Chapter 1

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SKOOKUM CHUCK FABLES

BITS OF HISTORY, THROUGH THE MICROSCOPE

(Some of which appeared in the Ashcroft Journal)

BY

SKOOKUM CHUCK

Author of "Songs of a Sick Tum Tum," and some others

Copyright, Canada, 1915, by R.D. Cumming

Preface

It is more difficult to sell a good book by a new author than it is to sell a poor one by a popular author, because the good book by the new author must make its way against great odds. It must assert itself personally, and succeed by its own efforts. The book by the popular author flies without wings, as it were. The one by the well-known author has a valuable asset in its creator; the one by the new author has no asset but its own merits.

I am not contending by the above that this is a good book; far from it. Some books, however, having very little literary recommendation, may be interesting in other ways.

There are several things instrumental in making for the success of a book: first, the fame of the author; second, the originality of the theme or style; third, the extent of the advertising scheme, and fourth, the proximity of the subject matter to the heart and home of the reader; and this last is the reason for the "Skookum Chuck Fables."

If the following stories are not literature, they are spiced with familiar local sounds and sights, and they come very close to every family fireside in British Columbia. For this reason I hope to see a copy in every home in the province.

THE AUTHOR.

Contents

SKOOKUM CHUCK FABLES: PAGE

OF THE ROLLING STONE 9

OF CULTUS JOHNNY 17

OF THE BOOBY MAN 24

OF HARD TIMES HANCE 35

OF THE TOO SURE MAN 55

OF THE UNLOVED MAN 60

OF THE CHIEF WHO WAS BIGGER THAN HE LOOKED 66

OF SIMPLE SIMON UP TO DATE 72

OF THE HIGH CLASS ESKIMO 79

OF THE SWEET YOUNG THINGS 89

OF THE TWO LADIES IN CONTRAST 97

OF THE RUSE THAT FAILED 100

OF THE REAL SANTA CLAUS 107

OF THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW 113

OF SICAMOUS 118

OF THE UBIQUITOUS CAT 122

BITS OF HISTORY:

OF THE FOOLHARDY EXPEDITION 127

OF THE LAWS OF LYCURGUS 133

OF JOAN OF ARC 138

OF VOICES LONG DEAD 144

OF THE WHITE WOMAN WHO BECAME AN INDIAN SQUAW 151

THROUGH THE MICROSCOPE 157

Of the Rolling Stone

Once upon a time in a small village in Bruce County, Province of Ontario, Dominion of Canada, there lived a man who was destined to establish a precedent. He was to prove to the world that a rolling stone is capable at times of gathering as much moss as a stationary one, and how it is possible for the rock with St. Vitus dance to become more coated than the one that is confined to perpetual isolation. Like most iconoclasts he was of humble birth, and had no foundation upon which to rest the cornerstone of his castle, which was becoming too heavy for his brain to support much longer.

His strong suit was his itinerate susceptibility; but his main anchorage was his better five-fifths. One of his most monotonous arguments was to the effect that the strenuousness of life could only be equalled by the monotony of it, and that it was a pity we had to do so much in this world to get so little out of it.

"Why should a man be anchored to one spot of the geographical distribution like a barnacle to a ship during the whole of his mortal belligerency?" he one day asked his wife. "We hear nothing, see nothing, become nothing, and our system becomes fossilized, antediluvian. Why not see everything, know everything? Life is hardly worth while, but since we are here we may as well feed from the choicest fruits, and try for the first prizes."

Now, his wife was one of those happy, contented, sweet, make-the-best-of-it-cheerily persons who never complained even under the most trying circumstances. It is much to the detriment of society that the variety is not more numerous, but we are not here to criticise the laws that govern the human nature of the ladies. This lady was as far remote from her husband in temperament as Venus is from Neptune. He was darkness, she was daylight; and the patience with which she tolerated him in his dark moods was beautiful though tragic. It was plain that she loved him, for what else in a woman could overlook such darkness in a man?

"You see," he would say, "it is like this. Here I am slaving away for about seventy-five dollars per month, year in and year out. All I get is my food and clothing--and yours, of course, which is as much necessary, but is more or less of a white man's burden. No sooner do I get a dollar in my hand than it has to be passed along to the butcher, baker, grocer, dressmaker, milliner. Are our efforts worth while when we have no immediate prospects of improvement? And then the monotony of the game: eat, sleep, work; eat, sleep, work. And the environs are as monotonous as the occupations. I think man was made for something more, although a very small percentage are ever so fortunate as to get it. Now, I can make a mere living by roaming about from place to place as well as I can by sitting down glued to this spot that I hate, and then I will have the chance of falling into something that is a great deal better, and have an opportunity to see something, hear something, learn something. Here I am dying by inches, unwept, unhonoured and unsung."

To be "blue" was his normal condition. His sky was always cloudy, and with this was mingled a disposition of weariness which turned him with disgust from all familiar objects. With him "familiarity bred contempt." One day when his psychological temperament was somewhat below normal the pent up thunder in him exploded and the lightning was terrible:

"Here I am rooted to one spot," he said, "fossilized, stagnant, wasting away, dead to the whole world except this one little acre. And what is there here? Streets, buildings, trees, fences, hills, water. Nothing out of the ordinary; and so familiar, they have become hateful. Why, everything in the environment breeds weariness, monotony, a painfully disgusting sameness. The same things morning, noon and night, year after year. Why, the very names of the people here give me nervous prostration. Just think--Cummings, Huston, Sanson, Austin, Ward, McAbee, Hobson, Bailey, Smith, Black, Brown, White--Bah! the sound of them is like rumors of a plague. I want to flee from them. I want to hear new names ringing in my ears. And I hate the faces no less than I do the names. I would rather live on a prairie where you expect nothing; and get it--anything so long as it is new."

Now, that which is hereditary with the flesh cannot be a crime. The victim is more to be pitied in his ancestral misfortune, and the monkey from which our hero sprang must have been somewhat cosmopolitan.

Of course his wife had heard such outbreaks of insanity from him before, so she only laughed, thinking to humor him back to earth again with her love and smiles.

"Conditions are not so bad in Bruce county as you paint them," she said, "and if you do not go about sniffing the air you will not find so many obnoxious perfumes. Why, I _love_ the locality; and I like the people. And I like you, and my home; and I am perfectly satisfied with everything. Things might be a great deal worse. You should have no complaint to make. You have a steady situation, a good master, a beautiful home, plenty to eat--and then you have me," she exclaimed, as though her presence should atone for all else in the world that he did not have. And perhaps a treasure of this kind should have been a valuable asset, and an antidote against all mere mundane cares.

"Look out through the parlor door," she continued. "Could anything be more beautiful? The sun is just setting. The lake is asleep. See the reflection of the trees beneath its surface. How peaceful, how restful! My mind is just like the lake--perfectly at ease. Why do you not control your storm and calm down like the lake? Look at the tall shadows of the contented firs reaching away out across its bosom. How like a dream."

"Bah! Don't mention lake to me. I hate the sight of it. I have seen it too long. It is too familiar. It is an eyesore to me. I am weary of it all. I want a rest. Here comes Brown now. Let me hide in the cellar. It would be hypocrisy to remain here and smile welcome to him when I hate the sight of his physiognomy and detest the sound of his name. No, he has gone by. He does not intend to call. Thank heaven. Five minutes of his society would be equal to ten years in purgatory. New sights, new scenes, new voices, new faces; all these are recreation to a mentally weary constitution."

"I would consider it a crime to leave this beauty spot," said his wife, "and it is a sin against heaven to decry it."

"Then I am a sinner and a criminal," said the hereditary crank, "because I hate it and am going to leave. I will take fifty dollars and go, and if I do not return with fifty thousand I will eat myself. I have said all there is to say. Those dull, uninteresting faces give me the nighthorse. I am going to-morrow. Of course you remain, because it is more expensive to travel double than single," he snorted, "and I have not the plunks."

He embarked into the big world a few days later with his wife's warm kiss burning his lips--faithful even in his unfaithfulness. She was cheerful for some time, thinking that he would return, but the magnetism which attracted him to the woman whom he had picked from among the swarming millions was of very inferior voltage.

He wandered about Canada and the United States for about two years. He had many ups and downs. On the average he made enough to induce his soul to remain in his body in anticipation of something better. To do him justice he remitted all odd coin to his wife in Bruce county, and he wrote saying he was perfectly happy in his new life. He awoke one morning and found himself in the "Best" Hotel, Ashcroft, British Columbia, Dominion of Canada, and the first thing he saw was the sand-hill. He thought Ashcroft was the most desolate looking spot he had ever seen. It looked like a town that had been located in a hurry and had been planted by mistake on the wrong site.

He fell in with a Bruce county fellow there who was running a general store, and they became very friendly. He secured employment from this friend, who proved to be a philanthropist.

"I have a proposition to make to you," the friend said one day.

"What is it?" asked the iconoclast.

"Buy me out," said the philanthropist. "I have all the money I can carry. When the rainy day comes I will be well in out of the drip, and my tombstone will be 'next best' in the cemetery."

"But I have no bank balance," said the aspirant eagerly. "I have no debentures of any kind; I have not even pin money."

"Bonds are unnecessary," said the friend. "Besides, when I sell you this stock and building you will have an asset in the property. I will sell outright, take a mortgage for the balance, which you will disburse at the rate of five hundred dollars per year. You can do it and make money at the same time. You will kill two birds with half a stone. Why, in twenty years' time Rockefeller will be asking you to endorse his notes."

The sale was made and the hero jumped into a store on Railway Avenue without a seed or cell, and in a short time the moss began to grow so thick upon him that he had all the sharks in B.C. asking him for a coating. And then he wrote for his wife, whom he missed for the first time. The letter ran thus:

"Ultima Thule, B.C., March 1st. 1915.

"My Dear Wife:

"You will see by the heading of this letter that fortune has cast me off at Ashcroft, and I must congratulate myself for initiating that rolling stone 'stunt.' I have stumbled upon the richest mine in B.C. The gold is sticking out of it in chunks. The auto that you will play when you arrive will be a 'hum dinger' and no mistake. I am enclosing my cheque for $500. Buy out Tim Eaton and bring your dear self here, for I am lonely without you.

"Your hitherto demented husband."

She read it fifty times, placed it next her heart and pranced about like a five-year-old. "Now, just where is Ashcroft?" she soliloquized. None of the Bruce county aborigines seemed to know, so she consulted a world map, and she found it growing like a parasite to the Canadian Pacific Railway away in among the mountains of British Columbia.

But this was nothing. She would have risked a journey over the Atlantic in an aeroplane if it were a means of uniting her with the man who was the only masculine human in existence so far as she was concerned--the man whom she had singled out and adopted from among the millions of his kind. When they met the union was pathetic, but it was lovely. To make a woman happy, who loves you like this, should be the consummation of a man's domestic ambitions.

It was pointed out to him afterwards that, after all, the moss did not begin to grow until he had settled down in Ashcroft. So he lost his knighthood as an iconoclast.

Of Cultus Johnny

Once upon a time at Spence's Bridge, County of Yale, Province of British Columbia, on the Indian reserve, there lived two Indians named Cultus (bad) Johnny and Hias (big) Peter. They were friends until Peter got married, and then the trouble began, because they both wanted the same klootchman. They had been fishing for some time for the same fish, in the same pool in the Thompson river, and had each been favored with very encouraging nibbles. One day, however, Peter felt the tugging at his bait somewhat stronger than usual and with one jerk he pulled out his fish. Peter had stolen a march on his rival. The priest married them when Johnny was at the coast, fishing at New Westminster for the canneries. When the intelligence reached him he sat down in the bottom of the boat and for a few moments imagined himself at Spence's Bridge giving Hias Peter a Jack Johnson trouncing. To Cultus Johnny the strange preference of this woman for his rival seemed like unmitigated discrimination. Why, there was no comparison between the two when it came to worldly icties. Peter had nothing: he had no illiha, no icties of any kind; he was broke morning, noon and night. Johnny had a sixty dollar saddle, a five dollar bridle, a two and a half quirt and the best cayuse in Spence's Bridge, and worth seventy-five dollars. Peter had nothing but the wage he earned working on the C.P.R. section, which had been just enough to supply him with his daily muck-a-muck (food) before marriage. How he calculated to feed two with the one basket of o-lil-ies (berries) which had been only large enough for one, did not seem to worry the community, as such things were taking place every day and were a common occurrence, and the klootchman always seemed to survive the ordeal. And it must not be forgotten that Johnny had a seven and a half Stetson hat while all Peter could afford was a two bit cap.

It will always remain a mystery why one Indian should be more voluptuous, or gather more icties about him than another, when none of them have any visible assets from which to derive an income. Unless it be that the more voluptuous Indian works every day of his weary, aimless life, spends nothing, and hoards the residual balance like a miser, lives on the old man before marriage, and on his klootchman after, we are unable to arrive at a solution. No one knew by what means Johnny had acquired all his wealth. Perhaps he had bought all his luxuries on jaw-bone from one store while he paid cash for his muck-a-muck in another. There is one thing certain, the honest Indian is always the poorest, and in these days of the high cost of beans and bacon and rice, he has to be poorer to be more honest. Now it came to pass that one day Johnny balanced his saddle, horse, quirt and Stetson hat with Peter's nothing and argued that all the weight was in his own favor. The keeka (girl) had made a mistake. And to a man who measured everything by worldly icties this was sound argument, for the only big thing about Peter was his avoirdupois--barring his heart, of course. In the heat of his argument Johnny determined to deprive Peter of his sacred property. And among the Indians this is not nearly so hazardous or hopeless or criminal an undertaking as it may seem through an Anglo-Saxon microscope. Although a wife is considerable of an asset to a white man, she is not so to an Indian; and it may be to his advantage that he is more or less philosophical about it. The cultus Indian was at Lillooet when this skookum tumtum (good thought) occurred to him. He was cutting fire-wood with some of the Statlemulth (Lillooet Indians) in an effort to heal the wound in his left chest which had been left gaping since his recent defeat in battle. He went back to Spence's Bridge as fast as his seventy-five dollar cayuse, his sixty dollar saddle, his five dollar bridle and his two and a half quirt could carry him, and presented himself to his kith and kin. The old man gave him a warm hand-shake. They killed some fatted chickens and had the biggest time that the rancherie had ever known. Peter and his schmamch (wife) were there and old acquaintances were renewed. Johnny's strong suit with his ancient flame was his personal icties; and when Peter was otherwise engaged he asked the girl to elope with him to Kamloops or Lillooet. The next day was Sunday and Peter was going out with others on a cayuse hunt which had been planned some time before. He invited Johnny because it would not be safe to leave him in possession of the fort, and in charge of such a valuable, though fickle, asset; for a great number of the Indian women are fickle.

But Cultus Johnny declined the invitation. He was tired, and wanted to rest. Besides, he had a bridle to finish which he was plaiting from the leather cut from the legs of an old pair of cow-boy boots which he had found; it would be worth ten dollars when finished. In spite of his good intentions Johnny spent the whole day in idleness at the home of Mrs. Peter; and, as it is no insult among the Indians for a buck to propose an elopement with his neighbor's wife, because it is a very common business transaction among them, Johnny again suggested the escapade. The woman only laughed and seemed to enjoy the flirtation. But she would neither consent nor refuse. Hias Peter did not return that evening, and the next day Johnny was at the works with greater cannonading, and with more skookum tumtum than ever, and this time he was braver. He was just on the point of putting his arm around the keeka's waist when the door opened and Peter darkened the opening. They looked at one another for a few moments like two panthers about to spring at each other's throats. Hias Peter had a hias gun, and he raised it to his shoulder and glanced in a very savage and threatening way along the barrel toward Cultus Johnny's heart. Johnny dropped to the floor and begged for mercy. Now it requires some courage to shoot a fellow-being down in cold blood, although the punishment may be well deserved, so Peter lowered his rifle.

"Klatawa!" (Go!) he commanded. "Hiak!" (Quick!) he shouted. Johnny crawled on his hands and knees towards the door, and as he was creeping over the threshold Peter gave him one awful kick that sent him rolling on the ground outside. And turning to the woman: "Fooled!" he roared. "I will shoot you down like a coyote next time," he said. As the Indian is a man of few words, he drew himself up to his hias (large) size in front of her. But the woman pleaded that she was not to blame. Johnny had persisted in his attentions to her, and she could not drive him off. "If you want to get rid of him, shoot him," said Peter.

Now, among the Indians, when you covet your neighbor's wife, or have been too familiar with her, and you are caught with the goods, you do not fly into a far country for fear of your life. You still hang around, and the worst you can get is perhaps a pounding from the jealous neighbor; and the sweet environment is worth the risk.

Johnny's skookum tumtum was somewhat out of commission for a while. When he met Mrs. Peter on the street after that they grinned at each other a few times without speaking; and by and by, when they thought Peter was out of sight, they would stop and talk for a while. He asked her again to fly to Kamloops with him, and she seemed to be swinging on the balance. Johnny dwelt upon his worldly assets--his saddle, his bridle, and all his skookum icties. Peter soon realized that his wife was eating at his table and living in another man's tumtum, but he kept on chewing his beans and bacon and dried soquas (salmon) in silence, and, but for the intervention of Providence, Peter might have followed in the footsteps of Paul Spintlum.

One day Cultus Johnny and his sister went across the river to fish. They cast their nets directly across from the rancherie, beneath an angry-looking, hungry, threatening, overhanging gravel bed. He and his father and his father's fathers had fished there time out of memory. The old men of the village were squatted here and there weaving nets for the fishing season. Squaws were bringing in bundles of tree branches on their backs for firewood; others were scraping the flesh from raw deer-skins, stretched on frames which leaned against buildings. Some young fellows, among whom was Hias Peter, were rolling up driftwood from the river. Children were capering about, laughing and shouting. Dogs were barking, cats mewing, roosters crowing. There was nothing but joy, and peace, and harmony. It was just such a scene as may be witnessed on a bright sunny day at any Indian village in the dry-belt at any time. Suddenly there was a rush and a roar and a plunge of waters. The whole mountain across from the rancherie had fallen into the river with one mad roar like thunder, and the water was thrown up upon the village and its helpless inmates. In a moment the peaceful scene was one of death and torture. Men, women and children were struggling helplessly in the water and trying in vain to reach the higher benches. At the next moment the water receded and carried many back struggling into the channel of the river. Hias Peter found himself, with others, struggling among logs, timbers and debris of every description. Just before the water receded he saw his wife and heard her yell for help. He seized her skirt and dragged her to safety, clinging to a friendly sage brush. For a moment Peter thought that, so far as he was personally concerned, she was scarcely worth saving; but it is very unnatural to allow a fellow being to drown before your eyes and make no attempt to save him. And perhaps our worst enemy could rely on us for protection under similar circumstances. But where was Cultus Johnny and his sister all this time? The whole world lay on top of them, and that is all we know. They were never seen again.

Mrs. Peter looked across the river and sighed.

Mr. Peter looked across the river and gave a grunt in his own language.

A million tons of earth were holding down Cultus Johnny.

Of the Booby Man