| CHAPTER
I.
“So
the little King Georgeman comes to-morrow, eh, Tillicum?”
asked the old Lillooet hunter.
“Yes,
comes for all summer,” replied “Banty”
Clark, “and I’ve got to be polite and show
him around, and, I suppose, stay in the ranch house
all the hot weather while his nibs togs up in his London
clothes, ‘don’t yer know,’ and drinks
five-o’clock tea, and does nothing but stare at
the toes of his patent leather shoes. Pshaw! What a
prospect! Ever see patent leather shoes, Eena?”
asked Banty, with some disgust.
“I don’t know, me.
I think not,” replied The Eena.
“You’re lucky,”
went on Banty. “But my cousin’s sure to
wear them, and they’re spoil-sport things, I can
tell you! No salmon fishing, no mountaineering, no hunting
while they’re around. But, Eena, why do you call
my cousin a King Georgeman?”
“It is the Chinook for
what you call an Englishman,” replied the Indian.
“Why, what a dandy idea!”
exclaimed the boy. “I think I shall like my cousin
better because of that Chinook term. I can even go the
patent leather shoes; I believe I’d almost wear
them myself to be called a King Georgeman.”
“You’ll like your
Ow” (Ow is Chinook for young cousin or brother),
encouraged The Eena. “King Georgeman all good
sport, all same fine fellows, learn Indian ways quick.”
[Page 191]
“I hope you’re right,”
said Banty, a little doubtfully, for, truth to tell,
he had small liking of the idea of a brand-new English
cousin on his hands for the summer, a Londoner at that,
who knew nothing of even the English country, let alone
the wilderness of mountains, canyons, and the endless
forests of British Columbia. Poor Banty had been so
accustomed to chum about with the old Lillooet hunter
whom he had nicknamed “The Eena” (which
is the Chinook for “Beaver”) that the thought
of a perfect outsider breaking into their companionship
for all the holidays was little short of misery.
But the next day when Banty
drove down to Kamloops to meet the train, and his cousin
stepped from the sleeper on the station platform, things
looked worse than threatened misery. The future loomed
before him like a tragedy; he almost groaned aloud,
for swinging towards him with a loose-jointed English
gait was a tall, yellow-haired chap, the size of a man,
with a face sea-tanned between a pink and a brown, his
long neck encircled with a very high, very stiff collar,
his light gray suit pressed as if it had just arrived
from the tailor’s, and poor Banty’s quick
eye flew from the smiling pink face to the faultlessly-trousered
legs—horrors! The trousers were long.
(Banty had at least expected a boy of his own size and
age.) But, worst of all, below the trousers gleamed
immaculate shoes of patent leather!
“I’m glad Eena didn’t
come,” moaned Banty. “If he’d seen
this, he would have steered clear of the ranch
for weeks.” Then, bracing himself like a man,
he went forward with outstretched hand to greet his
unwelcome relative. The English lad blushed like a girl
as he met his Canadian cousin, but his handclasp was
decidedly masculine as his soft London voice said: “Awfully
good of you to come and fetch me, don’t you know.
I suppose you’re my Cousin Bantmore?”
“Banty,” was all
the stricken boy could reply.
“Oh, good! I like that,
‘Banty.’ That’s a great [Page
192] name!” exclaimed the tall Britisher.
“You’re lucky! What would you do if you
were handicapped with a tag like mine—Constantine—with
all the dubs at school calling you ‘Tiny’
for short, while you stood a good five feet nine in
your socks? Isn’t it dreadful?”
Instantly Banty found his heart
warming towards this big pink cousin, who bore with
such sturdy good humor the affliction of such a terrible
name. “It is bad,” he assented,
“but it might be doctored. Haven’t you got
a middle name?”
“It’s worse,”
grinned the victim. “It’s St. Ives. I tried
it on the second term, and the crowd called me ‘Ivy,’
and one smartie sent me a piece of blue ribbon to tie
me yellow curls with—he wrote that in
an insulting note.”
“What’d you do?”
gasped Banty.
“Licked him in full view
of the whole school, and he was a senior; trimmed him
till he couldn’t see,” was the smiling reply.
“Good boy!” almost
shouted Banty. “You’re the stuff for out
West. I’m glad you’ve come.”
“I’m glad, too,”
answered his cousin, “but I’ll be ‘gladder’
if you will tell me where I can get some togs like yours.
I declare, but I like that outfit,” and he looked
enviously at Banty’s leather chaps, blue flannel
shirt, scarlet silk neckerchief and cowboy hat.
“These duds?” questioned
Banty. “Oh, you can get them anywhere. They’d
hardly suit you, though.” And he measured the
stranger with a critical eye.
“Suit or not, I’m
going to have them,” said “Con”—as
his genial father called him. “Let’s go
right to the shops and get an outfit now.”
So Banty tied up the horses,
stowed the luggage away in the afterpart of the trap,
and led the way to the trader’s.
When they started for the ranch,
Con had, in addition to his English bags, boxes, shawl-straps
and portmanteaus, a most beautiful outfit of typical
Western finery, a [Page 193] handsome
Mexican saddle, a crop, a quirt, fringed gauntlet gloves,
chaps, Stetson hat, a silk handkerchief, ties, and three
pairs of sporting and riding boots.
We’ll put these patent
leathers gently into the river, or on a shelf, until
I face the East again,” he said, half apologetically.
Then with a quick burst of English simplicity, he said:
“Oh, Banty, I want to be one of you!”
“And you’re going
to be one of us,” said that sturdy young Westerner.
“In fact, Con—well, you just are
one of us,” he added.
The lanky, pink-faced boy grew
pinker.
“I know I’m an awful
length and all that,” he said, “but I’m
only sixteen, don’t you know!”
Banty grinned. The “Don’t
you know,” which at first horrified him, was,
oddly enough, growing to be almost fascinating. Banty
would have felt himself an awful owl were he to say
it, but it somehow suited the tall, pink boy, and did
not sound one particle “dudish,” or offensive,
and during the ten-mile drive across the Kamloops Hills
Banty decided that Con was a first-rate fellow, notwithstanding
his abominable clothes and “swagger” English
accent. At the ranch house door they were greeted by
Banty’s parents and a couple of range riders,
and Eena, who, Indian-like, never revealed the fact
by word or look that he had observed the patent leather
shoes, and the wonderful high collar; who, also Indian-like,
in spite of these drawbacks, liked the stranger without
cause, a peculiar instinct of liking that came when
the young King Georgeman shook hands with him, a wholesome
British “shake” that engendered confidence.
“You will be tired, Constantine,”
said Mrs. Clark, with motherly care, “and not
accustomed to this extreme heat. Come at once and rest.
I have made a great jug of lemonade. Do come in at once.”
“If it’s all the
same to you, aunt, may I have some tea? And do please
call me ‘Con,’” he replied. No shadow
of expression crossed The Eena’s face, but when
[Page 194] Mrs. Clark had led Con indoors,
the Indian turned to Banty and remarked quietly, “You’re
right some ways; he wants tea, and the sun shines in
his shoes, but he good King Georgeman all same, I know,
me.”
“Guess you’re right,
Eena,” said Banty. “There’s something
about him that’s fine, just fine and simple and—English.”
The Indian nodded and he made but one more comment.
“He brave,” he muttered.
“How do you know that?”
asked Banty.
“The—what you name
it? I think you call it nostril of his nose
long, thin, fine. That shows brave people. When nostril
just round and thick like bullet-hole it shows coward.”
Banty laughed aloud, but all
the same his fingers flew to his own nostrils, and notwithstanding
his merriment he was gratified to find fairly long,
narrow breathing spaces at the edge of his own nose.
“What queer old ideas
your people have, Eena,” he commented.
“But it’s right,
even if queer,” smiled the Indian. “You
see, maybe this summer, Indian’s right about that
nose.”
But Mrs. Clark and Con were
now returning, Con having swallowed his tea, and, looking
refreshed by it, he settled himself in a porch chair,
stretched out his long legs and thoughtfully regarded
the toes of his patent leathers. Banty grinned openly,
but The Eena gravely shook his head, and, with the tip
of his little finger, touched his own fine, narrow nostril.
Banty understood, but then he and The Eena always understood
each other, and now the boy knew that the old hunter
meant to remind him of the best qualities of his English
cousin, and to overlook the little oddities that after
all did not carry weight when it came to a boy’s
character.
“King Georgeman, you come
with me to-morrow, me fish, or hunt?” asked the
Indian, his solemn eyes regarding [Page 195]
Con kindly. Banty explained the term “King Georgeman.”
“Indeed I will, if you’ll
have me!” exclaimed Con, excitedly. “I’ve
bought some decent clothes, and will look fitter in
them than I do in these togs. Don’t I look bally
in them?”
“I not sabe ‘bally,’
me,” answered the Indian.
The pink King Georgeman looked
puzzled.
“He means he doesn’t
understand what ‘bally’ is,” explained
Banty.
Con laughed, “Tell him
that I’m ‘bally,’ in these
clothes; he’ll grasp then what a fearful thing
‘bally’ means.”
It was that remark, “poking
fun” at his own appearance, that thoroughly won
Banty’s loyalty to his cousin from over seas.
A chap that could openly laugh and jeer at his own peculiarities
must surely be a good sort, so forthwith Banty pitched
in heart and soul to arrange all kinds of excursions
and adventures, and The Eena planned and suggested,
until it seemed that all the weeks stretching out into
the holiday months were to be one long round of sport
and pleasure in honor of the lanky King Georgeman, who
was so anxious to fall easily into the ways of the West.
Just as The Eena predicted,
Con proved an able fisherman and excellent “trailsman.”
He could stay in the saddle for hours, could go without
food or sleep, had the endurance of a horse and the
good-nature of a big romping kitten. He was generous
and unselfish, but with a spontaneous English temper
that blazed forth whenever he saw the weak wronged or
the timid terrified.
“I’ll never make
a really good hunter, Eena,” he regretted one
day, “I can’t bear to gallop on a big cayuse
after a little scared jack rabbit, and run him down
and kill him when he’s so little and doesn’t
try to fight me with his claws or fangs like a lynx
will do. It’s not a fair deal.” [Page
196]
“But when one camps many
leagues from the ranch house, one must eat,” observed
the Indian.
“Yes, that’s the
pity of it,” agreed Con, “but it seems to
me a poor sort of game to play at.”
Nevertheless he did his part
towards providing food when they all went camping up
in the timber-line in August, and frequently he, Banty
and the Indian would go out by themselves on a three
or four days’ expedition away from the main camp,
“grubbing” themselves and living the lives
of semi-savages. And it was upon one of these adventures
that the three got separated in some way, Banty and
the Indian reaching camp a little before sunset, and
waiting in vain for Con’s appearance while the
hours slipped by, and they called and shouted, and fired
innumerable shots thinking to guide him campwards, while
they little knew that all the gold in British Columbia
could not have brought Con’s feet to enter that
little tent for many days to come; that with all his
newborn affection for Banty, Con would make him most
unwelcome should chance bring them face to face again.
CHAPTER
II.
IT
happened so strangely, so quickly, that Con gave himself
no time to think. They had been trailing a caribou,
just for sport, for the hunting season was closed, and
Con struck into the wrong trail on the return journey.
Thinking to overtake the others, he worked his cayuse
hard, galloping on and on until the hills and canyons
began to look unfamiliar. Feeling that he was lost,
he fired his gun, once, twice. Far down in the valley
came a response, so he loped down the winding trail
until he suddenly came upon a little shack surrounded
by fields of alfalfa, and a few cattle grazing along
a creek.
As
he neared the ranch a shot was fired from the shack
[Page 197] window, he jerked his animal up
shortly, and was about to wheel and gallop back, when
a pitiful groan reached his ears, and a man’s
voice begged: “Water, water, for the love of heaven
bring me water!” Then, unfamiliar as Con was to
Western life, instinct told him that the revolver shot
was meant to call him to some one’s aid.
“Coming,” he shouted,
slipping from his saddle, “buck up, I’ll
fetch water,” but before he could enter the door,
a terrible, repulsive face was lifted to the window,
and the man almost shrieked:
“Don’t come in,
don’t, I say; just hand me some water from the
creek. I’m too weak to walk.”
“Of course I’m coming
in,” blurted Con, indignantly. “Why, man,
you’re dead sick!”
“Don’t!” choked
the man; “oh, boy, don’t come near me, I’ve
got smallpox.”
For one brief second Con stood,
stiff with horror.
“Who’s with you,
helping you, nursing you?” he demanded.
“No one, I’m alone,
alone; oh! water, water,” moaned the man.
Con flung open the door. There
was no hesitation, no fear, no thought of self; just
a great human pity in his fair young face, and a wonderful
tenderness in his strong young arms as he lifted the
loathsome sufferer from the floor where he had fallen
in his weakness, after crawling to the window in that
last, almost hopeless effort to call assistance.
On the soiled and tumbled bed
he laid the man, who still shrieked: “Go away,
go away, you’re crazy to come in here!”
Then without a word of even kindly encouragement the
boy seized a bucket and dashed down to the creek. “It’s
water, not words, he wants now,” he said to himself,
running back, and in another moment his good right arm
was slipping under the sick man’s shoulders, and
he was lifting him up and holding to the fever-cracked
lips a cup of gloriously cold water. [Page 198]
“Bless you! The dear good
God himself bless you! But, oh, boy, go away, go away!”
murmured the man, weakly.
“Go away and leave you
here alone, perhaps to die? And then have to face my
parents and Banty and The Eena, and—and England
again and tell what I’ve done? Not I!” cried
the boy, indignantly. “Look at this shack, the
state it’s in; look at you. How did you come to
be here alone?”
“I had a pardner, but
he left me, just skinned out, when he suspected what
I had,” said the man, hopelessly. It was then
that Con burst forth in that quick flashing English
temper that was always aroused at the sight of injustice,
of unmanliness, or of underhand dealings. He was so
furious that he took his temper out in cleaning up the
shack and cooking some soft foods for the patient, and
every time the wretched man begged him to go away he
got so indignant and abusive that the sick one finally
laughed outright, thereby lifting them both out of the
depths of gray despair.
“That’s the way,
‘Snooks,’” commented Con. (He had
nicknamed his shack-mate “Snooks.”) “Just
you laugh, it will do you no end of good, don’t
you know.”
But in spite of his heroic attempts at cheering up the
sick man, Con was undergoing a frightful experience.
In the first place, there were practically no medicines
and no disinfectants in the shack. The boy found a cake
of tar soap, a bottle of salts, and a package of sulphur.
The latter he burnt daily, sprinkling it on a shovel
of coals. The tar soap was a blessing both to himself
and the patient, and the salts they both swallowed manfully
and daily. There was rice, oatmeal, tapioca, jam, tinned
stuffs and prunes, and Con knew as little of cookery
as he knew of nursing, but he made shift with the little
store in hand. Snooks kept alive and the boy remained
well. But the nights were long periods of horror. [Page
199] Snooks would become delirious with fever,
and the torture of the foul disease would be unbearable.
Once they had an out-and-out
fight. Snooks, fever crazed, struggled to get out of
bed, crying that he was going to sink his agonized body
in the creek, and Con gripped the poor abhorrent wrists,
forcing the man to his back. Then flinging his whole
weight above the prostrate body he held him by sheer
force, conquering and saving this life which had no
claims on him except that of all common humanity. An
onlooker would have thought that the dread scourge had
no horrors for the boy, but Con was only human, and
many a time he fought it out with himself when the terrors
of the threatened infection were upon him. Then he would
say to himself, “Con, are you going to try and
be a gentleman through your whole life, or just be a
cad?” Then all thought of quitting would vanish,
and back he would go to the shack, to be rewarded by
a wonderful look of dog-like gratitude that would shine
in Snooks’ festered eyes, replacing the haunting
fear that always lurked there whenever the boy remained
outside any length of time—the fear that Con,
too, had gone, as had his “pardner,” leaving
him forever alone.
“Don’t you get scared,”
Con would say on these occasions. “I’m with
you to the finish for good or ill, and it will be good,
I think.”
“It sure is for my
good,” Snooks had said once. “If I pull
out of this I’ll be another man, and it will be
owing to having known you, pard. I had forgotten that
such bravery and decency and unselfishness existed.
I had—”
“Oh, quit it! Stop it!”
Con smiled. “This isn’t anything—don’t
you know.” But Snooks shook his head thoughtfully,
muttering, “I do know, and you’re
making another man of me.”
One day, after two weeks had
dragged wearily past wherein no human being had passed
up the unfrequented trail, Con heard gun shots, distant
at first, then nearing [Page 200] the
shack. Like a wild being he sprang to the door, hoping
some range rider, chancing by, would at least bring
food and a doctor, when, to his horror, he saw Banty
riding by, almost exhausted, peering to right and left
of the trail, searching—searching, he well knew,
for his lost cousin. Con made a rapid bolt for a hiding-place,
but Banty, whose quick eyes had caught sight of the
fleeting figure, gave a yell of delight as he leaped
from his saddle.
“Don’t you come
near this place! Get out, get out,
I tell you!” screamed Con, while Banty stood as
if petrified, staring wide-eyed at his seemingly insane
cousin.
“You come near here and
I’ll trim you within an inch of your life,”
Con roared anew, shaking his fist menacingly. “I’ll
trim you the way I did the fellow who sent me the blue
ribbon for my hair. We’ve got smallpox here. I’m
looking after a chap who is down with it. Get us a doctor
and beef tea and more tar soap and food, but don’t
you come an inch nearer, Banty, don’t.
Think of aunt and the people at the ranch. You can’t
do any good, and I’ll go clean crazy if you expose
yourself to this. Oh, Banty, get out of this, get out
of this, or, I tell you, honest, I’ll
lick you if you don’t.”
Banty was no coward, but Con
looked terrifyingly fierce and in dead earnest, and
the boy’s common sense told him that he could
far better serve these stricken shackmen in doing as
he was bidden. So after more explanations and instructions,
he mounted and rode away like one possessed, Con’s
last words ringing in his ears: “Don’t forget
barrels of tar soap, and tons of tea.
I haven’t had a drink of tea for ten days.”
Late that night a young doctor
rode up from Kamloops, and in his wake a professional
nurse with supplies of food, medicines, and exquisitely
fresh, clean sheets. While the physician bent over the
sick man, Con seized a package of groceries and in five
minutes was drinking a cup of his beloved English tea,
as calmly as if he had been nursing a friend with a
headache. [Page 201]
Presently a doctor beckoned
him outside. Con put down his cup regretfully and followed.
“Young man,” said
the doctor, eyeing him curiously, “Do you know
who this man is you’ve been nursing, exposing
yourself to death for?”
“Haven’t an idea;
I call him ‘Snooks,’” said Con.
“Much better call him
‘Crooks,’” said the doctor, angrily.
“You’ve been risking your life and that
pretty pink English skin of yours for one of the most
worthless men in British Columbia; he’s been a
cattle rustler, a ‘salter’ of gold mines,
and everything that is discreditable; it makes me indignant.
He tells me he at least had the decency to warn you,
when you came here. What ever made you come on—in?”
Con stared at the doctor, a
cold “stony British” stare. “Why,
doctor,” he said, “because Snooks has been
a—a—failure, I don’t see that’s
any reason why I should be a cad.”
The doctor looked him at him
hard. “I wish I had a son like you,” he
remarked.
“My father is an army
surgeon; he’s been through the cholera scourge
in India twice. I never could have looked him in the
face again if I hadn’t seen Snooks through,”
said Con, simply.
“Well, you can look him
in the face now all right, boy!” the doctor replied
gravely. “Say good-bye to your sick friend, for
we’ve brought a tent and you are to be soaked
in disinfectants and put into quarantine. No more of
this pest-shack for you, my boy.”
So Con went back to shake hands
with “Snooks,” who said very quietly: “I
can’t even say ‘Thank you,’ as I want
to; I guess the best way to thank a pard is to live
it, not speak it. I ain’t said a prayer for years
till the day you came here, and I’ve prayed night
and day, real prayers, that you wouldn’t
get this disease. Maybe that’ll show you, pard,
that I’ve started to be a new man.
“Yes, that shows,”
answered Con confidentially, and [Page 202]
with another handclasp, he left for his little tent,
with a great faith in his heart that the sick man’s
prayers would be answered.
At last one joyous day the doctor
sent for Banty, who rode over with a led horse, and
Con, leaping into the saddle, waved good-bye to Snooks,
who, now convalescent, stood in the door of the distant
shack. As the boy galloped off up the trail, Snooks
turned to the nurse and said:
“I’m going to live
so that youngster will never regret what he’s
done. That’s about the only reward I can give
him.”
The nurse looked up gravely.
“If I have estimated that boy right,” she
said, “I think that’s about the only reward
he would care to have.”
That was a great night at the
ranch. Most delicious things to eat and drink awaited
Con after his long isolation, and Mr. and Mrs. Clark
welcomed him as if he had been a son instead of a nephew.
The range riders came in, each one getting him to tell
of his antics with the sulphur and shovel of coals,
over which they roared with laughter. Banty’s
delight at having his comrade back from danger knew
no bounds, and when The Eena appeared Banty flung an
arm about Con’s shoulders, exclaiming: “Isn’t
this old chap a splendid King Georgeman, Eena?”
The old hunter replied with
much self-satisfaction: “Maybe now you not think
old Indian saying so queer. Did I not say, me, that
narrow, thin—what you name it?—nostril,
shows man that is brave, man that has no fear? Me sabe
now. He not ‘bally.’” [Page
203]
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