Part 19
“Then who will assist Mrs. O’Dowd while I am away?” asked the Captain. “She’ll surely need both company and assistance at the Ranch of the Whispering Firs as badly as you will need it at the Four Corners.”
“Don’t worry about me, Captain,” said Sally. “I can manage the whole place without the help of anybody.”
“Thank you, Mrs. O’Dowd. You are a thoroughly unselfish woman.”
“Pardon me, daddie,” said Jean, as soon as she could address him privately. “You make a great mistake if you imagine Sally O’Dowd isn’t as selfish as the rest of us. The Little Doctor was quite taken aback by a remark to the contrary that you made a while ago.”
“I’m sure I meant no offence, Jean. But I confess that I am disappointed in both the Little Doctor and Susannah. They ought not to leave me in an extremity like the present when I have been so kind to them.”
“Everything we attempt is actuated by selfishness, daddie.”
“I can’t agree with you, Jean.”
“Oh, yes, you can! You took the Little Doctor under your wing away back in the States, because you could only hope by that means to get some help that you needed out o’ Scotty. You smuggled Dugs out o’ Missouri because it pleased you to please your wife. I am going to teach a little school from a purely selfish motive.”
“Was it selfishness that prompted you to fall in love with your unfaithful Green River hero, Jean?”
She turned deathly pale. “Yes, daddie dear. I thought I was going to be happy; and that was selfishness, of course. But I’m getting my punishment.”
“If selfishness is a natural attribute of humanity, we ought not to decry it, but should seek to control and guide it, Jean.”
“That is right, daddie. We have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But we also need toughening. I am getting my share of toughening.”
“Do you object to my marrying Sally O’Dowd?”
“That is your affair, daddie; but there is no accounting for tastes.”
“Do you think your angel-mother would approve the step, my child?”
“Ah!” cried Jean, her face brightening, “there is one love that never dies,—the love of a mother for her child. It is the same sort of unselfish love that prompted the Son of Man to lay down His life for the redemption of the race; it is the same love that prompted my mother to risk and lose her life in the wilderness. You will please yourself by marrying Sally O’Dowd. We children will pay her allegiance as our father’s wife, chiefly because we know on which side our bread is buttered. But we will not call her mother; nor do we believe you would ask it.”
“I couldn’t think of taking the step, my child, unless I thought your mother would approve it, if she could know. But I am very sure she doesn’t know.”
“You do not want to believe she knows, daddie. It is always easier to believe or disbelieve anything when the wish is father to the thought.”
“Well, Jean, it will not do to be loitering here. Yonder come the logging crew. There’ll be a lot of hungry men to feed. Some of them are educated men, quite equal in intelligence and culture to Mr. Burns. Don’t go to losing your heart.”
“Don’t speak of hearts to me, daddie dear; mine is dead and buried. But you have no idea how cruelly it was wrung.”
“There, there, daughter, don’t worry! There are as good fish in the sea as any that have ever been caught.”
* * * * *
There was no time for loitering. There was an extra lodge to be built in the wilderness for the crew of loggers, and a long dining-shed to be added; the rails had to be made and fences built; the ground had to be cleared and broken for the spring’s planting; and much rude furniture for the homes had yet to be manufactured. The building of a skid road was another pressing need; and, taken all together, the Captain did not wonder that his partner should take his departure seriously.
That the partner was not lacking in executive ability was evident.
“I tell you, gals, that partner of mine is a corker for business,” said the Captain.
“He may be, daddie,” said Jean, “but that is all he’s good for. If there’s a chance to murder the Queen’s English, he’ll do it. He afflicts me with nausea whenever he speaks.”
“But if you had a man like him for a husband, you would never lack means for the indulgence of the selfish philanthropies you and I have been talking about. You know you promised your grandfather that you would assist him as soon as you could earn some money.”
“That’s so, daddie; but I must earn it honestly. And I’d be getting it through the worst kind of fraudulent practice if I married Happy Jack. Besides, he will be too stingy for anything after he’s married.”
“Don’t be too hard on him, Jean. He’s got good credentials.”
“And so had Sam O’Dowd. No, daddie, I won’t have any money unless I can get it honestly. As soon as I can earn some cash by teaching, I’ll send it to the dear old grandfolks. They capped the climax of their selfishness in jeopardizing the property and happiness of all concerned to gratify their selfish pride in Uncle Joe.”
“Your theories and practices don’t tally, Jean,” laughed her father as he turned, and, with a tender good-bye aside for Sally O’Dowd and an open and hearty adieu to the children, he seated himself in the buggy beside his sister-in-law and drove rapidly away.
“I wonder how many years must elapse before the roads to Portland are as snugly finished and kept in as good repair as they are to-day from one suburb of London town to another?” asked Mrs. Joseph, merely to break an embarrassing silence.
“In another fifty years the people’ll be awake to the need, mebbe. It takes a hundred years to make a new country habitable.”
“My people always want their hunting-grounds to remain wild,” said Mrs. Joseph. “I used to like the most primitive modes of life in my childhood; but I learned a better way in London.”
“Did you learn to like the Indian life again, Wahnetta?”
“Never, sir. But I stooped to conquer, and I have succeeded. But I never could have done the best that was in me, for myself and Joseph, to say nothing of the children, if my father hadn’t made me, instead of my husband, his legatee. It takes money to do things.”
XXXVII
_NEWS FOR JEAN_
The second meeting between the Ranger brothers was much more embarrassing than cordial. Each at sight of the other recalled their last encounter. They shook hands hesitatingly, and after an awkward pause sat down together on the front porch of the primitive hotel.
Joseph, who had been awaiting the arrival of his wife and the Captain for a couple of days, was displeased because his Wahnetta had not been within call from the moment of his advent, as long habit had led him to expect. That she met him now with the air of a friend and an equal, and after a pleasant greeting on her part discreetly left the brothers to themselves while she went in quest of her babies, was a display of good breeding and motherly solicitude which Joseph Ranger would have commended in any woman not his wife. But his will had so long been her only law that her greeting, in connection with his embarrassment at meeting his brother, put him in a very unamiable frame of mind.
“I concluded that you had gone back on your agreement, John,” he growled, after a painful silence.
“Oh, did you? Since when have you made a new record for punctuality, Joe?”
“Since the arrival of the last courier at the trading-post, who brought me your letter.”
“What did you think of my proposition?”
“I accepted it at once, or I would not have been here. Who is Wahnetta going out driving with, I wonder?”
“I called the cab for a drive with the children a little before you came, sir,” said the nurse.
“Oh!”
“You ought to be very proud of your wife, Joe.”
“I am beginning to be. Yet you never can tell what the Indian nature will attempt. She seems to be all right when she lives with white people, but she’d lapse at once into barbarism again if she got a chance. They all do it. It is in the blood.”
“She doesn’t seems to want that sort of a chance, Joe.”
“An Indian is like a wild coyote, John.”
“But you have caught a tame one, Joe. She is above the average, even of white women. Give her the chance she craves. Stand by her like a gentleman. She is as thoroughly civilized as any of us.”
“Did you see her at the trading-post last summer?”
“No; but why do you ask?”
“Because you would have beheld her in her native element. You may capture and tame a coyote, but when you turn him loose among his natural environments, you can’t distinguish him in a short time from the wildest wolf of the pack.”
“That being the case, there is strong need for keeping your wife in her adopted home, among your own people.”
John was thawing toward his brother at a rapid rate; and Joseph, the erring but encouraged and repenting brother, felt a pang of remorse as he arose to welcome his wife and children upon their return from their drive, resolving in his heart that he would never again allow himself to regret the vows he had taken upon himself in his early manhood.
The paper was awaiting the Captain at his table the next morning, with the announcement that the sailing of the ocean steamer was to be delayed for a couple of days on account of an accident to her propeller.
“Then we’ll have time for a spin out to the Ranch of the Whispering Firs, eh, Joe?” he asked, as his brother, accompanied by Wahnetta, who was resplendent in a crimson cashmere robe, over which her black mantilla was carelessly thrown, took his seat at his elbow at breakfast.
“I thought I’d like to take a spin through this embryo city,” was the quiet response.
“But I want you to see the lay of the land. I’m hoping to make you a partner in the ranch and sawmill business. You won’t want to buy a pig in a poke.”
A visit to Joseph’s sons and daughters at school was first in order. Then a carriage was called, and the entire party was conducted around and over stumps, logs, and devious primitive roadways to the heights.
“Why anybody wants to go to the Old World for scenery, when he can enjoy such a prospect as this right at his very door, is one of the mysteries of modern existence,” said Wahnetta. “Away to the north by east of us, in the home of my people, there is a land so different from this that it might be a part of another planet, yet it is passing beautiful. Directly to the north is the traditional Whulge, or Puget Sound, where the enemies of my people live, who, like my own, are dying out. This mighty land is a giant baby; wait half a century, and she will be a full-grown giantess.”
It was three o’clock when they returned to the hotel, but a fresh team from the one livery stable the metropolis of Oregon Territory was able to boast was placed at the disposal of the brothers, who spanned a distance of thirty miles in three hours. A light rain had fallen in the early morning, and the face of Nature was as pure as ether. Resplendent green abounded in the valley, lighted here and there by gleams of the gliding Willamette, on whose silvery current little white steamers were seen at intervals, flitting to and fro like swans. In many spots in the valley, and everywhere on the mountain-sides, stood rows on rows of forest firs, and beyond these, coming frequently into view as the road wound in and out among the trees, arose the snow-crowned monarch of the Cascades, majestic Mount Hood, whose slowly dying glaciers discharged their silt into the milk-white waters of the Sandy.
“What do you think of it all?” asked the elder brother, after a long silence, in which each had been feasting his eyes upon the beauty of the scene and filling his lungs with the exhilarating air.
“I’m thinking of the glories that await the later comers into this beautiful land, after the pioneers have worn their bodies out in their struggles with the native wilderness. I’ve been shutting my eyes and seeing coal mines, iron mines, gold mines, oil mines, silver mines, farms, fisheries, mills, factories, orchards, gardens, everything! I’ve lived in Utah and witnessed the marvels of irrigation there; but God does the irrigating in this country, and He does it well.”
“Did you see the fishes that swarmed in the Sandy, Joe?”
“Yes; and I’ve seen salmon and sturgeon struggling up the Columbia, so thick in the current that they looked like Illinois saw-logs. I think I know how Moses felt when he had
“‘Climbed to Pisgah’s top, And viewed the landscape o’er.’”
“Wait till we reach the Ranch of the Whispering Firs. Then you will see something worthy of all your rhapsodies. There!” cried the Captain, as they sighted the broad and slightly sloping plateau on which his new log house was built.
In front of it stood a towering fir-tree, like an ever-vigilant sentinel; and behind it rose gigantic colonnades of evergreen forests. Foaming waters surged and leaped through a ragged gulch; and tangled thickets of hazel, alder, dogwood, and elder crowded the luxurious growth of ferns that struggled for the mastery. “There!” he repeated, “what do you think now?”
“That I’d like to transport the entire family of Rangers, root and branch, to the Ranch of the Whispering Firs. Suppose we take your old sawmill off Lije’s hands and remove the whole thing to Oregon, John? It would be a good way to relieve him of his elephant.”
“The machinery is old and old-fashioned, Joe. We’d better buy everything new, and the best of its kind.”
“I was merely thinking of relieving Lije; that’s all.”
As they made the last turn leading to the house, they were accosted impatiently by the Captain’s junior partner.
“At this rate, you won’t git started to the States afore Christmas, Cap’n.”
“This is my brother Joseph, Mr. Jackman. And this, Joseph, is my partner, Mr. Jackman.”
The two men glared at each other for a moment in silence. Jackman was the first to speak,—
“Well, I’m dummed!”
“How came you to be known as Jackman? You posed as Hankins in Utah.”
“An’ you was Joe Addicks, pard. Better not tell tales out o’ school. That’s a game two can play at.”
“There are no tales to tell on my part. I am masquerading no more. Can you say as much?”
“I’m just a-beginnin’, as it were.”
“How in the name of Fate did you come across that chap, John?” asked Joseph, as they alighted from the buggy.
“He has taken a donation claim on the mountain-side which includes the water-power for our mill site. At least, he says it does. Burns and I haven’t had time to survey it yet.”
“Better go slow with that fellow, John.”
“What do you know about him, Joe?”
“Nothing; only he’s been a noted crook and jail-breaker.”
“Jean is to be our book-keeper. She’s been disappointed over that Green River affair. Do you know what became of Ashleigh?”
“I left him at my station in charge of my business. He’s as honest as the day. But, by the way, why didn’t Jean answer the letter he sent out in care of your Happy Jack?”
“She received no letter. But what about Le-Le? Did he marry her?”
“Did Ashleigh marry Le-Le? What a question! Who said he did?”
“Jackman.”
“Jean must know of all this. Will you break it to her, Joe?”
* * * * *
Night had come; and the autumn rains were gently enwrapping the Ranch of the Whispering Firs in a sheet of mist when Joseph Ranger sought Jean in her little schoolroom for a private conversation.
The flickering light of a single kerosene lamp emitted a characteristic odor. A rough table supported the lamp; and on a three-legged stool sat the schoolma’am, trying to bring order out of the chaos of a score or more of papers left by the children.
“Ah!” she said, arising. “Come in, Uncle Joe. You won’t find our crude beginnings very inviting, but we mustn’t despise the day of small things.”
“You’re making a good beginning, Jean. But I have not come to talk about your school. I have brought you some tidings from Mr. Ashleigh.”
Jean turned pale and would have fallen if her uncle had not caught her in his arms.
“Here is a note which he gave me just as I was leaving for the West.”
Jean retained her composure by a supreme effort of the will.
“You were my dream,” the letter began; “I trusted and loved you as I can never trust and love another. And the end is to be your marriage with a fellow you call Happy Jack! Oh, Jean, my bonnie Jean! Why have you been so fickle and so rash? I sent you a letter and a ring. It was my great-great-grandmother’s ring, and a hereditary talisman. The messenger was one Harry Hankins, a borderer and scout, who was going to Oregon City. No, Jean; I did not marry Le-Le, but I did secure her ransom, and I should before now have been on my way to you, but was awaiting your letter. Good-bye, and may God guard and keep you! Think of me as your heartbroken friend and lover.”
“I never received one single word from him,” said Jean; “and I never saw or heard of Harry Hankins.”
“Oh, yes, you did, Jean. He is none other than your father’s partner.”
“How can I reach Mr. Ashleigh with a letter? It must be sent at once.”
“That will be impossible, Jean; there will be no courier going out for a month yet. But we will take a letter to Portland, and leave it in care of Wahnetta. She will see that it is forwarded at the first opportunity.”
* * * * *
Busily the work went forward. But Happy Jack was nowhere to be seen, and the brothers were compelled to take their departure without making the business settlement with him which they so much desired.
“Never mind! We’ll freeze him out, or scare him out, if he shows up here again,” said the Captain, as he and his brother turned their faces Portland-ward.
XXXVIII
_THE BROTHERS JOURNEY HOMEWARD TOGETHER_
The steamer in which the Ranger brothers embarked for San Francisco was an ancient and somewhat decrepit tub, as much unlike the floating palaces that plough the Pacific Ocean to-day as the long railway trains with their Pullman coaches, cushioned seats, and electric bells are unlike the prairie schooners which belabored oxen hauled across deserts and mountains when the oldest pioneer of to-day was young, and Captain Ranger was in his prime.
“We’re at the jumping-off place,” said the elder brother, when the vessel stopped at Astoria. “There will never be a chance for the restive American citizen to get any farther west than the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean. And yet who knows?” he added, after a pause. “Burns has a theory in which, after all, there may be some logic. He says that the entire planet will some day be under the management of an affiliated government formed by a few great powers, who will organize an alliance to control, and maybe protect, the weaker nationalities from one another. Jean is enthusiastic over the theme.”
“You seem to set great store by Jean.”
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s about raking up a new engagement with that Green River chap. If she does, she’ll marry soon, and get immersed in the cares of a family, like all the rest of the girls. If so, she’ll never amount to much.”
“No great general can do as much for the world, no matter how many nations he conquers, as the mother who rears a family of noble men and women, John. I would rather be in some mothers’ shoes than in the President’s.”
“And so would I. But it is hard, when a man has raised a daughter of great mental promise, to see her talents buried under the selfish domination of some prig of a husband who has all the power though he hasn’t half her sense.”
* * * * *
“Wait long enough,” said John, as they passed Tillamook Head and pursued their undulating way southward; “wait long enough, and the genius of American liberty and enterprise will settle yonder shores with a million or more inhabitants. Railroads by the dozen will cross the continent in time, sending out lateral branches in all directions, till the whole country is gridironed with paths for the iron horse.”
“But the mountains are in the way, John.”
“They will be tunnelled or looped, Joe. New feats of engineering are being developed constantly; and I should not be surprised to hear of the discovery of some new force, or rather of the discovery of the utility of some always existing force, which will revolutionize transportation on the land and the sea. There are islands to the west of us, lots of them. And who knows but they will become a part of the possessions of the United States before the close of the century? I’d like to have Burns and Jean and the Little Doctor here to help me talk it out.”
“I can’t let my mind get away from me, as you do,” laughed Joseph, and they changed the subject.
* * * * *
Days passed, and the timber lines of southern Oregon and northern California gave way to the extensive treeless regions that border the central and southern edges of the Golden State. Immense stretches of barren, sandy wastes rose high in the arid heavens, revealing a region of desolation that seemed good for nothing but range for savage beasts and poisonous serpents.
“It is now my turn to prophesy and philosophize,” said Joseph. “My experience and observation in Utah, where irrigation has relieved the barren soil of its drouth, has taught me that irrigation will develop the latent power of the desert to sustain and perpetuate the race long after the Mississippi basin has ceased to respond to the demands of the husbandman and the vernal lands of the Willamette valley are worn out.”
“But the Willamette valley and the entire northwest coast will always beat the world with the fruits and cereals that thrive in the temperate zone.”
“‘Always’ is a good while, John. It is a pity that we can’t live always.”
“Jean declares that we do.”
“How came she to know so much?”
“I cannot tell; but she has evolved a theory from her studies and conclusions that seems plausible. At any rate, we cannot disprove it; and as it comforts her and hurts nobody, I am glad she can enjoy it. But the gong has sounded for dinner, and I am as hungry as a bear.”
* * * * *
“It is a glorious thing to be alive,” exclaimed the Captain, when they spied the lights of the Farallones to the leeward, while on their left rose Mare Island; and they knew that they were nearing the Golden Gate. Four days of happy, languorous idleness on a glassy sea had been theirs to enjoy. But each decided that he had had enough of leisure, and was glad when Telegraph Hill, the towering head of the city of San Francisco, was seen among its myriads of sand-dunes and rioting patches of native weeds.
“It is indeed a glorious thing to be alive!” said Joseph, as they were being jostled in the streets of the city, where a babel of tongues kept up a continuous clatter, as bewildering as it was unintelligible.
The hotel in which the brothers found lodgings was a little superior to the Portland hostelry, being larger; but the food was far from satisfactory, and they found the sand-fleas and Benicia Bay mosquitoes more voracious than welcome. The sights of the truly cosmopolitan city were new and alluring; and once, but for the intervention of the police, the verdant pair would have been fleeced by a smooth-tongued swindler. They were directed by a big policeman to an immense hardware establishment, where they found a complete up-to-date outfit for their plant. They then continued their journey toward the Isthmus with a feeling of anticipation to which their frequent conversations concerning the legendary lore of the peculiar country for which they were bound possessed a fascinating interest.