During his convalescence, Stephen had many callers. Mr. Cameron paid him a short visit, and briskly and efficiently expressed his gratitude. At least this was the way in which Loring characterized it to himself, after his departure. From motives of kindness, most of the foremen and men from the office force came in to see him; from motives of self-interest, the visits were generally repeated, for Loring combined a drollness, a vein of narrative, and a wide range of experiences. McKay was one of those who dropped in frequently to discuss the affairs of the camp in short, jerky sentences, which alternated with the puffs from his stubby black pipe. Stephen, by a great amount of reticence as to his own personal affairs, had won McKay’s respect as a wise man. He was by nature of an exuberant temperament; but experience had taught him that taciturnity was the best way to acquire a reputation for solidity in a community. About four years previous[56] to this time, when he had embarked in life in the West, the first man under whom he had worked had commented upon his garrulous propensities rather caustically. His words: “You don’t want to talk too much in this world, young feller; it ain’t pleasant,” had been borne in upon Loring to the great improvement of his character. McKay had once in the course of a discussion of different men’s capabilities expressed the Western view very tersely. He had said: “The wisest man I ever knew was a fellow in Nogales. I never heard him open his mouth once!”
Loring’s visitors, however, were not all of such a character. Every morning Miss Cameron came into the hospital and greeted Stephen with a gay smile that made pain seem a base currency with which to pay for such happiness. He had come to look forward to the few minutes during which she talked to him as the oasis of his day. As time went on, his thoughts of her grew more absorbing. A man when convalescent can, with the greatest of ease, fall in love with an abstract ideal, so that when a very charming concrete example was near, the process of dreaming speedily crystallized to a point where Stephen[57] found himself very much in love. For many hours after one of her visits he lay staring at the ceiling, trying to find some adjective by which to describe her. Failing in his direct search, he fell back on the method of question and answer. Was she beautiful? he asked himself. It was many years since he had seen women of her class, and it was hard for him to find a comparative standard. He was certain that she was a joy to look upon. Had she sympathy? Her kindness to the sick Mexicans in the hospital was a ready answer to that question. Was she feminine? She had a quality of comradeship and companionship combined, which previously he had only associated with men. Yet back of it was a latent coquetry, and unconsciously it piqued him to feel that towards him there was no trace of it. Strive as he would, he could find no word which could fit all the opposing sides of her character, her aloof frankness, her subtle force.
“Fall-in-love-withable-ness,” he reflected, “is not a recognized word, and yet it is the one that describes her.”
At last came the days when with effort at first, then with ease, he could stroll from shack to shack about the camp. He often spent his[58] time in the assay office, watching the assayer tend the delicate balances, or precipitate the metal from the various shades of blue liquid which stood on the ledge by the window in neat rows of test-tubes. Then there was the tienda, where, sitting on a box in the corner, he could watch the Mexicans as they crowded up to the bookkeeper’s window, loudly calling out their numbers, and asking for coupons. The air in the store was always thick with the smell of “Ricorte” or “Pedro” tobacco. There were also in the glass cases gaudy tinfoil-wrapped cigars, “Dos Nationes,” which the more lavish and wealthy purchased, and which added a slightly more expensive hue to the smoky atmosphere. Often, too, he would loaf about the draughting-room, where at first he amused himself by drawing exceedingly impressionistic sketches on the bits of paper that were scattered about.
Stephen possessed that rare quality of being able to loaf without being in the way. His loafing added a pleasant background to work that others were doing, instead of being an irritant. Gradually he came to helping Duncan, the surveyor, to check up his figures, and, much to the[59] latter’s surprise, in speedy fashion worked out logarithms for him. Loring as a subordinate always did so well that it made his incompetency, when given responsibility, doubly disappointing. Duncan, whose mathematical methods were, though no doubt safer, far slower, grew to have an excessive opinion of Loring’s ability, and expressed it about the camp. He often questioned Stephen as to where he had acquired his knowledge of logarithms; but Loring always told him that he had merely picked it up at a way station on the journey of life. As curiosity about others rarely goes deep in Arizona, the subject had been finally taken for granted, and dropped.
One day while Stephen was working with Duncan, Mr. Cameron entered the room, and said abruptly: “Well, Loring, are you about ready for work?”
“Yes,” said Stephen, “I was going to work for Mr. McKay again to-morrow.”
Mr. Cameron paused for a moment, and looked him over carefully. He noticed the clear light of the eyes, and he was pleased. He noticed the indecisive lines at the corners of the mouth, hesitated, and almost imperceptibly[60] shook his head. Years of experience had taught him to read men’s faces well. This was the first which he had ever liked, and yet not quite trusted. The combination of feeling puzzled him.
Loring had begun to flush a trifle under the sharp scrutiny, before Mr. Cameron again spoke.
“I was thinking of giving you a position on the hoist. The man on Number Three is going to quit to-morrow.” Mr. Cameron said “quit,” with a little snap of the jaw, that left no doubt as to why the man was going to leave. “Do you know anything about the work?” he went on.
Loring’s “No, but I think perhaps I can learn,” seemed to irritate Mr. Cameron, who exclaimed: “Good Lord, man! ‘think perhaps you may be able to learn.’ ‘Think perhaps!’ Here you are going to have men’s lives in your hands. It is no place for a man who thinks ‘perhaps.’ Still I will try you. You will receive three dollars and a half for eight hours, and overtime, extra. At that the work is not hard. You can go up to the shaft now. Colson, the man whom you are going to try to replace, is[61] on shift, and he will teach you what he can. You go on the pay-roll to-morrow.” Cutting short Stephen’s thanks, Mr. Cameron abruptly left the office.
Duncan began to chuckle quietly.
“It is damned lucky for you, Loring, that you didn’t go on much further with your theories of ‘thinking perhaps.’ I don’t know where you were before you came here, and I don’t care; but here it will help you some to remember that it is only what you do know or can do that counts.”
Stephen took cheerfully this good advice, and after securing his hat, he stretched himself comfortably in the doorway, then started up the hill to the mine. In the hot glare he climbed the tramway which led from the hungry ore cribs by the smelter to Number Three hoist. He was still weak, and the climb tired him considerably. Several times, in the course of the few hundred yards, he stopped and rested. As many times more he was compelled to step to one side of the track in order to let the funny, squat, little ore cars whiz by him, the brake cable behind them stretching taut, and whining with the peculiar note of metal under tension. When at[62] last, tired and out of breath, he reached the hoist box, Colson gave him a sour greeting.
“Damned boiler leaks like a sieve. Have to keep stoking her all the time. Engine is always getting centered. Wish you joy! It’s the worst job I ever tackled.”
In answer to Loring’s request for instructions, Colson slowly wiped his hands on a bit of oily waste, and having taken a fresh chew of tobacco, proceeded to explain the working of the drum hoist, and the signal code.
For the rest of the afternoon, under Colson’s supervision, Stephen managed the clutch that governed the cable, and at the ever recurring clang of one bell, ran the ore buckets with great speed up the shaft. Whenever the signal of three bells, followed by one, rang out, he brought the buckets slowly and decorously to the surface, for that told of a human load. Loring, in spite of apparent clumsiness, possessed a great amount of deftness, and he was soon running the hoist fairly well, although the jerks with which the engine was brought to a standstill told the miners that a new and inexperienced hand was at the clutch.
At half-past three the men of the shift began[63] to signal to come to the surface. Loring asked Colson how, when the shift did not end till four, this was allowed. Colson explained that as the mine was non-union, and employed mostly Mexican labor, the piece work system was in use. When the men had filled a certain number of buckets, they could come to the surface regardless of the time. The result had been that more work was accomplished than formerly, while the miners had shorter hours.
“That is all very pleasant,” reflected Stephen, “if the company, having seen how active the men can be, does not increase the number of buckets required.”
Shortly before four o’clock they were relieved by the engineer for the next shift, who undertook the task of lowering the waiting men. Then Colson and Loring, picking up their coats, walked slowly down the hill into the camp. At the smelter Loring parted with Colson and walked over to his own quarters. Since his dismissal from the hospital, he had been sharing a tent with one of the shift bosses—a man about whom Stephen knew little except the fact that he was named Lynn, and that he never washed. The company rented tents with[64] board floors, for two dollars a month, so that when the quarters were shared, household expenses were not large.
As Loring threw back the wire-screened door of the tent, Lynn, from within, greeted him with mild interest.
“I hear they are goin’ to try you on Number Three. Now over where I used to work in Black Eagle, they wouldn’t let a green man even smell the hoist. It ain’t safe, nor legal. But I suppose the Boss had to give you some job. All wrong, though.”
Loring kept discreet silence in answer to this, and after fetching a bucket of water, proceeded to wash with many splashes. This annoyed Lynn, who grunted: “How can a man do any work with you wallowin’ round like a herd of steers?” Then he returned to his previous occupation of poring over location papers for some claims of his “up yonder.” These claims were the joke of the camp, on account of their remoteness from any known ore vein, yet Lynn, unaffected by the waves of exultation or depression which from time to time swept through the camp, year by year persisted in doggedly doing his assessment work.
[65]
In Arizona almost every man, no matter what his occupation or station, has “some claims up in the hills.” These claims furnish the romance of his life, for always beneath the grimmest present lies the golden “perhaps” of a rich strike.
Stephen sat on the edge of his cot, rolling a cigarette and watching Lynn’s profile.
“There are some people,” he meditated, “who would not look cheerful if they were paid so much a smile.” When Lynn had finished his papers, he rose with solemn deliberative slowness, took down a black felt hat from a wooden peg on the tent pole, transferred his toothpick from the left side of his mouth to the right, and slouched towards the door.
“Come on over to grub!” he called back. Loring joined him, and together they walked over to the company mess.
As they picked their way along the sordid road, Stephen looked at the dirty houses of the Mexicans with a feeling of repulsion. They were built from all the refuse that could be gathered: old sheet iron, quilts, suwara rods, a few boards, broken pieces of glass and tarred paper. A broken-down wagon, on one wheel,[66] lurching in a dissipated fashion against a boulder, added to the disreputability of the tin-can-strewn road. While he and Lynn were plodding moodily along, Stephen suddenly heard behind him the clatter of horses’ hoofs. He turned. The scene no longer seemed sordid, for riding up the road was Miss Cameron. Around her rode five or six little girls,—the camp children,—their legs, too short to reach the stirrups, stuck in the leathers, their hair flying in all directions, while their stiff little gingham dresses fluttered in the breeze. Jean, riding a gray pony, sat clean limbed and lithe across the saddle. The deep full modeling of breast and thigh, the proud carriage of the shoulders, and the easy swing of her body to the lope of the horse—all bespoke high health and keen enjoyment. Her khaki skirt fell on either side in yellow folds against the oiled brown of the saddle. She wore no hat, and the sunlight struck clear and sparkling upon her tawny hair. Her color was fresh from the sting of the wind.
Stephen stepped aside to let the little cavalcade pass; but Miss Cameron reined in her pony, and smilingly greeted him and his companion. Her convoy of little girls bade her a grateful[67] “good-bye,” and scattered to their homes in the various parts of the camp.
“You seem to be a ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin,’” remarked Stephen, looking up at her. Lynn for some reason appeared uneasy.
“No, I don’t decoy them,” she answered. “In fact, I try hard to get away from them, but they are not allowed to ride alone in the valley, and consequently whenever they see my pony saddled they swarm about me like bees and cannot be shaken off. Are you sure that you are strong enough to be out of the hospital?” Miss Cameron added, scrutinizing Stephen with friendly solicitude.
Loring was busying himself with the problem of whether her eyes were really gray or blue. He gathered his wits together however to answer that he was growing better steadily.
“Well, good night, and be sure to continue to get better!” The girl shook the reins of her pony, and galloped off towards the corral.
Lynn could no longer contain himself.
“Look a-here, Loring. I don’t know where you was brought up, but Miss Cameron is a lady, if ever I seed one, and whar I come from, gentlemen don’t call ladies ‘Pi-eyed Pipers.’”
[68]
Stephen, with a start, came out of his wistful mood, then almost collapsed with laughter. Lynn stalked along in silent wrath, not speaking another word until they entered the mess room.
It was half-past five, and the room was still crowded, though that many had come and gone was attested by the pools of coffee on the zinc tables, the bread crumbs on the floor, and the great piles of dirty dishes. In a mining camp five o’clock is the fashionable supper hour, and he who comes late has cause to rue it. Loring and his companion cleared places for themselves, and after the necessary preliminaries of wiping their cracked plates on their sleeves, and obtaining their share from the great bowl of stew in the center of the table, they proceeded to eat in businesslike silence. There had been a time when such surroundings would have taken away Stephen’s appetite, but that was far away. The proprietor walked frequently up and down the room, answering mildly the contumely heaped upon the food. He carried a large bucket from which he replenished the coffee cups. Stephen quickly reached the dessert stage of the meal, and the proprietor set that course before[69] him. It consisted of two very shiny canned peaches, floating in a dubious juice.
The man who owned the eating house was of a quiet, depressed nature developed by years of endeavor to please boarders’ appetites at one dollar a day and make a profit of seventy-five cents. Ordinarily dessert consisted of one canned peach. Loring’s double allowance was a silent tribute to the fact that he did not rail at the food as did the others, and to the fact that once, when the purveyor had “spread himself” and served canned oysters, Stephen had thanked him. This had been the third time that the man had been thanked in all his life, and he stowed it away in his strange placid brain.
When Stephen had finished his meal, he rose and joined the group of men, who, as customary after supper, were lounging on the steps. The proprietor, wearing his usual apologetic smile, soon joined them.
“Pretty good supper, boys?” he remarked tentatively.
Some one in the crowd moaned drearily. “Say, I know what good food is. I used to eat up at the Needles, at a place so swell they give Mexicans pie. Reg’lar sort of Harvey house, that[70] was.” The proprietor, still smiling, sadly withdrew, and the crowd returned to its former occupations: commenting on the thin ponies of the Mexicans who galloped by, and trying to catch the eyes of the se?oritas as they strolled past, arm in arm, seemingly stolid alike to the attentions and to the jests of the men.
Many of the Indians, who had been brought from the San Carlos Reservation to work on the railway grade, were in camp to make their simple purchases of supplies. Stephen noticed with disgust the way the braves sat astride their ponies with indolent grace, while beside them walked the squaws, with the papooses slung in blankets over their shoulders.
“Good example of the ‘noble redman,’ isn’t it!” he exclaimed to McKay.
“Well, what can you expect?” chuckled the latter. “You know in their marriage ceremony the brave puts the bit of his pony in the mouth of his prospective bride. Sort of a symbol of equality and companionship between man and wife, I reckon.”
As the twilight turned to dusk, the group gradually dissolved, till Loring alone was left on the steps. It was peaceful there, and as he[71] drew on his old black pipe, a healthy feeling of contentment permeated him. He felt that he could do his new work well. His last lessons, he thought, had taught him concentration. He saw himself working up again to a position of power. For some reason that even to himself was only vaguely defined, he felt that now it was all infinitely worth while. As for drink, he merely thought of it as an episode of the past. Stephen’s worst fault lay in not grappling with his enemies until they had him by the throat. As he sat smoking and dreaming, he was aroused by a cheerful salutation.
“Howdy, me bludder? Me bludder, he feel fine?”
Stephen looked up to see Hop Wah standing in the road before him. With his derby hat, yellow face, coal black pig-tail, and with a five-cent cigar drooping from one corner of his mouth Wah was a strange combination of Occident and Orient.
“Fine, thanks!” answered Loring, “but what are you doing up here in camp now, Wah?”
Wah proudly puffed at his cigar, and blew a wreath of gray smoke from between his flat lips.
“Me cook for the company here, now. Makee[72] pie ebbrey day. Oh, lubbly, lubbly pie! Me bludder come to back door, and I give him some. Oh, lubbly, lubbly pie! Goodee bye. Goodee bye, me bludder!” Then Wah departed in the direction of the tienda, marching cheerfully along to his old refrain: “La, la, boom, boom; la, la, boom, boom.”
“The crazy Chinaman!” laughed Stephen. “He certainly enjoys life, though.” Loring rose and knocked out the ashes of his pipe on the steps. Then he walked towards his tent. They were just dumping the slag from the smelter, and he watched the glowing slag pot shoot along the track in front of him. As if by magic it checked at the end of the heap, and poured its molten, flashing stream far over the embankment. The whole camp glowed with a clear, all-suffusing orange light. The outline of the surrounding mountains loomed out blue-black. The glow faded to dull red, then dwindled to a mere thread of light, then disappeared, and all was dark again.
During the next two months, with a concentration of which he had never before thought himself capable, Stephen slaved at learning his task. To feel that in his hands lay the lives of the sixteen[73] men of the shift gave him a sense of responsibility, which in all his former work had been completely lacking. He was so faithful in the performance of his duties that even the critical Mr. Cameron was secretly pleased, while Jean watched with growing interest her father’s experiment, and felt that at last Loring had ceased to drift.
Stephen, on his part, carried in his heart one memory which shortened his working day, gladdened his leisure hours, and left no time for vain regrets. This was the thought of one evening which he had spent at Mr. Cameron’s house, on the occasion of a “Gringo” dance, whereto all the workers in camp, except the Mexicans, had been bidden, in celebration of Washington’s birthday.
Often did Stephen recall the flag-draped room, the Mexican orchestra, which in color resembled a slice of strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate ice-cream. He remembered the lantern-lighted porch, its lamps blending with the soft darkness of the southern night, hung with its own lanterns of stars.
But all these were only a background of his real memories, which were the warm touch of[74] Jean’s hand, as he had held it in the dance for five blessed minutes, and the sound of her voice as she had talked with him on the porch, in the brief intervals when the guests had gathered around the musicians, to invoke the “Star Spangled Banner” and urge that long might it “Wa-a-ave!”
What they had talked about Stephen scarcely knew; but he had a confused impression that under the commonplaces of their talk had lurked, on her part, a hint of friendship which made his dreams perhaps not quite so wild, for he recognized in her something softly invincible which once having given friendship would never withdraw it, though the skies fell. In fact, while Loring was playing cards over the mess table one evening, Jean was putting her friendship to the proof in another quarter of the camp.
“Father, he is a gentleman.” Jean made this remark after a period of silence, during which she had sat on the porch of the shack, contemplating the moon as it rode high in the unclouded sky.
“Who is a gentleman? The man in the moon?” As he asked the question, Mr. Cameron withdrew[75] his cigar from his mouth, and pulled the smoke in leisurely rings into the air.
“No,” Jean answered, “not the man in the moon; the man on the hoist, Stephen Loring.”
“What made you think of him?”
“I met him this afternoon in the valley. That put him into my head.”
“Well, I advise you to take him out again.”
“Not at all. I shall keep him there. He interests me, because he is a gentleman.”
“What are the hall-marks of a gentleman?”
“Oh,” said Jean slowly, “there are a hundred little signs which cannot be suppressed. A deacon may turn into a horse thief, or a millionaire into a beggar; but once a gentleman, always a gentleman. Mr. Loring tries to hide it; but he cannot. Oh, haven’t you noticed the difference?”
“Between Loring and the other men? No, I cannot say that I have. But I am not particularly interested in the question whether my hoist engineers are gentlemen.”
“Don’t you think you ought to be?”
“Why?”
Jean clasped her hands around her knee and looked out over the dim hills bathed in the mist[76] of the moonlight. After a while she said: “It must be very lonely for a gentleman in a camp like this.”
“If you are thinking of Loring,” said her father, “he is busy all day and he can go to the mess in the evening.”
“The mess!” exclaimed Jean scornfully. “Yes, fine place for a gentleman, where the men chew tobacco and drink whisky all the evening, and tell stories as long as they are broad!”
“All terribly offensive no doubt to a sensitive soul like your Mr. Loring,” answered Mr. Cameron. “Perhaps,” he added with fine sarcasm, “you would like to have him take his meals with us.”
“Yes, I would like to ask him here sometime. It is good in you to think of it,” replied his daughter calmly.
“It cannot be done, Jean. It cannot be done,” Mr. Cameron said with decision. “Discrimination among the men breeds discontent. I think that we have done full enough for Loring as it is.”
“Do you?” Jean responded, with the audacity of a hot temper. “Well, I do not; but then it was my life that he saved, and perhaps that makes me see the thing differently. I am thinking that[77] when a man saves your life you cannot get rid of the obligation by throwing him a job, as you might toss a bone to a dog. I am thinking that he has some claim on the life that he has given back, and that the other person should spend a little of it in doing something for him.”
“And, pray, what has his being a gentleman to do with all this?” asked Mr. Cameron, whose wrath took the form of sarcasm. “Suppose that Colson or Lynn had saved your life, would you have wished to have him at the house?”
“Neither of them would have wished to come.”
“That is not honest, Jean. You know that they would; but you would never ask them, except to one of your camp dances. You would not if they had saved your life twenty times.”
“I should try to do something for them, something that they would like; but if people are not of your kind there is no use in inviting them. There is no kindness in it in the end.”
“Perhaps,” said her father, “there would prove to be no kindness in the end in what you wish to do for Loring.”
“Very well. There is no use in arguing with a Scotchman; but I warn you that I shall make it[78] up to him in friendliness. The other men can scarcely object to that.”
With these words Jean rose from the steps and, passing through the door, entered the little living-room where she picked up a guitar from the window-seat, and to its accompaniment began to sing in a low voice. What was the song she chose? Why, it was “Jock o’ Hazeldean.” If ever a song expressed flat mutiny it is that one, and it lost nothing in expression from Jean Cameron’s rendering, from the beginning where the heroine refuses to be commanded or cajoled, to the last line where “She’s o’er the border and awa’ wi’ Jock o’ Hazeldean.”
Mr. Cameron was justified in being angry; but who could resist a voice like Jean Cameron’s? Evidently not Jean’s father, for when the girl came out again and smiling laid her hand upon his shoulder, Mr. Cameron relaxed the grimness of his expression.
“Well, well, lassie, we will see what can be done for your gentleman engineer,” he said encouragingly; “but don’t be ‘o’er the border and awa’’ with Jock, till we know a little more about him, and about what is thought of him in Hazeldean.”