The Last Spike by Cy Warman (red white and royal blue hardcover .TXT) 📕

pant for Ramsey, that he might join the rush to the North. That exciting summer died and another dawned, with no news from Ramsey.

When the adventurous English-American could withstand the strain no longer, he shipped for Skagway himself. He dropped off at Port Simpson and inquired about Ramsey.

Yes, the Hudson people said, it was quite probable that Ramsey had passed in that way. Some hundreds of prospectors had gone in during the past three years, but the current created by the Klondike rush had drawn most of them out and up the Sound.

One man declared that he had seen Ramsey ship for Skagway on the "Dirigo," and, after a little help and a few more drinks, gave a minute description of a famous nugget pin which the passing pilgrim said the prospector wore.

And so the capitalist took the next boat for Skagway.

By the time he reached Dawson the death-rattle had begun to assert itself in the bosom of the boom. The most diligent inquiry failed to reveal the presence of the noted prospector. On the contrary, many old-timers from Colorado and California declared that Ramsey had never reached the Dike--that is, not since the boom. In a walled tent on a shimmering sand-bar at the mouth of the crystal Klondike, Captain Jack Crawford, the "Poet Scout," severely sober in that land of large thirsts, wearing his old-time halo of lady-like behavior and hair, was conducting an "Ice Cream Emporium and Soft-drink Saloon."

"No," said the scout, with the tips of his tapered fingers trembling on an empty table, straining forward and staring into the stranger's face; "no, Jack Ramsey has not been here; and if what you say be true--he sleeps alone in yonder fastness. Alas, poor Ramsey!--Ah knew 'im well"; and he sank on a seat, shaking with sobs.

* * * * *

The English-American, on his way out, stopped at Simpson again. From a half-breed trapper he heard of a white man who had crossed the Coast Range three grasses ago. This white man had three or four head of cattle, a Cree servant, and a queer-looking cayuse with long ears and a mournful, melancholy cry. This latter member of the gang carried the outfit.

Taking this half-caste Cree to guide him, the mining man set out in search of the long-lost Ramsey. They crossed the first range and searched the streams north of the Peace River pass, almost to the crest of the continent, but found no trace of the prospector.

When the summer died and the wilderness was darkened by the Northern night, the search was abandoned.

The years drifted into the past, and finally the Chinook Mining and Milling Company went to the wall. The English-American promoter, smarting under criticism, reimbursed each of his associates and took over the office, empty ink-stands and blotting paper, and so blotted out all records of the one business failure of his life.

But he could not blot out Jack Ramsey from his memory. There was a "reason," he would say, for Ramsey's silence.

One day, when in Edmonton, he met Mayor Ross, who had come into the country by the back door some thirty years ago. The tales coaxed from the Mayor's memory corresponded with Ramsey's report; and having nothing but time and money, the ex-President of the C.M. & M. Company determined to go in _via_ the Peace River pass and see for himself. He made the acquaintance of Smith "The Silent," as he was called, who was at that time pathfinding for the Grand Trunk Pacific, and secured permission to go in with the engineers.

At Little Slave Lake he picked up Jim Cromwell, a free-trader, who engaged to guide the mining man into the wonderland he had described.

The story of Ramsey and his rambles appealed to Cromwell, who talked tirelessly, and to the engineer, who listened long; and in time the habitants of Cromwell's domains, which covered a country some seven hundred miles square, all knew the story and all joined in the search.

Beyond the pass of the Peace an old Cree caught up with them and made signs, for he was deaf and dumb. But strange as it may seem, somehow, somewhere, he had heard the story of the lost miner and knew that this strange white man was the miner's friend.

Long he sat by the camp fire, when the camp was asleep, trying, by counting on his fingers and with sticks, to make Cromwell understand what was on his mind.

When day dawned, he plucked Cromwells' sleeve, then walked away fifteen or twenty steps, stopped, unrolled his blankets, and lay down, closing his eyes as if asleep. Presently he got up, rubbed his eyes, lighted his pipe, smoked for awhile, then knocked the fire out on a stone. Then he got up, stamped the fire out as though it had been a camp fire, rolled up his blankets, and travelled on down the slope some twenty feet and repeated the performance. On the next march he made but ten feet. He stopped, put his pack down, seated himself on the trunk of a fallen tree and, with his back to Cromwell, began gesticulating, as if talking to some one, nodding and shaking his head. Then he got a pick and began digging.

At the end of an hour Cromwell and the engineer had agreed that these stations were day's marches and the rests camping places. In short, it was two and a half "sleeps" to what he wanted to show them,--a prospect, a gold mine maybe,--and so Cromwell and the English-American detached themselves and set out at the heels of the mute Cree in search of something.

On the morning of the third day the old Indian could scarcely control himself, so eager was he to be off.

All through the morning the white men followed him in silence. Noon came, and still the Indian pushed on.

At two in the afternoon, rounding the shoulder of a bit of highland overlooking a beautiful valley, they came suddenly upon a half-breed boy playing with a wild goose that had been tamed.

Down in the valley a cabin stood, and over the valley a small drove of cattle were grazing.

Suddenly from behind the hogan came the weird wail of a Colorado canary, who would have been an ass in Absalom's time.

They asked the half-breed boy his name, and he shook his head. They asked for his father, and he frowned.

The mute old Indian took up a pick, and they followed him up the slope. Presently he stopped at a stake upon which they could still read the faint pencil-marks:--

C.M. M. Co. L'T'D

The old Indian pointed to the ground with an expression which looked to the white men like an interrogation. Cromwell nodded, and the Indian began to dig. Cromwell brought a shovel, and they began sinking a shaft.

The English-American, with a sickening, sinking sensation, turned toward the cabin. The boy preceded him and stood in the door. The man put his hand on the boy's head and was about to enter when he caught sight of a nugget at the boy's neck. He stooped and lifted it. The boy shrank back, but the man, going deadly pale, clutched the child, dragging the nugget from his neck.

Now all the Indian in the boy's savage soul asserted itself, and he fought like a little demon. Pitying the child in its impotent rage, the man gave him the nugget and turned away.

Across the valley an Indian woman came walking rapidly, her arms full of turnips and onions and other garden-truck. The white man looked and loathed her; for he felt confident that Ramsey had been murdered, his trinkets distributed, and his carcass cast to the wolves.

When the boy ran to meet the woman, the white man knew by his behavior that he was her child. When the boy had told his mother how the white man had behaved, she flew into a rage, dropped her vegetables, dived into the cabin, and came out with a rifle in her hands. To her evident surprise the man seemed not to dread death, but stood staring at the rifle, which he recognized as the rifle he had sent to Ramsey. To his surprise she did not shoot, but uttering a strange cry, started up the slope, taking the gun with her. With rifle raised and flashing eyes she ordered the two men out of the prospect hole. Warlike as she seemed, she was more than welcome, for she was a woman and could talk. She talked Cree, of course, but it sounded good to Cromwell. Side by side the handsome young athlete and the Cree woman sat and exchanged stories.

Half an hour later the Englishman came up and asked what the prospect promised.

"Ah," said Cromwell, sadly, "this is another story. There is no gold in this vale, though from what this woman tells me the hills are full of it. However," he added, "I believe we have found your friend."

"Yes?" queried the capitalist.

"Yes," echoed Cromwell, "here are his wife and his child; and here, where we're grubbing, his grave."

"Quite so, quite so," said the big, warm-hearted English-American, glaring at the ground; "and that was Ramsey's 'reason' for not writing."


THE GREAT WRECK ON THE PERE MARQUETTE

The reader is not expected to believe this red tale; but if he will take the trouble to write the General Manager of the Pere Marquette Railroad, State of Michigan, U.S.A. enclosing stamped envelope for answer, I make no doubt that good man, having by this time recovered from the dreadful shock occasioned by the wreck, will cheerfully verify the story even to the minutest detail.

* * * * *

Of course Kelly, being Irish, should have been a Democrat; but he was not. He was not boisterously or offensively Republican, but he was going to vote the prosperity ticket. He had tried it four years ago, and business had never been better on the Pere Marquette. Moreover, he had a new hand-car.

The management had issued orders to the effect that there must be no coercion of employees. It was pretty well understood among the men that the higher officials would vote the Republican ticket and leave the little fellows free to do the same. So Kelly, being boss of the gang, could not, with "ju" respect to the order of the Superintendent, enter into the argument going on constantly between Burke and Shea on one side and Lucien Boseaux, the French-Canadian-Anglo-Saxon-Foreign-American Citizen, on the other. This argument always reached its height at noon-time, and had never been more heated than now, it being the day before election. "Here is prosper tee," laughed Lucien, holding up a half-pint bottle of _vin rouge_.

"Yes," Burke retorted, "an' ye have four pound of cotton waste in the bottom o' that bucket to trow the grub t' the top. Begad, I'd vote for O'Bryan wid an empty pail--er none at all--before I'd be humbugged."

"Un I," said Lucien, "would pour Messieur Rousveau vote if my baskett shall all the way up