Cy Warman - The Last Spike
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Cy Warman >> The Last Spike
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Far away we get glimpses of the crest of the continent, where the Peace
River gashes it as if it had been cleft by the sword of the Almighty;
and near the Rockies, on either bank, grand battlements rise that seem
to guard the pass as the Sultan's fortresses frown down on the
Dardanelles.
Now we follow a narrow trail that was not a trail until we passed. A
careless pack-horse, carrying our blankets, slips from the path and goes
rolling and tumbling down the mountain side. A thousand feet below lies
an arm of the Athabasca. Down, down, and over and over the pack-horse
goes, and finally fetches up on a ledge five hundred feet below the
trail. "By damn," says Jaquis, "dere is won bronco bust, eh?"
Smith and Jaquis go down to cut the cinches and save the pack, and lo,
up jumps our cayuse, and when he is repacked he takes the trail as good
as new. The pack and the low bush save his life.
In any other country, to other men, this would be exciting, but it's all
in the day's work with Smith and Jaquis.
The pack-pony that had been down the mountain is put in the lead
now--that is, in the lead of the pack animals; for he has learned his
lesson, he will be careful. And yet we are to have other experiences
along this same river.
Suddenly, down a side canon, a mountain stream rushes, plunging into the
Athabasca, joyfully, like a sea-bather into the surf. Jaquis calls this
side-stream "the mill-tail o' hell." Smith the Silent prepares to cross.
It's all very simple. All you need is a stout pole, a steady nerve, and
an utter disregard for the hereafter.
When Smith is safe on the other shore we drive the horses into the
stream. They shudder and shrink from the ice-cold water, but Jaquis and
I urge them, and in they plunge. My, what a struggle! Their wet feet on
the slippery boulders in the bottom of the stream, the swift current
constantly tripping them--it was thrilling to see and must have been
agony for the animals.
Midway, where the current was strongest, a mouse-colored cayuse carrying
a tent lost his feet. The turbulent tide slammed him up on top of a
great rock, barely hidden beneath the water, and he got to his feet like
a cat that has fallen upon the edge of an eave-trough. Trembling, the
cayuse called to Smith, and Smith, running downstream, called back,
urging the animal to leave the refuge and swim for it. The pack-horse
perched on the rock gazes wistfully at the shore. The waters, breaking
against his resting-place, wash up to his trembling knees. About him the
wild river roars, and just below leaps over a ten-foot fall into the
Athabasca.
All the other horses, having crossed safely, shake the water from their
dripping sides and begin cropping the tender grass. We could have heard
that horse's heart beat if we could have hushed the river's roar.
Smith called again, the cayuse turned slightly, and whether he leaped
deliberately or his feet slipped on the slippery stones, forcing him to
leap, we could not say, but he plunged suddenly into the stream,
uttering a cry that echoed up the canon and over the river like the cry
of a lost soul.
The cruel current caught him, lifted him, and plunged him over the drop,
and he was lost instantly in the froth and foam of the falls.
Far down, at a bend of the Athabasca, something white could be seen
drifting towards the shore. That night Smith the Silent made an entry in
his little red book marked "Grand Trunk Pacific," and tented under the
stars.
THE CURE'S CHRISTMAS GIFT
"A country that is bad or good,
Precisely as your claim pans out;
A land that's much misunderstood,
Misjudged, maligned and lied about."
When the pathfinders for the New National Highway pushed open the side
door and peeped through to the Pacific they not only discovered a short
cut to Yokohama, but opened to the world a new country, revealing the
last remnant of the Last West.
Edmonton is the outfiling point, of course, but Little Slave Lake is the
real gateway to the wilderness. Here we were to make our first stop (we
were merely exploring), and from this point our first portage was to the
Peace River, at Chinook, where we would get into touch once more with
the Hudson's Bay Company.
Jim Cromwell, the free trader who was in command of Little Slave, made
us welcome, introducing us _ensemble_ to his friend, a former H.B.
factor, to the Yankee who was looking for a timber limit, to the
"Literary Cuss," as he called the young man in corduroys and a wide
white hat, who was endeavoring to get past "tradition," that has damned
this Dominion both in fiction and in fact for two hundred years, and do
something that had in it the real color of the country.
At this point the free trader paused to assemble the Missourian. This
iron-gray individual shook himself out, came forward, and gripped our
hands, one after another.
The free trader would not allow us to make camp that night. We were
sentenced to sup and lodge with him, furnishing our own bedding, of
course, but baking his bread.
The smell of cooking coffee and the odor of frying fish came to us from
the kitchen, and floating over from somewhere the low, musical, well
modulated voice of Cromwell, conversing in Cree, as he moved about among
his mute and apparently inoffensive camp servants.
The day died hard. The sun was still shining at 9 P.M. At ten
it was twilight, and in the dusk we sat listening to tales of the far
North, totally unlike the tales we read in the story-books. Smith the
Silent, who was in charge of our party, was interested in the country,
of course, its physical condition, its timber, its coal, and its mineral
possibilities. He asked about its mountains and streams, its possible
and impossible passes; but the "Literary Cuss" and I were drinking
deeply of weird stories that were being told quite incautiously by the
free trader, the old factor, and by the Missourian. We were like
children, this young author and I, sitting for the first time in a
theatre. The flickering camp fire that we had kindled in the open served
as a footlight, while the Gitch Lamp, still gleaming in the west,
glanced through the trees and lit up the faces of the three great actors
who were entertaining us without money and without price. The Missourian
was the star. He had been reared in the lap of luxury, had run away from
college where he had been installed by a rich uncle, his guardian, and
jumped down to South America. He had ridden with the Texas Rangers and
with President Diaz's Regulators, had served as a scout on the plains
and worked with the Mounted Police, but was now "retired."
All of which we learned not from him directly, but from the stories he
told and from his bosom friend, the free trader, whose guests we were,
and whose word, for the moment at least, we respected.
The camp fire burned down to a bed of coals, the Gitch Lamp went out. In
the west, now, there was only a glow of gold, but no man moved.
Smith the Pathfinder and our host the free trader bent over a map. "But
isn't this map correct?" Smith would ask, and when in doubt Jim would
call the Missourian. "No," said the latter, "you can't float down that
river because it flows the other way, and that range of mountains is two
hundred miles out."
Gradually we became aware that all this vast wilderness, to the world
unknown, was an open book to this quiet man who had followed the buffalo
from the Rio Grande to the Athabasca where he turned, made a last stand,
and then went down.
When the rest had retired the free trader and I sat talking of the Last
West, of the new trail my friends were blazing, and of the wonderfully
interesting individual whom we called the Missourian.
"He had a prospecting pard," said Jim, "whom he idolized. This man,
whose name was Ramsey, Jack Ramsey, went out in '97 between the Coast
Range and the Rockies, and now this sentimental old pioneer says he will
never leave the Peace River until he finds Ramsey's bones.
"You see," Cromwell continued, "friendship here and what goes for
friendship outside are vastly different. The matter of devoting one's
life to a friend or to a duty, real or fancied, is only a trifle to
these men who abide in the wilderness. I know of a Chinaman and a Cree
who lived and died the most devoted friends. You see the Missourian
hovering about the last camping-place of his companion. Behold the
factor! He has left the Hudson Bay Company after thirty years because he
has lost his life's best friend, a man who spoke another language, whose
religion was not the brand upon which the factor had been brought up in
England; yet they were friends."
The camp fire had gone out. In the south we saw the first faint flush
of dawn as Cromwell, knocking the ashes from his pipe, advised me to go
to bed. "You get the old factor to tell you the story of his friend the
cure, and of the cure's Christmas gift," Cromwell called back, and I
made a point of getting the story, bit by bit, from the florid factor
himself, and you shall read it as it has lingered in my memory.
When the new cure came to Chinook on the Upper Peace River, he carried a
small hand-satchel, his blankets, and a crucifix. His face was drawn,
his eyes hungry, his frame wasted, but his smile was the smile of a man
at peace with the world. The West--the vast, undiscovered Canadian
West--jarred on the sensitive nerves of this Paris-bred priest. And yet,
when he crossed the line that marks what we are pleased to call
"civilization," and had reached the heart of the real Northwest, where
the people were unspoiled, natural, and honest, where a handful of Royal
Northwest Mounted Police kept order in an empire that covers a quarter
of a continent, he became deeply interested in this new world, in the
people, in the imperial prairies, the mountains, and the great wide
rivers that were racing down to the northern sea.
The factor at the Hudson's Bay post, whose whole life since he had left
college in England had been passed on the Peace River, at York Factory,
and other far northern stations over which waved the Hudson's Bay
banner, warmed to the new cure from their first meeting, and the cure
warmed to him. Each seemed to find in the other a companion that neither
had been able to find among the few friends of his own faith.
And so, through the long evenings of the northern winter, they sat in
the cure's cabin study or by the factor's fire, and talked of the things
which they found interesting, including politics, literature, art, and
Indians. Despite the great gulf that rolled between the two creeds in
which they had been cradled, they found that they were in accord three
times in five--a fair average for men of strong minds and inherent
prejudices. At first the cure was anxious to get at the real work of
"civilizing" the natives.
"Yes," the factor would say, blowing the smoke upward, "the Indian
should be civilized--slowly--the slower the better."
The cure would pretend to look surprised as he relit his pipe. Once the
cure asked the factor why he was so indifferent to the welfare of the
Crees, who were the real producers, without whose furs there would be no
trade, no post, no job for the ruddy-faced factor. The priest was
surprised that the factor should appear to fail to appreciate the
importance of the trapper.
"I do," said the factor.
"Then why do you not help us to lift him to the light?"
"I like him," was the laconic reply.
"Then why don't you talk to him of his soul?"
"Haven't the nerve," said the factor, shaking his head and blowing more
smoke.
The cure shrugged his shoulders.
"I say," said the florid factor, facing the pale priest. "Did you see me
decorating the old chief, Dunraven, yesterday?"
"Yes, I presume you were giving him a _pour boire_ in advance to secure
the greater catch of furs next season," said the priest, with his usual
sad yet always pleasant smile.
"A very poor guess for one so wise," said the factor. "_Attendez_," he
continued. "This post used to be closed always in winter. The tent doors
were tied fast on the inside, after which the man who tied them would
crawl out under the edge of the canvas. When winter came, the snow,
banked about, held the tent tightly down, and the Hudson's Bay business
was bottled at this point until the springless summer came to wake the
sleeping world.
"Last winter was a hard winter. The snow was deep and game scarce. One
day a Cree Indian found himself in need of tea and tobacco, and more in
need of a new pair of trousers. Passing the main tent one day, he was
sorely tempted. Dimly, through the parchment pane, he could see great
stacks of English tweeds, piles of tobacco, and boxes of tea, but the
tent was closed. He was sorely tried. He was hungry--hungry for a horn
of tea and a twist of the weed, and cold, too. Ah, _bon pere_, it is
hard to withstand cold and hunger with only a canvas between one and the
comforts of life!"
"_Oui, Monsieur!_" said the cure, warmly, touched by the pathos of the
tale.
"The Indian walked away (we know that by his footprints), but returned
to the tent. The hunger and the cold had conquered. He took his
hunting-knife and slit the deerskin window and stepped inside. Then he
approached the pile of tweed trousers and selected a large pair, putting
down from the bunch of furs he had on his arms to the value of eight
skins--the price his father and grandfather had paid. He visited the
tobacco pile and helped himself, leaving four skins on the tobacco. When
he had taken tea he had all his heart desired, and having still a number
of skins left, he hung them upon a hook overhead and went away.
"When summer dawned and a clerk came to open the post, he saw the slit
in the window, and upon entering the tent saw the eight skins on the
stack of tweeds, the four skins on the tobacco, and the others on the
chest, and understood.
"Presently he saw the skins which the Indian had hung upon the hook,
took them down, counted them carefully, appraised them, and made an
entry in the Receiving Book, in which he credited
'Indian-cut-the-window, 37 skins.'
"Yesterday Dunraven came to the post and confessed.
"It was to reward him for his honesty that I gave him the fur coat and
looped the big brass baggage check in his buttonhole. _Voila!_"
The cure crossed his legs and then recrossed them, tossed his head from
side to side, drummed upon the closed book which lay in his lap, and
showed in any number of ways, peculiar to nervous people, his amazement
at the story and his admiration for the Indian.
"Little things like that," said the factor, filling his pipe, "make me
timid when talking to a Cree about 'being good.'"
* * * * *
When summer came, and with it the smell of flowers and the music of
running streams, the factor and his friend the cure used to take long
tramps up into the highlands, but the cure's state of health was a
handicap to him. The factor saw the telltale flush in the priest's face
and knew that the "White Plague" had marked him; yet he never allowed
the cure to know that he knew. That summer a little river steamer was
sent up from Athabasca Lake by the Chief Commissioner who sat in the
big office at Winnipeg, and upon this the factor and his friend took
many an excursion up and down the Peace. The friendship that had grown
up between the factor and the new cure formed the one slender bridge
that connected the Anglican and the Catholic camps. Even the "heathen
Crees" marvelled that these white men, praying to the same God, should
dwell so far apart. Wing You, who had wandered over from Ramsay's Camp
on the Pine River, explained it all to Dunraven: "Flenchman and
Englishman," said Wing. "No ketchem same Glod. You--Clee," continued the
wise Oriental, "an' Englishman good flend--ketchem same Josh; you call
'im We-sec-e-gea, white man call 'im God."
And so, having the same God, only called by different names, the Crees
trusted the factor, and the factor trusted the Crees. Their business
intercourse was on the basis of skin for skin, furs being the recognized
coin of the country.
"Why do you not pay them in cash, take cash in turn, and let them have
something to rattle?" asked the cure one day.
"They won't have it," said the factor. "Silver Skin, brother to
Dunraven, followed a party of prospectors out to Edmonton last fall and
tried it. He bought a pair of gloves, a red handkerchief, and a pound of
tobacco, and emptied his pockets on the counter, so that the clerk in
the shop might take out the price of the goods. According to his own
statement, the Indian put down $37.80. He took up just six-thirty-five.
When the Cree came back to God's country he showed me what he had left
and asked me to check him up. When I had told him the truth, he walked
to the edge of the river and sowed the six-thirty-five broadcast on the
broad bosom of the Peace."
And so, little by little, the patient priest got the factor's
view-point, and learned the great secret of the centuries of success
that has attended the Hudson's Bay Company in the far North.
And little by little the two men, without preaching, revealed to the
Indians and the Oriental the mystery of Life--vegetable life at
first--of death and life beyond. They showed them the miracle of the
wheat.
On the first day of June they put into a tiny grave a grain of wheat.
They told the Blind Ones that the berry would suffer death, decay, but
out of that grave would spring fresh new flags that would grow and blow,
fanned by the balmy chinook winds, and wet by the dews of heaven.
On the first day of September they harvested seventy-two stalks and
threshed from the seventy-two stalks seven thousand two hundred grains
of wheat. They showed all this to the Blind Ones and they saw. The cure
explained that we, too, would go down and die, but live again in another
life, in a fairer world.
The Cree accepted it all in absolute silence, but the Oriental, with his
large imagination, exclaimed, pointing to the tiny heap of golden grain:
"Me ketchem die, me sleep, byme by me wake up in China--seven
thousand--heap good." The cure was about to explain when the factor put
up a warning finger. "Don't cut it too fine, father," said he. "They're
getting on very well."
That was a happy summer for the two men, working together in the garden
in the cool dawn and chatting in the long twilight that lingers on the
Peace until 11 P.M. Alas! as the summer waned the factor saw
that his friend was failing fast. He could walk but a short distance now
without resting, and when the red rose of the Upper Athabasca caught the
first cold kiss of Jack Frost, the good priest took to his bed. Wing
You, the accomplished cook, did all he could to tempt him to eat and
grow strong again. Dunraven watched from day to day for an opportunity
to "do something"; but in vain. The faithful factor made daily visits to
the bedside of his sick friend. As the priest, who was still in the
springtime of his life, drew nearer to the door of death, he talked
constantly of his beloved mother in far-off France--a thing unusual for
a priest, who is supposed to burn his bridges when he leaves the world
for the church.
Often when he talked thus, the factor wanted to ask his mother's name
and learn where she lived, but always refrained.
Late in the autumn the factor was called to Edmonton for a general
conference of all the factors in the employ of the Honorable Company of
gentlemen adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay. With a heavy heart he
said good-bye to the failing priest.
When he had come within fifty miles of Chinook, on the return trip, he
was wakened at midnight by Dunraven, who had come out to ask him to
hurry up as the cure was dying, but wanted to speak to the factor first.
Without a word the Englishman got up and started forward, Dunraven
leading on the second lap of his "century."
It was past midnight again when the _voyageurs_ arrived at the river.
There was a dim light in the cure's cabin, to which Dunraven led them,
and where the Catholic bishop and an Irish priest were on watch. "So
glad to see you," said the bishop. "There is something he wants from
your place, but he will not tell Wing. Speak to him, please."
"Ah, _Monsieur_, I'm glad that you are come--I'm weary and want to be
off."
"The long _traverse_, eh?"
"_Oui, Monsieur_--_le grand voyage_."
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked the Englishman. The dying
priest made a movement as if hunting for something. The bishop, to
assist, stepped quickly to his side. The patient gave up the quest of
whatever he was after and looked languidly at the factor. "What is it,
my son?" asked the bishop, bending low. "What would you have the factor
fetch from his house?"
"Just a small bit of cheese," said the sick man, sighing wearily.
"Now, that's odd," mused the factor, as he went off on his strange
errand.
When the Englishman returned to the cabin, the bishop and the priest
stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Upon a bench on the narrow
veranda Dunraven sat, resting after his hundred-mile tramp, and on the
opposite side of the threshold Wing You lay sleeping in his blankets, so
as to be in easy call if he were wanted.
When the two friends were alone, the sick man signalled, and the factor
drew near.
"I have a great favor--a very great favor to ask of you," the priest
began, "and then I'm off. Ah, _mon Dieu!_" he panted. "It has been hard
to hold out. Jesus has been kind."
"It's damned tough at your time, old fellow," said the factor, huskily.
"It's not my time, but His."
"Yes--well I shall be over by and by."
"And those faithful dogs--Dunraven and Wing--thank them for--"
"Sure! If _I_ can pass," the factor broke in, a little confused.
"Thank them for me--for their kindnesses--and care. Tell them to
remember the sermon of the wheat. And now, good friend," said the
priest, summoning all his strength, "_attendez_!"
He drew a thin, white hand from beneath the cover, carrying a tiny
crucifix. "I want you to send this to my beloved mother by registered
post; send it yourself, please, so that she may have it before the end
of the year. This will be my last Christmas gift to her. And the one
that comes from her to me--that is for you, to keep in remembrance of
me. And write to her--oh, so gently tell her--Jesus--help me," he
gasped, sitting upright. "She lives in Rue ---- O Mary, Mother of Jesus,"
he cried, clutching at the collar of his gown; and then he fell back
upon his bed, and his soul swept skyward like a toy balloon when the
thin thread snaps.
When the autumn sun smiled down on Chinook and the autumn wind sighed in
by the door and out by the open window where the dead priest lay, Wing
and Dunraven sat on the rude bench in the little veranda, going over it
all, each in his own tongue, but uttering never a word, yet each to the
other expressing the silence of his soul.
The factor, in the seclusion of his bachelor home, held the little cross
up and examined it critically. "To be sent to his mother, she lives in
Rue ---- Ah, if I could have been but a day sooner; yet the bishop must
know," he added, putting the crucifix carefully away.
The good people in the other world, beyond the high wall that separated
the two Christian Tribes, had been having shivers over the factor and
his fondness for the Romans; but when he volunteered to assist at the
funeral of his dead friend, _his_ people were shocked. In that scant
settlement there were not nearly enough priests to perform, properly,
the funeral services, so the factor fell in, mingling his deep full
voice with the voices of the bishop and the Irish brother, and grieving
even as they grieved.
And the Blind Ones, Wing and Dunraven, came also, paying a last tearless
tribute to the noble dead.
When it was all over and the post had settled down to routine, the
factor found in his mail, one morning, a long letter from the Chief
Commissioner at Winnipeg. It told the factor that he was in bad repute,
that the English Church bishop had been grieved, shocked, and
scandalized through seeing the hitherto respectable factor going over to
the Catholics. Not only had he fraternized with them, but had actually
taken part in their religious ceremonies. And to crown it all, he had
carried, a respectable Cree and the Chinese cook along with him.
The factor's placid face took on a deep hue, but only for a moment. He
filled his pipe, poking the tobacco down hard with his thumb. Then he
took the Commissioner's letter, twisted it up, touched it to the tiny
fire that blazed in the grate, and lighted his pipe. He smoked in
silence for a few moments and then said to himself, being alone, "Huh!"
"Ah, that from the bishop reminds me," said the factor. "I must run
over and see the other one."
When the factor had related to the French-Canadian bishop what had
passed between the dead cure and himself, the bishop seemed greatly
annoyed. "Why, man, he had no mother!"
"The devil he didn't--I beg pardon--I say he asked me to send this to
his mother. He started to tell me where she lived and then the call
came. It was the dying request of a dear friend. I beg of you tell me
his mother's name, that I may keep my word."
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