Arthur Preston Hankins

“ Once as he walked up the trail to the observatory a bullet had whizzed close to his head, followed by the distant bark of a heavy firearm. And when Sweet’s vaqueros had driven the first of the cattle into the mountains the herd had stampeded Argo, at graze on his rope beside the lake, and Joshua had scoured the country a week before he found him. The gray had pulled his pin and raced away in a frenzy of fright as the cowpunchers, with deliberate intent, drove the cows upon him, yelling and firing into the air. ”

“ Great thinkers invariably have tucked away in their brains a little spring, which, when unexpectedly released, reveals a flaw in their mental equilibrium. The flaw is always some delightfully, laughably human conceit, trait, hobby, or perhaps merely a great longing for something unattainable and amusingly foreign to what they have set out to do in life. And the flaw in the brain of Joshua Cole demanded a prancing horse, a hand-carved saddle with low-swinging tapaderos, a plaited, silver-mounted bridle with martingales to match, and some one to stare at him open-mouthed as he rode by. ”

“ Joshua slumped down in his chair, and copied Madge by extending his legs and crossing them at the ankles. Then he tamped the burning tobacco in his briar pipe and gave his soul to dreams.
“For me,” he said, “what I consider an ideal life is just opening. I love the freedom of these majestic mountains, the grandeur of the clean, cool forests, the fascinating colors of the lake. Up here a person can be himself and will be able to rise above the petty squabbles, struggles, ambitions, hatreds, and copycatism of life in the congested districts. ”

“ I am frivolous—more frivolous than I knew throughout all the years on the railroad grade. It took Los Angeles, with its brilliant throngs, dazzling hotels, and everything that has given me pleasure to teach me the shallowness of my nature.
“So, Joshua, I want you to forget me as unworthy of you. You are a dreamer, with an unpractical mind far above the sordid things that I find so interesting. You are young and will soon forget me when you become a great astronomer, which I am sure will happen some day. And then you can find a girl who appreciates you. ”

“ Joshua saw all the degradation of tramp life, met famous hobos and infamous hobos; slept in sand-houses, Salvation Army rooming houses, in coal bunkers, stretched out along the backs of several sheep bleating in a stock car, in cars of grain, beneath piles of lumber, and in many a well-known “jungle” camp. He saw all of the inner workings of the itinerant life which is so peculiarly an American institution, worked at many things, fought many battles—some won, some lost. Reduced to bitter hunger countless times, he almost lost his courage and began to believe himself nothing but a pawn of Fate. ”

“ Mankind is in the hollow of Thy hand. Not a sparrow falls unheeded. Not a worm is cloven in vain. Somewhere there is a goal worth striving for, and toward it man is always floundering. In him lies the means of his own salvation. Some day in the unseen future he will learn his own humanity; for within him Thou hast planted the power to return to the image of God in which he was created. I will keep on traveling West—and—and find another telescope—and Madge.”
Joshua Cole had fought his first great battle—and won. ”

“ Lofty peaks covered with untarnished snow looked down upon the camp, and the placid lake lay like a blue teardrop in the hollow of a gigantic, caressing hand. Lush meadows surrounded the lake, and here grazed innumerable cattle, the property of Box-R Ranch, down on the desert. All winter long they had cropped bunchgrass that grew under sage bushes on the sandy waste, and had just been driven into the mountains for the summer pasture of saltgrass and bluejoint. Occasionally Joshua saw cowpunchers working with them and heard their shouting from afar. ”

“ You’ll come back to Spyglass Mountain!”
“How do you know that, Joshua?”
“It’s easily explained: Never have I heard from you a murmur of discontent over the solitude of these vast mountains. Like myself, you are one who can be alone for days at a time, with the bleak peaks about you or the mocking sandy wastes of the desert, and be content with only them and your thoughts for company. We are rare, Madge. Such an unanswering solitude as would drive many people insane, we thrive on. I say we are rare. ”

“ Joshua had become an artistic hammerman, and, though the youngest man in his crew, he was a welcome addition. Always quiet and reserved, he had none of the qualities that often make youth obnoxious to such old-timers as it fell to his lot to labor with. And as he swung his striking hammer or turned the drill he thought of Madge Mundy of the frizzly bronze-gold hair, and wondered if ever he would find courage to go to her. ”

“ I have longed for some one close to me who is moved by the inspiring grandeur of the heavenly bodies. I have been told that I am a born teacher, but I prefer to teach the things that interest me. You wanted to study science and they refused you. So you see, Joshua, that you and I have a great deal in common. And it will be my delight to make an effort to ground you in the science of astronomy, if you are willing to learn and will help me by observing the rules and regulations of the school, and attempting to master what the directors have prescribed as a course for the institution. ”

“ From under a man’s broad-brimmed hat her large eyes, brown as Oriental topaz, looked straight at Joshua. Her hair was frizzly and bronze-gold where the sunbeams caught it.
“Lady wants to see you, Cole,” said the walker. “Let Bluenose turn the drill awhile.”
As a little girl Madge Mundy had been outstanding. Her adorably recalcitrant hair, with its strange gleam of reddish gold, combined with the blended brown-pink coloring of her flawless skin had made her so. Now, a young woman rounding to maturity, she would have attracted instant attention among a hundred girls, all beautiful. ”

“ Presently a man with heavy, fiery-red hair entered the tent. Immediately Joshua knew him for “Bloodmop” Mundy, the father of Madge, and he knew that he would like this man with the twinkling sky-blue eyes, at the corners of which queer little crow’s-feet came and went, giving his face that quizzical, whimsical look which boys interpret as belonging to a man who is friendly and sympathetic to them and interested in their boyish activities. Bloodmop Mundy wore dirty yellow overalls and a disreputable slouch hat, and needed a shave. ”

“ Sheep, all of them—bleating, crowding sheep, shouldering one another aside in an effort to gain the protection of the middle of the flock, where no one might single them out and accuse them of being anything but sheep! Could he, Joshua Cole, a man now, hope to become the bellwether of this wriggling, woolly mass? No, because he would not stoop to setting a pace that their newspaper, moving-picture minds would follow. Pitiable worms slathering in the slime of up-to-dateness! Afraid of their own minds, afraid of their neighbors’ minds, afraid of life itself! ”

“ You can’t afford to take chances by letting yourself love another man, who might take you to the cities, where you imagine you want to go. For as sure as spring follows winter Spyglass Mountain will call you back. And then—if he doesn’t want to come?
“What if a night on the desert, with the moaning of the wind in the greasewood bushes and the half-mournful, half-mocking laugh of the coyote, strikes terror to his heart? What if the constant roar of a waterfall gets on his nerves instead of soothing him to sleep, as it would soothe you and me? ”

“ So that is really my business in life, Joshua. It is a work of love, as the society pays nothing in money to any of its members. And, as I told you, I occupy my position here to gain a livelihood while pursuing my hobby, as my critics term my work. My fellow-instructors are out of tune with me, and even go so far as to ridicule me at times. But as the superintendent considers me harmless, and as I try to perform my school duties faithfully, he does not interfere with my astronomical work, which I never allow to conflict with the regular routine. ”

“ Then Joshua rose to his feet with a long sigh.
“I’ve thought it all out, Bill,” he announced, “and there’s nothing that I can do. I’ll simply let him go—that’s all. I’ll tell you, Bill: When a fellow has for years devoted his soul to study of the fundamental things of life, everything else seems puny. Look through that refractor for an hour and you’ll get the feeling, too. ”

“ To the stable boss came Joshua Cole, grave-eyed and slim. Joshua had just left a freight train that had come to rest at Spur, and the train crew had let him ride for a hundred miles because he was headed for this scene of intense activity.
To the stable boss he said:
“Got a job?”
“Sure—a hundred of ’em. Don’t bother me! You a skinner?”
“Yes,” said Joshua. “But I’m a hammerman, too, and I prefer to work in rock.”
“Then see the walker. Or just go to work unloadin’. Don’t bother anybody about a job, young fella. Help yourself.” ”

“ Mr. Beaver Clegg, Joshua thought, was the owner of the ugliest face he had ever seen on a human being. He was thin, but not exceptionally tall. He wore a baggy gray suit, and his linen, in its soiled state, did not set a good example for his wards. Joshua looked at him curiously as he read the note from the superintendent. He noticed the nose, twisted to one side, and bumpy at the end; the curious eyes, neutral in color but inclining toward slate-blue, and cocked out of all proportion, one of them appearing much smaller than the other and set lower in the face ”

“ THE ROAD TO G-STRING SO the end of Joshua Cole’s quest was at hand. Up there somewhere in the mountains was Madge Mundy—“Shanty” Madge, as California Bill had called her. He wondered, as he worked that afternoon, what she would be like. He knew why they called her Shanty Madge, for he remembered all that she had told him about “gypo” men and “shanty” men, as small contractors were called on the railroad grade, and since leaving his home town he had worked in several camps, so that he was familiar with the vernacular. ”

“ Next afternoon found the crawling worm that was the wagon train at Wild Woman Springs, which for years had been nothing but a watering station on the road to G-string, but which, since the coming of the nomad laborers, had become a frontier village boasting eleven houses. Every house was built of new, resinous pine and corrugated iron, and all sheltered gambling devices, rude bars, restaurant counters, bunks for the exhausted, and floors upon which to dance with the highly painted female denizens of the dives. ”

“ And sometimes he will not care to return to Broadway. Men even deliberately return to penitentiaries where they have spent great portions of their lives.
Man is a human chameleon; it is beyond dispute. His soul craves intercourse with his fellows and without it [113] shrivels to a rattling pod. And if he be associated day by day with only tramps he will either become a tramp or a morbid Pariah—and from the last he shrinks in horror.
This was taking place in the heart of Joshua Cole. By gradual degrees he was growing to think and see and look at life through the eyes of the nomad men about him. ”

“ He wondered about young Montgomery. What was he like? Madge had not mentioned him; Joshua knew only that California Bill had referred to him as one of the ardent suitors of the shanty queen.
California Bill arrived in camp in the course of a day or two, and that night Joshua saw him for the first time since his trip down the line. They sat on the ground at the edge of camp and watched the lake turn red, then violet, then purple as the sun sank to rest behind Saddle Mountain; and Bill, as he listened to Joshua’s accusation, sang softly:
“My head likes liquor, but my stomach don’t. ”

“ Madge’s mother proved to be a comely woman of over forty, and Joshua was not a little surprised at her apparent refinement. While a boy of fourteen makes few pretenses of being himself refined, he is quick to note it or the lack of it in his elders. She was dressed simply and neatly in an inexpensive house gown. Joshua wondered, too, how she could look so fresh and unsoiled in a camp by the railroad tracks, where men worked all day long at moving dirt. ”

“ Muck from the tunnel was being carried to its dump over another route by men “pullin’ ’im by the whiskers,” which, in construction parlance, means leading with a rope a horse or mule hitched to a cart. They looked on in silence for a time, then Madge said:
“This means a lot to me, Joshua. You know, I was a harum-scarum kid when you met me, pretty good with a team and a wheeler even at that age, and wild about railroading. Well, I never got over it. It’s my delight to-day. I love the work and the free-and-easy, democratic life in the open country. ”