Despair's Last Journey.

by David Christie Murray.

INTRODUCTION

HOW AND WHERE THE STORY OF DESPAIR'S LAST JOURNEY WAS TOLD

I

A solitary pa.s.senger alighted from the train, and many people looked curiously after him. The mulatto porter handed to the platform a well-battered portmanteau, which was plastered thickly over with luggage-labels and the advertising tickets of hotels in every quarter of the globe. A great canvas bag followed, ornamented in like fashion. Then from the baggage-van an invisible person tumbled, a canvas bale.

The coffee-coloured mulatto held out a grayish-white palm for the quarter-dollar the pa.s.senger was ready to drop into it, and stepped back to the platform of the car. The engine bell tolled slowly, as if it sounded a knell, and the train wound away. The curve of the line carried it out of sight in less than a minute, but in the clear mountain air the quickened ringing of the bell, the pant of the engine, and the roll of the wheels were audible for a long time. Then the engine, with a final wail of good-bye, plunged into the tunnel of a distant snow-shed, and the whole region seemed as quiet as a grave.

The little weatherboard railside station was void of life, and there was not a soul in sight. The pa.s.senger had given up the ticket for his sleeping-berth an hour before, and had announced his intention to stop over at this lonely place. An altercation with the conductor as to the possibility of releasing the canvas bale from the baggage-van before it arrived at its expressed destination at Vancouver had reached the ears of other travellers who were on duty in the observation car, painfully conscious of the scenery and the obligations it imposed. To experience some ecstasy, more or less, was imperative, and it was weary work for most of them. They stuck to it manfully and woman-fully, with abysmal furtive yawns; but the skirmish between the conductor and their fellow-pa.s.senger came as a sort of G.o.dsend, and when the transfer of a dollar bill, incredibly dirty and greasy and tattered, had brought warfare to a close, they still had the voluntary exile to stare at. He was a welcome change from scenery, and they stared hard.

He was a city man to look at, and had the garb of cities--tall silk hat, well worn, but well brushed; frock-coat in similar condition; dark-gray trousers, a little trodden at the heels; patent-leather boots; high collar; silken scarf. Everything he wore was slightly shabby, except his linen; but a millionaire who was disposed to be careless about his dress might have gone so attired. People had a habit of looking twice at this pa.s.senger, for he bore an air of being somebody; but the universal stare which fastened on him as the train steamed away was the result of his intent to deliver himself (at evident caprice) at a place so lonely, and so curiously out of accord with his own aspect. What was a clean-shaven man of cities, with silk hat, and frock-coat, and patent leathers, doing at Beaver Tail, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains? Why had he suddenly decided to stay there, of all places in the world? And why had he made up his mind without having so much as seen the place? These questions kept the occupants of the observation car in better talk than scenery long after the lonely pa.s.senger had landed, and long after the last wail of the engine had sounded in his ears.

If he had come here in search of landscape splendours, he might have had his fill at once. The railside shanty stood at a height of some four thousand feet above sea-level, but the mountains heaved vast shoulders and white heads about him.

Below, in the tremendous gorge, a torrent ran recklessly, tearing at its rocky confines with raging hands, and crying out in many voices like a mult.i.tude bent on some deed of vengeance--hurrying, delaying, turning on itself, maddening itself. Its bellowing seemed a part of universal silence. Silence brooded here, alone, with those wild voices for an emphasis.

Right and left the gorge swept out into dreadful magnificences of height and depth, and glow and shadow. Cliffs of black basalt, scarred and riven by the accidents of thousands of years, frowned like eyeless giant faces. One height, with a supernal leap, had risen from the highest, and stood poised a mile aloft, as if it were a feat to stand so for a second, with a craggy head cut out of the sheet of blue. Mountain torrents, too far away to bring the merest murmur to the ear, spun and plaited their quivering ropes of silver wire. The shadows in the clefts of near hills were like purple wine in a gla.s.s. Above and beyond they were bloomed like an ungathered plum. The giant firs looked like orderly pin-rows of decreasing size for half a mile along the climbing heights.

Before they reached the snow-line they seemed as smooth as the smallest moss that grows.

The pa.s.senger regarded none of these things, but stared thoughtfully at the platform at his feet. He drew a cigarette from amongst a loose handful in a waistcoat pocket, struck a lucifer match upon his thigh, and smoked absently for a minute or so. Then he took the portmanteau in one hand and the brown bag in the other, and, leaving the railway platform, crossed the single line, and made a plunging, careless scramble through a narrow belt of undergrowth. In a minute or less he came upon a moss-grown way cut through the wood along the side of the mountain--the old Cariboo Track men used before the days of the railway.

Weighted as he was, he found it warm work here, shut in from the cool breezes of the mountains and yet exposed to the rays of the mid-day sun.

He wrestled along, however, for some quarter of a mile, and, reaching a small wooden bridge which crossed a runnel of clear water, set his burden down and looked about him, mopping his brow with a handkerchief.

'This will do, I fancy,' he said aloud, and then began to undress.

He stripped to socks, drawers, and vest before opening the brown bag, from which he took an old black felt hat, a shirt of gray patternless flannel, coat and trousers of gray tweed, a belt of leather, and a pair of mountain boots. Having attired himself in these things, he lit another cigarette, and smoked broodingly until it was finished. Then he walked back to the railside shanty, found the canvas bale, and slowly and with great exertion lugged it down the slope and along the trail. He panted and perspired at this task; for though he was st.u.r.dily set, and large of limb and stature, he was obviously unused to that kind of work, and by the time it was over he was fain to throw himself upon the moss and rest for a full half-hour. Being rested, he rolled over, and, stretching out a hand towards the discarded frock-coat, drew from its inner pocket a ball of Canadian and American notes, crushed and tangled together like papers of no value. He smoothed them out, flattening them upon his knee one by one, and, having counted them over, rolled them up tidily, and thrust them to the bottom of the brown bag. Next, he began to untie the cords which fastened the canvas bale, muttering 'd.a.m.n the thing!' at intervals, as the knots refused to yield to his unskilful handling. Finally, when the work was two-thirds done, he made search for a pen-knife, and, having found it, severed the remaining knots, and threw the cords away into the runnel.

'That's emblematic,' he said. 'Anything's emblematic if you're on the look-out for emblems.'

The canvas bale, being unrolled, displayed a bundle of gray blankets; a tent-pole, jointed like a fishing-rod, and in three pieces; an axe; a leather gun-case; a small gridiron; a small frying-pan; a tin quart pot, close-packed with loose cartridges; and a pair of folding trestles and a folding board for the construction of a little table. The canvas in which all these things had been packed afforded material for a tent, and the Solitary, with a seeming custom and alertness which no man would have argued from his aspect of an hour ago, began to set up his abiding-place in the narrow natural clearing he had chosen.

In a while everything was tidy and ship-shape, and when he had made a fire, and had constructed a tripod of branches from which to hang the quart pot, newly filled with water from the sparkling runnel near at hand, the lonely man sat down and smoked again, letting his eyes rove here and there, and seeming to scan the scene before him with a dreamy interest. The pot boiled over, and the hissing of the wet embers awoke him from his contemplations. The brown portmanteau, being opened, proved to be filled with packets of provisions of various kinds. He made tea, broke into a tin of sardines and a packet of hard biscuits, and then sat munching and sipping, with his feet stretched wide apart, and his back against a tree--a picture of unthinking idleness.

A rustle near at hand awoke attention, and he rolled his head lazily on one shoulder. The rustle drew nearer yet, and round the bend of the trail came a man in moleskin trousers, a gray shirt, and a shapeless felt hat, which seemed to have no colour but those lent to it by years of sun and rain.

'Hillo, mate!' said the new man.

'Hillo!' said the camper-out.

'Come here by the last train, I suppose?'

'By the last train.'

'Got a mate with you?'

'No.'

The new-comer stared, and said 'Hm!' doubtfully. He looked from the other man's pale, clean-shaven face to his white hands.

'New to this kind of game, ain't you? he asked, at length.

'For a year or two,' the other answered.

'I spotted the trail you made from the platform,' said the new-comer. 'I seen something had been dragged away. I was bound to follow.' There was a part apology in his tone, as if he knew himself unwelcome. 'You might have been Indians,' he added, 'or any kind of riff-raff.'

'Quite so,' said the man of the camp. 'Not many of 'em hereabouts, I suppose?'

'One or two in a year, perhaps. And harmless, what there is of 'em; but as thievish as a set of jackdaws.'

'You in charge of the station?' asked the man of the camp, looking composedly down the canon and sipping at his tea.

'Yes, I'm in charge.'

'Alone?'

'Alone? Yes.'

'Fond of being alone?'

'Yes.'

'So am I.'

'All right.' The man in the moleskin trousers and the shapeless hat laughed, lounged indeterminately for a minute, rolled his quid in his cheek, spat, wiped his bearded mouth with the back of a sunburnt hand, and laughed again. 'There's room enough for both of us. Good-night, mate.'

'Good-night'

The keeper of the station strolled away with a backward glance, and the man of the camp sipped his tea and stared straight before him. The sound of the retreating footsteps had died away, when the Solitary raised a powerful voice and cried, 'Hillo!'

'Hillo!' came the answer, so m.u.f.fled by the trees that it sounded as if from a considerable distance. The two men walked towards each other and met face to face. They had exchanged a greeting of good-night together, but the sun had some two hours to travel before it set upon the plains.

Here it was out of sight already behind a monstrous hill, and although the dome of the sky was one translucent quiet splendour, dusk lay in the shadow of the mountain and the nearer shadows of the sombre pines.

'I want to ask you,' said the camper-out, 'if you're a teetotaler?'

'No,' said the station-keeper, 'not in particular.'

'Any whisky about here just now?'

'A gallon,' said the station-keeper; 'new in yesterday. Like a tot?'

'No.'

The word was snapped out savagely, and the station-keeper said 'Oh!'