Kate's Narrative

My horse was hungry, and wanted to get back to the ranch. I was hungry too, but dared not go. I had left my husband lying drunk on the kitchen floor, and when he woke up it would be worse than that.

For miles I had followed the edge of the bench lands, searching for the place, for the right place, some point where the rocks went sheer, twelve hundred feet into the river. There must be nothing to break the fall, no risk of being alive, of being taken back there, of seeing him again. But the edge was never sheer, and perhaps after all, the place by the Soda Spring was best. There the trail from the ranch goes at a sharp turn, over the edge of the cliffs and down to the ferry. Beyond there are three great bull pines on a headland, and the cliff is sheer for at least five hundred feet. That should be far enough.

I let my horse have a drink at the spring, then we went slowly on over the soundless carpet of pine needles. I would leave my horse at the pines.

Somebody was there. Four laden pack-ponies stood in the shade of the trees, switching their tails to drive away the flies. A fifth, a buckskin mare, unloaded, with a bandaged leg, stood in the sunlight. Behind the nearest tree a man was speaking. I reined my horse. "Now you, Jones," he was saying to the injured beast, "you take yo'self too serious. You ain't goin' to Heaven? No! Then why pack yo' bag? Why fuss?"

I had some silly idea that the man, if he discovered me, would know what business brought me to this headland. I held my breath.

"And since you left yo' parasol to home, Jones, come in under out of the sun. Come on, you sun-struck orphan."

His slow, delicious, Texan drawl made me smile. I did not want to smile. The mare, a very picture of misery, lifted her bandaged, frightfully swollen leg, and hobbled into the shade. I did not want to laugh, but why was she called Jones? She looked just like a Jones.

"The inquirin' mind," said the man behind the tree, "has gawn surely astray from business, or you'd have know'd that rattlers smells of snake. Then I asks—why paw?"

His voice had so curious a timbre of aching sympathy. He actually began to argue with the mare. "I've sucked out the pizen, Jones, hacked it out with my jack-knife, blowed it out with powder, packed yo' pastern with clay—best kind of clay—millionaires cayn't buy it. And I've took off your cargo. Now what more kin I do? Feedin' bottle's to home, and we're out of cough mixture. Why, what on airth—"

The mare, with her legs all astraddle, snorted in his face.

"Sugar is it? Why didn't ye say so befo'?"

Jones turned her good eye on the man as though she had just discovered his existence, hobbled briskly after him while he dug in his kitchen boxes, made first grab at the sugar bag, and got her face slapped. The man, always with his eye upon the mare, returned to his place, and sat on his heel as before. "Three lumps," he said, holding them one by one to be snatched. "You're acting sort of convalescent, Jones. No more sugar. And don't be a hawg!"

The mare was kissing his face.

"Back of all! Back water! Thar now, thank the lady behind me!"

And I had imagined my presence still unknown.

"How on earth," I gasped, "did you know I was here?"

The man's eyes were still intent upon the wounded mare. "Wall, Mrs. Trevor," he drawled.

"You know my name? Your back has been turned the whole time! You've never seen me in your life—at least I've never seen you!"

"That's so," he answered thoughtfully. "I don't need tellin' the sound of that colt yo' husband bought from me. As to the squeak of a lady's pigskin saddle, thar ain't no other lady rider short of a hundred and eighty-three and a half miles."

What manner of man could this be? My colt was drawing toward him all the time as though a magnet pulled.

"This Jones," the man went on, "bin bit by a snake, is afraid she'll be wafted on high, so my eyes is sort of engaged in holding her down while she swells. She kicked me hearty, though, and loading sugar's no symptom of passing away, so on the whole I hope she'll worry along while I cook dinner."

He stood facing me, the bag still in his hand, and my colt asking pointedly for sugar. Very tall, gaunt, deeply tanned, perhaps twenty-five years of age, he seemed to me immeasurably old, so deeply lined was his face. And yet it was the face of one at peace. Purity of life, quaint humor, instant sympathy, may perhaps have given him that wonderful charm of manner which visibly attracted animals, which certainly compelled me as I accepted his invitation to dinner. I had been away since daybreak, and now the sun was entering the west. As to my purpose, that I felt could wait.

So I sat under the pines, pretending to nurse Jones while the shadows lengthened over the tawny grass, and orange needles flecked fields of rock, out to the edge of the headland.

The man unsaddled my horse, unloaded his ponies, fetched water from the spring of natural Apollinaris, but when, coming back, he found me lighting a fire, he begged me to desist, to rest while he made dinner. And I was glad to rest, thinking about the peace beyond the edge of the headland. Yet it was interesting to see how a man keeps house in the wilderness, and how different are his ways from those of a woman. No housewife could have been more daintily clean, or shown a swifter skill, or half the silent ease with which this woodsman made the table-ware for one, enough to serve two people. But a woman would not clean a frying-pan by burning it and throwing on cold water. He sprinkled flour on a ground sheet, and made dough without wetting the canvas. Would I like bread, or slapjacks, or a pie? He made a loaf of bread, in a frying pan set on edge among glowing coals, and, wondering how a pie could possibly happen without the assistance of an oven, I forgot all about that cliff.

He parboiled the bacon, then peppered it while it was frying. When the coffee boiled, he thrust in a red coal to throw the grounds to the bottom. If I thought of English picnics, that was by way of contrast. My host had never known, I had almost forgotten, the shabby barriers, restraints, and traditions of that world where there are picnics. Frontiersmen are, I think, really spirits strayed out of chivalric ages into our century of all vulgarities. They are not abased, but only amused by our world's condescensions. Uneducated? They are better trained for their world than we are for ours. Their facts are at first-hand from life, ours only at second-hand from books. Illiterate? I should like to see one of our professors read the tracks on a frontier trail. What was the good of the education which had led me to the brink of this cliff? My host, who lived always at the edge of death, had eyes which seemed to see my very thoughts. How else could he know that silence was so kind? To the snake-bitten mare he gave outspoken sympathy, to me his silence. Jones and I were his patients, and both of us trusted him.

He had found me out. The thing I had intended was a crime, and conscience-stricken, I dreaded lest he should speak. I could not bear that. Already his camp was cleaned and in order, his pipe filled and alight, at any moment he might break the restful silence. That's why I spoke, and at random, asking if he were not from the United States.

His eyes said plainly, "So that's the game, eh?" His broad smile said, "Well, we'll play." He sat down, cross-legged. "Yes," he answered, "I'm an American citizen, except," he added softly, "on election days, and then," he cocked up one shrewd eye, "I'm sort of British. Canadian? No, I cayn't claim that either, coming from the Labrador, for that's Newf'nland, a day's march nearer home.

"Say, Mrs. Trevor, you don't know my name yet. It's Smith, and with my friends I'm mostly Jesse."

"If you please, may I be one of your friends?"

"If I behave good, you may. No harm in my trying."

From behind us the sun flung beams of golden splendor and blue tree shadows, which went over the rim-rock into the misty depths of the abyss. Down there the Fraser roared. Beyond on the eastern side soared a vast precipice of gold and mauve which at an infinite height above our heads was crested with black pines. Level with our bench land that amazing cliff was cut transversely by a shelf of delicate verdure, with here and there black groves of majestic pines. Nearly opposite, half hidden by the trees, perched a log cabin, in form and in its exquisite proportion like some old Greek temple.

"And that is where you live?"

The moment Jesse Smith had given me his name, I knew him well by reputation. Comments by Surly Brown, the ferryman, and my husband's bitter hatred had outlined a dangerous character. Nobody else lived within a day's journey.

"That's my home," said Jesse. "D'ye see a dim trail jags down that upper cliff? That's whar I drifted my ponies down when I came in from the States. I didn't know of the wagon road from Hundred Mile House to the ferry, which runs by the north end of my ranch."

"Your house," I said, "always reminds me of an eagle's aerie."

"Wall, it's better'n that. Feed, water, shelter, timber, and squatter's rights is good enough to make a poor man's ranch."

"And the tremendous grandeur of the place?"

"Hum. I don't claim to have been knocked all in a heap with the scenery. A thousand-foot wall and a hundred-foot gulch is big enough for dimples, and saves fencing. But if you left this district in one of them Arizona caÑons over night, it would get mislaid.

"No. What took holt of me good and hard was the company,—a silver-tip b'ar and his missus, both thousand pounders, with their three young ladies, now mar'ied and settled beyond the sky-line. There's two couples of prime eagles still camps along thar by South Cave. The timber wolf I trimmed out because he wasted around like a remittance man. Thar was a stallion and his harem, this yere fool Jones bein' one of his young mares. El SeÑor Don Cougar and his seÑora lived here, too, until they went into the sheep business with Surly Brown's new flock. Besides that, there was heaps of lil' friendly folks in fur, hair, and feathers. Yes, I have been right to home since I located."

"But grizzly bears? How frightful!"

"Yes. They was frightened at first. The coarse treatment they gets from hunters, makes them sort of bashful with any stranger. Ye see, b'ars yearns to man, same as the heathen does to their fool gods, whereas bullets, pizen, and deadfalls is sort of discouraging. Their sentiments get mixed, they acts confused, and naturally if they're shot at, they'll get hostile same as you and me. They is misunderstood, and that's how nobody has a kind word for grizzlies."

"But the greatest hunters are afraid of them."

"The biggest criminals has got most scare at police. B'ars has no use for sportsmen, nor me neither. My rifle's heaps fiercer than any b'ar, and I've chased more sportsmen than I has grizzlies."

"Wasn't Mr. Trevor one of them?"

Jesse grinned.

"Tell me," I said, for the other side of the story must be worth hearing.

"Wall, Mr. Trevor took out a summins agin me for chasing him off my ranch. He got fined for having no gun license, and no dawg license, and not paying his poll-tax, and Cap Taylor bound him over to keep the peace. I ain't popular now with Mr. Trevor, whereas he got off cheap. Now, if them b'ars could shoot—"

I hadn't thought of that. "Can they be tamed?" I asked.

"Men can be gentled, and they needs taming most. Thar was three grizzlies sort of adopted a party by the name of Capen Adams, and camped and traveled with him most familiar. Once them four vagrants promenaded on Market Street in 'Frisco. Not that I holds with this Adams in misleading his b'ars among man-smell so strong and distrackful to their peace of mind. But still I reckon Capen Adams and me sort of takes after each other. I'm only attractive to animals."

"Oh, surely!" I laughed.

But Jesse became quite dismal. "I'm not reckoned," he bemoaned himself, "among the popular attractions. The neighbors shies at coming near my ranch."

"Well, if you protect grizzlies and hunt sportsmen, surely it's not surprising."

"Can't please all parties, eh? Wall, perhaps that's how the herd is grazing. Yes. Come to think of it, I remember oncet a Smithsonian grave robber comes to inspect South Cave. He said I'd got a boneyard of some ancient people, and he'd rob graves to find out all about them olden times. He wanted to catch the atmosphere of them days, so I sort of helped. Robbing graves ain't exactly a holy vocation, the party had a mean eye, a German name, and a sort of patronizing manner, but still I helped around to get him atmosphere, me and Eph."

"Who's Eph?"

"Oh, he's just a silver-tip, what scientific parties calls ursus horribilis ord. You just cast your eye where the trickle stream falls below my cabin. D'ye see them sarvis berry bushes down below the spray?"

"Where the bushes are waving? Oh, look, there's a gigantic grizzly standing up, and pulling the branches!"

"Yes, that's Eph.

"Wall, as I was telling you, Eph and me is helping this scientific person to get the atmosphere of them ancient times."

"But the poor man would die of fright!"

"Too busy running. When he reached Vancouver, he was surely a cripple though, and no more use to science."

"Crippled?"

"Yes, lost his truthfulness, and a professor without truth is like a woman with no tongue, plumb disabled. His talk in the Vancouver papers beat Ananias, besides exciting a sort of prejudice. The neighbors shies at me, and I'm no more popular. Shall I call Eph?"

"I think not to-day," said I, hurriedly rising, "for indeed I should be getting home at once."

Without ever touching the wound, he had given me the courage to live, had made my behavior of the morning seem that of a silly schoolgirl; but still I did not feel quite up to a social introduction. I said I was sure that Eph and I would have no interests in common.

"So you'll go home and face the music?" said Jesse's wise old eyes.

"My husband," said I, "will be getting quite anxious about me."

Without a word he brought my horse and saddled him.

And I, with a sinking heart, contrasted the loneliness and the horror which was called my "home" with all the glamour of this man's happy solitude.

While Jesse buckled on the head-stall, some evil spirit prompted me to use the word "romantic." In swift resentment he seized and rent the word.

"Romantic? Snakes! Thar's nothen romantic about me. What I can't earn ain't worth stealing, and I most surely despise all shiftless people."

"Forgive me. I did not mean romantic in that sense."

"Lady, what did you mean?"

"May I say picturesque?"

He spat. "Thank Gawd I ain't that, either. I'd shoot myself if I thought I was showing off, or dressing operatic, or playing at bein' more than I am."

Seeing him really hurt, I made one last wriggle.

"May I say what I mean by romance?"

He held the stirrup for me to mount, offered his hand.

"Do you never get hungry," I asked, "for what's beyond the horizon?"

He sighed with sheer relief, then turned, his eyes seeing infinite distances. "Why, yes! That country beyond the sky-line's always calling. Thar's something I want away off, and I don't know what I want."

"That land beyond the sky-line's called romance."

He clenched his teeth. "What does a ship want when she strains at anchor? What she wants is drift. And I'm at anchor because I've sworn off drift."

At that we parted, and I went slowly homeward, up to my anchor. Dear God! If I might drift!