The Cow Puncher - Robert J. C. Stead (best reads .TXT) 📗

naturalized? I'm the mother of six, and what has the country done for me, but leave me at the mercy of those who charge more for an hour's attendance than my old man can save from a month's drudgery? And then, with my health broken down—in the service of the State—I have to go to the hospital, and they tell me I must have an operation, and I wake up with a horrid pain and a bill for a hundred and fifty dollars. All done in an hour, or less, and that's the bill, or part of it, for the hospital dues and the extras and etceteras are still to come. Masters and slaves! More than I can save in a year, or two years, and no one to say whether the work was needed or not, or whether it was well done or not. When my kitchen pipes are plugged a plumber fixes them and charges me a dollar, and if he doesn't do it right he has to do it over again, but when the human pipes go wrong the man-plumber charges a hundred and fifty dollars, and if he doesn't do it right he collects just the same, and the undertaker adds another hundred. Now I don't know whether this comes under the head of Capital or Labour or Single Tax, but I do know it is outrageous extortion—extortion of blood money, imposed by the wealthy and prosperous on the poor and the sick and the unfortunate, and while the State clamours for population it does not raise a finger to protect those who are bringing the native-born."

During this philippic Dave had turned toward the woman; her thin face still wore marks of refinement and even his uncultured ear recognized a use of English that indicated a fair degree of education. But she was broken; crushed with the joint cares of motherhood and poverty, and desperate at the injustices of a system that capitalized her sacrifices. He had heard much talk of slaves, but here, he felt, he saw one, not in the healthy, well fed men with their deep mutterings against employers, but in this haggard woman from whose life the lamp of joy had gone out in the bitterness of suffering and physical exhaustion.

He spent the rest of the day alone, thinking. He was not yet sure of any road, but he knew that his mind had been made to think, and that his life was bigger that night than it had been in the morning. He might not find the right road at once, but he could at least leave the old one. He felt a strange hunger to understand all that had been said. He felt, also, a tremendous sense of his own ignorance; tremendous, but not crushing; a realization that the world was full of things to be learned; problems to be faced; conclusions to be studied out, and underneath was a sense almost of exaltation that he should take some part in the studies and perhaps aid in the solutions. It was his first glimpse into the world of reason, and it charmed and invited him. He would follow.

He went early to bed, thinking over all he had heard. His mind was full, but it was happy, and, in some strange way, fixed. Even the morning service came back with a sense of worthwhileness as he recalled it in the semi-consciousness of approaching sleep… The music had been good. It had made him think of spring and the deep woods … and water … and wood smoke…

It was about a far away land … and Reenie Hardy. She was very like Reenie Hardy…

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fortunate Fate, or whatever good angel it is that sometimes drops unexpected favours, designed that young Elden should the following day deliver coal at the home of Mr. Melvin Duncan. Mr. Duncan, tall, quiet, and forty-five, was at work in his garden as Dave turned the team in the lane and backed them up the long, narrow drive connecting with the family coal-chute. As the heavy wagon moved straight to its objective Mr. Duncan looked on with approval that heightened into admiration. Dave shovelled his load without remark, but as he stood for a moment at the finish wiping the sweat from his coal-grimed face Mr. Duncan engaged him in conversation.

"You handle a team like you were born to it," he said. "Where did you get the knack?"

"Well, I came up on a ranch," said Dave. "I've lived with horses ever since I could remember."

"You're a rancher, eh?" queried the older man. "Well, there's nothing like the range and the open country. If I could handle horses like you there isn't anything would hold me in town.

"Oh, I don' know," Dave answered. "You get mighty sick of it."

"Did you get sick of it?"

Elden shot a keen glance at him. The conversation was becoming personal. Yet there was in Mr. Duncan's manner a certain kindliness, a certain appeal of sincere personality, that disarmed suspicion.

"Yes, I got sick of it," he said. "I lived on that ranch eighteen years, and never was inside school or church. Wouldn't that make you sick?… So I beat it for town."

"And I suppose you are attending church regularly now, and night school, too?"

Dave's quick temper fired up in resentment, but again the kindliness of the man's manner disarmed him. He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "No, I ain't. That's what makes me sick now. I came in here intendin' to get an education, an' I've never even got a start at it, excep' for some things perhaps wasn't worth the money. There always seems to be somethin' else—in ahead."

"There always will be," said Mr. Duncan, "until you start."

"I suppose so," said Dave, wearily, and took up the reins.

But Mr. Duncan persisted. "You're not in such a hurry with that team," he said. "Even if you are late—even if you should lose your job over it—that's nothing to settling this matter of getting started with an education."

"But how's it to be done?" Dave questioned, with returning interest. "Schools an' books cost money, an' I never save a dollar."

"And never will," said Mr. Duncan, "until you start. But I think I see a plan that might help, and if it appeals to you it will also be a great convenience to me. My wife likes to go driving Sundays, and sometimes on weekday evenings, but I have so many things on hand I find it hard to get out with her. My daughter used to drive, but these new-fangled automobiles are turning the world upside down—and many a buggy with it. They're just numerous enough to be dangerous. If there were more or less they would be all right, but just now every horse is suspicious of them. Well—as I saw you driving in here I said to myself, 'There's the man for that job of mine, if I can get him,' but I'm not rich, and I couldn't pay you regular wages. But if I could square the account by helping with your studies a couple of nights a week—I used to teach school, and haven't altogether forgotten—why, that would be just what I want. What do you say?"

"I never saw anything on four feet I couldn't drive," said Dave, "an' if you're willing to take a chance, I am. When do we start?"

"First lesson to-night. Second lesson Thursday night. First drive Sunday." Mr. Duncan did not explain that he wanted to know the boy better before the drives were commenced, and he felt that two nights together would satisfy him whether he had found the right man.

Dave hurried back to the coal-yard and completed the day's work in high spirits. It seemed he was at last started on a road that might lead somewhere. After supper he surprised his fellow labourers by changing to his Sunday clothes and starting down a street leading into the residential part of the town. There were speculations that he had "seen a skirt."

Mr. Duncan met him at the door and showed him into the living-room. Mrs. Duncan, plump, motherly, lovable in the mature womanliness of forty, greeted him cordially. She was sorry Edith was out; Edith had a tennis engagement. She was apparently deeply interested in the young man who was to be her coachman. Dave had never been in a home like this, and his eyes, unaccustomed to comfortable furnishings, appraised them as luxury. There were a piano and a phonograph; leather chairs; a fireplace with polished bricks that shone with the glow of burning coal; thick carpets, springy to the foot; painted pictures looking down out of gilt frames. And Mr. Duncan had said he was not rich! And there was more than that; there was an air, a spirit, an atmosphere that Dave could feel although he could not define it; a sense that everything was all right. He soon found himself talking with Mrs. Duncan about horses, and then about his old life on the ranch, and then about coming to town. Almost, before he knew it, he had told her about Reenie Hardy, but he had checked himself in time. And Mrs. Duncan had noticed it, without comment, and realized that her guest was not a boy, but a man.

Then Mr. Duncan talked about gardening, and from that to Dave's skill in backing his team to the coal-chute, and from that to coal itself. Dave had shovelled coal all winter, but he had not thought about coal, except as something to be shovelled and shovelled. And as Mr. Duncan explained to him the wonderful provisions of nature; how she had stored away in the undiscovered lands billions of tons of coal, holding them in reserve until the world's supply of timber for fuel should be nearing exhaustion, and as he told of the immeasurable wealth of this great new land in coal resources, and of how the wheels of the world, traffic and industry, and science, even, were dependent upon coal and the man who handled coal, Dave felt his breast rising with a sense of the dignity of his calling. It was no longer dirty and grimy; it was part of the world; it was essential to progress and happiness—more essential than gold, or diamonds, or all the beautiful things in the store windows. And he had had to do with this wonderful substance all winter, and not until to-night had it fired the divine spark of his imagination. The time ticked on, and although he was eager to be at work he almost dreaded the moment when Mr. Duncan should mention his lesson. But before that moment came there was a ripple of laughter at the door, and a girl in tennis costume, and a young man a little older than Dave, entered.

"Edith," said Mrs. Duncan. Dave arose to shake hands, but then his eyes fell full on her face. "Oh, I know you," he exclaimed. "I heard you sing yesterday."

Slowly he felt the colour coming to his cheeks. Had he been too familiar? Should he have held that back? What would she think? But then he felt her hand in his, and he knew it was all right.

"And I know you," she was saying. "I saw you—" she stopped, and it was her turn to feel the rising colour.

"Yes, I know what you saw," he took up her thought. "You saw me get up and go out of church because I wouldn't sit and listen to a man say that God punished the innocent to let the guilty go free. And I won't." There was a moment's silence following this outburst, and Mr. Duncan made a new appraisal of his pupil. Then it was time to introduce Mr. Allan Forsyth. Mr. Forsyth shook hands heartily, but Dave was conscious of being caught in one quick glance which embraced him from head to heel. And the glance was satisfied—self-satisfied. It was such a glance as Dave might