The Dominant Dollar Part 34

"I'm listening. Go on, please."

"That was the first stage. Then, together with a hundred other similar little beasts, a charitable organization got hold of me and transplanted me out into the country, as they do old footsore hack horses when they get to cluttering the pavement. Chance ordained that I should draw an old Norwegian farmer, the first generation over, and that he should draw me.

I fancy we were equally pleased. His contract was to feed me and clothe me and,--I was twelve at the time, by the way,--to get out of me in return what work he could. There was no written contract, of course; but nevertheless it was understood just the same.

"He fulfilled his obligation--in his way. He was the first generation over, I repeat, and had no more sense of humor than a turtle. He saw that I had all I could eat--after I'd done precisely so much work, his own arbitrary stint, and not a minute before. If I was one iota short I went hungry as an object-lesson. He gave me clothes to wear, after every other member of the family had discarded them, in supreme disregard for suitability or fit. He sent me to school--during the months of January and February, when there was absolutely nothing else to do, and when I should have been in the way at home. At times of controversy he was mighty with the rod. He was, particularly at the beginning of our intimacy, several sizes larger than I. It was all a very pleasant arrangement, and lasted four years. It ended abruptly one Thanksgiving Day.

"I remember that day distinctly, as much so as yesterday. Notwithstanding it was a holiday, I'd been husking corn all day steady, from dark until dark. There was snow on the ground, and I came in wet through, chattering cold, hungry, and dog-tired--to find the entire family had left to celebrate the evening with a neighbor. They did that often of a holiday, but usually they left word. This time they'd forgotten, or didn't care. Anyway, it didn't matter, for that day had been the last straw. So far as I was concerned the clock had struck twelve and a new circuit had begun.

"I looked about the kitchen for supper, but there was none, so I proceeded to prepare one suitable to the occasion. Among other things, the farmer raised turkeys for the market and, although the season was late, there were a few birds left for seed. I went out to the barn with a lantern and picked the plumpest gobbler I could find off the roost, and an hour later had him in the oven. This was at eight o'clock in the evening. While he was baking I canva.s.sed the old farmer's wardrobe. I'd grown like a mushroom those last years and, though I was only sixteen, a suit of his ready-made clothes was a fair fit. I got into it grimly. I also found a dog-skin fur coat and, while it smelled a good deal like its original owner, it would be warm, and I laid it aside carefully for future reference.

"Then came supper. I didn't hurry in the least, but I had a campaign in mind, so I went to work. When that bird was done I ate it, and everything else I could find. I had the appet.i.te of an ostrich, and when I was through there wasn't enough left for a hungry cat. I even considered taking the family cat in to the feast,--they had one, of course, and it always looked hungry, too; but I had a sort of pride in my achievement and I wanted to leave the remains as evidence.

"It was ten o'clock by this time and no one had shown up. I was positively sorry. I'd hoped the old farmer would return and find me. I had a few last words to say to him, some that had been lying heavy on my mind for a long time. But he didn't come, and I couldn't wait any longer; so I wrote them instead. I put on the dog-skin coat and started away on foot into the night. If I'd had money I would have left the value of the clothes; but he'd never given me a dollar in all those four years, so I took them on account. It was two miles to town and I made it in time to catch the ten-forty-five freight out.

"I forgot one thing, though. I went back after I'd got started a quarter of a mile to say good-bye to the horses. I always liked horses, and old Bill and Jerry and I had been good friends. I rode the pilot of that engine and got into Kansas City the next morning. That was the second stage.... Still interested, are you, Elice?"

"Yes."

"Next, I landed in the hardwood region of Missouri, the north edge of the Ozarks. It was the old story of one having to live, and I'd seen an ad in the papers for 'loggers wanted.' I had answered it, and the man in charge dropped on me like a hawk and gave me transportation by the first train.

Evidently men for the job were not in excess, and when I'd been there a day I knew why. It was the most G.o.d-forsaken country I'd ever known, away back in the mountains, where civilization had ceased advancing fifty years before. The job was a contract to deliver so many thousand feet of lumber in the log daily at the mill on the nearest railway. There was a five-mile haul, and we worked under a boss in crews of four. Each crew had to deliver eight big logs a day, seven days in the week, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. How it was done, when they were cut, when hauled, was not the boss's affair--just so the logs came. When we of the crews ate or slept was no one's affair--just so we kept on the job. No single man could handle one of those big cuts, no single mule team haul it in places over those cursed mountain roads. That's why we worked in crews. On the average we worked eighteen hours a day. In summer this was long, in winter it seemed perpetual; but I was in it and I was going to stick--or thought I was. The other three in my gang were middle-aged men,--hard drinkers, good swearers, tough as oak themselves.

The boss was a little tobacco-eating, bow-legged Irishman. I never, before or since, knew a man who could swear as he could, or drink so when he struck town. It seems to go with the logging business; but he was a master.

"I struck this place in the winter. It was in the winter following, again by chance on a holiday, but Christmas this time, that I quit. They don't have much cold down in that country and usually but little snow; but this year there had been a lot,--soft, wet snow, half rain, that melted on the ground and made the roads almost impa.s.sable. For that reason we'd been getting behind in our contract. We simply could not make two trips a day; and Murphy, the boss, grew black and blacker. He swore that if we couldn't make but one trip a day on that one haul we'd have to carry two logs each instead of one. The thing was barely possible on good roads, wholly impossible with the ground softened; but he was the boss, his word law, and before daylight on this Christmas morning we were loaded and on the road.

"I was on the head wagon with Murphy behind me, the other three following. The first half-mile was down grade and we got along all right.

Then came the inevitable up grade following and the team began to flounder. They were mules, of course,--horses could never have stood for a day the grief of that mountain hauling,--great big-framed, willing fellows that in condition would pull anything any team could pull; but now they were weak and tired, and so thin that their bones almost stuck through their hides from the endless grind. They did their best, though, and struggled along for a few rods. The wheels struck a rock in the road and they stopped. I urged them on and they tried again, but the load wouldn't budge. There was but one thing to do,--to double with the team behind, and I slid off to make the coupling.

"Murphy had been watching it all in silence,--a bad sign with him. When he saw what I was going to do he held up his hand to the rear team, which meant:'Stay where you are.' 'Give over the lines,' he said to me.

"I knew what that meant. I'd seen him cripple animals before; but that was when I first came. Since then I'd had another year to grow and to get hard and tough. I was going on eighteen and as big as I am now almost; and I wasn't afraid of him then or of any human being alive.

"'It's no use,' I answered. 'We may as well double and save time.'

"He said something then, no matter what; I was used to being sworn at.

"'No,' I said.

"He jumped off the load at that. I thought it was between us, so I jerked off my big mittens to be ready; but the mules' turn was to come first, it seems. He didn't wait for anything, just simply went at them, like a maniac, like a demon. I won't tell you about it--it was too horribly brutal--or about what followed. I simply saw red. For the first time and the last time in my life, I hope, I fought a man--fought like a beast, tooth and nail. When it was over he was lying there in the mud we'd made, unconscious; and I was looking down at him and gasping for breath.

I was bleeding in a dozen places, for he had a knife; but I never noticed. I suppose I stood there so for a minute looking at him, the other three men who had come up looking at me, and not one of us saying a word. I reached over and felt of him from head to foot. There were no bones broken and he was breathing steadily. So I did what I suppose was a cruel thing, but one I've never regretted to this day, though I've never seen him since. I simply rolled him over and over in the mud and slush out of the road--and left him to come to. After that we pulled off the second log from each of the four wagons and left them there beside the track. Then we drove on to town, leaving him there; sitting up by that time, still dazed, by the side of the road. There was just one logging train a day on that stub, and when we pulled into town it was waiting.

Without a word of understanding, or our pay for the month, the four of us took that train and went our four separate ways. That's the third stage.... Begin to understand a little, do you, Elice?"

"Yes; I begin, just begin, to understand--many things."

Roberts s.h.i.+fted position silently, his arms crossed under his head for a pillow. But he was still looking straight up, through the gently rocking leaves at the infinite beyond.

"The next stage found me in a southern Iowa soft-coal mine. The explanation is simple. I had saved a few dollars; while they lasted I drifted, and to the north. When they were gone I had to work or starve. I had no education whatever, no special training even. I was merely a big, healthy animal, fit only for hard, physical work. I happened to be in a farming and mining community. It was Winter and there was nothing to do on a farm, so by the law of necessity I went to work heaving coal.

"I stayed there a little over seven months and during that time I scarcely saw the sun. I'd go into the tunnel at seven in the morning, take my lunch with me, and never come out until quitting time. I worked seven days in the week here too. There wasn't any union and, anyway, no one seemed to think of doing differently. At first it used to worry me, that being always in the dark. My imagination kept working, picturing sunlight and green things; after a bit that stage pa.s.sed and I used to dread to come out of the tunnel. The glare hurt my eyes and made me blink like an owl in the daytime. I felt chilly, too, and s.h.i.+vered so my teeth chattered. But I stuck to it, and after a few months the thing seemed natural and almost as though I'd been there always. I began to cease to think and to work unconsciously, like a piece of machinery. I even quit counting the days. They were all the same, so what was the use? I just worked, worked, and the coal dust ground into me and sweated into me until I looked more like a negro than a white man.

"Time drifted on this way, from Winter until Spring, from Spring until Summer; at last the something unusual that always comes about sooner or later happened, and I awoke. It was just after dinner one day and I'd gone back to the job. I had a lot of loose coal knocked down in the drift and was shovelling steadily into a car when, away down the main tunnel, I saw a bunch of lights bobbing in the darkness. It wasn't the time of day for an inspection, and anyway there were several people approaching, so I waited to see what it meant.

"They came on slowly, stopping to look at everything by the way. At last they got near enough so I could make them out; there were three men and a woman. I recognized one of the men by this time,--our foreman, Sharp. He was guiding the others and I knew then they were visitors, owners probably, because no stranger had ever come before while I was there. The woman, I saw that she was a girl now, called one of the men 'father'; and from the way she spoke I guessed why she was along too. She'd come anyway, whether they approved or not. The drift I was working in was a new one, just opened; and when they got there the whole group stopped a little way off, and Sharp began explaining, talking fast and giving figures. If any of the men saw me they didn't pay any attention; they just listened, and now and then one of them asked a question. But the girl wasn't interested or listening. She was all eyes, looking about here and there, taking in everything; and after a bit she noticed the light in my cap and came peering over to see what it meant. I just stood there watching her and she came quite close, all curiosity, until finally she could see my face. She stopped.

"'Oh,' she said, 'I thought it was just a light. It's a man.'

"'Yes, it's a man,' I said.

"She was looking at me steadily by this time, wholly curious.

"'A--a white man?' she asked.

"I thought a moment, then I understood.

"'Yes, a white man,' I answered.

"She came up to the car at that and looked in. She glanced back at me.

Evidently she wasn't entirely satisfied.

"'How old are you?' she asked. 'You look awfully old.'

"I leaned over on the car too; I'd begun to think. I remembered that to me she seemed so very, very young; and all at once it flashed over me that probably I wasn't a day older.

"'Eighteen,' I said.

"'Eighteen!' She stared. 'Why, I'm eighteen. And you--have you been here long?'

"I suppose I smiled. Anyway I know I scared her. She drew back.

"'I don't know,' I said. 'I've forgotten. If you'll tell me the date maybe I can answer. I don't know.'

"'You don't know! You can't mean that.'

"'Yes, I've forgotten.'

"She didn't say a word after that, just looked at me--as a youngster looks when it goes to the circus for the first time. I fancy we stood there half a minute so; then at last, interrupting, the man she'd called 'father' looked over and saw us. He frowned, I could see that, and said something to the foreman. He spoke her name."

Just for a moment Roberts s.h.i.+fted his head, looking at his silent listener steadily. "What do you fancy was that name he called, Elice?"

Elice Gleason started involuntarily, and settled back in her place.

"I haven't the slightest idea, of course."

"It wasn't an ordinary name. At that time I'd never heard it before."

"I'm not good at guessing."

Roberts s.h.i.+fted back to his old position.

"It was 'Elice.' 'Elice, come,' he said.