Part 20

“Your wife,” John had written to his brother, “has come to visit us at the Ranch of the Whispering Firs, as my girls have named our donation claims, to hold which we have pooled our issues, and have filed upon them as individuals. My family are charmed with her. Do join us here at once. Take a donation claim near to one or more of ours. Forget bygones. And, best of all, go with me this winter, by the Isthmus route, to the dear old home. Do say yes, Joe, and we may all be happy yet.”

“Halloa!” cried Ashleigh, as he alighted at the post.

“Well,” cried Joseph Ranger, as he opened his canvas door; “it’s Ashleigh. Come right in! You’re the very man I wanted to see.”

A savory odor of hot biscuits and frying ham greeted the nostrils of the benumbed and hungry wayfarer.

“This supper smells good, Mr. Addicks.”

“Mr. Addicks no more, if you please, Mr. Ashleigh. My name is Ranger,—Joseph Ranger. I have found myself, and I shall be known by my real name hereafter. But help yourself to pot-luck. And please excuse me. I have just begun to read a letter from the coast. The courier hasn’t been gone five minutes.”

After Ashleigh had finished his meal his host thrust the letter in his face and said, “What do you think of that?”

“What do you propose to do?” asked Ashleigh, after carefully considering the missive.

“Why, go to Oregon, of course. What else could a fellow do? But I don’t know what in the dickens to do with my stuff.”

“You can leave me in charge, if you like. You can invoice at your lowest selling-price, and I’ll make what profit I can on the venture and close it out in the spring; that is, if you do not care to return next year.”

“The good Lord has taken pity on me at last,” cried the delighted host. “My luck has begun to turn.”

XXXVI

_HAPPY JACK IS SURPRISED_

“You don’t seem to like the idea of my going to the States this winter, after all,” said Captain Ranger to his partner, who had been for several days exhibiting a degree of ill temper not assuring to a man of peaceful inclinations.

“Not by a darn sight. Business is business. Them weemen folks o’ yourn is as independent as so many hogs on ice. They are goin’ back on me about the cookin’ for the men. But say! I won’t object to your goin’ no more, if you’ll make Jean marry me afore you start. I could manage her all right if she was my wife; an’ then I could set the pace for the rest of ’em.”

The Captain paused a moment, in doubt whether to give the fellow the toe of his boot or wipe the ground with his whole body. “My daughters are to be their own choosers,” he said. “I have already engaged a crew of loggers to work while I am absent. If the winter is open, we can have everything shipshape by the time the machinery arrives.”

“Stay, daddie,” cried Jean, who, with Mary, had come up unobserved by their father. She was ghastly pale and strangely tremulous. “Mame and I have something important to say to you both before you part.”

“What is it, gals? Don’t hesitate to speak right out.”

“We—that is, Jean and I and Sally O’Dowd—have been talking things over; and we have concluded that we had better settle our side of this business proposition before matters go any further,” said Mary, speaking with unusual decision. “As you, father, have arranged to have a partner, and as—to use his own words—‘business is business,’ I want to say that I will be your cook at the partnership mess-house, but only at a reasonable salary. If you had no partner, the work would be all in the family, and we could settle its dividend among ourselves.”

“I have engaged a dozen pupils and will open a little school in a few days,” interrupted Jean, who had not heard the partner’s proposition in regard to herself, and therefore spoke without embarrassment. “But I shall have plenty of time to keep the books of the concern after school hours, and I will see that everything is done on business principles.”

“The deuce you will!” thought the partner. Then aloud: “I was intendin’ to keep the books myself.”

“Are you a practical book-keeper?” asked Jean.

“No; that is, not edzactly. But I kin keep most any set o’ transactions in my head. I never in my born days hearn tell of any woman or gal that could keep books. An’ I never knowed any woman to git a salary.”

“That was because you never knew the Ranger family,” laughed Marjorie.

“It is arranged that Hal is to have employment in the mill at a salary,” said Mary, “and he is very proud of the opportunity. We girls are all as willing to work as he is. But we do not believe at all in the custom of servitude without salary, to which all married women, and most of the single ones, are subject.”

“Is that the way you look at it, Miss Jean?” asked her would-be suitor.

“Daddie has always taught us that the highest type of humanity is built on the self-dependence of the individual. Haven’t you, daddie?”

“My daughters are right, Mr. Jackman. I have trained them to the idea of self-government. I am glad indeed to see them taking hold of these principles firmly.”

The partner turned away crestfallen. When he was fairly out of hearing, he took off his hat and exclaimed: “I’ll be gol darned! What is the weemin comin’ to?”

* * * * *

“I have engaged Susannah to live at my house,” said the Little Doctor, addressing the Captain as he sauntered toward a spreading fir near the front doorsteps, where the family were holding a consultation with Mrs. Joseph Ranger prior to her departure.

“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.