Part 9

A peculiar feeling of rest and freedom at first possessed me; I was, or thought I was, beginning to understand many things hitherto unrevealed, to have a sympathy with Simon Stylites, and an appreciation of Mahatmaism; but soon a wild desire to project myself indefinitely into space seized upon me. The moonlight and the vastness were getting into my brain--a little more, and I might have leapt from the train, and run until nature or prairie dog holes should assert their influence upon me;--and then with a saving grace, a couple of coyotes appeared from behind a hillock, and played with their tails in the moonlight--and the spell was broken.

I became conscious that my cigar was out, that the mosquitoes were annoyingly attentive. Better to be a limited being in a smoking car and not itch, than to be an unlimited being outside it and itch most ‘demnibly.’ I went back into the smoking-room.

Empty, thank heaven--no professionals from the Golden City to talk faro and rowdyism; no commercials to bombard one with down Eastern brag, the decline of Winnipeg, or the future of Vancouver and the C. P. R.; no globe-trotting sportsman to bewail his luck in the Rockies, or abuse the British Columbian for a liar.

‘Empty, thank God.’

‘Take a light, sir?’ said a soft, rather high pitched, drawling voice under my left elbow. I jumped, and, to disguise it, smote my cheek, where a mosquito might have been, but was not.

A man of about forty, a long figure in a sleeping suit, with a lean, brown, clean-shaven face, courteously bending forward, held towards me the lighted end of a cigar.

‘Thanks very much, sir; delighted to find I’m not alone.’

‘_Not_ empty, thank God;’ said Mr Dick Denver, in an unmoved voice.

‘My dear sir,’ said I, sitting down next to him, ‘I should’nt have dreamed of that remark, if I’d seen _you_; but you were so completely tucked away in that corner, that I’d no idea you were here, and I must confess I _was_ uncommonly glad not to see our ’Frisco friends, or the bummers’ (_Anglice_ commercial travellers).

‘Guess you’re right; they are kind of tiring.’

‘What beats me,’ I went on, ‘is the way people like that, who really have nothing to say, insist upon saying it, and, by Gad, enjoy saying it, and are certain you enjoy hearing them say it, and set you down as a condemned fool if you don’t say it yourselves.’

‘Right,’ said Mr Denver; ‘for a man that spreads himself around to be dull, give me a woman first, and then a bummer. And yet,’ he went on meditatively, ‘there are some profoundly interesting beetles amongst that last tribe; and--amongst the other too.’ He sighed, and relapsed into the silent puffing of his cigar. I had not travelled from Montreal nearly to Calgary with Mr Denver without discovering that he was a silent man on all subjects, and on the subject of women a dumb, and apparently a deaf image. Try him upon the subject of ‘bummers’ the oyster might open for once, I thought, but without much hope.

‘Did you ever have anything to do with any curious specimen?’ I said carelessly.

‘Some,’ he said; ‘one mainly--Irishman--he travelled in wine; I guess he was the smartest coon I ever struck, but no head--or rather too much head, like a glass of stout.’

‘All Irishmen are like that,’ I said, sententiously and untruthfully; then, with a cautious insertion of the opener, ‘what was his name?’

‘Kinahan; we called him Kinjan,’ and--more to himself than to me--‘Jupiter! I was in the tightest kind of a hole with that cuss and one other.’

‘Really tight?’ said I.

‘Never tighter, except about three times, and those I don’t take much stock in talking of.’

‘Women?’ I said hardily. He nodded.

‘And others,’ he added, as if he had thereby over-committed himself.

‘It seems to me,’ said I, feeling the opener deepening in the shell, ‘you don’t “take much stock” in talking of anything, considering that you really have got something to say; tell me this yarn of Kinjan, and be a benefactor to a poor sleep-forsaken devil.’

Mr Denver chewed the end of his cigar.

‘Bore you world without end,’ he said.

‘Try me,’ I besought.

‘We must have drinks, then.’ He heaved himself up, and called melodiously over the car platforms.

When the materials had been brought, Mr Denver constructed himself his favourite pick-me-up, in which raw egg and cayenne pepper formed the chief ingredients.

‘Let me mix you one,’ he said; ‘guess you won’t weaken on it; it’s short, but it’s breezy.’

We drank together, and our hearts were opened within us, and we became as brothers. Through the open door and window the wonderful silver prairie night came in, and the lamp of the smoking-room flickered and went out before its breath. We swallowed another prairie oyster each, and the strings of Mr Dick Denver’s tongue were unloosed, and he spake plain, if a little through his nose.

And as he spake, the snoring from the sleeping-saloon and the snorting of the engine became to me as the roaring of the surf upon the sea-shore, and the rolling prairie as the sands of the desert, and afar off a lone clump of trees shining white under the moon as the minarets of a distant Moorish city.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was moving around one time on a cargo steamer, calculating to go to Madeira or Teneriffe, and see what I could strike out of those parts. Well, you know, I don’t cotton to “tramps;” they’re a pretty ordinary lot, and the one I was on that trip was tough, just tough; from the skipper down to the bacon the whole show was tough. There were only three passengers on board: myself, this Kinjan, and a long Britisher, by name Torin--the Hon. Christopher Torin was his full label.’ Mr Denver paused, and tilted his head back in his seat, and in this attitude, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, resumed, through a cloud of smoke.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I guess I am of opinion _that_ Mr Torin was by a considerable way the coolest and the silentest cuss I ever struck, and I’ve had experience; but with it, mind you, he was the most reckless devil that ever let in to make the universe hum. He wasn’t long out of some mess or other--woman, I heard--and likely enough--poor beggar!’--and Mr Denver heaved a sigh of smoke that brought a stupefied mosquito down from the ceiling. Presently he resumed.

‘He was a long, good-looking chap, with a don’t-care look, and one of those short, fair beards that grow on so many of you Britishers--going a bit grey--and an extraordinary strong man, thick through, and long in the limb. He was going down to Madeira, to fetch one of the South African boats for a shooting trip. We three used to mess together, you know, and got pretty thick,--Kinjan blowing around and spreading himself, Torin smoking and drinking, and now and then nodding his head, and I laying up and figuring them out--not for professional reasons, but because it’s kind of got to be a habit of mine, and they were two of the queerest bugs.

“Not alone in their glory,” I thought to myself, but, beyond a grunt of appreciation, said nothing; the oyster was fairly open now.

‘Well, one evening about four bells,--while we were making down pretty near in to the Morocco coast, and about a hundred miles top side of Mogador,--I was leaning over the port rail aft, snuffing up the phosphorus, and admiring at the right down smartness of the skipper, shoving in shore on a real reefy coast, when there came an everlasting jolt, and before I could get in the thin end of a cuss, I guess I was treading water, and blowing like a grampus, forty yards from a fast-sinking ship. It wasn’t any good going back--that was clear--she wouldn’t be above water another five minutes, so I lit out and shoved for the shore,--a long white streaky line about a quarter of a mile off, with a blamed current setting me off it. I had to get there, or bust, and I _got_, but it was stiff going, and when I had made the sand I was as badly roasted as a leg of pork.

‘I easied a bit, and lay up with my legs in the water, though the tide running out soon left them high and dry. By and bye, I came round, and concluded to prospect along that shore, and see if any other wreckage had come to hand. It was pretty dark, but the sands were easy going, and there was a moon just getting up. I guess I hadn’t gone above a few hundred yards when I saw something white, about the height of a man’s figure, rising out of the sand a short way off. When I got nearer I saw it _was_ a man, Torin himself, leaning on an oar and looking down at his legs, which were quite bare.

‘I fetched out a howl of joy, and ran for him. I remember he just turned his head, and all he said was: “Haven’t got a pair of breeches to lend a chap, have you?” Seems he’d been in his berth when the ship struck, and the lower end of his pyjamas had sprung and cut adrift in swimming, and left him in pale pink above, and another kind of a pale pink below. Being a tidy sort of a cuss, he was a good piece annoyed, so I reckoned we had better get right along with the prospecting, and it might be we should run on that nether end. However, we didn’t, and presently, as we were a good bit stretched with swimming against the tide, we lay up under a sand hillock and had considerable sleep. I guess it might have been an hour or so after dawn, when I was woke by a curious screechy sort of a noise. As soon as I got my ears under weigh, I found it panned out something like, “Bedad! ye divils, begorra, be aisy, bejabbers!”--seemed kind of Irish. I rolled over from sleeping inland, and, by the holy poker, within fifty yards of where we had slept, washed up high and dry by the tide, which had turned in the night and was then about full, was a barr’l with a head on it, and out of that head was just pouring the thickest kind of Irish. A man could see that the inside of that barr’l was yearning to have some sort of consideration paid to it. I roused up Torin, and we went down quietly, and inspected the cask from behind. It was a very nice barr’l--a butter barr’l--and I judge about a third full of butter, and may be two-thirds full of Kinjan; and the funny thing was that the poor coon had been washed up stuck fast in that barr’l with his head turned out to sea, so as he couldn’t suspicion we were around, and he was waltzing into creation with the finest language, and the air was real stiff with cussing. Well, I guess we laughed some, though we were tarnation glad to see him,--that is, I laughed, and Torin stood there stroking his beard, with the nearest approach to a grin I ever saw on him. The laughing just drove Kinjan mad, and he wrenched round with a mighty wriggle, and when he saw us he fairly surpassed himself, cussing us up and down, beginning with our boot laces--which were mighty scarce, by the way. His remarks were not worth repeating.

‘When he had dried up, owing to a trickle of butter dripping from his head into his mouth,--he was buttery all over,--Torin said, “Got any bread with you?” That set him off again, but he toned down mighty quick, and ended up by saying quite quietly:

‘“Take me out of this, and be d----d to ye, ye leather-headed sons of bottle-washers!” and then he fainted. So we took him out, and hung him over the cask, and sluiced water over him, and presently he came to, ca’m, but pretty yallow.

‘’Pears when the ship struck, he’d been jerked off the poop right into this butter barr’l, which was standing open and most empty on the lower deck. When he felt the ship disappearing under him, being an Irishman, and a genius, with a turn for expurriment,--but I guess mainly because he couldn’t swim,--he calculated to stay where he was. He grabbed a bit of wood that came along, and by means of this managed to keep the barr’l top side up, the sea luckily being as ca’m as a mill-pond. He said he was first taken out maybe hundred of miles till he could most smell the Canaries, and then brought in again on the turning tide and washed up. In his struggles near shore, he’d kicked clean through the bottom of the cask, and, getting his leg jammed tight through the hole, was as fast as a tick when we found him. He had a down on butter afterwards; he never ’peared to go much on it, ’slong as I knew him.’

Over Mr Denver’s face, which had hitherto been as unmoved and expressionless as carved mahogany, twinkled a fleeting look of joy, which disappeared with the next puff of his cigar.

‘That was not the most amusing day I _have_ spent,’ he went on, meditatively; ‘we kept mighty busy looking for fixings and finding none to speak of; I guess the current must have appropriated all that was useful in the old tub,--only the most or’nery articles came along--empty hencoops, and barr’ls, and such like--not a single tarnation thing to eat or drink. I judge the skipper and most of the crew turned up their toes, though I heard afterwards that four of them were saved out of a small boat by a passing vessel. Torin got a piece of sail-cloth, and made himself a pinafore, which comforted him some. Kinjan slept most of the day, and when he woke up, he told us we were fools, and that what we wanted instead of mooning around for things from the sea, was to go inland and find out if there weren’t any houses or cities in the vicinity; and then he rolled himself up tight in the shade of that sand-heap like a darned yellow dormouse, and went to sleep again; I guess he must have had a most amazing wide-awake time in that barr’l, I never saw a man sleep so. Torin and I were most powerfully hungry and thirsty by this, so we went inland a piece and looked about us for the highest ground we could find,--the country was as blamed flat, mind you, as this prairie. We found a sand hillock that rose a bit above the rest of the ground, and Torin made a back and said “get up;” so I got, and stood on his shoulders, and looked; and presently out of the distance away to the south-east, it might have been five or six miles, I could see some white spikey things seeming to stick up out of the yallow horizon. I told Torin, and he got up on me, and when he came down--which he did pretty smart, owing to my balance going wrong--he cursed gently, with his mouth full of sand, and said, “Minarets, city!”

‘Well, we went back to Kinjan, who was awake, for a wonder, and told him; and then he said he’d just remembered the whole country round those parts was in the hands of the rebels, and that if we were seen we should be killed, so he recommended us to go on hunting along shore, till we ran across a boat, and get away in that, and he recommended us particularly to look out for a barr’l of whisky; then he went to sleep again. Well, we just sat down, and waited for him to get thirsty, calculating that when that was so, being an Irishman, he would find us a way out of the fix. And presently he got, and it woke him up, and after cursing a bit, he sat up quite spry--but a piece yallow still--and figured out the most beautiful plan of how we would go and take that city if necessary, and make them provide us with an escort down to Mogador. Then he said it was no good doing anything till it was cool and dark. So he lay down again and went to sleep; and after one more look along shore we lay down alongside and did the same, meaning to start with the dawn next morning for the city. I reckon we were played out that evening, and felt real rocky and dispurited.’

Dick Denver’s memories of that thirsty day were here too much for him; he rose and called again for drinks across the platform. When they had come, in the hands of a sleepy and coloured individual, he finished a whisky and soda at a single draught, and resumed.

‘That fellow was infectious, I guess; anyway I slept until a heavy sort of feeling about my chest woke me, and I found a great hairy nigger cuss had taken me for an arm-chair. All around us in the moonlight were a lot of ferocious-looking devils in long robes and turbans, armed to the teeth. Torin was lying spread-eagled on my right--he didn’t ’pear to be discommoded--but he spat out a broken tooth, and I heard him mutter to himself, “You fools, much better have killed me, and have done with it;” and I judged he was powerfully divided between two sorts of wish.

‘There was a nigger holding on to each of my arms and legs, so I took it quietly, and they bound me up like an eternal mummy. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kinjan’s face shining round and red in the middle of a mass of niggers. He rolled his eye at me, and began, “Be aisy, Dick--Begad! I’ll take tay with ye prisintly, ye hairy haythens!” Just then one of the niggers stuffed his mouth with sand, so he shut his head kind of sudden. Then they picketed their horses round us, and sat on their haunches, and pow-wowed everlastingly.

‘I judged we were in the hands of a band of rebel Moors loafing along shore in search of wreckage; and a man could see with half an eye it was a tight place. I wasn’t more than six feet from Kinjan, and I could tell by the prick of his ears he was understanding the pow-wow; living as he did at “Gib,” he’d been a lot in the country and _sabed_ the lingo well. Lie low was the only game, and I lay and thunk a lot, but all the time I felt kind of certain that if we were coming out of that place, it was Kinjan’s show--and the more so because I knew he was almighty dry. Their chief seemed a venerable kind of a bug, with a long white beard and turban, and he did most of the pow-wowing. Presently they easied off, and after looking us over well, and giving us a kick or two, set two sentinels, and turned in for sleep. The sentries stood out about twenty yards; and when the others seemed fixed pretty quiet, Kinjan gave a gentle roll of his fat carcase towards me, and said, out of his back teeth (I can’t give his accent, but it was real rich): “Thanks be to Jasus, one of me knots is a granny. Praise the pigs, I’ll be out of ut in ten minutes. Tell Torin; and when I give ye the wink, stand by, and I’ll cut ye loose--then grab what ye can and clear the camp; whist!” One of the sentries faced round right there and came towards us; he prodded at me with the butt end of his lance to see that I couldn’t move when he tickled me, and he rolled Kinjan over with his foot; we neither of us budged, so he concluded we were fixed, and mouched back again.

‘I counted the gang; there were fifteen of them. Torin was laying very low about three yards away, but I judged from a sign he made when the sentry vamoosed, that he knew things were about to progress. After what seemed a ’nation long time, Kinjan raised his head, and I saw from his movements he’d succeeded in freeing his hands; presently he came rolling gently on to me, and I felt the point of his blamed knife going in as he cut the thongs; then he handed me the knife, and I rolled on to Torin and hacked him loose; and just as I got through, one of the sentries tumbled to it, and came for us like greased lightning. I saw Kinjan throw out his arm from the ground, and the cuss tripped right over it on to us, and his spear went into the ground through my coat.

‘Kinjan raised a whoop, and got that spear and ran it through the man next him--he was a bloodthirsty little cuss. I laid for the sentry’s pistols--he had two--and drew a very neat bead on the other sentry.

‘Torin he just sat up and purred, and then when the devils began to come on, he took that fallen sentry by the legs, and got a wiggle on him, and went for them into the thick; and he swung the poor devil round and round and cleared that crowd like fury--’peared they didn’t understand the game. He laid out three of them, and then they scattered and drew back; I dropped another with the other pistol, and Kinjan charged right down on the old chief, and bowled him over with the butt-end of his spear. “’Tis all over, bhoys,” he said, and sat on the old gentleman; and so it was. When they saw the tail-ends of their boss waving in the air, the rest of them made tracks. In the intervals of sticking the business end of his spear into things, Kinjan had cut loose all their horses but four or five, and there was a beautiful scrimmage over those sand hillocks, men and horses all mixed, and travelling in most directions like fury. That was a vūrry tidy dodge of Torin’s,--maybe it was rough on the sentry, but it was vūrry impressive--some of the impressions might have been a foot long, I should judge.’ He paused; the train had stopped with a jerk at a station, and the engine was blowing off steam with a disturbing energy.

‘Durn the durned thing,’ said Mr Denver; but presently he resumed, as we droned on again.