Part 7

"I have shem," she said. She heard Sam go down the path singing a high-pitched quavering Chinese song. When he was quite gone she began to weep, and wept until she was ill. She stumbled blindly round the room, and went into the bedroom and kissed things of George's, and the very bed itself, and then went out into the darkness. In that hour, the poor child forgot how beautifully she was dressed. She stumbled in light shoes down the path, and as she went she wished she were dead. For Pete would be cruel. He would beat her and take her back.

"I'm very wicked," she said, weeping. George would be unhappy. She turned with her empty arms outstretched to the hill above her, to the empty house. George had been very good to her.

She passed Wong's shack. Sam was in there with half a dozen others, and they were hard at it gambling. After Wong's came Skookum Charlie's and then Indian Annie's. The next shack was Pete's. She sank down in the darkness between the two shanties in a state of fear and stupor. In front of her was shame and cruelty and behind her the fires of hell. But she wanted to be good.

There was no light in Pete's shack. When she saw that, she hoped for one despairing moment that he had gone away. Yet she knew that if he had gone George would have told her. Most likely he was with Indian Annie. He would be at least half-drunk. She felt dreadfully beaten. There was a roar of bestial silly laughter from Indian Annie's.

From down the river almost abreast of Lulu Island there came the sound of a steamer's whistle. It meant nothing to her and Sam did not hear it. Annie's door opened and Annawillee ran out reeling. She was going home to Chihuahua and had to pass Jenny, crouching on the sawdust in silks and fine linen.

"Oh," groaned Jenny as Annawillee came along crooning in mournful tones her old ballad that said she was "keely." When she was close to Jenny she reeled and recovered and stood for a moment straddle-legs. She hiccupped and in the clear darkness saw Jenny without knowing her.

"Who you?" she hiccupped.

Then she saw who it was, and burst into idiotic laughter.

"Oh, Jenny klootchman," she screamed. And Pete came out of Annie's to go home.

"What's that, Annawillee?" he asked in the thick voice of liquor. "What you say, eh?"

Annawillee forgot there was money and drink in Pete's not knowing, and she stood there laughing--laughing as if her sides would split.

"Your klootchman Jenny she come home," said Annawillee. And Jenny groaned as Pete came running.

Before he spoke a word, he kicked her.

"You damn klootchman," he said. He took her by the hair and dragged her along the ground while Annawillee still laughed. And Jenny screamed.

"Where's your man now, ha?" said Pete, thickly. "I tink I kill you now."

The _Yosemite_ came alongside her wharf as if it were bright day and Quin leapt ashore.

As Pete dragged her, Jenny got upon her knees and fell. And again she half-rose and again fell, and under his brutal grip of her hair her scalp seemed a flame of agony. She was sorry she had determined to be good and to repent. She screamed dreadfully and many heard. Some shrugged their shoulders, for screams in Shack-Town were only too common. Yet some came out of their houses. Among them was Chihuahua. Indian Annie came too, and before Pete had got his wife to his own door, there were others, among them two Chinamen from an overcrowded shanty further up the road. And still they did not interfere. Jenny was Pete's klootchman and she had run away. Like a fool she had come back, and must suffer. There was none among them that dared to interfere: for they feared a knife.

And as George Quin came ashore he heard Jenny's screams. "Another drunken row," he said carelessly as he faced the hill to his lonely house. He was very glad to get back home to his tenas klootchman, for he hated loneliness. He said "poor little Jenny" as he walked.

There was now a crowd about poor Jenny, for more came running, more Siwashes, among them Skookum Charlie, and more Chinamen. But still no one interfered, though Annawillee shrieked even more than Jenny. She implored Chihuahua to kill Pete. But Chihuahua booted Annawillee and made her howl on her own account.

"She run way and come back," said Chihuahua. "If she mine I kill her, carajo!"

And Pete started kicking Jenny. Once and again she cried out, and then the last of all who looked on came like a fury at Pete. The bleared and haggard and horrible old Annie was the one who had the courage, and the only one.

"Aya, you damn Pete," she screamed. She got her claws in Pete's long black hair and pulled him down. She was a bundle of flying rags with a savage cat in them. If Jenny were killed she would be nothing to Annie, but while she lived she was worth drinks. And perhaps Annie loved the little klootchman. Who can tell?

She and Pete rolled together on the dusty road, and the onlookers shrieked with laughter. Quin heard it as he climbed.

"The row's over," said Quin.

More came out of the huts, and this time Wong, old Wong, the philosopher was among them. And with him came Lung and Wing, and at last Sam. The Chinamen stood outside the circle of the Siwashes and chattered. The first told the others that Pete had killed his wife, and now was killing someone else. The devilish twisting bundle in the dusty road revolved and squealed. But Annawillee howled by the side of Jenny, who lay insensible. Skookum struck a light, and it shone upon the poor girl. It showed her dress of scarlet, and Sam's quick eyes saw it. He ran in quickly towards her, though the wise Wong held him back. Chinamen never join in alien rows if they can help it. It is wisest not to, and they have much wisdom. Skookum's match went out. Sam lighted another and knelt beside Jenny.

"'Ullo, Chinaman," grinned Skookum, "you tink she dead, you tink mimaloose?"

Oh, said Sam, this was Mista Quin's Missus right enough. What did she want here? He called to Wong, who came calmly, unhurriedly. Sam spoke to him in their own tongue, and then Sam, who was as quick to catch as Wong was wise to suggest, cried out suddenly that the tenas klootchman was dead. He took her in his arms and ran with her to Wong's shack. And as he ran Pete got up from Annie, whom he had choked into stillness. But his torn face bled and one eye was nearly on his cheek. He kicked Annie as she lay, and then turned to where he had left Jenny.

"Where my klootchman go?" he demanded.

They told him in a dreadful chorus that she was dead, and he staggered back against his shack.

"Where is she?"

"Wong take her."

They believed wise old Wong a physician, for Chinamen have strange gifts.

"I go see," said Pete.

"No, you run 'way," said Skookum urgently. He believed Jenny was dead.

"Mus' I run?" asked Pete with a fallen jaw.

"Dey hang you, Pete," screamed Annawillee joyfully. Old Annie sat up in the road.

"Where I go?" asked Pete. "I wis' I never see Jenny."

He burst into tears. They brought him a bottle, and told him to "dlink." They gave him advice to go down the river, up the river, to the Inlet, to the Serpentine, oh, anywhere from the Police.

"I go," said Pete. He drank.

"I--I--go," said Pete. He drank again, and fell and lay like a log.

"Now they catch Pete and hang him," screamed Annawillee. Annie staggered across to him and kicked him in the face.

"Pig Pete," said Annie.

Quin came to his empty house and called to tenas Jenny. And then to Sam. When no answer came he ran through the hall into the empty room where the lamp was. On the floor he saw the Bible. He understood. He quite understood.

X

There was no doubt at all in George Quin's mind as to what had happened, and perhaps he was not wholly surprised. What did surprise him was his own ferocious anger, and the wave of pity that even swallowed up his wrath.

"My God!" said Quin.

There wasn't a man in the City who knew him a little but was prepared to swear that Quin was a brute, and a devil without any feeling to speak of. It was said that he had killed Lily, the Haida girl, when, as a matter of fact, it was his brother, Cultus Muckamuck as the Siwashes called him, who had done a deed like that. He had treated Lily well. Her people said so. He had treated them well, the greedy brutes!

Now Quin was full of pity, and of jealousy. This Bible had hurt her poor weak mind, no doubt of that: and it had driven her back to Pete, perhaps.

"My God," said Quin again, "where else?"

He remembered the screams he had heard coming from Shack-Town as he landed. And as he remembered he found himself running down the hill in the starlit gloom. He wasn't a very young man either. Quin was nearly forty: hard and set: at times a little stiff. Now he went recklessly.

"If Pete----"

It didn't bear thinking of, so Quin wouldn't think of it. He was jealous, hideously jealous. He could have torn Pete asunder with his powerful hands. He felt his nerves in a network within him, and in his skin. They thrilled like fire.

"My poor little Jenny!"

Why, the fact was that he loved her! When one comes to think of it, this was a monstrous discovery for him to make. He had really never loved anyone, certainly not dead Lily, more certainly not that white woman over in Victoria, though he thought he had. What he felt for Jenny was a revelation; it made him a saint and a devil at once, as passion does even the best and worst of men. And Quin had force and fire, and bone, and muscle and a big heavy head and hands like clip-hooks. Now passion shook him as if he were a rag in the wind.

He came down to Shack-Town, and stopped. He was hot but again he sweated ice. He looked down the road and saw figures moving.

"Which is the shack?" he asked himself.

He went past Wong's house, where Jenny lay on a table with ten jabbering Chinamen around her. He heard a high-low sing-song of their chatter and cursed his boy Sam for leaving the house as he had done.

"I'll kick the damn stuffin' out of him," said Quin savagely.

He passed Indian Annie's and saw the group beyond it, standing about Pete's recumbent body. Skookum Charlie was almost in tears to think that Pete would be hanged. Annie wiped her bloody face with her skirt. Annawillee, howling curses at Pete, sat by her.

"What's all this?" said Quin, coming out of the darkness. He saw Pete, or rather saw a body. He spoke hoarsely.

"Mista Quin, oh!" said Skookum, scrambling to his feet.

"What is it?" asked Quin again. "Kahta mamook yukwa? What do you do here?"

"Pete him kill Jenny," screamed Annawillee. Quin staggered back.

"He, he----"

He pointed at the drunken man.

"Not mimaloose, him dlunk," said Annawillee, "Jenny with Chinaman."

Skookum led Quin, the big Tyee, to Wong's shack.

"If she's dead----" said Quin, looking towards Pete. He opened Wong's door.

The room was eight feet by twelve by ten: it reeked of fierce tobacco and the acrid fumes of "dope." Some of them "hit the pipe," smoked opium. The smell was China; Quin, who had been there, knew it. With the odours of Canton were the odours of bad oil. Three lamps ate up the air. Quin saw a row of whitish masks about the table: some excited, some stupid, one or two villainous. At the head of the table was the quiet majestic head of the old philosopher Wong. He had a great domed skull and a skin of drawn parchment over wide bones. With a sponge he wiped blood from Jenny's face. Sam held a bowl of water. He looked anxious and strange. And Jenny's body, in white linen and crimson silk, fouled with sawdust and blood, lay there quietly.

"Is she dead?" asked Quin.

The philosopher, whose shiny skin declared his love of opium, said she was not dead.

"My tinkee she all light bymby," said Wong, "She belongy you, Tyee?"

"Turn the others out," said the Tyee, and at Wong's word they fled out of the door, and stood in the dark jabbering about Quin having taken Jenny.

Quin turned on Sam.

"Why did you leave the house, Sam? My tell you stop, you damn thief!"

Sam, now as pale as Jenny, threw out his hands in urgent deprecation of Quin's anger.

"My no go out," he lied, "my stay allo tim' with Missus, maskee she go out and my no findee. I lun down here, Mista Quin, lun queek, findee damn Pete hurtee Missus. T'at tlue. My tellee Missus no cly: maskee she lead Bible and cly. My no can do."

He wrung his hands. Perhaps what he said was true. Quin felt Jenny's pulse and found it at last. He saw she breathed.

"I'll have her home," he said.

They took the door off its hinges, and Sam with the others carried her up to the house. Wong went into town to ask the doctor to come to Quin's at once "chop-chop," and Dr. Jupp came. He found Jenny on the bed moaning a little.

"What's this, Quin?" asked Jupp, who knew Quin well enough.

Quin answered sullenly and told the truth.

"Tut," said Jupp, "some day you'll get knifed, Quin; why can't you get married and leave the klootchmen alone?"

He was a white-bearded old boy, who knew how ignorant he was of medicine. But he knew men. He went over Jenny carefully.

"Two ribs broken," he said, "and the small bone of the left arm. And a little concussion of the brain. I think she'll do, Quin."

"Thank you," said Quin.

Between them they made her comfortable after Jupp had sent for splints and bandages.

"She's very pretty," said Jupp, For Pete hadn't kicked her face. "She's very pretty."

"She's as good as gold, by God!" said Quin.

"Humph," said Jupp. "I'll come in to-morrow morning early. Shall I send you a nurse?"

"I'll sit up with her," said Quin. "You'd only send some cursed white woman with notions."

"Maybe," said Jupp, "they frequently have 'em incurably."

Quin's face was white and hard. He stood up and looked across the bed.

"I tell you this little girl is as good as any white woman in town, Jupp."

Jupp took snuff habitually; he took some now.

"Who the devil said she wasn't?" he asked drily. He left the room.

It was early morning before Jenny became conscious, and even then Quin had great trouble with her. For she was very sick. There was no end to his patience. Nor was there any to Sam's. The boy sat outside on the mat all night.

"My askee Missus no tellee Boss my go playee Fan-tan," he said nervously.

At bright dawn Jenny found Quin half-dozing with his head on the quilt under her hand. She touched his hair tenderly, and he woke up.

"Tchorch," she said feebly, with a heavenly smile, "Tchorch!"

"Yes, little girl," said George.

"I tink I no go away again, Tchorch. I no want to be good, I want to stay with you. What you tink, Tchorch?"

The tears ran down George's face. That's what he thought.

"I'll kick that damn Pete's head in," said George to himself.

"I no want to be good. I jus' want Tchorch," said Jenny.

She closed her eyes and slept.

XI

His friends, even including Skookum Charlie, left Pete where he lay. If a man killed his klootchman and then got pahtlum, or "blind-speechless-paralytic" on something cousin-german to methylated spirit, what could be done with him but let him alone till the police came for him by daylight? Don't forget, tilikums, that none of the officers of the law could come in Sawdust Shack-Town after dark. They would as soon have gone to Cloud Cuckoo Town. It was as much as their cabezas were worth, and that's a hard-wood truth, without knots or shakes. The last time a constable (under the influence of a good but uninstructed superior and some bad whisky) did go into Shack-Town after dark he stayed there in a pool of blood (or what would have been a pool but for the convenient sawdust) till it was broad daylight, and he took much patching-up before he got into running again. After dark we had it to ourselves, Whites, Reds, and all colours who were of the order of the Mill, or the disorder of it. The "bulls" or "cops" or "fingers," as hoboes say, kept order in the orderly uptown streets.

Skookum "quit" and went home. So did Annawillee, whom Chihuahua hauled off as he was doubtful of her morals in the dark. But Annie, whose windpipe was exceedingly sore, went out several times and booted Pete in the ribs where he lay, as a kind of compensation or cough lozenge. However, she let up on him at last and went home to "pound her ear" in the sleep of the just and virtuous. It never even occurred to her that Pete didn't know anything whatsoever about Quin being the man who had kapsuallowed or stolen his dear Jenny. Everybody else knew, Chinamen, Swedes, Lapps, Letts, Finns, Spaniards and a number of whites of the rougher kind who camped in Shack-Town. I knew myself. But the man who ought to have known didn't. It was a sign that life is the same everywhere.

Pete woke up before dawn, as it seems to be a revenge of nature to make drunken men wake when they can't find a drink, and when he woke he hadn't the remotest notion of what had happened to him. He knew that he had a thirst on him of a miraculous intensity, and when he moved he was aware that he had a pain in his side which almost made him forget his thirst. For Annie wore a man's shoes, with heavy soles to them. And when a man is helpless and his ribs open even a woman's kicks can do mischief.

"Oh," said Pete, "ah!"

He rolled over and groaned, poor devil. And, just as the secret dawn began to flame, so the red deeds of the night before began to come up to him. He sat up and his jaw fell.

"Ah," said Pete, "I tink I--I kill Jenny!"

There's a crowd of virtuous ones who will imitate Annie and boot him in the ribs, poor devil. He drank and gambled and played hell and beat his wife and drove her into the arms of Quin. Even a missionary, who ought to know something about such humanity, would disapprove of him. And those whites of high nobility and much money and great station, who are ready, in like cases, to drag their own wretched women by the hair of the head through the bloody sawdust of the Divorce Court, and who hire (at so many guineas and one or two more) some gowned ruffian to boot her in the ribs, will objurgate Pete perhaps, poor chap. He had no chance to know better and now the terrors of the rope and the gallows had hold of him.

Pete was brave enough, even if he did kick klootchmen. As Ginger White knew, he was the best wedger-off thereabouts, and could have got a job at any of the big Mills of the Sound or the Inlet. He could ride a horse and fight a man of his own weight quite well enough. Indeed there was nothing wrong with him but the fact that he was a Sitcum Siwash and given to drink when it was handy. Up at Cultus Muckamuck's, where it wasn't handy, he was as sober as any judge and a deal more sober than some out West. He was brave enough.

But when he thought of being hanged he wasn't brave. He sat up and wondered why he wasn't in the Calaboose or cooler or jail already. He looked round fearfully as if he expected to see Jenny's body there. Then he groaned and felt his ribs. It was odd he should be so sore. But the oddest thing was that he wasn't already jailed.

"I don' b'lieve I kill Jenny after all," said Pete. And as soon as he didn't believe it, he very naturally determined to do it as soon as possible. He staggered to his feet, and made for his shack, thinking that Jenny perhaps was there. Of course it was as empty as an old whisky bottle, and Pete scratched his head. Then the dawn came up, and just about the time that Jenny was murmuring that she didn't want to be good but only wanted "Tchorch," he went out again and ran against Annie, who had also waked up with a thirst and with an idea that it would ease her throat and her mind if she went out and had another go at Pete's ribs.

"Yah, you pig Pete," she said with her jaw out at him and her skinny throat on the stretch.

"Why you call me pig, you damn Annie?" demanded Pete, savagely.

"Because you halo good, no good, damn bad man, try to kill you tenas klootchman," yapped Annie raucously as she spat.

"You a damn fool," said Pete. "Jenny she been away from me----"

"Yah," yelled Annie, "she find a good man, and Mista Quin, he give her good dlesses, he velly kind to Jenny."

It was a blow between the eyes for Pete, and he staggered as if he had been struck. His jaw dropped.

"Mista Quin, kahta mika wau-wau, what you say?" he stammered.

"I say she now Mista Quin's klootchman: he velly good to her. By-by he come and kill you, because you kick his klootchman. Las' night he say he mamook you mimaloose, kill you dead, you pig Pete," she squealed, withdrawing into her house, so that she could slam the door on him if he made a rush. But truly it was the last thing he thought of.

"The Tyee take my klootchman!" he said with a fallen jaw, "the Tyee----"

The boss had taken Jenny!

"Dat tlue, Annie?" he asked weakly.

"Dat tlue, you pig," said Annie.

Pete made a horrid sound in his throat like a strangled scream and Annie slammed and bolted her door and got a bar of iron in her hands as quick as she could move.

"I kill Mista Quin," screamed Pete. "I kill heem!"

He ran to his shack on the instinct to find something then and there to kill the boss with. But he had no weapon, not even a good knife.

"I kill him all same," said Pete. As the men in the South would have said he was "pretty nigh off his cabeza."

He started to work on his shack, and smashed the windows and their frames and then all the wretched furniture in both rooms. By the time the house was an utter wreck he felt a little calmer. But though many heard him none came near. It might be dangerous. Then at last it was daylight: there was a pleasant golden glow, and the river was a stream of gold. The tall Mill chimneys began to smoke, for Scotty's helper fed the fires early.

"I go to work all same," said Pete, "and I see Quin."

He ground his teeth and then took a drink of water, and spat it out. There was nothing that he wouldn't have given for some whisky, but who ever had whisky in Shack-Town early in the morning? He had to do without it. And at last the whistle spoke and the sun shone, and the working bees came out of their hives and went to the Mill.

There was a devil of a wau-wau going on that morning in the Engine-Room, for the place was crowded. Some Chinamen even were allowed to come inside, for they had news to give. The patriarch and philosopher Wong was interrogated by Mac and Shorty Gibbs and Tenas Billy (white man in spite of Tenas).

"Quin--eh, what?" said Tenas Billy with open eyes.

"He took Jenny! Well I'm damned," said Gibbs.

"I never reckoned that slabsided cockeyed roust-about Jack Mottram took her," said Long Mac. "But I own freely I never gave a thought to Quin."

"Oh, he was always a squaw-man," said Ginger White. "What was that talk of a gal called Lily? Wasn't she from Coquitlam?"

"She was a Hydah, but I never seen her," said another. Papp the German intervened.

"She was a bretty gal. I zeen her mit Quin at Victoria; no, at Nanaimo. She died of gonsumption, boys."

They had heard Quin had killed her, kicked her when she was going to be a mother.

"It ain'd drue," said Papp. "Thad was the odder Quin, him dey galls Gultus Muckamuck. When I was ub to Gamloops I saw her grave. Gultus kigged her in the stomag, poor thing, and she died."

"Is it true Pete killed Jenny last night?" asked young Tom Willett, who had just come in.

Wong had told Long Mac all about it and he had told the others. They all told Tom Willett all about it at once.

"Pete hadn't better run up agin Quin this day," said Ginger. "I've lost the best wedger-off I ever struck."

He saw Skookum Charlie grinning in a corner.

"And now I've got to put up with Skookum. I guess Pete has lighted out."

"Pulled his freight for sure," said Tenas Billy. Then Scotty yanked the whistle lanyard and the men sighed and moved off.

And as they moved Pete came in.