The Great Divide E-Book

Alan Sullivan

• Herausgeber: Passerino
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The Great Divide is a historical novel by the Canadian writer Alan Sullivan, which was first published in 1935. It was a breakthrough work for Sullivan, and was very well received by critics. It depicts the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the nineteenth century.

Edward Alan Sullivan (November 29, 1868 — August 6, 1947) was a Canadian poet and author of short stories. He is noted for his 1935 historical adventure novel The Great Divide, which depicts the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Leseprobe

Alan Sullivan

The Great Divide

The sky is the limit

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Table of contents

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

PART II

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PART III

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

FOREWORD

This story is an attempt to recapture something of that period when Canada, as we Canadians know it, did not exist; when the hinterland of the Pacific Coast north of the United States Boundary had just ceased to be administered from Whitehall; and, implementing a promise given in previous years in order to divert British Columbia from the open arms of the neighbouring Republic, Sir John Macdonald’s government in Ottawa embarked on the greatest railway gamble ever conceived.But for that promise and later building of the line, the United States had controlled the entire Pacific Coast from Mexico to Behring Strait, there would be no Imperial highway to the Orient, and Canada’s western frontier would follow the axis of the Rocky Mountains.Aiming at a fair picture of what happened fifty years ago, I have re-vivified many who now live only in memory, associating them with a half-dozen others who, for the purpose of this writing, are fictional, which seems a reasonable thing to do when one considers the strangely assorted multitude that either preceded or followed the steel. A few, a very few, are biographically recorded, but the great majority, their work done, have slipped unrecognized into the shadows of the past, and if this tale does nothing more than give some presentment of the army that lived and died that the steel might go through, the writing will not have been in vain.With the exception of Big John and Mary Moody, the characters depicted in Yale are all authentic, and I am indebted to my friend Joe Mackenzie, who still lives on the banks of the Frazer, for many of the details in that part of the book; to the Hon. Judge Howay, British Columbia’s noted historian, for his kindly guidance; and to Mr. James Taynton of Windermere, B.C., who had personal dealings with Bulldog Kelly.Also I had the benefit of talks with Tom Wilson, Rocky Mountain Guide, companion of Major Rogers, a man of clear brain, courtly presence and quiet assurance; and with Donald Mann, another pioneer, giant in stature and courage. These two have now passed over the long trail taken years ago by Father Lacombe and those unconquerable personalities in Ottawa and Montreal who breathed life into the all-red line.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The writer makes grateful thanks to the following for their kindly assistance in the collection of data for the purpose of this book:

F. W. Alexander, m.e.i.e., Winnipeg.

E. W. Beatty, k.c., l.l.d., Montreal.

Mrs. Bevington, Montreal.

Sir George McLaren Brown, k.b.e., London.

The Hon. Randolph Bruce, Windermere, B.C.

The Hon. Martin Burrell, Library of Parliament, Ottawa.

J. H. Campbell, Winnipeg.

W. C. Coleman, Winnipeg.

W. T. Coleman, Vancouver.

Miss Cree, Provincial Library, Victoria, B.C.

C. A. Cotterell, Vancouver.

Colonel Dennis, Victoria, B.C.

Ashley Edwards, Montreal.

The Hon. Howard Ferguson, London.

J. Murray Gibbon, Montreal.

J. J. Horn, Revelstoke.

John Hosie, Provincial Archivist, Victoria, B.C.

The Hon. Judge Howay, ll.b., New Westminster, B.C.

J. W. MacArthur, Vancouver.

The late Sir Donald Mann, k.b.e., Toronto.

Joseph Mackenzie, Yale, B.C.

Mrs. Molly Glenn Niblett, Victoria, B.C.

Lady Pope, Ottawa.

Duncan Campbell Scott, Ottawa.

O. D. Skelton, Secretary of State for External Affairs, Ottawa.

J. Harry Smith, Montreal.

Joseph Tarte, Library of Parliament, Ottawa.

James Taynton, Windermere, B.C.

The late Tom Wilson, Banff, Alta.

Lieut.-Col. George Vanier, d.s.o., London.

Fred Williams, Toronto.

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

Shaped like a gigantic “S” with shallow curves, the pass lay between a tangle of mountains on whose precipitous flanks wild goats sprang from ledge to ledge: above it towered scarred peaks, first to blush under the rising sun, last to retain the dying glory: eastward, westward, the land fell away to ravines and hanging valleys and glacier-fed lakes in whose shining surface shimmered the reflection of gaunt, inaccessible summits.

Each lake, lonely in its beauty, smiled up, bordered with stretches of dark green conical spruce of which the multitudinous spires were guarded by ten thousand feet of solid rock, and swayed by no disturbing winds. Here in a season of the year stalked the gigantic elk, deliberate and unafraid: here were meadows of a lighter green, traversed by winding streams where the beaver built his heavy-roofed home of earth and sticks, damming the vagrant creeks till only a rounded crown was unsubmerged.

By rocky shores where scented cedars curled their gnarled roots over naked boulders, the otter, the mink, and fisher played and hunted, while everywhere spread a chuckle of hidden runnels, and a murmurous sound born of snowy cataracts leaping from mountain palisades into gulfs below. Baldheaded eagles with sheathed eyes and unquivering pinions floated across circumambient space, crumpled talons drawn close against the grey-white of their breasts. They alone could scale the heights and look down on the austerity of the mountain tops.

This might be seen from the pass in summer time.

In winter an alien world was revealed, a world of white, relieved only where the stony ribs of earth rose vertically, and the spruce still held their warm and verdant hue. Here and here only was there life. No cataracts transfixed the purple distance, every lake was iron-clad, wraiths of drifting snow circled diaphanously around the upper peaks, and the glaciers glinted stark in vast folds of the eternal solitudes.

In the upper regions, smitten by gales born in the Aleutians, nothing stirred, but down where the evergreen spruce gave shelter a wild population moved across the blanket of snow. Pink-eyed rabbits, white as the snow itself, frisked and made their runways, wary of marauding fox and lynx: elk thrust their gigantic antlers between young trees, pawing the snow till succulent moss lay bare: red deer passed daintily in the crumbling trough of their own making, partridge fed in the hemlocks, and the otter ploughed his sinuous overland course in search of food. The black bear drowsed in his burrow, and ivory-beaked ravens with great ragged wings winnowed over crystalline silence.

Near the middle of the pass, a spring formed a tiny pool that overflowed in opposite directions, one part of it moving hesitantly to the west, where, joined by other trickles, it began to hurry down the sunset slope. The other ran eastward towards the Columbia River.

The pass was unknown, and the range made the backbone of a continent: no crossing had been accomplished, and its fangs filled the sky, unmapped and unconquered.

It fell on a day that Apau, the Weasel, was camped on the slopes of the Selkirk Mountains, and sat with his head between his hands, saying nothing. On the other side of the teepee crouched Anatoki, She of the Pretty Head, while at her empty breast sucked her first and late-born son, Light in the Morning. Her face was thin and troubled as she looked down at the child, then at her husband.

Nodding silently, he put on his heaviest moccasins and capote, slung axe, knife and powder-horn in his belt with the little deerksin sack of bullets, and picked up his long, single-barrelled gun. There was no word of farewell when he went out.

Stooping a little as he walked, he skirted first the edge of the timber, slowly working his way higher: he knew that the greater his altitude the less the chance of finding elk, but somewhere among the naked ridges might be a mountain sheep whose flesh was good, and of whose coat Anatoki would weave a winter blanket for Light in the Morning.

Moving without sound, he came clear of the timber: the day had a quiet greyness, with a touch of snow in the air, and far below he could see his lodge, a yellowish speck in a gulf of distance.

This country was strange to him. A man of violent passions, he had not been acceptable to his tribe on the eastern foothills, so in a season of the year when Anatoki was already with child he crossed the Kicking Horse Pass and journeyed west in search of elk. For weeks he travelled: then Light in the Morning was born, and they moved on, the child packed in moss and strapped to a board carried on Anatoki’s back. Now Apau looked for a place to winter where game was plentiful, but so far with no success.

Leaning on his gun, he stared westward where, it was said, lay the Bitter Water, and there lived other Indians who ate only fish. Searching the ground he could distinguish no sign that any man had ever preceded him: north and south lifted the crests, tossing their heights into a sunless sky, lonely, austere, except at one point where, a little below his own level, their nakedness was broken by a patch of scanty timber that nestled in a cleft of this gigantic rampart: it was miles away, but guided by some instinct, he turned in that direction.

At this moment came a sudden clatter fifty yards off, and a bull elk with great branching horns galloped southward along the slope.

Quick as thought, Apau fired. Usually he would have stalked the animal till he could get a standing shot and make sure of a kill, but to-day he was weak, with no saying how far his strength would carry him. It was a hit. The elk swerved, stumbled, came to his knees, scrambled up and dashed off. Apau, his heart pounding, reloaded, ran forward, and found a gout of blood: scraping this up, he swallowed it, took courage, and hurried on.

At this height the air tasted thin, and his breast rose with long, deep inhalations. Presently he found more blood, dark and thick. Not stopping this time, he progressed in a sort of shuffle, arms hanging loose, knees bent, his black eyes fixed always some twenty feet ahead: he missed nothing; a broken stick, an overturned stone, a scrape of moss—all were eloquent. Smiling, he thought of Light in the Morning, of Anatoki’s sigh of relief at the burden he would carry back, and the bubbling of a pot as it hung over the teepee fire.

Watching the trail, he watched also the country he traversed. Behind the patch of timber which he now neared there seemed to be a great hole in the mountains with nothing beyond but emptiness and air. That on the western side. On the east the ground fell away very quickly into a wide ravine floored with spruce much bigger and older than that higher up: it was sheltered down there, with wood and water, a likely spot for game, and a very good place to camp in. He must remember that.

The elk now came into sight, floundered across a rockslide, swerved into what seemed to be a mountain meadow, and stood for a fraction of time outlined against the sky. Beside a spring it lowered its head to drink, when Apau, steadying himself, fired again: the bullet went in behind and below the shaggy shoulder, the beast quivered, gave a choking cough, and died reaching for the water.

Apau nodded, grunted, reloaded, and moved forward. He was, he reckoned, ten miles from camp, but that did not matter, and fifteen minutes later his strong teeth were shearing into a wedge of half-scorched meat. Devouring it slowly, life began to course more buoyantly in his veins. He would take a hundred-weight back with him, leave the carcass protected in a cache of big stones, and to-morrow pack the rest of it down to camp. Where he stooped to drink at the little pond, he noted that it ran both east and west.

Perched here on the very summit of the divide, and looking westward, on right and left the slopes pitched steeply down, leaving this unexpected roadway towards the setting sun. In front the land fell away to a lower level in a series of prodigious steps, and widening valleys were visible. These must lead toward the Bitter Water. Regarding them with a mild curiosity, he wondered what the country was like farther on, and determined that some day he would find out.

It gave no promise of the plains whence his people had come, and was far too rough for buffalo, but ought to harbour elk, beaver and deer. His keen microscopic eyes could distinguish no teepees, no feather of smoke, no cutting, no faint suggestion of a trail: he saw a baldheaded eagle, and heard the distant croak of ravens, but that was all. Then, feeling sleepy and a little tired, his lids began to droop.

But Apau, the Weasel, was not alone. Eyes watched him from fifty feet away, small, bright, brown eyes in a leathery skull topped by short triangular ears; for behind a boulder, motionless save for the slow regular breathing of its enormous body, lay a two-year grizzly. The crack of a gunshot had come to him an hour previously, and since then the Lord of the Mountain, who feared nothing that walked the earth, had marked every step of the approaching hunter. Never before had he seen anything that went on two legs.

His deep tawny hide blending marvellously with the tone of his shelter, the great brute had not shifted even when the dying elk shambled up to the spring, for instinct had warned him that danger was drawing near, and like a master of strategy he waited his moment. The smell of meat was in his nostrils, but now it was lost in that other smell of humanity, than which there is no sharper signal to the wild things of the forest.

He did not stir till Apau’s head sagged forward, then with extraordinary quietness he began his attack, a soundless brown mountain, ears back, his terrible jaws bared: very softly the great paws progressed, sheathing their long, copper-coloured claws, spreading sponge-like on the hard ground while a light wind ruffled his shaggy fur. He had covered half the distance when one displaced pebble made a tiny clatter.

Instantly Apau’s full senses revived, but, snatching at the gun and whirling as he sat, his heart faltered. Little chance was there of stopping this mass of bone and muscle when it came head on. The gun leaped to his shoulder, and he fired. In the same second “He who walks like a Man” lifted on his huge haunches.

The bullet grazed his skull, ploughing through leathery skin and furrowing the lower jaw. There came an infuriated cough as Apau darted to one side. A stone turned under one foot, and he fell. He was conscious of a smothering weight, but after the first swinging blow he knew no pain.

An hour went by. The grizzly, glutted, drank deeply at the spring, and carried what remained of the elk to a cranny in the rocks. Returning, he stood for a moment over the lifeless body of Apau, sniffed, and pushed it with one great paw. Then, leaving the first discoverer of the pass to ravens that would shortly drop out of dull-grey skies, he took his lurching unhurried way to a cavern in the western slopes.

CHAPTER TWO

On a dull autumn afternoon in 1880, a man past middle age stood in front of the fireplace in a first-floor sitting-room in Batt’s Hotel, Dover Street, London: occasionally he glanced impatiently at the clock or stepped to the window to look out. The hour was five and the street unusually quiet save for the clop-clop of horses drawing four-wheel cabs.

The features of this man offered points of interest: they had a faintly Jewish cast, though a second glance would have convinced the observer that he was not a Jew: his age was sixty-five, his name Macdonald, his office that of Prime Minister of Canada.

He had greying hair, a large, flexible mouth with curving, mobile lips, thin like the edge of a saucer. They were sensitive lips. The slightly hollow cheeks and shrewd, highly intelligent eyes set far apart under prominently arched brows were suggestive of daring and seemed to invite disputation: the thick mass of hair was tossed back, baring the right forehead, bringing into definition the longish nose with narrow bridge and bulbous tip: the features presented a curious blending of matured youthfulness and benignant cynicism, and in an age of bearded men Macdonald was clean shaven.

He had been waiting for perhaps half an hour when he was joined by two other men, with one of whom he exchanged a quick searching glance that appeared to impart to each the same disturbing information, whereat Macdonald shrugged.

“Well, Charles, I was afraid of it: the stars in their courses do not favour us.”

Tupper, Canadian Minister of Railways, and Macdonald’s faithful ally, shook his head.

“What did you find, sir?”

“Depression! I reached Hughenden at the hour arranged, and Lord Beaconsfield saw me at once, but what a change! He, too, was very conscious of it. Ichabod! Charles, and the glory has departed: an old, old man now, crippled with asthmatic bronchitis and gout. We talked for an hour—a great effort for him at this stage—and only a spark of the former Disraeli is left. I don’t think he can last long. He still likes the idea of our all-red line, but of course can do nothing now. He asked if we had seen Rothschild—I told him that George Stephen was looking after that—then described how he’d sent Corry—Lord Rowton, y’know—to the Baron five years ago for four million pounds in twenty-four hours to buy the Khedive’s Suez Canal shares. The Baron, who happened to be eating grapes, asked what the security was, and Corry said: ‘The British Government.’ He got the money.”

“And that secured control of the route to India and the Far East,” said Tupper emphatically. “Well, we propose to open the other route the other way round.”

“Beaconsfield agreed at once, and referred to our previous talk in ’75; also he said that if our party had been in power five years ago when he was at his zenith he could have provided what backing we needed. It is too late now. One anticipated that, but—well——”

“How does he look?”

“Like some eastern magician in a fez, a fantastic red dressing-gown and slippers. He still gets affectionate notes from the Queen, but sees practically no one: he reads, dreams, and examines his collection of portraits, calling them the Gallery of Friendship. He says he would prefer to live, but is not afraid to die, and that he never hated Gladstone but simply couldn’t understand him. He’s only a mummy now, a dried-up human pod kept alive by the fading vision of former triumphs. It was all rather sad.”

Tupper nodded, and for a moment nothing was said while their minds reverted to the purpose that brought them here. That, too, was a vision. They had landed in England with hopes high, hopes that in past weeks had cooled considerably, and Tupper for one experienced a chill in the stuffy chambers of this centre of world finance. British money bags were full, but British eyes turned east rather than west, and the fairy tale of a three-thousand-mile railway through a wilderness of hostile Indians and unchartered mountain ranges did not appeal to Lombard Street. But Macdonald had risked his political life on the construction of that road, and refused to withdraw. Now the vision was encountering the solid unimaginative weight of London, with its power, its bland self-sufficiency, its politic indifference.

“Well,” said Tupper heavily, “if Stephen bumps into the same thing there’s only one thing for it: Canadians will build the road themselves, and Stephen must form the syndicate and subsequent company. Pope, what’s your view?”

Pope, Canadian Minister of Agriculture, agreed at once; then with a smile: “Sir John, you’ll have to make it sufficiently inviting.”

“If he will take it up, that means the Bank of Montreal, too,” suggested Tupper thoughtfully.

“To say nothing of a certain Donald A. Smith.”

At this the Premier put back his head and laughed. “Donald by all means, though perhaps not officially—that is to begin with. John Henry, can you suggest suitable terms with such a syndicate?”

This question, the signal for an earnest conversation, occupied them till there came a knock at the door, and there entered the two men who completed a Canadian group that had set out from Montreal a month previously.

George Stephen was tall, with a long, loose, graceful body, flowing brown beard and moustache, and large, kindly, intelligent eyes that held a lurking readiness for humour. Now he looked dejected, and, observing the gravity of the three already assembled, he frowned slightly. Difficulty was in the air, and only on Macdonald’s face might there have been discerned a faintly satirical tinge. The other man was Macintyre.

Nodding to the newcomers, Macdonald resumed his position on the hearth rug:

“Well, gentlemen, after some arduous prospecting along different trails we meet again, and I hope you unearthed more than we have. What about it, Mr. Stephen?”

“Practically nothing, sir.”

“That’s encouraging—very.”

“We have learned, Sir John, that your idea of an all-red line from the Atlantic to the Pacific strikes no spark of interest in the city, but a good deal of opposition.”

“H’m,” he murmured, “you discussed it with Barings?”

“Very fully, and lunched with Lord Revelstoke.”

“Then you did get something out of it?” chuckled Macdonald. “We should have gone with you instead of elsewhere. Yes?”

“Barings knew all about the scheme—they’ve known about it since the first—and won’t touch it: they think it a gamble, and——”

“It is a gamble—yes?”

“Lord Revelstoke holds that one cannot sell shares in a shot in the dark. Very polite, of course, and I like him immensely, but he was quite firm; he did ask, however, if your Government would guarantee interest on the shares.”

“Impossible,” said Tupper firmly, “that was agreed on the way over. The Government is not going to build this line: we desire it done by private enterprise.”

“So I told him, and got no farther.”

“Rothschilds?” asked Macdonald.

“The same thing,” replied Macintyre, “but more so. My impression is that the Baron considers us too young, the whole country too young to embark on such a project. We came away feeling that the Rothschilds were too accustomed to dealing with crusted old kingdoms and European States to entertain business with a youth like Canada. We smelled money all round us, but couldn’t reach a cent.”

“The City’s like that,” nodded Stephen, “and I’d like to be back in Montreal: you meet a man here and he seems interested—he is interested because he can’t tell when your information may not be of considerable use—he listens—he nods—perhaps asks you to lunch, and you talk yourself dry. Then he asks you to come back in a fortnight. You do come back, when he tells you that having gone into your proposition very thoroughly, he regrets that he cannot avail himself just now—later on, possibly—but not now. The reason is that anyone having anything to sell brings it to London, and he knows perfectly well that within twenty-four hours he’ll be offered something more to his liking. So there’s no hurry about anything. Oh! Macintyre and I have learned a lot since we got here.” He paused and shrugged. “What happened in Downing Street, Sir John?”

Macdonald made a grimace. “Tell him, Charles.”

“Much the same experience as yours: Canada and our affairs are not of present interest in Downing Street, and we weren’t even asked to come back—let alone lunch. We waited three hours for an interview—then nothing. Mr. Gladstone is——”

“Is not Disraeli,” put in Macdonald with a touch of bitterness, “nor is he Lord Salisbury, worse luck, but puffed with recent victory. We were about six months late, but I couldn’t anticipate Disraeli’s defeat. The last time I saw him he was Prime Minister with the country at his feet. Now he is the dying leader of the opposition in the House of Lords. Well, I know how it feels to lead an opposition. Mr. Stephen, it seems that you’ve shot your last bolt?”

“There is one glimmer of support we have heard of, sir.”

“From whom?”

“Morton Rose and Company—they’ll participate to a limited extent—perhaps a few millions—if you approve.”

“Did you ever hear of my disapproving of millions?” scoffed Macdonald.

“It’s the British firm, but American dollars.”

At this, Tupper looked a shade uncertain. “What about it, Sir John?”

“Grab them, Stephen, grab them. Nothing else?”

“Possibly a little from Holland: that exhausts the possibilities on this side.”

“Yet here we are sitting in the middle of the richest city in the world! Frankly, gentlemen, I am astonished.”

This sobering truth left them all silent. The biggest political and mercantile figures in their own Dominion, they were but small fry in London, and each underwent the nostalgia born of fruitless effort; of a sudden Macdonald turned with an exclamation.

“The Grand Trunk is behind all this: I feel it in my bones. What do you think, Charles?”

“I agree, and after encountering that stone wall, I rather anticipated what would follow. Stephen, they were willing to build the line for us, and run it—yes, I can see Sir Henry while he laid down his terms—if—he was very smooth when he came out with that if—we did not require them to have the entire road in Canadian territory: that is, they would run through the State of Michigan, then up across the boundary to the prairie country.”

“Which he knew perfectly well we would not have,” snapped Macdonald hotly. “By God! we won’t: ’twould be playing straight into American hands: defeating the whole project, and putting your friend James Hill in strategic control. No, no, he’s thick enough already with the Grand Trunk. I know that you two gentlemen, with Mr. Hill and my political thorn in the flesh, Mr. Donald A. Smith, have shared a good many millions cleaned up on a certain railway deal in the United States not long ago, but that’s your affair, not mine, and what we’re talking about now is a Canadian line with every damned spike in it a bright red. I defy Mr. Hill to get control of that. At the same time he might be very useful with his money and experience, so I’ve no objection whatever to his joining you. The Opposition would howl, but that’s nothing new. What do you say, Charles?”

“I agree.”

Macintyre and Stephen exchanged glances, the Minister of Agriculture began to converse with Tupper in a lowered tone, and presently Macdonald gave his head a characteristic toss.

“Mr. Stephen,” he said, “I am going to make you a proposal. Some twelve years ago I pledged my faith to the people of British Columbia that if they would join the other Provinces already in the Federation, the Government would undertake to link them by rail with eastern Canada. But for that they had seceded, and naturally enough, to the United States. I think you are fully informed of this. As you know, I could do nothing till two years ago.”

“I understand, sir.” Stephen had a shrewd anticipation of what was now coming.

“Well, we began at the Pacific end—with an American contractor. It was not possible to do otherwise: that coast was cut off from us—no communication through Canada—and California the only source of labour. Also it seemed wiser to break the first ground in the Province we were determined to keep under the flag. Mr. Onderdonk is a reputable man, we are safe in his hands, and he’s already at work on the Fraser River. Also we are building from Winnipeg to the Great Lakes—about six hundred miles in all.”

“Out of three thousand, Sir John.”

“About that. As to the remainder, England is evidently not interested, so it is forced upon me that this must be a Canadian enterprise—in contrast to the Grand Trunk. Canada must play her own hand without English aid. Mr. Stephen, if you and Mr. Macintyre and Morton Rose and others of your friends—including James Hill if you like—I’ll take a chance there—will sign a contract to complete this all-red line, my Government will vote you twenty-five millions of dollars in cash, twenty-five million acres of fertile land in the west, and such legislative protection as may be necessary.”

Stephen, feeling his pulse quicken, stared fixedly at the speaker. Macintyre sat motionless: Tupper’s large eyes were regarding the two merchants with luminous urgency, and into the quiet room crept the consciousness shared by all that here and now gigantic issues were at stake. The thing was too big to be more than fractionally visualized: they all perceived that, and no man could foresee what might not be involved: but it presented an aspect defiantly stimulating that mocked, intrigued and dared all at once. Like growing pains in the muscles of youth, it invited the unproved strength of a young Dominion.

“A big order, Sir John,” said Stephen in a voice not quite steady, “and no syndicate could dream of it without constant Government support.”

“I agree fully: I had hoped that we would find assistance in England: now we’re cast on our own resources.”

“Would you protect such a line from invasion by other roads across the border?” asked Macintyre tersely.

“Certainly,” Tupper assured him, “the object being to create traffic east and west, whereas now it runs north and south.”

“I’m thinking of the mountains,” interjected Stephen, “especially the Selkirk Range: from what I hear not one of your Government Surveys—and there are a lot of them—indicate a suitable pass anywhere near the border, so the line might be shoved up north, shoved anywhere, to get through. Also, so far as my knowledge goes, there’s a thousand miles of territory east of Winnipeg and north of Lake Superior which is simply barren rock and would not bring any traffic whatever. How about that? Admittedly the prairie section might pay, but what else?”

Tupper, glancing at his chief, made a gesture. He was a big man with a broad, square immobile face, large confident mouth, masses of dark hair and opulent whiskers trimmed well back from a strong, clean-shaven chin. He exhaled repose and a sort of comforting solidity.

“As a Canadian, Mr. Macintyre, do you desire Canada to end on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains?”

“What real Canadian does?”

“Then I put it to you that that is the big question. Sir John, Mr. Pope and I have decided that Mr. Stephen and yourself are in the first instance the men we need. The Government will back you to the extent indicated: you may capitalize a company for what you think desirable. As to the pass through the Selkirks, Mr. Moberly, one of our best engineers, believes that there is one: as to the thousand miles of barren rock, it is through, main-line traffic rather than local that will justify the road. Its political and national effect will be enormous, and it should bring this city of London within two weeks of the Pacific Ocean.”

Stephen sat silent, feeling in brain and body an electrical tingle: he was a little breathless. No opportunity here to weigh this matter coolly and cautiously. On the voyage over he and Macintyre had considered the possibility of drawing a blank in Lombard Street, and their own position in such an event. Now that the blank was drawn the alternative had in some notable fashion assumed proportions infinitely greater than they could have anticipated: it was concrete, yet nebulous: fascinating, forbidding: he could see a beginning, but no end. And Macintyre’s expression told him that exactly the same reaction was going on there.

“Is it too big for you, gentlemen?” asked Sir John in a slightly provocative manner.

Stephen, a proud and high-spirited man, felt the blood rush to his face. “We’ll try it, sir,” he said in an unsteady tone, “we’ll do our best.”

CHAPTER THREE

In the month of June, the year 1881, Kelly, The Rake, whose financial prospects were intimately connected with the all-red line, sat on the north bank of the Fraser River, 300 miles west of where Apau died, pulling a narrow strip of fine sandpaper between the lightly compressed tips of thumb and forefinger of either hand: his manner was deliberate, he found apparent satisfaction in the feeling of friction, and when the skin, which was smooth and white, had been reduced to a thin tissue beneath whose transparency the blood was clearly visible, he examined the result with grave approval and drew on a pair of cotton gloves. The Rake being a professional gambler, it was of importance that by touch alone he should be able to determine the pinpoint markings on cards which were practically invisible and too slight to be detected under the horny cuticle of miners and railwaymen.

He was attired in highly-polished leggings of black leather, narrow sharp-toed boots of American make with a glossy shine, a white silk shirt with loosely knotted black silk tie, a long black frock coat, full at the breast, close-fitting over the hips, reaching to his knees, and a large black sombrero hat. His face was sallow and clean shaven, cheeks a shade hollow, his eyes large, dark and mournful: the wide mouth had little pits at the corners of the lips, and his sombre dress and air of thoughtful detachment gave his general appearance a touch of the ecclesiastical.

He sat some thirty feet above the river, his back to the straggling town of Yale with its irregular ranks of flimsy houses, log shacks, tents, frontier hotels with narrow balconies at first-floor windows, stores, saloons and woodpiles, with here and there a squat, stone-built structure. This agglomeration, for the most part devoid of paint, displayed every sign of hasty occupation, and stretched perhaps a half-mile north-east, ceasing abruptly where a mountain torrent called Yale Creek established the boundary of the Indian Reserve on which no white man might build. To the south-west along the clay bank it widened till it ended amongst scattered clearings on the rough shoulders of a rocky mound known in virtue of its outline as the Jew’s Nose. On the other flank rose Mount Linhey, dotted with jack pine to its great rounded crown, while still farther north-east the tawny river appeared mysteriously to emerge from a vast rampart of higher peaks, down whose scarred flanks coursed transitory cataracts that at this season of the year escaped from hidden recesses in the mountains, and leaped to sunlight in waving pencils of argent foam.

Sometimes, when Yale enjoyed a quiet night with the wind from the east, one might hear the distant voices of these cataracts blending with the low monotone from the river, which was now sixty feet deep, half a mile wide, and flowed at some six miles an hour; but since Andrew Onderdonk, the American contractor, was building a 200-mile railway through the mountains and had chosen Yale, the head of navigation on the Fraser, for his headquarters, there were but few moments of silence.

Now, a hundred yards behind The Rake, a small saddleback tank locomotive was snorting at the head of a train of flat cars from which a gang of Chinese were unloading material; steel clanged on iron, the voices of men rose in free profanity, waggons creaked, and from upriver sounded the boom of dynamite where Onderdonk was slowly blasting his way through the formidable gorges of the Fraser.

These sounds, however, woke no answering chord in The Rake, and his slack figure lounged comfortably till he heard a voice close by.

“Hello, Kelly: fingers in good shape?”

The newcomer was a man of different appearance, shorter, broader, with heavy face, cold eyes and shoulders like a Texas steer. Known locally as Big Mouth Kelly, he held a position of considerable importance, having secured the contract for burying Chinamen dead of the China plague, a mysterious malady, little understood, which began in the legs that immediately turned black, then mounted to the heart and carried off its victims in a few hours: it did not attack the whites but was common amongst Orientals, and since Onderdonk had on his payroll some five thousand chattering labourers from the Yellow River, and twenty dollars was the interment fee, Big Mouth found no cause for complaint. He was reputed at times to be a shade prompt in his official duties, but because no Chink had ever been known to survive an attack of the disease this was hardly a matter for criticism.

“My fingers are all right.”

Big Mouth lit his pipe and nodded affably. “How’s business?”

“Not so bad: how’s the plague?”

“She’s holding up pretty well: four yesterday, and to-morrow looks good. Coming round to-night?”

“Maybe I might. Where?”

“Graveyard’s looking for a game at the Stiffs’ Rest.”

The Rake gave a faint smile. Graveyard, a leading Chinese merchant of Yale, was an adversary opposite whom he found a definite pleasure in sitting. Here was a player to be respected. Hour after hour he would remain, his sallow features entirely blank, his slanting eyes betraying nothing, always wearing the same conical straw hat, shaped like the flattened thatch on a haystack, the same loose, blue silk tunic and voluminous trousers. Graveyard, admitted The Rake with frank admiration, passed all understanding at poker. Otherwise and elsewhere he did a large trading business with his countrymen, bought for twelve dollars an ounce amalgam of gold washed from the Fraser, and as a side issue owned a very profitable installation wherewith he distilled a potent liquor from a mash of pounded rice and other ingredients whose identity passed beyond common understanding: it was known as Chinese gin, had a short range, and provided a popular substitute for the genuine and more expensive article.

“I guess I’ll be round. Who else?”

“Bulldog Kelly.”

“Sure of that?”

“He says so: I saw him just now: he’s kind of laying for you.”

“Well, there’s room enough.”

The Rake, speaking placidly, set his mind on Bulldog, a rival gambler, but of dubious reputation and a bad record, and lest there be any confusion concerning the tribe of Kelly as represented in Yale in ’81, let it be said that in addition to these three there was Silent Kelly who played solitaire day after day, did no stroke of work, yet existed in what Yale called comfort: Molly Kelly, known favourably of all and interested in a house of dalliance where four girls lived not far from the jail: and finally Long Kelly, Molly’s man of business, who would have liked the reputation of being a dangerous person but lacked the necessary guts. Between these six lay no bond of relationship or prior acquaintance elsewhere, but as flies to the honey they had gathered on the banks of the Fraser soon after the Macdonald Government in Ottawa accepted Onderdonk’s deposit cheque for half a million dollars and turned him loose in the south-west corner of British Columbia.

The Rake was thinking about Bulldog, by general repute a bad hombre, when his attention was drawn to a young man who came unsteadily towards them along the river bank, paused, and said in a thick voice:

“Either of you Kellys lend me ten dollars?”

The two regarded him with distant unapproval. He stood a full six feet, had masses of unkempt flaxen hair, blue eyes now decidedly glazed, and the shoulders of a giant: he swayed as he stood, favouring them with a loosely vacuous smile. His age might have been twenty-five years, and he suggested a young god gone to seed. The Kellys exchanged a glance of mutual understanding, and The Rake held out a five dollar bill with an air of distaste.

“That’ll last just as long as ten, John. Say, why don’t you take a job?”

“I guess I will, maybe next week. Thanks: see you later.”

He slouched on and the benefactor looked after him disgustedly. “That sort of fellow gives Yale a bad name: can’t drink without fighting. Fact is I know more about him than he does himself.”

“Which ain’t any particular asset to either of you. What is it?”

“Kind of private,” said The Rake suavely. “None of your business. What’s the latest news round town?”

“I heard Donk talking yesterday, and he said he was going to build a steamer and take her up the canyon to Lytton,” said a dry voice close by, “and I’m allowing there’s a camel.”

The speaker, a tall man with a long straight nose and lean, bird-like face, had come up without sound, a large, shallow sheet-metal pan under his arm, and now halted, staring dubiously at the swollen Fraser. His untrimmed hair fell in a greyish fringe to the nape of a long sinewy neck. He did not look at the Kellys but remained shaking his head and chewing vigorously: presently he spat with flat trajectory, turned and waved a hand.

“Yes, sir, I’m saying there’s another camel. It can’t be done: look at that goddam river, an’ she’s nothing to what’s higher up.”

“Joe, what in hell has a steamer to do with a camel?” inquired Big Mouth.

“You been here how long?” demanded the last comer with a touch of condescension.

“Eight months.”

“Then there’s a lot you don’t know: I struck Yale more’n twenty years ago, an’ the camels come soon after me.”

The Rake, rousing himself, flicked the ash from his cigar. “You said camels right here in B.C. Do I get that straight, Joe?”

“You sure do. Them was the Cariboo days, and I guess there was eight of ’em imported from over the line, half bucks, half does. Round about then freight from Lilloet to the Forks of the Quesnel was fifty cents a pound an’ as much more as the traffic could stand: all bull-teams, mind you, with maybe sixteen pair of widehorns yoked to the same drag chain so the darned wagon had to move. Of course there was horses and mules too. There might have been five thousand men up in the Cariboo that year, an’ they just had to be fed an’ damn the expense. Yes, sir, it took twenty days’ good going to make the round trip from Lilloet.”

“At the same time there’s a kind of difference between bull-teams and camels,” suggested The Rake mildly. “Go right along, Joe.”

The tall man, gnawing another chew from a sticky plug, nodded agreement.

“That’s how it looked in ’62. There was Frank Laumeister in it—he made his pile in good gravel up in Richfield, an’ Harry Ingram an’ old Adam Sheffly—there’s a creek coming into the North Thompson called after him: an’ this crowd had seen camels in Arizony where they worked all right for the Yanks, who’d brought ’em from Australy—it being kind of sandy in Arizony—so danged if they didn’t send a bunch to Victoria, then up to the head of the Harrison River, an’ over Douglas Portage to Lilloet to tote stuff over the Cariboo Road. The fun started right away because the syndicate figured them animals would walk off with maybe five hundred pounds, take a drink about once a week as convenient, feed themselves in their spare time, give no trouble that you’d notice, an’ travel faster’n bulls or mules. Well, it didn’t pan out like that: they couldn’t carry what a good mule could tote an’ when they struck a hill they just lay down, groaned, an’ quit right there. Feet got all cut in loose stone, an’ by heck! when a pack train of horse or mules saw them scarecrows on the skyline there was hell to pay with everything on its hind legs an’ language wide an’ free.”

“How did it finish?” inquired Big Mouth.

“Syndicate got sort of tired after the first trip, everyone sick with laughing at ’em, so they turned the camels out to rustle for themselves in Lac la Hache Valley—that’s near the 144 mile post past Lilloet. I saw ’em on my way to Barkerville in ’65. Harry an’ old Adam went into the ranching business next Kamloops an’ sat up nights trying to crossbreed camels with bulls, but they fell down on that. I guess there are some up there now. Harry went back to San Fran an’ died there in ’67, an’ a Douglas Lake Indian called Alexander bought one: I guess he used to worship it. Camels! Hell! Bad as the road steamers.”

“What’s that—what kind of steamers?”

“I said road steamers, with a boiler in ’em drivin’ the engines that drive their wheels—sort of road loco: that was another syndicate reckoning to corral the freighting business of the Cariboo Road, and bringing the steamers from Scotland round the Horn the way Donk gets his rails. They got ’em here to Yale, and again there was hell to pay with the cayuses and bull-teams an’ horses. You couldn’t tell what you’d strike on the Road in them days. I guess the steamers weighed a couple of ton, an’ the syndicate made their pile out of oats.”

“Oats,” murmured The Rake with growing interest, “you said oats?”

“Sure I said oats. It was like this—they hadn’t been delivered more’n a day or two when the bottom fell out of the price of horse feed. Some of the syndicate had gone up the Road and told all the farmers what was coming, and how there’d be no more use for pack-trains and horse feed, so the farmers got cold feet and sold their oats for what they could get, which wasn’t much. The steamer crowd bought ’em in on the quiet. Y’see by that time they’d begun to have private doubts about the damned machines, which were like to shake themselves to pieces on a trial trip, so they played safe. Well, sir, when they’d bought all the oats in sight, the big day came, the steamers hooked up with some waggons and started up the canyon with a hell of a hurrah an’ everything wide open, but danged if they didn’t lay down an’ die at the foot of Jackass Hill forty miles from here. Licked, b’God! They never got no farther. Then the price of oats shot right up again, so the syndicate broke more’n even on the whole game. It’s going to be the same with that boat of Donk’s; they’ll pull the nose out of her an’ nothing more, so I’ll bet fifty dollars right now she’s wrecked in Hell Gate. God Almighty never meant anything to float in them waters. Well, so long, boys; the Fraser is falling a little, and I guess I’ll try my luck.”

The Rake stretched himself and got up, amused but not impressed, his only real interest being in his profession: he had a remarkable memory, a brain which, were its moral texture differently woven, might have carried him far, and no nerves whatever. Abhorring anything that resembled work, he dressed with care, took pride in personal cleanliness, never drank intoxicants, and found in cards a pursuit that exactly fitted his discriminating taste. It enabled him to choose his company. Maintaining a natural sense of humour, he found small satisfaction in rooking the stupid or defenceless, but matched himself with pleasure against those he considered worthy antagonists, amongst whom Bulldog Kelly ranked high.

It was now nearly a year since The Rake reached Yale from the Golden Gate, and he had not even been shot at.

The Fraser, taking its source amongst a nest of mountains forming the Carson Range far to the north, debouches into the Pacific some 400 miles to the south-west through a widening alluvial plain a few miles north of the United States boundary. Between its mouth and the western prairie, tower four massive mountain ranges, Coast, Gold, Selkirk, and Rocky, this heaven-tossed barrier, so far impenetrable, cutting off the late Crown Colony of British Columbia from eastern Canada. A little above Yale begins the Fraser Canyon, through which for some forty miles the river finds escape to the sea between precipitous walls that rise abruptly to summits snowcapped for half the year, and here the flood is compressed to narrow, tortuous dimensions by prodigious battlements of unyielding diorite.

In a season the Fraser falls low; this is late summer and through the winter, when along its course are exposed sand and gravel bars from which fortunes have been won in gold; but in early summer when the upper snowfields are melting, and dripping glaciers contribute their icy streams, the river, fed by a thousand roaring tributaries plunging from the high playground of the gods, rises to incredible heights, expands to an extraordinary volume, and, ripping through the canyon, bears in its troubled bosom the detritus of ravished slopes and great trees that avalanches have torn from their rocky foothold.

In such a season the Fraser is uncontrollable. At Hell’s Gate, twenty miles above Yale, where two monoliths of granodiorite obstruct its passage, the flood climbs to eighty feet above winter level, hurling in one sharp second of time ten thousand tons of swirling, turbid water toward the Pacific.

To this wild theatre some twenty-two years previously had hurried the gold hunters from across the line, the first Americans to make their mark in that country, many of whom had traversed the western wilderness from Iowa and Ohio and Illinois on their perilous way, and skimmed wealth from the gulches and river beds of Arizona and California. When that fine frenzy was spent, this high-spirited human tide, leaving embryonic cities in its wake, beat restlessly against the shores of the Pacific till word came that gold had been discovered in the Fraser; then, gathering its old impetus, it swarmed on rotting wharves, and, drunk with the old hunger, turned northward in thousands carried by anything that would float.

Those were wild days in Yale, for the river bars were rich, and ere the best of them had been panned and washed, again from farther north came word of gold in the Cariboo, whereat once more the Argonauts set out, little guessing that ere Barkerville became a poor man’s camp a maddening whisper would reach them from the solitary banks of the Subarctic Yukon. That was their Ultima Thule.

Now it is written that on the heels of the man of gold follows his brother of steel, and this brought Andrew Onderdonk in 1880, with a contract in his pocket and the problem of the Fraser canyon in front of him. There was no other feasible railway route toward the east, and this section of the line, practically a water-level route, had been located by Tom White and other engineers through the canyon up the smoother reaches to Lytton where the Thompson River joined its greater brother, thence up the Thompson to the vast basin where that river was born in the depths of many-armed Shuswap Lake. Only by following the run of water could the Coast and Gold ranges be crossed by a line of steel.

Onderdonk found the town in a sort of twilight sleep, the aftermath of the second great gold rush of ’61 when Yale was the gateway to the Cariboo District, but at low water there was still won a dwindling amount of dust. New York Bar, Hill’s Bar—most famous of all—and Sawmill Bar a mile below, were spasmodically worked with pan and rocker, being to some extent re-enriched by every springtime freshet, but the coarse, heavy cream, the lavish accumulation of centuries, had disappeared, and one made but an uncertain wage. The bars continued to be sprinkled with whites and Chinamen, and of these the latter did best: they took more care, worked harder, caught finer gold and made a profit out of aureate gleamings at which the white man shook his head. Gone were the times when in a single day nearly two thousand excited men swarmed on perilous craft in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Seattle, and set out for the golden Fraser, times when the river bed was alive, and all night and all round the clock came the creak and rattle of grizzlies and rockers. A thousand dollars a shift was nothing to brag of then.

Next came the discovery that while the Fraser was good, the gold in its bowels grew coarser higher up, and thus advancing gilded mile by mile adventurous man, braving rapid, canyon, and hostile Indians, worked his way northward till amongst the bristling hummocks of the Cariboo he uncovered a natural mint. Here one might and did win a hundred dollars a pan in nuggets from the size of beans to that of walnuts, and towards this isolated amphitheatre near the headwaters of the Fraser pack-trains traversed the dizzy wilderness that marooned it from outside. So great became the traffic, with five thousand miners in Richfield and Barkerville, so insistent the need for transport, that in the early ’sixties the Cariboo Road was built by Royal Engineers under orders from Whitehall.

The Cariboo had its day, fortunes were made, and in one season it shipped four million dollars in gold, till presently there ensued the inevitable lean years: five thousand diminished to five score, only an occasional wagon climbed northward, and old sourdoughs who had wandered back to Yale sat in the sun talking of past glories, of Frank Laumeister and his camels, of road steamers, of Frank Barnard, who, when not driving mules, carried letters on his back for the round trip of 760 miles, and the time when Sergeants Lindsay and McMurphy, handcuffed in turns to Perry, the murderer, drove him 380 miles over the road from Yale to Barkerville in thirty hours.

Finally, Onderdonk inherited the lower end of this historic highway, it being the only means of getting men and material to work higher up the river. Traversing ravines on high causeways of logs crossed and notched to hold them in place, clinging to narrow benches blasted in the face of overhanging cliffs, the Road was at times depressed close to the surface of the tawny river only to make an aerial flight over some mountain flank: such was the trail the Argonauts took with careless laughter to the bellowing of straining oxen and the raucous voices of rebellious mules, but to Onderdonk, who surveyed it with the eye of the railway builder, it was only a stopgap. It followed the canyon through which he, too, must build, but transport over the vertiginous track would cost too much ere it reached the smoother reaches of Boston Bar higher up. Steam! he needed steam on the Upper Fraser, and steam he would have.

At the outset this railway was in general opinion a political gesture, two ribbons of steel over which there could be but little traffic, finishing in a maze of mountains. There was a promise of building from the Atlantic, three thousand miles away, but British Columbians suspected that this expensive strip of metal was merely to assuage their discontent. Between their territory and the east rose the mountains, unconquered and seemingly unconquerable; all lines of communication ran north and south; British emigrants reached Vancouver Island round the Horn in sailing ships, a three months’ journey of no little danger; the week’s news came from San Francisco: the lure of gold had brought countless Americans over the border; Gladstone, six thousand miles away, was more interested in the disestablishment of the Irish Church than in the future of British Columbia. Such was the state of affairs when Sir John Macdonald embarked on his prodigious political gamble.

Onderdonk knew all this, but, being a railway builder and no politician, was not much interested, and on his arrival a surge of life animated the wooden skeleton that was Yale, while the resident population shot up to perhaps four thousand, and the town became the assembling point for thousands more, a motley army whose entire lack of docility had earned them the satirical sobriquet of ‘Onderdonk’s Lambs’. By shipload he had brought them to New Westminster nearer the mouth of the Fraser, asking only that they be sound and whole, and transferring them in midstream to shallow-draught river boats lest they get ashore and change their minds. But once at Yale he had them.

All afternoon a long queue of men had moved forward a pace at a time through the small office where Onderdonk’s paymaster sat behind a counter with trays of small, yellow envelopes on either side and a revolver immediately in front but out of sight. Behind him a flight of wooden steps descended to a subterranean stone-built vault with an iron door where the contractor kept his cash. From the advancing queue there were few words, and as it progressed towards the counter the average weekly wage which ran from fifteen to twenty dollars was spent many times over ere the magic envelope was pushed out. Once clear of the office the pace quickened, features brightened, anticipation achieved a sharp point, and money burned in the pocket.

Yale was ready for the occasion, and it did not burn long. Before the sunset glow died on the mountain tops, every lamp had been lit down the length of Water Street, the yellow light flooding a trampled road where now surged the population of this frontier town. Every house in this straggling line faced the Fraser, while between them and the steep clay banks ran Onderdonk’s recently laid track over which now flowed in eddies and conflicting currents a jostling human tide of sharply varying character.

From the dance halls, seeking a taste of fresh air, came fair, flaxen-haired, straight-bodied girls arm-in-arm, most of them Germans or Scandinavians, popularly known as the ‘Hurdy Gurdies’, with whom for a dollar and a drink one might dance, but nothing more; a curious company, still virginal in all this riot, many of them destined for marriage and contented motherhood. One took no liberties with a Hurdy Gurdy. Tipsy men progressing by uncertain stages halted unsteadily to chuck under the chin other girls, more garish, more painted, who confronted them bareheaded, skirts trailing in the dust, dressed in low-cut gowns that displayed naked necks and invitational bosoms. These were bold-faced ‘fluzies’ from such establishments as that of Molly Kelly, and Sadie the Jewess. Siwash women were there, squat and supple of body, with black, slanting eyes and pendulous breasts, some from Juneau in far north Alaska, and known as the ‘maneaters’; these three, Hurdy Gurdy, fluzie and maneater, representing the descending grade of female relaxation in the town of Yale. Coast Indians with flat, copper-coloured faces, greasy black hair, and wide, thin lips carried over their shoulders great freshly speared salmon from the Fraser; the narrow sidewalk sprang under the tread of American and Canadian engineers; track-layers; Britishers in bowler hats, leather leggings, and short-cut, tight-fitting coats that ended ere they touched the buttocks; teamsters in sombrero hats, corduroy breeches, and leather belts; clerks; axemen; Cornish single-handed drillers, known as Cousin Joes; mounted men on bucking cayuses; groups of chattering, yellow-visaged Chinese labourers; blue-eyed, fair-haired Swedes; small, sinewy Italians who took station work contracts for sections of earth embankment. One observed, too, Ki Tee and Fee Wong Long, oriental merchants, parading in grave sobriety, masking their impressions of the Occidental behind broad, imperturbable features. Straight men these, who like Graveyard wore conical straw hats and sold wholesale liquor in stone-fronted stores that faced the river. There were Jewish peddlers, leathery prospectors, and, circulating genially amongst this polyglot assemblage, one uniformed authority in the person of Jack Kirkup, the single arm of the law, in helmet, brass buttons, tight-cut breeches, blue tunic, and truncheon. Jack carried no gun, and occupied most of his time in depositing unconscious men behind woodpiles, or the favoured ones on heaps of empty gunny sacks.

Payday in Yale!