manning's
private car, the pleasure of their late meeting and the Judge's kindly
greeting vanished instantly. It was all submerged and swept away,
obliterated and forgotten in the great wave of inexpressible joy that
now filled and thrilled his throbbing heart, for it was Mary Manning who
came forward to greet him. For nearly an hour she and her father had
been listening to the wonderful story of the last five years of the
engineer's life. When the wily General caught the drift of the young
lady's mind, and had been informed of the conditional engagement of the
young people, he left nothing unsaid that would add to the fame and
glory of the trail-maker. With radiant face she heard of his heroism,
tireless industry, and wonderful engineering feats; but when the
narrator came to tell how he had been captured and held and tortured by
the Indians, she slipped her trembling hand into the hand of her
father, and when he saw her hot tears falling he lifted the hand and
kissed it, leaving upon it tears of his own.

The Judge now produced his cigar case, and the General, bowing to the
young lady, followed the great financier to the other end of the car,
leaving Mary alone, for they had seen Bradford coming up the track.

The dew of her sweet sorrow was still upon her face when Bradford
entered, but the sunshine of her smile soon dried it up. The hands he
reached for escaped him. They were about his face; then their great joy
and the tears it brought blinded them, and the wild beating of their
happy hearts drowned their voices so that they could neither see nor
hear, and neither has ever been able to say just what happened.

On the day following this happy meeting, when the consolidated special
was rolling east-ward, while the Judge and the General smoked in the
latter's car, the tent boy brought a telegram back to the happy pair. It
was delivered to Miss Manning, and she read it aloud:

"WASHINGTON, May 11, 1869.

"GENERAL G.M. DODGE:

"In common with millions I sat yesterday and heard the mystic taps of
the telegraph battery announce the nailing of the last spike in the
Great Pacific Road. All honor to you, to Durant, to Jack and Dan
Casement, to Reed and the thousands of brave followers who have wrought
out this glorious problem, spite of changes, storms, and even doubts of
the incredulous, and all the obstacles you have now happily surmounted!

"W.T. SHERMAN,

"_General_."

"Well!" she exclaimed, letting her hands and the telegram fall in her
lap, "he doesn't even mention my hero."

"Oh, yes, he does, my dear," said Bradford, laughing. "I'm one of the
'thousands of brave followers.'"

Then they both laughed and forgot it, for they were too happy to bother
with trifles.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The subsidy from the Government was $16,000 a mile on the
plains, and $48,000 a mile in the mountains.]

THE BELLE OF ATHABASCA

Athabasca Belle did not burst upon Smith the Silent all at once, like a
rainbow or a sunrise in the desert. He would never say she had been
thrust upon him. She was acquired, he said, in an unguarded moment.

The trouble began when Smith was pathfinding on the upper Athabasca for
the new transcontinental. Among his other assets Smith had two camp
kettles. One was marked with the three initials of the new line, which,
at that time, existed only on writing material, empty pots, and equally
empty parliamentary perorations. The other was not marked at all. It was
the personal property of Jaquis, who cooked for Smith and his outfit.
The Belle was a fine looking Cree--tall, strong, _magnifique_. Jaquis
warmed to her from the start, but the Belle was not for Jaquis, himself
a Siwash three to one. She scarcely looked at him, and answered him
only when he asked if she'd _encore_ the pork and beans. But she looked
at Smith. She would sit by the hour, her elbow on her knee and her chin
in her hand, watching him wistfully, while he drew crazy, crooked lines
or pictured mountains with rivers running between them--all of which,
from the Belle's point of view, was not only a waste of time, but had
absolutely nothing to do with the case.

The Belle and her brown mother came to the camp of the Silent first one
glorious morn in the moon of August, with a basket of wild berries and a
pair of beaded moccasins. Smith bought both--the berries for Jaquis, out
of which he built strange pies, and the moccasins for himself. He called
them his night slippers, but as a matter of fact there was no night on
the Athabasca at that time. The day was divided into three shifts, one
long and two short ones,--daylight, dusk, and dawn. So it was daylight
when the Belle first fixed her large dark eyes upon the strong, handsome
face of Smith the Silent, as he sat on his camp stool, bent above a map
he was making. Belle's mother, being old in years and unafraid, came
close, looked at the picture for a moment, and exclaimed: "Him Jasper
Lake," pointing up the Athabasca.

"You know Jasper Lake?" asked the engineer, glancing up for the first
time.

"_Oui_," said the old woman (Belle's step-father was half French); "know
'im ver' well."

Smith looked her over as a matter of habit, for he allowed no man or
woman to get by him with the least bit of information concerning the
country through which his imaginary line lay. Then he glanced at Belle
for fully five seconds, then back to his blue print. Nobody but a
he-nun, or a man already wedded to the woods, could do that, but to the
credit of the camp it will go down that the chief was the only man in
the outfit who failed to feel her presence. As for Jaquis, the alloyed
Siwash, he carried the scar of that first meeting for six months, and
may, for aught I know, take it with him to his little swinging grave.
Even Smith remembers to this day how she looked, standing there on her
two trim ankles, that disappeared into her hand-turned sandals or faded
in the flute and fringe of her fawn skin skirt. Her full bosom rose and
fell, and you could count the beat of her wild heart in the throb of
her throat. Her cheeks showed a faint flush of red through the dark
olive,--the flush of health and youth,--her nostrils dilated, like those
of an Ontario high-jumper, as she drank life from the dewy morn, while
her eye danced with the joy of being alive. Jaquis sized and summed her
up in the one word "magnific." But in that moment, when she caught the
keen, piercing eye of the engineer, the Belle had a stroke that comes
sooner or later to all these wild creatures of the wilderness, but comes
to most people but once in a lifetime. She never forgot the gleam of
that one glance, though the Silent one was innocent enough.

It was during the days that followed, when she sat and watched him at
his work, or followed him for hours in the mountain fastnesses, that the
Belle of Athabasca lost her heart.

When he came upon a bit of wild scenery and stopped to photograph it,
the Belle stood back of him, watching his every movement, and when he
passed on she followed, keeping always out of sight.

The Belle's mother haunted him. As often as he broke camp and climbed a
little higher upstream, the brown mother moved also, and with her the
Belle.

"What does this old woman want?" asked the engineer of Jaquis one
evening when, returning to his tent, he found the fat Cree and her
daughter camping on his trail.

"She want that pot," said Jaquis.

"Then for the love of We-sec-e-gea, god of the Crees," said Smith, "give
it into her hands and bid her begone."

Jaquis did as directed, and the old Indian went away, but she left the
girl.

The next day Smith started on a reconnoissance that would occupy three
or four days. As he never knew himself when he would return, he never
took the trouble to inform Jaquis, the tail of the family.

After breakfast the Belle went over to her mother's. She would have
lunched with her mother from the much coveted kettle, but the Belle's
mother told her that she should return to the camp of the white man, who
was now her lord and master. So the Belle went back and lunched with
Jaquis, who otherwise must have lunched alone. Jaquis tried to keep her,
and wooed her in his half-wild way; but to her sensitive soul he was
repulsive. Moreover, she felt that in some mysterious manner her mother
had transferred her, together with her love and allegiance, to Smith the
Silent, and to him she must be true. Therefore she returned to the Cree
camp.

As the sinking sun neared the crest of the Rockies, the young Indian
walked back to the engineer's camp. As she strode along the new trail
she plucked wildflowers by the wayside and gathered leaves and wove them
into vari-colored wreaths, swinging along with the easy grace of a wild
deer.

Now some women would say she had not much to make her happy, but she was
happy nevertheless. She loved a man--to her the noblest, most god-like
creature of his kind,--and she was happy in abandoning herself to him.
She had lived in this love so long, had felt and seen it grow from
nothing to something formidable, then to something fine, until now it
filled her and thrilled her; it overspread everything, outran her
thoughts, brought the far-off mountains nearer, shortened the trail
between her camp and his, gave a new glow to the sunset, a new glory to
the dawn and a fresher fragrance to the wildflowers; the leaves
whispered to her, the birds came, nearer and sang sweeter; in short it
was her life--the sunshine of her soul. And that's the way a wild woman
loves.

And she was to see him soon. Perhaps he would speak to her, or smile on
her. If only he gave a passing glance she would be glad and content to
know that he was near. Alas, he came not at all. She watched with the
stars through the short night, slept at dawn, and woke to find Jaquis
preparing the morning meal. She thought to question Jaquis, but her
interest in the engineer, and the growing conviction that his own star
sank as his master's rose, rendered him unsafe as a companion to a young
bride whose husband was in the hills and unconscious of the fact that he
was wedded to anything save the wilderness and his work.

Jaquis not only refused to tell her where the engineer was operating,
but promised to strangle her if she mentioned his master's name again.

At last the long day died, the sunset was less golden, and the stars
sang sadder than they sang the day before. She watched the west, into
which he had gone and out of which she hoped he might return to her.
Another round of dusk and dawn and there came another day, with its
hours that hung like ages. When she sighed her mother scolded and Jaquis
swore. When at last night came to curtain the hills, she stole out under
the stars and walked and walked until the next day dawned. A lone wolf
howled to his kith, but they were not hungry and refused to answer his
call. Often, in the dark, she fancied she heard faint, feline footsteps
behind her. Once a big black bear blocked her trail, staring at her with
lifted muzzle wet with dew and stained with berry juice. She did not
faint nor scream nor stay her steps, but strode on. Now nearer and
nearer came the muffled footsteps behind her. The black bear backed from
the trail and kept backing, pivoting slowly, like a locomotive on a
turntable, and as she passed on, stood staring after her, his small eyes
blinking in babylike bewilderment. And so through the dusk and dark and
dawn this love-mad maiden walked the wilderness, innocent of arms, and
with no one near to protect her save the little barefooted bowman whom
the white man calls the God of Love.

Meanwhile away to the west, high in the hills, where the Findlay flowing
into the Pine makes the Peace, then cutting through the crest of the
continent makes a path for the Peace, Smith and his little army,
isolated, remote, with no cable connecting them with the great cities of
civilization, out of touch with the telegraph, away from the war
correspondent, with only the music of God's rills for a regimental band,
were battling bravely in a war that can end only with the conquest of a
wilderness. Ah, these be the great generals--these unheralded heroes
who, while the smoke of slaughter smudges the skies and shadows the sun,
wage a war in which they kill only time and space, and in the end,
without despoiling the rest of the world, win homes for the homeless.
These are the heroes of the Anglo-Saxon race.

* * * * *

Finding no trace of the trail-makers, the Belle faced the rising sun and
sought the camp of the Crees.

The mysterious shadow with the muffled tread, that had followed her
from the engineer's camp, shrank back into the bush as she passed down
the trail. That was Jaquis. He watched her as she strode by him,
uncertain as to whether he loved or hated her, for well he knew why she
walked the wilderness all night alone. Now the Gitche in his unhappy
heart made him long to lift her in his arms and carry her to camp, and
then the bad god, Mitche, would assert himself and say to the savage
that was in him, "Go, kill her. She despises her race and flings herself
at the white man's feet." And so, impelled by passion and stayed by
love, he followed her. The white man within him made him ashamed of his
skulking, and the Indian that was in him guided him around her and home
by a shorter trail.

That night the engineers returned, and when Smith saw the Cree in the
camp he jumped on Jaquis furiously.

"Why do you keep this woman here?" he demanded.

"I--keep? Me?" quoth Jaquis, blinking as bewildered as the black bear
had blinked at the Belle.

"Who but you?--you heathen!" hissed the engineer.

Now Jaquis, calling up the ghosts of his dead sires, asserted that it
was the engineer himself who was "keeping" the Cree. "You bought
her--she's yours," said Jaquis, in the presence of the company.

"You ill-bred ----" Smith choked, and reached for a tent prop. The next
moment his hand was at the Indian's throat. With a quick twist of his
collar band he shut off the Siwash's wind, choking him to the earth.

"What do you mean?" he demanded, and Jaquis, coughing, put up his hands.
"I meant no lie," said he. "Did you not give to her mother the camp
kettle? She has it, marked G.T.P."

"And what of that?"

"_Voila_," said Jaquis, "because of that she gave to you the Belle of
Athabasca."

Smith dropped his stick, releasing the Indian.

"I did not mean she is sold to you. She is trade--trade for the empty
pot, the Belle--the beautiful. From yesterday to this day she followed
you, far, very far, to the foot of the Grande Cote, and nothing harmed
her. The mountain lion looked on her in terror, the timber wolf took to
the hills, the black bear backed from the trail and let her pass in
peace," said Jaquis, with glowing enthusiasm. It was the first time he
had talked of her, save to the stars and to We-sec-e-gea, and he glowed
and grew eloquent in praise of her.

"You take her," said Smith, with one finger levelled at the head of the
cook, "to the camp of the Crees. Say to her mother that your master is
much obliged for the beautiful gift, but he's too busy to get married
and too poor to support a wife."

* * * * *

From the uttermost rim of the ring of light that came from the
flickering fire la Belle the beautiful heard and saw all that had passed
between the two men. She did not throw herself at the feet of the white
man. Being a wild woman she did not weep nor cry out with the pain of
his words, that cut like cold steel into her heart. She leaned against
an aspen tree, stroking her throat with her left hand, swallowing with
difficulty. Slowly from her girdle she drew a tiny hunting-knife, her
one weapon, and toyed with it. She put the hilt to the tree, the point
to her bare breast, and breathed a prayer to We-sec-e-gea, god of the
Crees. She had only to throw the weight of her beautiful body on the
blade, sink without a moan to the moss, and pass, leaving the camp
undisturbed.

Smith marked the faintest hint of sarcasm in the half smile of the
Indian as he turned away.

"Come here," he cried. Jaquis approached cautiously. "Now, you skulking
son of a Siwash, this is to be skin for skin. If any harm comes to that
young Cree you go to your little hammock in the hemlocks--you
understand?"

"_Oui, Monsieur_," said Jaquis.

"Very well, then; remember--skin for skin."

Now to the Belle, watching from her shelter in the darkness, there was
something splendid in this. To hear her praises sung by the Siwash, then
to have the fair god, who had heard that story, champion her, to take
the place of her protector, was all new to her. "Ah, good God," she
sighed; "it is better, a thousand times better, to love and lose him
than to waste one's life, never knowing this sweet agony."

She felt in a vague way that she was soaring above the world and its
woes. At times, in the wild tumult of her tempestuous soul, she seemed
to be borne beyond it all, through beautiful worlds. Love, for her, had
taken on great white wings, and as he wafted her out of the wilderness
and into her heaven, his talons tore into her heart and hurt like hell,
yet she could rejoice because of the exquisite pleasure that surpassed
the pain.

"Sweet We-sec-e-gea," she sighed, "good god of my dead, I thank thee for
the gift of this great love that stays the steel when my aching heart
yearns for it. I shall not destroy myself and distress him, disturbing
him in his great work, whatever it is; but live--live and love him, even
though he send me away."

She kissed the burnished blade and returned it to her belt.

When Jaquis, circling the camp, failed to find her, he guessed that she
was gone, and hurried after her along the dim, starlit trail. When he
had overtaken her, they walked on together. Jaquis tried now to renew
his acquaintance with the handsome Cree and to make love to her. She
heard him in absolute silence. Finally, as they were nearing the Cree
camp, he taunted her with having been rejected by the white man.

"And my shame is yours," said she softly. "I love him; he sends me away.
You love me; I send you from me--it is the same."

Jaquis, quieted by this simple statement, said good-night and returned
to the tents, where the pathfinders were sleeping peacefully under the
stars.

And over in the Cree camp the Belle of Athabasca, upon her bed of
boughs, slept the sleep of the innocent, dreaming sweet dreams of her
fair god, and through them ran a low, weird song of love, and in her
dream Love came down like a beautiful bird and bore her out of this life
and its littleness, and though his talons tore at her heart and hurt,
yet was she happy because of the exquisite pleasure that surpassed all
pain.

PATHFINDING IN THE NORTHWEST

It was summer when my friend Smith, whose real name is Jones, heard that
the new transcontinental line would build by the way of Peace River Pass
to the Pacific. He immediately applied, counting something, no doubt, on
his ten years of field work in Washington, Oregon, and other western
states, and five years pathfinding in Canada.

The summer died; the hills and rills and the rivers slept, but while
they slept word came to my friend Smith the Silent, and he hurriedly
packed his sleds and set out.

His orders were, like the orders of Admiral Dewey, to do certain
things--not merely to try. He was to go out into the northern night
called winter, feel his way up the Athabasca, over the Smoky, follow the
Peace River, and find the pass through the Rockies.

If the simple story of that winter campaign could be written out it
would be finer than fiction. But it will never be. Only Smith the
Silent knows, and he won't tell.

Sometimes, over the pipe, he forgets and gives me glimpses into the
winter camp, with the sun going out like a candle: the hastily made camp
with the half-breed spotting the dry wood against the coming moment when
night would drop over the forest like a curtain over a stage; the
"lean-to" between the burning logs, where he dozes or dreams, barely
beyond the reach of the flames; the silence all about, Jaquis pulling at
his pipe, and the huskies sleeping in the snow like German babies under
the eiderdown. Sometimes, out of the love of bygone days, he tells of
long toilsome journeys with the sun hiding behind clouds out of which an
avalanche of snow falls, with nothing but the needle to tell where he
hides; of hungry dogs and half starved horses, and lakes and rivers
fifty and a hundred miles out of the way.

Once, he told me, he sent an engineer over a low range to spy out a
pass. By the maps and other data they figured that he would be gone
three days, but a week went by and no word from the pathfinder. Ten days
and no news. On the thirteenth day, when Smith was preparing to go in
search of the wanderer, the running gear of the man and the framework of
the dogs came into camp. He was able to smile and say to Smith that he
had been ten days without food, save a little tea. For the dogs he had
had nothing.

A few days rest and they were on the trail again, or on the "go" rather;
and you might know that disciple of Smith the Silent six months or six
years before he would, unless you worked him, refer to that ten days'
fast. They think no more of that than a Jap does of dying. It's all in
the day's work.

Suddenly, Smith said, the sun swung north, the days grew longer. The sun
grew hot and the snow melted on the south hills; the hushed rivers,
rending their icy bonds, went roaring down to the Lakes and out towards
the Arctic Ocean. And lo, suddenly, like the falling of an Arctic night,
the momentary spring passed and it was summer time.

Then it was that Smith came into Edmonton to make his first report, and
here we met for the first time for many snows.

Joyously, as a boy kicks the cover off on circus morning, this Northland
flings aside her winter wraps and stands forth in her glorious garb of
summer. The brooklets murmur, the rivers sing, and by their banks and
along the lakes waterfowl frolic, and overhead glad birds, that seem to
have dropped from the sky, sing joyfully the almost endless song of
summer. At the end of the long day, when the sun, as if to make up for
its absence, lingers, loath to leave us in the twilight, beneath their
wings the song-birds hide their heads, then wake and sing, for the sun
is swinging up over the horizon where the pink sky, for an hour, has
shown the narrow door through which the day is dawning.

The dogs and sleds have been left behind and now, with Jaquis the
half-breed "boy" leading, followed closely by Smith the Silent, we go
deeper and deeper each day into the pathless wilderness.

To be sure it is not all bush, all forest. At times we cross wide
reaches of wild prairie lands. Sometimes great lakes lie immediately in
front of us, compelling us to change our course. Now we come to a wide
river and raft our outfit over, swimming our horses. Weeks go by and we
begin to get glimpses of the Rockies rising above the forest, and we
push on. The streams become narrower as we ascend, but swifter and more
dangerous.

We do not travel constantly now, as we have been doing. Sometimes we
keep our camp for two or three days. The climbing is hard, for Smith
must get to the top of every peak in sight, and so I find it "good
hunting" about the camp.

Jaquis is a fairly good cook, and what he lacks we make up with good
appetites, for we live almost constantly out under the sun and stars.

Pathfinders always lay up on Sunday, and sometimes, the day being long,
Smith steals out to the river and comes back with a mountain trout as
long as a yardstick.

The scenery is beyond description. Now we pass over the shoulder of a
mountain with a river a thousand feet below. Sometimes we trail for
hours along the shore of a limpid lake that seems to run away to the
foot of the Rockies.

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