Morley Roberts

“ There is a power of strange madness in the Indian blood, diluted though it be. Under the maddening influence of liquor the nature of the Indian flowers in dreadful passions, forgetful of new circumstances, oblivious of punishment and of law. None knew this better than Ned Quin, and yet he stood there foolishly, with a doubtful smile upon his face, a smile almost of greeting. He was even ready to forgive Pete for what he had done. He felt his heart was changed, and without a touch of religion or creed this was a natural and sweet conversion. But Mary tugged at his arm, for she knew. ”

“ The vision passed and he saw the burning Mill. He heard Mac speak, heard the roar of the flames, and the murmur of the crowd. Then he came to the surface and knew where he was, knew that he was alive but at handgrips with Death himself. He sucked in air, filled his lungs and rolled over, and went under once again.
When consciousness is past there is a long space of organized, of purposed, instinctive struggle for life left in a man. So it was with Quin. He knew not that he slipped both hands to Pete's right wrist: he was unaware that when they once more rose Pete howled as his wrist snapped. ”

“ But Ginger said nothing. Terror had hold of him. He leant against the deadly log and vomited. Every lamp in the Mill was held up in two circles, one about Skookum and the other about the Chinaman. Faces as white as the dead men's looked at the dead.
That night Skookum's klootchman sat with loosed hair howling over the body of her good and stupid man. And by her Annie and Annawillee mourned.
And many thought of Pete. Among them were Quin and his klootchman Jenny, who understood the nature of the man who had been her man and was now no better than a murderer. ”

“ For Annie wore a man's shoes, with heavy soles to them. And when a man is helpless and his ribs open even a woman's kicks can do mischief.
"Oh," said Pete, "ah!"
He rolled over and groaned, poor devil. And, just as the secret dawn began to flame, so the red deeds of the night before began to come up to him. He sat up and his jaw fell.
"Ah," said Pete, "I tink I—I kill Jenny!"
There's a crowd of virtuous ones who will imitate Annie and boot him in the ribs, poor devil. He drank and gambled and played hell and beat his wife and drove her into the arms of Quin. ”

“ And people came running up the hill. Whether this was Pete's work or not they were safe. But their house was a torch, the flames soared above the gambrel of the roof.
Jenny sat upon a rock, clad only in her nightgown, with the quilt thrown about her shoulders. Her home was burning and all their beautiful things were destroyed. She could not cry, but her heart wept, and the child was her only comfort. She knew well enough that this was Pete's work, she felt it in her heart.
And a crowd gathered. There were many from the City: those whose work it is to put out fires, and some of the police. ”

“ The terror of the white man got hold of Pete, and the terror of his silence maddened him anew. There was not so much as a grunt out of his pursuer. Pete saw a machine coming after him. It was not a man, it was a thing that ran Indians down and drowned them. So might a steamer, a dread "piah-ship," run down the dug-out of some poor wild Siwash in some unexplored creek. Quin was not a man, or a white man, he was the White Men: the very race. There had always been a touch of the wild race in Pete: an underlying hint of the wrath of those who go under. ”

“ Though the river was wide the day was now bright. A strong man's voice might reach across it in a windless time. But strong men may be weak, if they have struggled.
Wong stood still as Mac came up to him. Though he could see so well he was a little deaf.
"What is it, Wong?" asked Mac. Even as he spoke it seemed to him that he heard a faint far-off call.
"My tinkee t'at Mista Quin," said Wong as he pointed across the river. He spoke as quietly as if he had said that he thought he could see the rosy cone of Mount Baker shining in the rising sun.
"You think—oh, hell!" said Mac. ”

“ He was weak, now that fear was in him, and the alcohol died out of him, and he felt renewed pangs of hunger. To wander in the thick brush would be fatal. They would renew their search on the morrow: every avenue of escape would be guarded. And hunger would so tame the little spirit he had within him that he would give himself up.
"They hang me, they hang me," he said piteously, even as Ned Quin had said it. But there was none to help him. The very men who had been his brothers, his tilikums, would give him up now.
He cursed himself and Jenny and Quin and the memory of Skookum Charlie. ”

“ Pete's face was hard now and his eyes glittered: his muscles stood up: his face and neck were wet: they glistened. He went like a machine: and never made a mistake. He climbed a five-foot log on the carriage close to the teeth of the saw (the sawdust was in his hair and it looked white and woolly) like a cougar, at one bound. He worked up Skookum Charlie in like manner and made the Siwash like it.
"Oh, he's good," said Quin approving and yet savage. "Oh, he's——" and then Scotty yanked the whistle lanyard and the whistle said, "Knock off, you galoots, galoots, galoo-oots!" ”

“ He had really never loved anyone, certainly not dead Lily, more certainly not that white woman over in Victoria, though he thought he had. What he felt for Jenny was a revelation; it made him a saint and a devil at once, as passion does even the best and worst of men. And Quin had force and fire, and bone, and muscle and a big heavy head and hands like clip-hooks. ”

“ If it hadn't been that the rush of work handling hay-bales, sacks of oats, maize, flour, mats of sugar, cases of dynamite, and tools and all the rest, sweated the alcohol out of him he would have got the sack promptly, the Grand Bounce. As it was he stayed, being really a worker, and as nice a boy to work alongside as one could wish.
"Pete's a clever boy for a Sitcum Siwash," said the Boss. For clever in the vernacular of the West means nice. They quite liked him, even though the real white men looked down on him, of course, as real Whites will on everyone who isn't White. ”

“ And the Big Hoes, Father and Mother of the Mill, droned in the cut of logs and said (or sang) that what they cut was Douglas Fir, and that it was tough. But the Pony Saw said that the last big log had been Spruce. The smell of spruce said "spruce" just as the Saw sang it. And the Trimmers screamed opposing notes, for they cut across the grain. Beneath the floor where the chorus of the Saws worked was the clatter of the lath-mill and the insistent squeal of the Shingle Saw, with its recurrent shriek of pride, "I cut a shingle, phit, I cut a shingle, phit!" ”

“ The world of yesterday, nay, even of to-day, was far off, further off than the pure faint hills.
"You be good to me, Mista Quin?"
His hard heart was touched.
"You bet, Jenny, I'll give you all you'll want."
"Ah, you very big boss," said Jenny. If he could give any human creature all she wanted he was a very big boss indeed.
"Yes, my kiddy, you forget all about everyone but me, and I'll act square to you, on my oath I will," said Big Quin. He pulled her towards him and kissed her mouth. She flamed scarlet.
"I lik' heem better'n Pete," she said. "Pete cluel to me; tear my dless. ”

“ It was one of Ginger White's devilish days, when he hated himself and his kind and was willing to burst himself if he could make others sigh or groan. He ran the crew of the Mill almost to death, and death came at last as the day died down and found them running the saws screaming in logs still cold within. For the winter left the men soft: they had been half-fed, many of them: they had lived idle lives, and found work hard on their hands, hard on their muscles. But Ginger never failed when the devil was in him. ”

“ They were all young, not an old man among them, Ginger White himself was the senior of them all. They could love and work and fight and play hell, for they had youth in them. They had to show it to the song and dance of the Saw, the song and dance of the flying dust. The engines ran easy, and their muscles played beneath a glistening moist skin as with open shirts they did what came to their hands. ”

“ It never even occurred to her that Pete didn't know anything whatsoever about Quin being the man who had kapsuallowed or stolen his dear Jenny. Everybody else knew, Chinamen, Swedes, Lapps, Letts, Finns, Spaniards and a number of whites of the rougher kind who camped in Shack-Town. I knew myself. But the man who ought to have known didn't. It was a sign that life is the same everywhere.
Pete woke up before dawn, as it seems to be a revenge of nature to make drunken men wake when they can't find a drink, and when he woke he hadn't the remotest notion of what had happened to him. ”

“ When he worked at the Mill at Kamloops he had been told of what one man had done at Port Blakeley.
"I do it," said Pete savagely. He heard John's klootchman laugh, and thought again of Jenny. The stronger he grew the more bitterly he missed her. And yet if she had come back to him now he would have thrust her out into the frost.
In this unhappiness of his heart it was natural he should turn to his sister Mary, up at Kamloops or the back of it, who was Cultus Muckamuck's klootchman. And after all old Cultus wasn't such a bad sort. ”

“ Pete knew all the men did. She was so pretty. Even the Chinamen knew it and said so. Pete was proud of that. "Velly hansum litty klootchman," said Wong. Why should a man be angry because another man wants his "litty gal?" No need to "makee bobbely 'bout that" surely. But the litty girl had to be taught, Nawitka!
"I give her the stick by-by," said Pete, and he used the wedges and the maul as if he were giving poor wretched Jenny the stick then. He worked that day though he hadn't an ounce of muckamuck inside him. Ginger White said he was as quick as the devil: worth ten of that swine Simmons. ”

“ In the busy world as it was Quin's mind ran on Jenny.
"Yes, Sir," he used to say, "we're small but all there. We run for all we're worth, every cent of it, every pound of beef. If you want to see bigger, try the Inlet or Port Blakeley. But we cut here to the last inch. Thirty thousand feet a day ain't a hell of a pile, but it's all we can chew. And, Sir, we chew it!"
He was a broad heavy man, dark and strong and much lighter on his feet than he looked. If there hadn't been Skookum Charlie it might have been Skookum Quin. ”

“ The day after the news came of the split saw Pete had boarded the boat for Yale and was put out at the mountain town in a storm of rain. And Pete hated the wet as a saw-mill man must, or as one who had worked in the Dry Belt where the rain is scarce and the fattening grasses dry.
At this time the Railroad, the Railroad of all Roads, the longest on earth, gentlemen, partners and tilikums, was being put through the hills, through the Rockies and the Selkirks and the Eagle Range. The woods were full of Contractors, small and big, good and measly, generous and mean, men and pigs. ”

“ If Pete had spiked the logs, as Quin believed, he was capable of anything. And poor little Jenny was about to be a mother. It wouldn't be more than a month or two now.
Until Jenny had come into his life in real earnest, the Mill, the Stick Moola, had been the man's whole desire. He loved it amazingly: there wasn't a plank in it he didn't love, just as there wasn't a job in it that he couldn't do in some fashion, and no fool's fashion either. He had run the old Moola "good and strong," caring for everything, seeing that it had the best of everything. ”

“ XXV
"Oh, oho, the toketie papoosh: I love the papoosh, Jenny's papoosh," said Annawillee, as she held the baby. The shack was lighted by the burning Mill rather than by the stinking slush lamp on the foul table. Jenny cried for her baby, but Annawillee was after all a woman and loved children in her own way. For years she hadn't handled one. Her only child had died. Its father was not Chihuahua.
"Oh, give him me, Annawillee," said Jenny. He was George's child, and now she knew that "Tchorch" was out on the great lonely river, hunting unhappy Pete. Men said they would never come back. ”

“ She was very good to my brother and to Mary," said Quin. "She's a very good little girl."
He nodded and walked on. He wished Pete would get killed on the top of a log, but his face was inscrutable and calm as that of any full-blooded Siwash. Pete was as innocent and as unsuspicious as any child. If he feared anyone it was Spanish Joe, with his guitar and his songs. He went home as pleased as Punch by the condescension of the Boss, and found Jenny laying out dinner. ”

“ From the Columbia Crossing, or even from the summit of the Rockies down to the Inlet, and the City of Vancouver (in Pete's time mere forest and as thick as a wheatfield) , it's the Main Street.
The fact of the matter is that the whole of the Slope, the Pacific Slope, is only one Main Street. It begins to dawn on a man on the Slope, that in a very few years he might know everyone from the Rocky Mountains down to Victoria and to Seattle and Tacoma and Portland and San Francisco. Men wander to and fro like damned souls or migratory salmon or caribou. ”

“ They looked up and smiled unenvious of idle Pitt River Pete. They knew work was good, their breath felt clean: their hearts beat to the rhythm of the Mill.
As mills go it was a small one. It could not compete with the giants of the Inlet and the Sound who served Australia, which grows no good working wood, or South America. It sent no lumber to Brisbane, no boards to Callao or Valparaiso. It served the town of New Westminster and the neighbouring ranches: the little growth of townships on the River up to Hope and Yale. Sometimes it sent a cargo to Victoria or 'Squimault. ”

“ And then he knew that there was such a creature as a man! He gasped and drew in air again and with it life and more far-off knowledge. He remembered the Mill which was burnt in some ancient day, and Jenny, long since dust, of course. And then the past times marched up to him: he knew they were the present, and that he had lost Pitt River Pete in the river, and that he hung feebly to a capsized boat. ”

“ Most men represent other men or shadows, but you represented yourself and a great part of my old life: you stood for the Grade, for the Mountains, and the Passes, for the steel rails, for the Contractors with whom I worked, for the Road, for all Railroads, for Canada and British Columbia, linked and made one at last. You know what Colonial fever is: that disease of desire which at intervals afflicts those of us who have come back out of the Wilderness. ”

“ Pete was brave enough, even if he did kick klootchmen. As Ginger White knew, he was the best wedger-off thereabouts, and could have got a job at any of the big Mills of the Sound or the Inlet. He could ride a horse and fight a man of his own weight quite well enough. Indeed there was nothing wrong with him but the fact that he was a Sitcum Siwash and given to drink when it was handy. Up at Cultus Muckamuck's, where it wasn't handy, he was as sober as any judge and a deal more sober than some out West. ”

“ In less than a minute he dropped, still carrying the half-emptied kerosene can, through the hole in the wharf. Then he waited and saw a warm blaze high upon the hill.
"That fix heem and her," said Pete, intoxicated with his deed and with the alcohol. "That teach heem, damn Shautch Quin, heh! I kill his blother, heh, and burn his house!"
His heart was warm within him as fire. It seemed so good to be revenged. Now they would wake, and perhaps would not escape. All the world would wake and go up there, and then the Mill would be left alone. ”