Part 2 (1/2)

But he was a man with a purpose in life, and that was more than a great many could say. He was chronically eccentric. When he first located on the homestead which had since become so valuable an a.s.set, he had determined to live with one purpose in view, and that was to expand financially with the toil of his hands and the sweat of his brow, and then, when he had acquired sufficient sinking fund, to emerge suddenly into the limelight of society and s.h.i.+ne like a newly polished gem. So he wandered up and down the trail which his own feet and the feet of his cayuse had worn through the woods, up the creek, along the face of the mountains, and away down to the limy waters of the Fraser on the other side of the perpetual snows.

There was a fascination for him on this old trail; it had become as part of his life, of his very soul. Sometimes he would be rounding up cattle.

Sometimes he would be hunting mowich (deer), or driving off the coyotes.

All his plans and schemes were built on trail foundation. He could not think unless he was tramping the trail through the woods, and down the valleys. Here is where all his castles were constructed; and, from the trail observatory, he saw his new life spring into being, when the time would be ripe.

In time the coin grew so bulky that it became a burden to him. It had grown very c.u.mbersome. He might at any time resurrect himself into that new world of his, but there was no occasion for haste; he was very happy and contented; besides, it would mean leaving the old trail and things.

He had his balance banked in a strong box which he buried in a hole under his bed, and the fear grew upon him that some mercenary might discover its lurking-place and relieve him of the burden of responsibility. This was the only skeleton which lurked in the man's closet. It was the only cloud in his sky; the rest of the zenith was suns.h.i.+ne and gladness. To the neighbors and itineraries he had been preaching hard times for twenty years, although the whole earth suspected the contrary. He became known throughout the width and breadth of Yale, Lillooet and Cariboo as ”Hard Times Hance.” Although diplomatically reserved and unsociable, he was more popular and famed than he suspected. Peculiarity is a valuable advertis.e.m.e.nt.

His outward appearance and mode of life certainly justified the above appendix to his personality, and it was so blazoned that it could be seen and heard all over British Columbia. He had but one compet.i.tor, and that was ”Dirty Harry,” who at one time frequented the streets of Ashcroft. No other name could have distinguished him so completely from the other members of the human family.

His overalls, which were once blue, had become pale with age, and had adopted a dishrag-white color; and one of the original legs had been patched out of existence. His Stetson hat, which had left the factory a deep brown, now approached the color of his terrestrial real estate. His ”jumper” had lost its blue and white ”jail bird” stripe effect, and was now a cross between a faded Brussels carpet and a grain sack. To save buying boots he wore his last winter's overshoes away into the summer, while his feet would blister in discomfort. Braces were a luxury which he could not endure, so he supported his superfluously laundried overalls with a strand of baling-rope which had already served its time as a halter guy. His feet had never known the luxury of a factory or home-knitted stocking since he had graduated from the home crib, but were put off with gunny sacking which had already seen active service as nose bags for the cayuses.

”If one wishes to acquire wealth in this world,” he would say, ”one must make a great many personal sacrifices.” So he lived on and waxed wealthy at the expense even of the simplest of domestic comforts.

The improvements with which he had enhanced the value of his ranch were much in keeping with his personal appearance, and they could be recognized as brothers with the least difficulty. The fences, which had refused to retain their youth against the pa.s.sing years, had their aged and feeble limbs supported with thongs and makes.h.i.+fts of every description; and where their pride had rebelled against such ingrat.i.tude, they were smothered beneath the limbs of fallen trees, which had been felled on the spot to serve as subst.i.tutes. His flumes were knock-kneed and bow-legged, and in places they had no legs at all.

Their sides were warped and bulged with the alternate damp and drouth, heat and cold. The lumber was bleached white, and porous with decay. It was with difficulty they could be persuaded to remain at their water-carrying capacity. The ditches were choked with willows and maples to such an extent that they were abandoned only in spots where they a.s.serted themselves, and refused to convey the necessary irrigation stream. Here they would burst their sides with indignation, and had to be repaired. The barns, stables and chicken-houses had for years been threatening to collapse unless supplied with some stimulant; so numerous false-works had been erected, outside and in, to retain them within their confines. The harness, which had originally been made of leather, betrayed very little trace of this bovine enveloper, but was composed chiefly of baling-rope and wire which had been picked up at random on the ranch as the occasion demanded. The various sections of the wheels of his wagons remained in intimate a.s.sociation with each other because they were submerged in the creek every night; the moisture keeping the wood swelled to its greatest diameter. One day's exposure to the drouth, without the convenient a.s.sistance of the creek water, would have been sufficient to cause the wheels to fall asunder. In this respect the unsuspecting creek was an a.s.set of incalculable value. The boxes of his wagons could boast of nothing up to date, that was not possessed by the wheels; and in many cases the tongues and whiffletrees and neck-yokes had been subst.i.tuted by raw maples or birch secured on the ranch. His unwritten law was to buy nothing that would cost money, and to import nothing that could be produced on the farm even if it was only a poor makes.h.i.+ft subst.i.tute. No part was ever replaced until it had gone hopelessly on strike, and necessity was his only motive power when it came to repairs. The general conditions were suggestive of the obsolete.

In the midst of all this ruin and decay, however, there was suns.h.i.+ne, and the heart of Hard Times Hance was warm and buoyant, cheerful and hopeful, and even if he did live upon the husks which the swine did eat, he derived from his life a great deal more pleasure than the world gave him credit for. He had his future to live for. He had his life all mapped out, and that was more than a great many could boast of. For breakfast he had mush, for dinner he had beans and bacon, and for supper he had bacon and beans and Y.S. tea. And he was just as happy eating this fare with his knife as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of British Columbia could be with his cereal, consomme, lobster salad, charlotte russe, blanc mange, cafe noir, or any other dainty and delicate importation. Bananas, oranges and artichokes had no place on his bill-of-fare. Besides, after he had eaten a meal he had no s.p.a.ce for such delicacies. And he could always wash his meal down with the famous Y.S. tea stand-by; and, on top of this, a few long draws at his kin-i-kin-nick (sort of Indian tobacco) pipe. And then there were no restrictions upon his mode of feeding his face. He could eat with his knife with impunity. There was no etiquette-mad society digging him in the ribs, and jerking on the reins in protestation at every one of his natural inclinations; and he could use his own knife to b.u.t.ter his sourdough bread. For a man who expected to emerge into the suns.h.i.+ne of society, he was giving himself very inadequate training. He was as near the aboriginal as it was possible for a white man to approach. He was a Siwash (male Indian) with one exception--his love of the coin. But then, he had an object in this ambition; and a fault, if it is a means to a worthy end, must be commended. He had this propensity developed to the most p.r.o.nounced degree. It was a disease with him, for which there was no cure. In outward appearance he was a typical B.C. specimen of the obsolete ”coureur de bois” of eastern Canada during the seventeenth century.

The interior of his ”dug-out” was more like an Indian kik-w.i.l.l.y (ancient Indian house) than the dwelling of a modern Anglo-Saxon. The walls were composed of the rough timbers, and the c.h.i.n.ks were stuffed with rags and old newspapers. A few smoke-begrimed pictures were hanging on the walls, and a calendar of the year 1881 still glared forth in all its ancient uselessness, leading one back into a past decade. If he broke the rules of etiquette by eating with his knife, he also smashed those of modesty by utilizing his air-tight heater as a cuspidor, for it was streaked white with evaporated saliva.

How this crude bud ever antic.i.p.ated blooming out into a society blossom was a conundrum. Perhaps he had some secret method buried in the same box with his h.o.a.rded coin. His long evenings were pa.s.sed reading the _Family Herald and Weekly Star_ and the _Ashcroft Journal_ by candle-light; for those were the only papers he would subscribe for. His bed consisted of, first, boards, then straw, then sacking; and it had remained so long without being frayed out that it had become packed as hard as terra firma. His blankets had not seen the light of day, nor enjoyed the fresh cool breezes for many long years. His one window was opaque with the smoke of many years' acc.u.mulation. Although his chickens had a coop of their own where they roosted at night, they ran about the floor of his ”dug-out” in the daytime looking for crumbs that fell from the poor man's table; and his cat, through years of criminal impunity, would sit on the table at mealtime and help himself to the victuals just as the spirit moved him. A stump had been left standing when the cabin was built; it had been hewn at the appropriate elevation of a chair.

This was near his air-tight heater, and his favorite position was to sit there with his feet propped against the stove and smoke by candle-light; and sometimes he would sit in the dark to save candles. His other furniture consisted of ”Reindeer” brand condensed milk and blue-mottled soap boxes, which he had acquired at times from F.W. Foster's general store at Clinton.

Hard Times Hance was living on first principles; but then, if a man wishes to save any coin in this world he must make great personal sacrifices; and so he was perfectly happy in his temporary aboriginal condition. There were no restrictions upon him. He was even outside the circ.u.mference of any ministerial jurisdiction, and had never been cautioned about the hereafter. Like an Indian, he moved just as the impulse seized him. How this man expected to submit to the personal restrictions and embargoes imposed by modern fas.h.i.+ons and society was known only to himself. The song of the forest had been his only concert; the whisper of the creek his sole heart companion. When occasion permitted he would wander the entire day on the high mountains, at the end of his trail, hunting for game, and little caring whether he found it or not, so long as he had the wild and congenial environs to admire and embrace. What was city life in comparison with this?

At last the day arrived when he realized that he must develop wings, so he wrapped himself up in a coc.o.o.n; and while the metamorphosis was in process of development he had ample time to study Hamlet's soliloquy. It would mean a divorce from everything he held dear; a parting with his very soul. It would mean the most sorrowful widowhood that could be imposed on man. It would be equivalent to leaving this earth and taking up his abode in Mars. He must sacrifice his love for the creek and the trail. He must renounce his freedom and go into social slavery. It was the emerging from the woods into the prairie; the coming from darkness into the light; a resurrection from the dead. In future he must tread the smooth cement walk between cultivated lawns and plants, instead of climbing the rude, uneven trail obstructed by fallen trees and surrounded with vegetation in its wildest and most primeval forms. He would walk the polished mahogany floor with patent boots, instead of the terrestrial one of his dug-out with obsolete overshoes.

But it must be. For years he had been preparing and planning. The object of his past had been a preparation for a better future; and why not?

Others enjoyed the good things of this life, and why not he? Had he not paid the price. Others reaped where they had not sown; he had sown, yes, sown in persecution, now he would reap in envious joy. He had lived the first half of his life in squalor and darkness, that the latter half might be clean and cheerful. When he had set out in his young days to live his pre-arranged history it was with an ambition to be wealthy, no matter by what means it should be acquired, so long as it was honest.

Now he was wealthy. He had been poor; now he was rich, and money would put the world at his feet, which henceforth had been over his head. He had been an animal; from now on he would be human.

But in his enthusiasm of development he forgot that he had grown attached to the wild, aboriginal life; that the parting might snap thongs and inflict wounds which even time would not mend or cure. At times the creek would sing, and the trail would speak, but he banished the tempters from his mind to make room for his illuminating prospects, and his wings continued to grow towards maturity. He struggled and freed himself from the coc.o.o.n. He went to Vancouver a caterpillar and returned a b.u.t.terfly, and the earthquake which accompanied his debut was equal to that which destroyed San Francisco. He had sold his farm, which included the creek, and the trail, and the dug-out, and his salt pork barrel, for a song, and with his coin and icties about him, and in his lately acquired form, he invaded Clinton with an accentuated front. The street was lined with people as though a procession had been going by--all the sweet and familiar sounds and sights had been sacrificed criminally, and he was on his way to sip honey from flower to flower.

He sounded about Clinton for some time for a suitable anchorage on which to materialize the plans and specifications of his mansion, but he did not drive a stake, because Clinton was very much inferior to his ”cla.s.s”

ideal; it had no electric light, and no water system. So he migrated south to Ashcroft, and there he pre-empted a large lot and made arrangements for the foundation of his castle. Out of the ground in a short period arose one of the most up-to-date bungalows. While the building was in course of construction Hard Times Hance, who had repudiated this headline, moved about in his dress suit, stiff hat, silk gloves, and a cane, and gave such orders to the contractor as he saw fit. He was looked upon as the most remarkable freak that had ever invaded the dry belt. And he sprang into society spontaneously. The people clamored for him. Progressive socials were arranged in his honor at all the leading social centres in their eagerness to cultivate his society. Some had faint recollections of having seen him at times, others claimed to have heard of him at his hermitage, but they all pretended to have known him personally and thoroughly, and many even suspected that he possessed more, intrinsically, than he had revealed superficially. He was the lion of the hour, and he did not forget to hand around the coin in his efforts to retain the position which he had secured.

When his mansion was turned over by the contractor, and had been accepted by the architect, he issued invitations to one of the most magnificent social functions which had ever erupted at Ashcroft. Those who were invited were flattered, and those who were not called were grossly insulted and wondered what disqualified them. They danced the ”tango,” and the ”bango,” and the ”flango,” and all the ”light fantastics” until their feet went on strike, and their ear drums had become phonographic and reproduced the music with a perpetual motion which could not be stopped. Every lady was eager to reveal the dancing secrets to mine host, and before the evening was over he could waltz, tango, and do many of the up-to-date ridiculous ”stunts.”

And then they dined on a French dinner. It was cooked in French style, and they ate it in French; and then they drank French toasts to the King of England, the Governor-General of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and the gentlemen drank to the ladies in general all over the world. Then the ladies proposed a French toast to ”mine host.” Not one of them could speak French, although a few of them could repeat, parrot-like, the words ”Parlez-vous Francais?” but they only knew it as a ”foreign phrase” which sounded extremely cultured.

And the menu was as follows: ”Canape of Anchovies,” ”Celery en Branch,”

”Potage a la Reine,” ”Consomme au Celeri,” ”Calves' Sweetbreads a la Rothschilds,” ”French Lamb Chops a la Nelson,” ”Cafe noir,” etc., etc.

In the midst of all this foreign celestialism mine host forgot the creek, the trail, the dug-out, the beans and bacon, and the kin-i-kin-nick pipe; and he prided himself on his rapid and agreeable transition into swift channels of life. He was taking to society as a duck takes to water.