Part 5

Lightning! My God! It was zippitty-flash-flash-flash, so fast and fearful that the whole world jumped out into broad day and back a hundred times a minute. Heaven send I'll never see another such sight as the sea those flashes showed. Under the spout it was as if somebody had run a club into a snake-hole. You got it, to the least crinkle, in the lightning blasts. There were walls of water like Niagara Falls, jumbled up, falling, smashing together. If it hit us square we'd vanish.

Saxton stood near me. He passed me a rope and signed for me to make myself fast. I couldn't do it. I must be free. I thought of Mary, below, and shook. What must she feel? We couldn't get down to her now, and that made me sick. Saxton fastened the rope around me. He put his mouth to my ear and shouted, "You never could hold without it!"

I let him do what he liked. All desire to do anything myself, one way or the other, was rattled out of me.

"How is she?" he shrieked again. I could just hear him at a one-inch range.

"All right,"! said.

"Make a little prayer to Himmel," he says, "for here it comes!"

Here it come. Something that looked like the Atlantic up-ended loomed over the bows. The wind struck me flat on my back, in one grand crash of snapping wood, roaring water, thunder, and the fall of the pillars of the world. The ocean swept over me, yet I rose high in the air. I felt that the _Matilda_ was turning a back somersault. The rope nearly cut me in half. Just when my lungs were pumping so I couldn't hold my breath a heart-beat longer, the wind suddenly cut over my face. Man! It hit like a fire-engine stream! I turned and swallowed some of it before we went down into the deep again. After that, it was plain disorderly conduct. Part of the time I was playing at home, a little boy again, and part of the time I was having a hard time trying to sleep in strange lands. But the next thing I can swear to is that the moon was shining, and the _Matilda_ jumping like a horse. In spite of the aches and pains all over me, I just lay still for a minute and let it soak in that I was still on board this pretty good old world. Next, I thought of Mary and the rest of them and scrambled to my feet. I was dizzy--a three-inch cut across the top of my head gave reason enough for that, let alone the rest of the racket--and one eye was swelled shut. Otherwise, barring a sprained arm, a raw circle around me where the rope cut, a black-and-blue spot the size of a ham on my right leg, and all the skin off my knuckles, I was the same person.

Saxton got himself up. We stared at each other.

"Hello!" says he.

"Hello!" says I.

"Well, what the devil are you doing alive?" he says. He meant it, too. It seemed to astonish him greatly. This made me mad.

"Well, I guess I have a right to," I says. At this we both laughed very hard. So hard I couldn't stop, till he grabbed me by the arm.

"Mary!" he says.

We both tried to cast our moorings. The knots were jammed beyond fingers and teeth. He took out a knife and we cut loose. On the way to the hatch we come across Jesse sitting up straight, staring out to sea. He put his hand to his head and put it down again, looking at his fingers. What he found so interesting in the fingers I don't know, but he couldn't take his eyes off of them.

"Hurt, Jesse?" we asked him.

He turned a face like a child's to us. "My," he says, "wasn't it wet!"

"Come on!" says Sax; "he's all right!"

We pulled the scuttle off by main strength.

"Mary!" we called. "Mary!"

"Yes!" she answered. The relief was so sweet my knees weakened. She came to the stair and looked up. Durned if the old lantern wasn't burning. That knocked me. I remembered lighting that lantern several hundred years ago, and here it was, still burning!

"Are you hurt?" said Saxton.

"Not--no, not much," she answered. "But nearly dead from fright--is it over?"

"All over, thank God!" says Sax. "We only caught the edge of it, or-- The moon is shining now. There's a heavy sea still, but that's harmless if the boat isn't strained--do you want us to stay with you?"

She looked up and laughed--a great deal nearer being sensible than either Sax or me.

"If I could stand the other, I can stand this alone--where's your promise, Arthur? You never came near me."

He took this very seriously. "Why, Mary," he began, "do you think I would have left you if I could have helped it! They closed the hatch--"

"Come along," I said. "She's joking."

He turned and looked at me. "_Is_ she?" he asked, as earnest as if his life hung on it. Not the least strange memory of that night is when Arthur Saxton turned and said, "Is she?"

"Sure!" I replied. "Come--some of the boys may be badly hurt."

We pulled through that uproar surprisingly good. Of course, every man-jack of us had lumps and welts and cuts, and there were some bones broken. Saxton was slapped down with such force that the flat of his hand was one big blister where it hit the deck, and the whole line of his forearm was a bruise--but that saved his face. One passenger drew a bad ankle, jammed in the wreckage. The worst hurt was Jimmy Hixley, a sailor; a block hit him in the ribs--probably when the mainmast went--and caved him for six inches.

The actual twister had only hit one third of us, from where the mainmast stood, aft. That stick was pulled out by the roots--clean. Standing rigging and all. Good new stuff at that. Some of the stays came out at the eyes and some of 'em snapped. One sailor picked a nasty hurt out of it. The stays were steel cable, and when one parted it curled back quick, the sharp ends of the broken wires clawing his leg.

Nobody knows the force of the wind in that part of the boat. Had there been a man there, no rope could hold him from being blown overboard; but, luckily, we were all forward.

The rails were cut clean as an ax stroke. Nothing was left but the wheel, and the deck was lifted in places as if there'd been an explosion below.

However, we weren't in the humor to kick over trifles. We shook hands all around and took a man's-sized swig of whisky apiece, then started to put things shipshape.

Jesse had an extra spar and a bit of sail that we rigged as a jigger, and though the _Matilda_ didn't foot it as pretty as before, we had a fair wind nearly all the rest of the trip, making Panama in two weeks, without another accident.

VIII

ARCHIE OUT OF ASPINWALL

The thing I recall clearest, when we dropped anchor at Aspinwall, was a small boat putting off to us, and a curly yellow head suddenly popping up over the rail, followed by the rest of a six-foot whole man. That was Jimmy Holton, my future boss.

Him and Jesse swore how glad they was to see each other, and pump-handled and pounded each other on the back, whilst I sized the newcomer up. He was my first specimen of real West-Missouri-country man; I liked the breed from that minute. He was a cuss, that Jimmy. When he looked at you with the twinkle in them blue eyes of his, you couldn't help but laugh. And if there wasn't a twinkle in those eyes, and you laughed, you made a mistake. Thunder! but he was a sight to take your eye--the reckless, handsome, long-legged scamp! With his yellow silk handkerchief around his neck, and his curls of yellow hair--pretty as a woman's--and his sombrero canted back--he looked as if he was made of mountain-top fresh air.

"Well, Jesse!" says he; "well, Jess, you durned old porpoise! You look as hearty as usual, and still wearing your legs cut short, I see; but what the devil have you been doing to your boat?"

So then Jesse told him about the tornado.

Jimmy's eyes were taking the whole place in, although he listened with care.

"Well, what brings you aboard, Jim!" says Jesse.

"I'm looking for a man," says Jimmy. "I want a white man; a good, kind, orderly sort of white man that'll do what he's told without a word, and'll bust my head for me if I dast curse him the way I do the pups working for me now."

"H'm!" says Jesse, sliding me a kind of underneath-the-table glance. "What's the line of work?"

"Why, the main job is to be around and look and act white. I got too durned much to see to--there's the ranch and the mine and the store--that drunken ex-college professor I hired did me to the tune of fifteen hundred cold yellow disks and skipped. You see, I want somebody to tell, 'Here, you look after this,' and he won't tell me that ain't in the lesson. Ain't you got a young feller that'll grow to my ways? I'll pay him according to his size."

"H'm!" says Jesse again, jerking a thumb toward me. "There's a boy you might do business with."

Jim's head come around with the quickness that marked him. Looking into that blue eye of his was like looking into a mirror--you guessed all there was to you appeared in it. He had me estimated in three fifths of a second.

"Howdy, boy!" says he, coming toward me with his hand out. "My name's Jim Holton. You heard the talk--what do you think?"

I looked at him for a minute, embarrassed. "I don't seem to be able to think," says I. "Lay it out again, will you? I reckon the answer is yes."

"It sure is," says he. "It's got to be. What's your name?" He showed he liked me--he wasn't afraid to show anybody that he liked 'em--or didn't.

"Bill," says I--"Bill Saunders."

"Now Heaven is kind!" says he. "I hadn't raised my hopes above a Sam or a Tommy, but to think of a strapping, blue-eyed, brick-topped, bully-boy Bill! Bill!" he says, "can you guess Old Man Noah's feelings when the little bird flew up to him with the tree in his teeth? Well, he'll seem sad alongside of me when I catch sight of that sunrise head of yours above my gang of mud-colored greasers and Chinamen. You owe it to charity to give me that pleasure. By the way, William, if you should see a greaser flatten his ears back and lay a hand on his knife, what would you do--read him a chapter of the Bible, or kick him in the belt?"

I thought this over. "I don't know," says I. "I never saw anybody do that."

"Bill," says he, "I'm getting more and more contented with you. I thought at first you might be quarrelsome. You don't fight, do you?"

"Well," I says, flustered, "not to any great extent--not unless I get mad, or the other feller does something, or I feel I ought to, or--"

"'Nough said," says he. "There's reasons enough to keep the peace of Europe. I have observed, Bill, in this and many other countries, that dove-winged peace builds her little nest when I hit first and hardest. I tell you, on the square, I'll use you right as long as you seem to appreciate it. That's my line of action, and I can prove it by Jesse--I can prove anything by Jesse. No; but, honest, boy, if you come with me, there's little chance for us to bunk as long as you do your share. And," he says, sizing me up, "if an accident should happen, when you've got more meat on that frame of yours, be durned if I don't believe it would be worth the trouble."

"Explain to him," says Jesse; "the boy's just away from his ma--he don't know nothing about working out."

Jim turned to me, perfectly serious--he was like Sax--joke as long as it was joking-time, then drop it and talk as straight as a rifle-barrel.

"I want a right-hand man of my own country," he says. "You'll have to watch gangs of men to see they work up; keep an eye on what goes out from the stores; beat the head off the first beggar you see abusing a horse; and do what I tell you, generally. For that, I'll put one hundred United States dollars in your jeans each and every month we're together, unless you prove to be worth more--or nothing. I won't pay less, for the man in the job that ain't worth a hundred ain't worth a cent--how's it hit you!"

A hundred dollars a month! It hit me so hard my teeth rattled.

"Well," I stammers, "a hundred dollars is an awful lot of money--you ain't going to find the worth of it in my hide--I don't know about bossing men and things like that--why, I don't know _anything_--"

He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled at me. He had a smile as sweet as a woman's. He was as nice as a woman, on his good side--and you'd better keep that side toward you. Him and Sax was of a breed there, too. I understood him better from knowing Sax.

"Billy boy," he says, "that's my funeral. I've dealt with men some years. I don't ask you for experience: I ask you for intentions. I get sick, living with a lot of men that don't care any more about me than I do about them--that _ain't_ living. You can clear your mind. I like your looks. If I've made a mistake, why, it's a mistake, and we'll part still good friends. If I haven't made a mistake, it won't take you long to learn what I want you to know, and I'll get the worth of my time training a good pup--is it a go, son?"

I was so delighted I took right hold of his hand. "I begin to hope you and me will never come to words," said he as he straightened his fingers out.

I blundered out an apology. He reached up and rubbed my hair around. "There was heart in that grip, son," he said. "You needn't excuse that."

Just then Mary came on deck and he saw her. He whistled under his breath. "That the kind of cargo you carry now, Jess?" he asked. "I'll take all you got off your hands at your own price."

"Like to know her?" says Jesse. "She's going to teach in one of them mission schools at Panama. You'll see her again, likely."

"I suppose she ought to be consulted," says Jim; "but I'll waive ceremony with you, Jesse."

So they went aft to where Mary stood, a little look of expectancy on her face. She'd been about to join Sax, but seeing the two come, didn't like to move, as it was evident they had something to say to her.

Jesse and Jim made a curious team. Jesse flew along on his little trotters, whilst Jim swung in a long, easy cat-stride, three foot and a half to the pace. Jesse always looked kind of tied together loose. Jim was trim as a race-horse--yet not finicky. His spurs rattled on the deck. Take him from boots to scalp-lock, he was a pretty picture of a man.

"Miss Smith," says Jesse, with a bob, "this feller's Jim Holton."

"And very glad that he is, for once in his life," says Jim, sweeping the deck with his hat, and looking compliments.

Mary smiled just enough to make the dimples count. They were best of the dimple family--not fat dimples, but little spots you'd like to own.

She wasn't the girl to take gaiety from a stranger; but, somehow, Jim showed for what he was--a clean heart, if frolicsome.

Mary was a match for him, all right. She made him as deep a bow, gave him a look, and in a mock-earnest way, with her hand on her heart, said:

"Am I to suppose myself the cause of so much joy?"

"You're not to suppose--you're to know," says Jim.

"Well," says Mary, with another flying look at him, "it doesn't seem possible; but the evidence of such very truthful and very blue, blue eyes"--she stopped and looked at the eyes--"is, of course, beyond questioning."

That knocked Jimmy. Underneath his dash, he was a modest fellow, and to have his personal appearance remarked openly rattled him. Mary'd got the war on his territory in two seconds. He looked at her, dumb; until, seeing her holding back her laughter by means of a row of the whitest of teeth set into the most interesting of under lips, he laughed right out and offered his hand.

"I'll simply state in plain English," he says, not wanting to quit whipped, "that you are the best use those eyes have ever been put to."

"That's entirely satisfactory," says Mary. "I'd have a bad disposition not to be contented with that--and, Mr. Holton, here's a friend of mine--Mr. Saxton."

Saxton was the only one who hadn't drawn entertainment out of the previous performance. He and Holton shook hands without smiles. It was more like the hand-shake before "time" is called. But they looked each other square in the eye--honest enemies, at least--not like the durned brute--well, he comes later.

There they stood; fine, graceful, upstanding huskies, both; each as handsome as the other, in his own way; each as able as the other, in his own way; one black and poetic-looking; the other fair and romantic-looking. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Sax knew more of books; Jim knew more of men. Sax knew the wild lands of music and such; Jim had slept with an Injun or two watching out to be sure he wasn't late for the office the next morning. Either one was plenty durn good enough to make a girl fix her hair straight.

And there stood Mary, the cause of the look each man put upon the other. She'd brought down Jim in one stroke--he was a sudden sort of jigger. Well, there she stood; and if there's anything in having a subject worth fighting for, those two fellers ought to have been the happiest of men.

I'm glad I can add this: Mary didn't _want_ any man to fight about her--not much! She was the real, true woman; the kind that brings hope in her hand. Of course she had some vanity, and if two fellows got a little cross when she was around, that wouldn't break her heart; but to arouse any deep feeling of anger between two men--why, I honestly believe she'd rather they'd strike her than each other. Oh, no! She stood for nothing of that kind. She stood heart and soul for light and fun and kindness. If she made mistakes, it was from a natural underrating of how the other party felt, or, like her worst mistake, through some twisted idea of duty. There's a saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that's particularly true of women. When a good woman gets hold of half a fact, she can raise the very devil with it.

That two felt disposed to glare put restraint on conversation, and after some talk, in which Jim fished for an invitation to call on Mary in Panama, and got what you might call a limited order--"I shall be very glad to see you, sometime, Mr. Holton"--he turned and treated me to a view of Western methods.

"Pack your turkey and come with me, Bill," he says.

"What--_now_?" says I.

"Well, I'll wait, if you want me to," he says. "But what's your reason?"

"Not any," says I, and skipped for my truck. Isn't it surprising how people, even boys, that ain't much troubled about fixed rules, will keep on going the same old way; not because there's sense, comfort, nor profit in it, but simply because it is the same old way? I've known folks to live in places and keep at jobs, hating both, could quit easily, yet staying on and on, simply because they were there yesterday. I've got so that if people start talking over an act, I feel like saying, "For Heaven's sake! Let's try it and then we'll _know_," while at the same time it happens that their talk is so good, I feel bashful about cutting in. Give me the Western idea. People that get an action on, instead of an oration. That is, if they're the right kind of people. Yet I dearly love to talk. It's a strange world!

Jimmy was the Western idea on two legs. The moment he thought of a thing, he grew busy. And when work was over, I'd talk him against any man I ever met. Perhaps the chief difference between the Western man's way and the Eastern man's way is that the Westerner says it's fun and believes it, whilst the Easterner says it's a great and holy undertaking he's employed in, and wastes lots of time trying to believe it. We all do the things we like to do, and we might as well admit it, cheerful.

I hadn't much more than time to say good-by all around, and find out where Sax and Mary were going to stay, before I was off on the new deal.

"Have you ever ridden a horse?" Jim asks me, when we hit shore.

"Never," says I.

"Well," says he, rubbing his head, "we _can_ go across on the railroad, but I'd like to stop here and there. It wouldn't be so bad if the good critters hadn't been all hired out or bought this last rush. As it is, you stand to get on to something that don't want you. My Pedro'd eat you alive if you laid a hand on him, or I'd trade with you--you got to learn sometime, Bill, but you'll get a tough first lesson here--suppose we take the train, eh?"

Now, I hadn't come to the Isthmus of Panama to exhibit all the things I was afraid of. I didn't like the thought of playing puss-in-the-corner with a horse I'd never met before, a little bit, and I liked the idea of backing out still less.

"Trot your animal out," I says. "I guess, if I get a hold on him, we won't separate for a while."

Jim rubbed his head again.

"I don't want to lose you right in the start," he says. "These mustangs are the most reliable hunks of wickedness on earth--"

"All I need to try and ride is a horse," I says. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "I won't quarrel with that spirit," he says. He spoke to a native in Spanish. The feller looked at me and spread both hands. I scarcely knew there was such a thing as a Spanish language, but I knew that those hands said, "This is the impossible you have shoved down my chimney."

Jim translated. "He says he can't think of but one brute, and he can't imagine you and that one making any kind of combination."

"If you're keeping me here to see my sand run out, you'll make it, all right," I says--"otherwise, get that horse."

Jim spoke to the native and the native looked at me again, shaking his head sorrowful. At last he discarded all responsibility and ambled off.

Here come my gallant steed. His neck had a haughty in-curve; he was bow-legged forrud, and knock-kneed aft. His hips stuck out so far the hair couldn't get the nourishment it needed, and fell out. He had a nose like Julius Caesar, an under lip that hung down three inches, and the eye of a dying codfish. I lost all fear of him at once. Ignorance is the papa of courage. According to instructions, I put my left foot in the stirrup and made ready to board. At that instant my trusty steed whipped his head around like a rattlesnake, gathered a strip of flesh about six inches long, shut his eyes, and made his teeth to approach each other. I've been hurt several times in my life, but for straight agony give me a horse-bite.

With a yell that brought out every revolutionist in Aspinwall,--which means the town was there,--I grabbed that cussed brute by the windpipe and stopped his draft. Jim and the native made some motions.

"Keep out of this!" I hollered. "This is my fight!"

So then me and my faithful horse began to see who could stand it the longest. There was nothing soul-stirring and uplifting about the contest. He pinched my leg, and I pinched his throat. He kicked me, and I kicked him. We wrastled all over the place, playing plain stick-to-him-Pete. The worst of having a hand-to-hand with an animal is that he don't tire. You get weaker and weaker; they get stronger and stronger. Besides, the pain in my leg almost seemed to stop my heart. Murder! how it hurt!

At the same time, a horse doesn't do as well without an occasional breath of fresh air, and I had this feller's supply cut off short. Pretty soon he got frantic, and the way he tore and r'ared around there was a treat. It didn't occur to either one of us to let go. Finally, when I'd ceased to think entirely, there came a staggering sort of fall; hands took hold of me and dragged me away.

Jim lifted my head and gave me a drink of water. He swore at himself ferocious, and by all that was great and powerful, lie was going to shoot that horse.

By this time I was interested in the art of riding. I told him he wasn't going to kill my horse; that I intended to ride that same mustang out of the town of Aspinwall if it took some time and all of my left leg.

"What's the good of being a fool?" says he. "Now, Bill, you be sensible."

"Where's the horse?" says I.

He had to laugh. "United you fell," says he. "I honest think he hadn't a cent the best of it."