Rogue River Feud E-Book

Zane Grey

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Zane Gray had a hut on the Robber, and his affection and passion for this epic river make her the main theme of the book.It is the best writing about the Rogue that has been done before or since and poetically and descriptively traces the river from its birth below Crater Lake to its dispersal into the Pacific and then picks up a school of salmon and takes them all the way back up the river to spawn. Environmental organizations attempting to save Northwest salmon should be handing Rogue River Feud to anyone who will take a copy.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER ONE

DEEP and dark green, swift and clear, icy cold and as pure as the snows from which it sprang, the river had its source in the mountain under Crater Lake. It was a river at its birth; and it glided away through the Oregon forest, with hurrying momentum, as if eager to begin the long leap down through the Siskiyous. The giant firs shaded it; the deer drank from it; the little black-backed trout rose greedily to floating flies. And in sunlit glades, where the woods lightened, the wild lilac bloomed in its marvelous profusion of color, white and purple and pink, scenting the warm drowsy air with sweet fragrance.

Then suddenly, with a gurgling roar, the river performed a strange antic. It sank underground to reappear far below, bursting from a great dark hole at the head of a gorge and sliding down in glancing green inclines that ended in silvery cascades. Below Prospect the river tumbled off the mountain in mellow thundering music, to meet its main branch, and proud with added strength and beauty, it raced away between its timbered banks down the miles to the sheltered valley, through Burnham’s Ranch, and by Gold Hill, slowing in a long still reach that ended in Savage Rapids. Then on to Pierce Riffle, and skirting Grant’s Pass, the river twisted and chafed and fought its way through Hell Gate, and rushing over the Alameda rocks, and the ledges of the Argo Mine, it entered the canyoned wilderness of the Coast Range.

Long before the towering crags above Horseshoe Bend looked down upon the hurrying green and white stream it had grown to superb maturity, and flowed on, here with brooding peace and there with eddying poise, yet ever and oftener breaking into fierce rapids, down into the thundering cauldron of Reamy Falls and through the Plowshare, a white furrow in the mighty boulders, and over the constricted Graves Creek Rapid.

Tyee Bar and Russian Bar and China Bar, where the miners had washed away the sand for gold, and shed their blood and left their strange graves, made wide curves for the river. It raced and eddied by turns; it tarried under the high golden meadows that shone like jewels on the black mountain slopes; it glided on in glancing ripples around Winkle Bar, gentle and reluctant and sweetly vagrant, as if to lull and deceive, only to bellow sudden rage at the confines of Blossom Bar, and to prepare itself for a sullen surrender to treacherous Mule Creek Canyon. When it emerged from that narrow black-walled crack it was a subdued and chastened river, yet glad to be free once more, and to receive graciously the amber brook that tumbled off the mossy cliffs, on to the winding beauty of Solitude, where the black firs encroached to the water’s edge, and the sun shone only at midday down upon the ledged and barred river, and the wild ducks played among the reeds, and the weird and lonely water ouzels built their mud nests under the overhanging rocks, and the eagles screamed aloft, and the deer and bear made trails along the shores. But at last the leaps of Clay Hill and Two Mile Rapids released the river from the hundred-mile grip of the mountains.

Here it opened out and slowed down and spread wide over shallow gravelly bars, and ran on merrily, its fury spent, its mood changed, its age realized, on through the pastoral country of the coast, past the picturesque farms of the Indians and the rude shacks of the fishermen, broadening and meandering, smiling from its shiny pebbled bed at the retreating banks and the low colorful hills, and so on down to Gold Beach, assuming a deep, calm majesty when it found its home in the infinite sea.

Outside the mouth of the Rogue lurked a motley swarm of salmon, steelhead, forked-tails and silversides, and the hungry wolf-jawed jacks.

They began to gather early in the spring and every day thereafter the specked ranks grew. A marvelous instinct of nature brought them from out the ocean depths to the river which had given them birth. That same strange instinct actuated them with this restless waiting urge. Sharks and seals moved them to and fro, but never drove them from this inevitable wait at the river’s mouth. In great shadowy shoals they drifted close to the gateway through the breakers and listened for that mysterious call. When it came it was as if an irresistible command had united them. It was the first rise in the river, the freshet from mountain rains, and the water carried a sweet cold scent of the springs and the gravel beds. The run was on. First over the bar were the great brown leather-backed, white-bellied salmon, and the others followed, in a long endless stream, like deer migrating from north to south.

Their next obstacle was a man-made one, the wall of nets stretched across the wide river to intercept and capture and kill. Thousands strangled by the gills in the close meshes, but hundreds got through or around or over. The run was on and only death could end that instinct to survive and to reproduce. All day fish came over the bar into the river, but it was at night when they ran in heavy numbers. The fishermen knew this and cunningly spread their nets across the deep channels.

Those fish that escaped went up the river, steadily while the high water was on, sooner or later, when it fell again, to be halted by shallow bars over which they could not swim, or by rapids which they could not mount. Here in deep pools and where cool springs bubbled out of the ferny banks they waited again for another rise in the river, and ever their number grew. Days, sometimes weeks, passed before they could resume their journey. But most years nature provided the means by which the fish could move on upstream. At last they climbed above the region of obstructing shallows, and from then on the progress depended on strength and endurance. They shot the rapids and leaped the falls.

Gradually their number thinned out. The long two-hundred-mile climb was beset by perils and obstacles. The forked-tails and steelhead had no such battle for life that faced the salmon. They were smaller and nature had endowed them with endurance to get back to the sea. But the great scar-sided salmon sacrificed life in this struggle. Many weakened on the way, only to drop back; others, leaping high to get over the falls, sometimes hit rocks and crippled themselves; all rested longer and longer in the still pools above the rapids; none ever reached the spawning beds without the wounds of battle.

Upon the shallow gravel bars of the upper reaches of the river the surviving salmon made their spawning beds. When the sun shone brightly they could be seen almost motionless, huge brown-and- silver shapes, heroically absorbed in their task of procreation. And below them, wavering in deeper water, like wolves on the edge of a flock, hung the predatory jacks. They were salmon, too, but the cannibals of the species. Often one of these would glide forward, suddenly to shoot head on into the plump side of a spawning salmon, to burst from her eggs that floated down. And the wolf would drop back to fight his fellows for these floating eggs.

Nevertheless the spawning proceeded, perhaps inscrutably benefited by this cruel preying of nature. Salmon eggs were laid and fertilized and hatched–a procedure which ended in death for the progenitors. Out of millions of tiny little salmon, almost too small to be seen, some survived. And this survival was a monstrous and marvelous thing, in that the little fish lived off the rotting carcasses of their parents. As if by magic they grew.

When the time came the same mysterious call that had brought their parents up the river drew them instinctively down toward the sea. In shiny schools they glittered on the surface, sometimes leaping like a swarm of silver minnows. And they went on down the river to be swallowed up by the fertile salty sea, into which they vanished until maturity roused the same urge that had given them existence, when, strong with life and immutable to extend it forever, they sought the rolling Rogue to fulfill their part in the cycle.

CHAPTER TWO

KEVEN BELL, returning home to Grant’s Pass after two terrible years in an army training-camp hospital, seemed to see all things strange and unfamiliar except the beloved river of his boyhood–the errant and boisterous Rogue.

He had not gone home at once, but wandered about the town, finally lingering at the river bridge. It troubled him that he could not remember well. But he knew his mother had died during his four-year absence from home, and his father’s last letter had acquainted him with more misfortune. Watching the green gliding, rolling river brought a break in his thought and feeling. A poignant spasm gripped his breast. His jaw quivered, and his eyes smarted and dimmed with tears. How long had it been since he had cared for anything?

Surely still for Rosamond Brandeth, whom he had loved before he left home to train for war! Long since her letters had ceased–so long that he could not recall when. He knew what to expect and had no bitterness then. Indeed he meant to release her from a claim that honor, at least, held binding. The river brought back memories of Rosamond.

At length he turned away. He had to ask a man, who peered strangely at him, how to find his father’s house. It looked old and dilapidated. He sat down on the porch, slowly realizing. Yes, he knew the rose vine, just budding green, and the flagstones in the walk.

The day was a Sunday in May. He had arrived from Seattle on the morning train. The streets appeared deserted. New houses across the common hid the banks of the river. Finally, hearing steps within, he knocked on the door. It opened.

There stood his father, greatly changed, now slight of build and stoop-shouldered, his hair gray, with amazed and slow recognition dawning in his mild blue eyes.

“Dad, don’t you know me? It’s Kev.”

“My son!” replied the older man, and reached for him. “I–I didn’t know you... Come in.”

When Keven saw the sitting room, with its open grate, where a fire burned, he suffered another pang. That empty armchair by the table told him of the vacancy in this home. His father clasped his hands hard and gazed up, puzzled and anxious.

“Son, you’re not the same,” he said. “Taller... Thin. You used to be big... And your face–”

“I couldn’t write,” replied Keven, a hand going to his father’s shoulder. “But you heard of my accident?”

“I think I did. Long ago, wasn’t it? But I forget what. Once we thought you’d died. Then it was in the paper about your being in the army hospital. That was before your mother went... What happened to you, Kev?”

“A lot. Cannon blew up. I stopped the breechblock with my face,” replied Keven. “I was pretty badly mussed up. But I didn’t know anything about it for months. They thought I’d die. I was in hospitals for two years. Then I pulled through. But my mind is bad. I notice it most in not being able to remember. Can’t see well out of one eye... And look here–at my iron jaw.”

He drew down his lower lip, to expose the hideous thing that served for his lower maxillary.

“What’s that?” queried his father, nonplussed.

“I lost most of my lower jaw. The dentist patched it up with iron. I can chew with it. But I hate the taste. They said I could get a gold-and-platinum jaw someday, with teeth in it. Ha! Ha! When I strike gold along the Rogue!”

“Well! Well!... Sit down, son. So you never got to France?”

“No, worse luck. Four years! My health shattered–my eyesight impaired–my brain injured somehow. I’d been better if I’d gotten to the front. Four years for nothing.”

“My God!” replied his father huskily. “It seems hard... And now you’re only twenty-six. Ruined!... What a miserable farce! All that patriotic hokum! That wonderful training camp. What did they do for my son?”

“Worse than killed me, Dad,” replied Keven sadly. “I suffer pain all my waking hours. And I don’t sleep well. In the Army I learned a lot of rotten things. But you get so you don’t care. They wanted you not to care–to revert to savagery. Yet they fed us on saltpeter bread... Whisky gives me relief, though... I’m sorry to tell you this, Dad. Better from me, though, than from anyone else. I had to come home. I’m a wreck. No money. Nothing but this uniform on my back. That’s all.”

“God has failed us,” replied the older Bell bitterly.

“I don’t remember where I stood in regard to God once. But sure He didn’t linger around that camp.”

“Son, if we lose faith we’re lost,” said his father, poignantly regretting his momentary confession. “It could have been worse. You might have been killed–or have been sent to an asylum. While there’s life there’s hope. Kev, I implore you to have hope.”

“For what, Dad?”

“That you’ve something left to live for,” was the earnest reply. “Find it–make it! They have failed you. Your country–your sweetheart! And you’ll find no friends now. But I say–by God, as long as you can wag, rise above it all! The damned sordid, rotten part of the world that seems in power. The destructive forces!... Don’t let them kill your soul.”

“I understand, Dad... Thanks. I know there’ll always be a bond between us. It’s something–it’s enough. I’ll try... Tell me about Mother.”

“Kev, she just gradually went downhill,” returned Bell. “You should remember she was a sick woman before you left. She had a long, lingering illness. She was glad to go. Before she died she told me to get you back home here by the Rogue–that the river would cure you. She loved that river... Well, I had to take more and more time away from the store, until gradually my business failed. I lost it... Since then I’ve been carpentering. You know I was always handy with tools. They were my hobby. And now that hobby stands by me. You can never tell.”

“If only I had learned a trade!” sighed Keven. “I’m not so weak. I could work–I could stick at something that didn’t require thinking. But I never learned anything, except how to fish. I spent more time fishing than in school.”

“Kev, you can go back to the river,” said Bell thoughtfully.

“What? You don’t mean fishing?”

“Yes, I do. For a living. The market fishermen do well now. Some of them own their homes. Brandeth has gotten control of the canning factory at Gold Beach. He pays big wages. It’s an established business now. He got rich during the war.”

“Brandeth. You mean Rosamond’s father?”

“Yes, no one else than John Brandeth. Of course he never was poor. But now he’s rich. Built a magnificent new house. Has a big fruit ranch down on the river. He’s in everything. And, by the way, he got my store.”

“Straight or crooked, Dad?” queried Keven.

“All business is straight, since the war,” replied his father evasively. “But John Brandeth could have saved me from failing.”

“Business must be like war... Dad, how about Rosamond?” returned Keven, averting his eyes.

“Grown into a beautiful young woman. Fine feathers make fine birds. She sure flies high. Drives her own car. Drinks and dances. Engaged to this high-stepper from Frisco and then some fellow round here–so the gossip runs. She never speaks to me, though it’s not so long since she begged candy from me at my store... But, Kev, you haven’t any hopes, have you–about Rosamond?”

“No, indeed, Dad... But she never broke our engagement. At least I never had word of it... Was–that reported about town?”

“Lord, no, son. You’ve been long forgotten.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Forget all that, too, my son... Let’s talk of other things. We’ll fix up your old room. And come out to the shed. I’ve built a new river boat. The same old model, Kev. I sell one now and then to a market fisherman. This one is spruce, twenty-one feet long, deep gunwales, sharp fore and aft, with watertight compartments. It’s a dandy.”

Sight of that Rogue River boat seemed to open a door in Keven’s heart to let memory in. For he had known every stone in the river from Savage Rapids to Blossom Bar, and beyond. To run the rapids, to drift with the still current, to listen to the singing waters, to fish the pools–these had been his joy from boyhood up. And sight of this long deep boat, sharp fore and aft, with its beautiful lines and its strong frame, brought that old forgotten joy surging back.

“Dad, it’s sure a dandy. Better than you used to build,” Keven said heartily.

“Necessity is the mother of improvement, son,” replied his father.

“What do you charge for these boats, Dad? I’ve forgotten.”

“Forty dollars to the market fishermen. They furnish oars, locks, lines.”

“This one sold?”

“No. But Garry Lord has his eye on it. Wanted to pay me ten on deposit. Garry can never keep money long enough to save up that much.”

“Garry Lord!... Somehow that name seems familiar,” returned Keven ponderingly.

“Humph, it ought to be. You used to play hooky from school to fish with Garry Lord. How that distressed your mother! Garry never was any good, and now he’s worse. He’s grown up now. Just a lazy drunken low-down riverman!”

“Does he still live out on the edge of town, in a tumble-down shack under the pines by the river?”

“No. Brandeth bought that pine grove and the river front. He ousted Garry and the other loafers out there. Garry moved farther down the river.”

“I’ll hunt him up... Dad, here’s your forty dollars for the boat. It about cleans me out.”

“Son, I can’t take your money.”

“Yes, you can. If you don’t some bootlegger will get it,” replied Keven, and forced the money into his father’s unwilling hands. “Is my old room available?”

“It has never been used. Mother locked it after you went to be a soldier. And she lost or hid the key. That room has never been opened... But we can force the lock.”

Presently Keven Bell stood on the threshold of the room where he had lived his childhood and boyhood days. And on the threshold of the dim past, where vague scenes arose, like ghosts, like the musty cobwebbed things under his piercing gaze!

In the afternoon he walked out the broad avenue to the Brandeth mansion that lifted its shiny tiled red roof among the pines on a bench high above the river. He wanted to get something over–a duty he imagined he owed himself–something for which no letter would suffice. The fine-graveled road, the smooth path, the green lawn with its plants and statued fountain, the stately house that seemed to frown at his insolence–these made but momentary impressions. The maid who answered his ring informed him that Miss Brandeth was out motoring.

Keven returned to the main street and strolled its long length, passing many persons, not one of whom he recognized. Automobiles full of gay young people whizzed by him. Keven was used to being stared at. The attention he created, however, was not due to recognition. He went to the park, which was dotted with strollers and loungers, and from there back to the railroad station. An hour’s walk on Sunday afternoon assured Keven he was not known in his home town. But four years was an age and he had greatly changed. He ended upon the river road, from which he crossed a meadow to the pine-fringed bank.

He sat down in a shady fragrant brown-carpeted spot. It was lonely there. The road, the bridge, the town with its noisy cars and young people were out of sight. Suddenly the dull thoughts that had been stirred in him ceased to operate. And he felt the pleasantness, the welcome of the place.

The river ran clear, swift, and green over the rocky ledges. From the bend below floated a low musical roar of a rapid. It mingled with the sound of the wind in the pines. A crow cawed from the hills. In the shallow water red crayfish backed over the mossy stones.

Keven closed his eyes and lay back upon the pine mat, and all these sensations seemed magically intensified. At last, thought and remembrance encroached upon the first peace he had felt for years. How strange that it should come to him here on the bank of the Rogue! Even his physical pain had been in abeyance. It was something he must inquire into. Rising, he strode on down the river, past the white rapid that stopped his heart with a recollection. Here as a boy he had experienced his first upset and had drifted, clinging to his skiff, through the ugly rocks and rushing channels to the safety of shallow water below. How much better it would have been for him to perish then! But a doubt mocked his sadness.

At the end of the fringe of pines he espied a fisherman’s shack. He knew the type, though this one appeared more hastily and flimsily thrown up. It had been constructed of boards and stones and flattened gasoline cans, with a stovepipe sticking out of the roof. Yet it appealed to Keven. No location could have surpassed that upon which it stood. A giant pine spread wide branches down over the roof, to brush against it. Keven was calculating doubtfully about its being above high-water mark when he saw a man bending over a net which evidently he was repairing. Keven had to gaze keenly to make sure this was Garry Lord. Finally convinced, he slipped aside so that the shack hid him and went cautiously down the bank, with a warm, inexplicable desire to surprise Garry. And he peeped out from behind the shack, in time to see Garry throw aside the old net in disgust.

“Rotten!” he ejaculated. “Rotten as the damned nettin’ game itself!... It ain’t no use. No net–no boat. An’ jail yawnin’ at me again!”

Keven stepped out. “Hello, Garry.”

The fisherman started quickly to rise and turn. He had a leathery, weather-beaten face, homely and hard, unshaven and dirty, yet despite these features and the unmistakable imprint of the bottle, somehow far from revolting. Perhaps that was due to the large, wide-open, questioning blue eyes. His ragged apparel further attested to his low estate.

“Fer the love of Mike!” he yelled suddenly. “It ain’t Kev Bell?”

“Yes, it is, Garry. All that’s left of him.”

“But, my Gord! Last I heerd you was dead!”

“No, worse luck, I’m alive.” There was no mistaking the glad- eyed, warm-fisted welcome of this fisherman, to which Keven felt strange reaction. He returned that hard grip.

“Gord, I’m glad to see you, Kev. An’ you hunted me up? Or was you jest walkin’ down the old river?”

“Dad told me where to find you,” replied Keven. “I got home today. The old place is changed, Garry. I didn’t see anyone I knew. Mother’s gone–Dad’s old and broken... It’s tough to come home to–to all that... Well, I’m lucky to get home at all. Garry, I was at the butt end of a gun that blew up. Breechblock hit me in the face. I’ve a bum eye, an iron jaw, and a sunspot on my brain. Ha! Ha! But that’s all, Garry, about me.”

“Set down, Kev. You are changed a lot. I’d knowed you, though, out of a thousand. You can still ketch the eyes of the girls.”

“Honest, Garry, I’m a cripple. Look here.” And Keven gave proofs of several of his physical defects.

“I heerd you’d been bunged up somethin’ fierce an’ was slated to cross the big river. Fact is, Kev, I heerd lots about you before an’ after you was hurt.”

It was Garry’s manner of speech, more than its content, that roused Keven’s curiosity. The fisherman regarded him gravely, as if remembering that before the war there was a certain definite barrier between them, and as if wondering now if that had been leveled.

“You remember Gus Atwell?” he queried guardedly.

“Yes, I guess so. Though I can’t recall his face.”

“He got a major’s commission.”

“Oh, yes. He lorded it over us at camp. God, that seems long ago. Atwell went to France long before I was injured.”

“Like hell he did,” retorted Garry with contempt. “He came home. Invalided they called it. We all called it nogutseted!... Kev, he was as healthy as me.”

“Is that so? News to me. I guess there’ll be a lot of news.”

“You said it. An’ I’m wonderin’, Kev... Wal, I’ll tell you straight. Atwell spread such talk about you thet it got to the ears of us fishermen.”

“Gossip? What about? My accident? How near death I came–and all that time in the hospital?”

“Not on your life,” snapped the riverman, with those keen bright eyes studying his visitor. “He spread a lot of rotten stuff. I can only remember one of the things. Thet was so queer no one’d ever forget it. About five girls in one family. Name Carstone. They lived near the trainin’ camp. Five girls from fifteen years old up to twenty-two, an’ every damn one of them had a baby. Five sisters!... Thet’s the worst I ever heerd.”

“Carstone? Five sisters? That runs in my mind somehow–not exactly strange.”

“Well, Atwell said you was mixed up in thet. An’ there sure was a nine-days’ gabfest here at the Pass.”

“Garry, it’s a lie,” replied Keven hotly.

“I’m right glad to hear thet, Kev,” returned Garry fervently. “An’ if I was you I’d face Atwell with it. Make him crawl or beat hell out of him. Us upriver fishermen sure have it in for Atwell. You see he’s superintendent of the biggest cannery on the coast. Belongs to Brandeth, who’s gettin’ hold of everythin’. He about runs Gold Beach. Well, Atwell’s gang of downriver fishermen are against us, an’ we’ve had hell these last two years. Fights every Saturday night durin’ the nettin’ season. There’s been two killin’s. There’s a tough crowd down the river. They’re tryin’ to freeze us out.”

“Don’t stand for it, Garry,” said Keven stoutly.

“What can we do, Kev? Why, there’s only a few upriver fishermen who go down to the coast. An’ they shoot the Rogue, which you ought to remember is some job. No, we’re up against it. Atwell dominates the market here an’ on up the river. An’ at Gold Beach we have to sell to opposition canneries, none of which can afford to pay what Brandeth pays... It sure riles me to see Atwell drivin’ around here in his fast cars. Spends as much time here as at Gold Beach. He’s chasin’ Brandeth’s girl now. Hell of a lot of good thet’ll do him. Fer there’s too swift a little lady fer him. She’s playin’ him fer a sucker.”

“You mean Rosamond Brandeth?” asked Keven quietly.

“Sure. She’s the only daughter. She’s as swift as she’s pretty... By gosh, Kev, I forgot!” exclaimed the fisherman, slapping his knee. “You used to be sweet on her. I remember you used to borrow my boats to take her ridin’ on the river. When you was kids, an’ later, too.”

“Yes, I remember, Garry. It seems long ago... But let’s talk fish. When does the season open?”

“Open now. But there’s no run yet. If I had a boat an’ a net I’d take another try at Gold Beach, if only to spite Atwell. Kev, I’m very suspicious about thet guy. But my boat won’t hold together no longer. If I tried to shoot Tyee or Mule Creek I’d be feed for little salmon. An’ I haven’t got no net, either. Last season I hand-lined salmon. Hard job an’ poor pay!”

“Is it enough to live on?”

“Well, yes, if you can make a little durin’ winter to help out.”

“What’s a net cost?”

“Around two hundred dollars. I could make one for less, but it takes time, an’ I’m lazy.”

“Garry, I’ve a little money. And Dad will lend me the balance. He’s just built a dandy new boat. Come in with me, Garry. We’ll be partners. I furnish equipment to start. We’ll share profits.”

“Kev, what are you talkin’ about?” asked the fisherman incredulously.

“I mean it, Garry.”

“You be a market fisherman!”

“Yes, I’d like it. I see no disgrace in it. I’ve got to work at something. And I never could do anything but handle a boat and fish.”

“You could do them, by gosh! But, Kev, you’re dotty. I’ve got a bad name. I’m only a lazy no-good, rum-guzzlin’ riverman. It’d ruin you to be braced with me.”

“Ruin? Ha! I’d like to know what I am now. The Army sounds great. But it’s a hideous lie!... Garry, I don’t believe you’re as bad as you make out. Or perhaps as bad as the majority of Grant’s Pass believes. You know the Rogue. It’s about all there’s left for me. I always liked you. I’d swear by you. So come on. Let’s be partners. Let’s give Atwell a whirl.”

“By Gord, Kev, I’ll take you up!” shouted Garry, extending a horny hand. There was a birth light of love and loyalty in his eyes. “I taught you to run a boat an’ mebbe you can make a man of me. Shake!”

CHAPTER THREE

THE river called Keven. At night he lay awake listening to its low roar. In the darkness his memory seemed clearer. He longed to drift into the wilderness, into the mountain fastness which the Rogue penetrated. And that was the first longing he had felt for years–except to die. Pictures wavered before his wide eyes in the dark–Chair Riffle, with its glancing slide along the ledges under which the steelhead lurked; Whisky Creek, where the otter and the wild boars fought; Solitude, so sweet and wonderful in all that had given it name.

But obstacles arose. The sheriff arrested Garry Lord on a belated warrant. Fishing out of season was the charge, and it required no effort to trace it to the factor now dominant in river affairs. Keven had to raise money to get him out, as well as for the necessary equipment of market fishermen. His father at length found the means. So it came about that Keven had to remain at home, during which time occurred inevitable meetings with old acquaintances. And every one probed deeper into what had seemed a closed wound.

Girls he had been friends with, now grown into modern young women, eyed him in curiosity as if they had never known him. That, however, was a relief. It was the honest gladness and warmth of Minton, the tackle dealer, whom Keven had once fished with many a summer day, that hurt him. For here was faith and loyalty he had not expected. “To hell with all that rot!” Minton had exclaimed, when Keven had haltingly hinted of the calumny which had been heaped upon him. “Nobody believes it. Sure I don’t. Chuck that uniform, Kev, and forget the war. It was a dose of hell for all of us. Drop in at the store. I’ll show you some of the new tackle we’ve developed. Steelhead fishing has become a great booster for the old town. But there’s only a few of us to fight the canning hogs at Gold Beach. If we don’t unite and restrict them the grand fishing on the Rogue will soon be gone.”

He met Clarke and Dugan, likewise former fishing comrades, and old Jim Turner, and the Negro Sam Johnson–all of whom were cordial in their welcome. No reference to his army training–no hint of any change in him! They were glad. How significant that each associated him with the past and the river they loved!

Then he turned a corner to be confronted by a tall, blond, sweet-faced girl who appeared strangely familiar. He swerved.

“Kev Bell! You can’t dodge me,” she called in a high treble. “Don’t you know me?”

“I–I do and I don’t,” replied Keven confusedly, hastening to take her proffered hand.

“Guess,” she said archly. “I was one of your schoolgirl sweethearts.”

“Indeed. It’s good of you to remember that,” he responded, stirred by unfamiliar emotion. “Your face I know. But I–I can’t place you... I sustained an injury to my head. It affected my memory.”

“You fickle soldier! I am Emmeline Trapier,” she said reproachfully.

In a flash Keven linked the name with that pretty face and bygone associations. “Well, I know you now,” he replied heartily, and wrung her hand. “Lord, I’m glad you spoke to me, Em. I’ve been snubbed until I’m leary.”

“Have you seen Billy yet? Oh, of course you haven’t, or you would have known me. We heard you had come home. Billy is crazy to see you.”

“Billy who?” inquired Keven.

“Why, Billy Horn, your old chum.”

“Oh!... No, I haven’t run into Billy yet,” replied Keven hesitatingly.

“You will soon, for he’ll hunt you up. Come, Kev, walk out home with me.”

“I’d like to. But it wouldn’t do for you to be seen talking to me.”

“I’ll risk it, Kev. We’re not all snobs. And you’ve friends still in Grant’s Pass. Mother will be glad to see you... Did you know my brother Hal was killed in France?”

“Hal! No, I didn’t. I’ve heard so little... My God, that’s terrible, Emmeline, I’m sorry... I never got over there.”

They walked down the street toward the residence quarter.

“You were badly hurt, though, I heard,” she said solicitously.

“Yes. It’d been better if I’d gone west, too.”

“No. Don’t say that. Kev, you mustn’t be bitter. How silly of me! Yet I mean it. For your own sake.”

“Emmeline, it’s good of you. I thank you. It makes me feel there are a few people who understand a little. But there’s no place in the old life for me. I can’t delude myself.”

“Then you’ve seen Rosamond?” she asked gravely.

“Not to speak to. I called Sunday. She wasn’t home. And again last night. The maid took my name. But Rosamond was not at home–to me... I saw her through the window. Seemed as though she suited that gaudy place.”

“Don’t take it to heart, Kev.”

“Well, it hurt so little I was surprised. Perhaps I can’t feel deeply any more. I only wanted to see her a moment... Em, I wish you’d tell her I felt honor bound to release her–no, never mind. That’s ridiculous. I’ve fallen behind in these quick modern days. But I’m no jackass.”

“I don’t see Rosamond often,” rejoined the girl. “She belongs to the new set. While I–well, Kev–I’m engaged to Billy.”

“Fine!” ejaculated Keven, thrilled at the blush that flushed her cheek. “I congratulate you both. I wish you everything life can give, Em. There are two kinds of people: the destroyers and the builders. You belong to the latter.”

“Thanks, Kev,” she said, stopping at a gate. “Won’t you come in and speak to Mother? She’ll weep over you. But don’t mind. It’ll do her good to see you back alive.”

“Yes, I’ll come. It might do me good to have someone shed a tear over me... But wait just a moment, Em. I want to ask you something. Was it Atwell who started this vile gossip here? I mean that scandal about a family named Carstone, who lived near our training camp. Five sisters who–But did you hear it?”

“Yes, Kev, I did, and I–we never believed it,” she returned warmly, her face scarlet. “It was Atwell who started that talk. Billy told me so. He heard him.”

“Emmeline, I swear it’s a lie,” returned Keven appealingly. “God knows I got tough enough in the Army. They wanted us–made us tough... I wasn’t concerned in that Carstone affair. I thought I didn’t care what anyone believed. But, Em, meeting you again and remembering–well, I’m afraid I do care.”

“Kev, you needn’t have denied that,” she replied, with tears in her eyes. “Come in now.”

THAT visit with Emmeline and her mother was an ordeal Keven did not want to undergo twice. It apprised him of his unsuspected weakness. It left him raw. A dull and thick lethargy passed from his consciousness.

Turning once more into the main street, he strolled down, revolving in mind the need to get away from town, from home that was no longer home, from an awakening, brooding self he did not trust. And it was while thinking thus that he espied Rosamond Brandeth. She was driving a flashy car. Bareheaded, bare-armed she sat at the wheel. Keven stopped stock-still. It was a recognition that staggered him, wrenched his sore heart; yet her bobbed hair and her painted face had something to do with the pang. She saw him. She knew him. That he realized in the flash of her eyes. The sleek, handsome head went up. She drove on with no other sign and her gay laugh trilled back. Keven turned to see her companion was a man, young, and bareheaded, too.

“Well, that’s over and I’m glad,” muttered Keven, resuming his walk. But the meeting left no warmth in him. Love was dead. He could be tolerant towards anyone whom the war had changed, for better or worse. Did it change anyone for the better? Souls did not require war to be tried in fire. Yet he wished Rosamond had been big enough to regret his misfortune, if not to repudiate the ignominy cast upon him.

Keven went into Minton’s store and straightway forgot the episode. Here Keven had spent many an hour in the years gone by selecting and rejecting the varieties of fishing gear. He had stepped out of a void into the pleasant and sunny past, over which the river reigned.

“I’d bet you couldn’t keep long out of here,” laughed Minton, sure of his man. “Kev, you’ll have to get some to catch up. These four years have changed fishing tackle, same as the other and less important things. Lighter rods, smaller flies, fewer spoons. Oh, boy, the steelhead I hung last summer!”

“It’s nice to see you once more among your treasures,” replied Keven. “How I used to slave, beg, and borrow, almost steal money to spend here!... I’d forgotten... Joe, I–I guess I’ll never cast a fly again.”

“Ha! Ha! Listen to him! Once a fisherman always a fisherman, Kev. The old river will get you back. You were born on it. So was I. Do you imagine you can resist? Never, and don’t think you’re too weak or sick or bitter ever to fish again. That’s what you need. The Rogue will cure you, Kev. Give you back all you’ve lost!”

“Mint, you were always a great salesman,” said Keven admiringly.

“Sure! But, you darned fool, I’m just glad to see you home. I don’t want your money.”

“I haven’t any,” replied Keven. “Just got Garry Lord out of jail. Dad’s going to raise enough to buy us a net. I’ve decided to try the market-fishing game with Garry.”

“Deuce you have! That’s not a bad idea, Kev. You two ought to clean up. Garry is the best salmon fisherman on the river. If you can keep him sober!”

“Mint, I may need some keeping myself,” laughed Keven.

“Oh, say, Kev, you didn’t learn to hit the booze?”

“Afraid I did, Mint.”

“Then you gotta quit. I hate a drinking fisherman. That old gag about fishermen going out in the morning to return smelling of rum, with the truth not in them–that always gets my goat. It’s not true.”

“Mint, I got in the habit of drinking because it relieved my pain,” replied Keven sadly. “I don’t know which is worse now.”

“You take to fishing again, Kev Bell,” said Minton with earnest bluntness. “It’s your best bet. There’s a living in it. And more–for you. Jobs are hard to get in this valley, and there’s none for crippled soldiers. Market-fish for a few years–save your money–and put it in an apple farm. Oregon apples! Fortune in them, Kev. I’m raising an orchard now.”

“Apple farm? Well, not so bad, Mint. I’d like it, and if I can save some money!... You make me feel sort of hopeful.”

“That’s the fisherman of it, Kev. Always anticipating, always hopeful. Every bend of the river beckons–every pool may bring better luck. Life should be like that. Then the joy of fishing! The fun, the peace, the sport! Who would ever tire of the music and the beauty of a running river? Especially the Rogue! It’s the best in the world, Kev.”

“You make me wish I had the dough to buy a lot of tackle,” replied Keven dejectedly.

“Say, you don’t need any dough,” retorted Minton. “Buy what you like and pay me when you can. I don’t care if you never pay, far as I’m concerned. I owe you something.”

Keven was powerless to resist this offer, and straightway plunged into the old delight of choosing a rod and suitable outfit to go with it.

“No more,” he vowed, finally, waving back the generous and enthusiastic dealer.

“Well, when you bust that come in for more,” declared Minton. “Say, the steelhead ran big last year. Late in the season, though. Funny about that. We used to get some twelve-pounders in the first run.”

“Twelve pounds! And you’ve sold me a six-ounce rod?” ejaculated Keven, awakening to the old argument over heavy versus light tackle.

“You bet. Wait till you hang a big one on that rig,” replied Minton. “And now listen to your Uncle Dudley. This talk is looking to the future and it’s serious. Keep it under your hat. Find a likely flat or bench down the river. And locate it. File a mining claim. Do your assessment work faithfully. Someday it’ll be valuable property, even if you don’t strike gold.”