Chapter 12. The Making Of A Man

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_ CHAPTER XII. THE MAKING OF A MAN

Wakota, consisting of the mud-house of a Galician homesteader who owned a forge and did blacksmithing for the colony in a primitive way, they left behind half an hour before nightfall, with ten miles of bad going still before them. The trail wound through bluffs and around sleughs, dived into coulees and across black creeks, and only the most skilful handling could have piloted the bronchos through.

It was long after dark when they reached the ravine of the Night Hawk Creek, through which they must pass before arriving at the Lake. Down the sides of this ravine they zigzagged, dodging trees and boulders till they came to the last sharp pitch, at the foot of which ran the Creek. During this whole descent Kalman sat clinging to the back and side of the seat, expecting every moment to have the buckboard turn turtle over him, but when they reached the edge of the final pitch, were it not for sheer shame, he would have begged permission to scramble down on hands and knees rather than trust himself to the swaying, pitching vehicle. A moment French held his bronchos steady, poised on the brink of this rocky steep, and then reaching back, he seized the hind wheel and, holding it fast, used it as a drag, while the bronchos slid down on their haunches over the mass of gravel and rolling stones till they reached the bed of the Creek in safety. A splash through the water, a scramble up the other bank, a long climb, and they were out again on the prairie. A mile of good trail and they were at home, welcomed by the baying of two huge Russian wolf hounds.

Through the dim light Kalman could discover the outlines of what seemed a long heap of logs, but what he afterwards discovered to be a series of low log structures which did for house, stable and sheds of various kinds.

"Down! Bismark. Down! Blucher. Hello there, Mac! Where in the world are you?"

After some time Mackenzie appeared with a lantern, a short, grizzled, thick-set man, rubbing his eyes and yawning prodigiously.

"I nefer thought you would be coming home to-night," he said. "What brought ye at this time?"

"Never mind, Mac," said French. "Get the horses out, and Kalman and I will unload this stuff."

In what seemed to be an outer shed, they deposited the pork, flour, and other articles that composed the load. As Kalman seized the straw-packed case to carry it in, French interfered.

"Here, boy, I'll take that," he said quickly.

"I'll not break them," said Kalman, lifting the case with great care.

"You won't, eh?" replied French in rather a shamed tone. "Do you know what it is?"

"Why, sure," said Kalman. "Lots of that stuff used to come into our home in Winnipeg."

"Well, let me have the case," said French. "And you needn't say anything to Mac about it. Mac is all right, but a case of liquor in the house makes him unhappy."

"Unhappy? Doesn't he drink any?"

"That's just it, my boy. He is unhappy while it's outside of him. He's got Indian blood in him, you see, and he'd die for whiskey." So saying, French took up the case and carried it to the inner room and stowed it away under his bed.

But as he rose up from making this disposition of the dangerous stuff Mac himself appeared in the room.

"What are you standing there looking at?" said French with unusual impatience.

"Oh, nothing at all," said Mackenzie, whose strong Highland accent went strangely with his soft Indian voice and his dark Indian face. "It iss a good place for it, whatefer."

French stood for a moment in disgusted silence, and then breaking into a laugh he said: "All right, Mac. There's no use trying to keep it from you. But, mind you, it's fair play in this thing. Last time, you remember, you got into trouble. I won't stand that sort of thing again."

"Oh, well, well," said Mackenzie cheerfully, "it will not be for long anyway, more's the peety."

"Now then, get us a bite of supper, Mackenzie," said French sharply, "and let us to bed."

Some wild duck and some bannock with black molasses, together with strong black tea, made a palatable supper after a long day on the breezy prairie. After supper the men sat smoking.

"The oats in, Mac?"

"They are sowed, but not harrowed yet. I will be doing that to-morrow in the morning."

"Potato ground ready?"

"Yes, the ground is ready, and the seed is over at Garneau's."

"What in thunder were you waiting for? Those potatoes should have been in ten days ago. It's hardly worth while putting them in now."

"Garneau promised to bring them ofer," said Mackenzie, "but you cannot tell anything at all about that man."

"Well, we must get them in at once. We must not lose another day. And now let's get to bed. The boy here will sleep in the bunk," pointing to a large-sized box which did for a couch. "Get some blankets for him, Mac."

The top of the box folded back, revealing a bed inside.

"There, Kalman," said French, while Mackenzie arranged the blankets, "will that do?"

"Fine," said the boy, who could hardly keep his eyes open and who in five minutes after he had tumbled in was sound asleep.

It seemed as if he had been asleep but a few moments when he was wakened by a rude shock. He started up to find Mackenzie fallen drunk and helpless across his bunk.

"Here, you pig!" French was saying in a stern undertone, "can't you tell when you have had enough? Come out of that!"

With an oath he dragged Mackenzie to his feet.

"Come, get to your bed!"

"Oh, yes, yes," grumbled Mackenzie, "and I know well what you will be doing after I am in bed, and never a drop will you be leaving in that bottle." Mackenzie was on the verge of tears.

"Get on, you beast!" said French in tones of disgusted dignity, pushing the man before him into the next room.

Kalman was wide awake, but, feigning sleep, watched French as he sat with gloomy face, drinking steadily till even his hard head could stand no more, and he swayed into the inner room and fell heavily on the bed. Kalman waited till French was fast asleep, then rising quietly, pulled off his boots, threw a blanket over him, put out the lamp and went back to the bunk. The spectre of the previous night which had been laid by the events of the day came back to haunt his broken slumber. For hours he tossed, and not till morning began to dawn did he quite lose consciousness.

Broad morning wakened him to unpleasant memories, and more unpleasant realities. French was still sleeping heavily. Mackenzie was eating breakfast, with a bottle beside him on the table.

"You will find a basin on the bench outside," observed Mackenzie, pointing to the open door.

When Kalman returned from his ablutions, the bottle had vanished, and Mackenzie, with breath redolent of its contents, had ready for him a plate of porridge, to which he added black molasses. This, with toasted bannock, the remains of the cold duck of the night before, and strong black tea, constituted his breakfast.

Kalman hurried through his meal, for he hated to meet French as he woke from his sleep.

"Will he not take breakfast?" said the boy as he rose from the table.

"No, not him, nor denner either, like as not. It iss a good thing he has a man to look after the place," said Mackenzie with the pride of conscious fidelity. "We will just be going on with the oats and the pitaties. You will be taking the harrows."

"The what?" said Kalman.

"The harrows."

Kalman looked blank.

"Can you not harrow?"

"I don't know," said Kalman. "What is that?"

"Can you drop pitaties, then?"

"I don't know," repeated Kalman, shrinking very considerably in his own estimation.

"Man," said Mackenzie pityingly, "where did ye come from anyway?"

"Winnipeg."

"Winnipeg? I know it well. I used to. But that was long ago. But did ye nefer drive a team?"

"Never," said Kalman. "But I want to learn."

"Och! then, and what will he be wanting with you here?"

"I don't know," said Kalman.

"Well, well," said Mackenzie. "He iss a quare man at times, and does quare things."

"He is not," said Kalman hotly. "He is just a splendid man."

Mackenzie gazed in mild surprise at the angry face.

"Hoot! toot!" he said. "Who was denyin' ye? He iss all that, but he iss mighty quare, as you will find out. But come away and we will get the horses. It iss a peety you cannot do nothing."

"You show me what to do," said Kalman confidently, "and I'll do it."

The stable was a tumble-down affair, and sorely needing attention, as, indeed, was the case with the ranch and all its belongings. A team of horses showing signs of hard work and poor care, with harness patched with rope and rawhide thongs, were waiting in the stable. Even to Kalman's inexperienced eyes it was a deplorable outfit.

There was little done in the way of cultivation of the soil upon the Night Hawk Ranch. The market was far away, and it was almost impossible to secure farm labour. The wants of French and his household were few. A couple of fields of oats and barley for his horses and pigs and poultry, another for potatoes, for which he found ready market at the Crossing and in the lumber camps up among the hills, exhausted the agricultural pursuits of the ranch.

Kalman concentrated his attention upon the process of hitching the team to the harrows, and then followed Mackenzie up and down the field as he harrowed in the oats. It seemed a simple enough matter to guide the team across the ploughed furrows, and Kalman, as he observed, grew ambitious.

"Let me drive," he said at length.

"Hoot! toot! boy, you would be letting them run away with you."

"Aw, cut it out!" said Kalman scornfully.

"What are you saying? Cut what?"

"Oh, give us a rest!"

"A rest, iss it? You will be getting tired early. And who is keeping you from a rest?" said Mackenzie, whose knowledge of contemporary slang was decidedly meagre.

"Let me drive once," pleaded the boy.

"Well, try it, and I will walk along side of you," said Mackenzie, with apparent reluctance.

The attempt was eminently successful, but Kalman was quick both with hands and head. After the second round Mackenzie allowed the boy to go alone, remaining in the shade and calling out directions across the field. The result was to both a matter of unmixed delight. With Kalman there was the gratification of the boy's passion for the handling of horses, and as for Mackenzie, while on the trail or on the river, he was indefatigable, in the field he had the Indian hatred of steady work. To lie and smoke on the grass in the shade of a poplar bluff on this warm shiny spring day was to him sheer bliss.

But after a time Mackenzie grew restless. His cup of bliss still lacked a drop to fill it.

"Just keep them moving," he cried to Kalman. "I will need to go to the house a meenit."

"All right. Don't hurry for me," said Kalman, proud of his new responsibility and delighted with his new achievement.

"Keep them straight, mind. And watch your turning," warned Mackenzie. "I will be coming back soon."

In less than half an hour he returned in a most gracious frame of mind.

"Man, but you are the smart lad," he said as Kalman swung his team around. "You will be making a great rancher, Tommy."

"My name is Kalman."

"Well, well, Callum. It iss a fery good name, whatefer."

"Kalman!" shouted the boy.

Mackenzie nodded grave rebuke.

"There is no occasion for shouting. I am not deef, Callum, my boy. Go on. Go on with your harrows," he continued as Kalman began to remonstrate.

Kalman drew near and regarded him narrowly. The truth was clear to his experienced eyes.

"You're drunk," he exclaimed disgustedly.

"Hoot, toot! Callum man," said Mackenzie in tones of grieved remonstrance, "how would you be saying that now? Come away, or I will be taking the team myself."

"Aw, go on!" replied Kalman contemptuously. "Let me alone!"

"Good boy," said Mackenzie with a paternal smile, waving the boy on his way while he betook himself to the bluff side and there supine, continued at intervals to direct the operation of harrowing.

The sun grew hot. The cool morning breeze dropped flat, and as the hours passed the boy grew weary and footsore, travelling the soft furrows. Mackenzie had long ceased issuing his directions, and had subsided into smiling silence, contenting himself with a friendly wave of the hand as Kalman made the turn. The poor spiritless horses moved more and more slowly, and at length, coming to the end of the field, refused to move farther.

"Let them stand a bit, Callum boy," said Mackenzie kindly. "Come and have a rest. You are the fine driver. Come and sit down."

"Will the horses stand here?" asked Kalman, whose sense of responsibility deepened as he became aware of Mackenzie's growing incapacity.

Mackenzie laughed pleasantly. "Will they stand? Yes, and that they will, unless they will lie down."

Kalman approached and regarded him with the eye of an expert.

"Look here, where's your stuff?" said the boy at length.

Mackenzie gazed at him with the innocence of childhood.

"What iss it?"

"Oh, come off your perch! you blamed old rooster! Where's your bottle?"

"What iss this?" said Mackenzie, much affronted. "You will be calling me names?"

As he rose in his indignation a bottle fell from his pocket. Kalman made a dash toward it, but Mackenzie was too quick for him. With a savage curse he snatched up the bottle, and at the same time made a fierce but unsuccessful lunge at the boy.

"You little deevil!" he said fiercely, "I will be knocking your head off!"

Kalman jibed at him. "You are a nice sort of fellow to be on a job. What will your boss say?"

Mackenzie's face changed instantly.

"The boss?" he said, glancing in the direction of the house. "The boss? What iss the harm of a drop when you are not well?"

"You not well!" exclaimed Kalman scornfully.

Mackenzie shook his head sadly, sinking back upon the grass. "It iss many years now since I have suffered with an indisposeetion of the bowels. It iss a coalic, I am thinking, and it iss hard on me. But, Callum, man, it will soon be denner time. Just put your horses in and I will be following you."

But Kalman knew better than that.

"I don't know how to put in your horses. Come and put them in yourself, or show me how to do it." He was indignant with the man on his master's behalf.

Mackenzie struggled to his feet, holding the bottle carefully in his outside coat pocket. Kalman made up his mind to possess himself of that bottle at all costs. The opportunity occurred when Mackenzie, stooping to unhitch the last trace, allowed the bottle to slip from his pocket. Like a cat on a mouse, Kalman pounced on the bottle and fled.

The change in Mackenzie was immediate and appalling. His smiling face became transformed with fury, his black eyes gleamed with the cunning malignity of the savage, he shed his soft Scotch voice with his genial manner, the very movements of his body became those of his Cree progenitors. Uttering hoarse guttural cries, with the quick crouching run of the Indian on the trail of his foe, he chased Kalman through the bluffs. There was something so fiendishly terrifying in the glimpses that Kalman caught of his face now and then that the boy was seized with an overpowering dread, and ceasing to tantalize his pursuing enemy, he left the bluffs and fled toward the house, with Mackenzie hard upon his track. Through the shed the boy flew and into the outer room, banging the door hard after him. But there was no lock upon the door, and he could not hope to hold it shut against his pursuer. He glanced wildly into the inner room. French was nowhere to be seen. As he stood in unspeakable terror, the door opened slowly and stealthily, showing Mackenzie's face, distorted with rage and cunning hate. With a silent swift movement he glided into the room, and without a sound rushed at the boy. Once, twice around the table they circled, Kalman having the advantage in quickness of foot. Suddenly, with a grunt of satisfaction, Mackenzie's eye fell upon a gun hanging upon the wall. In a moment he had it in his hand. As he reached for it, however, Kalman, with a loud cry, plunged headlong through the open window and fled again toward the bluffs. Mackenzie followed swiftly through the door, gun in hand. He ran a few short steps after the flying boy, and was about to throw his gun to his shoulder when a voice arrested him.

"Here, Mackenzie, what are you doing with that gun?"

It was French, standing between the stable and the house, dishevelled, bloated, but master of himself. Mackenzie stopped as if gripped by an unseen arm.

"What are you doing with that gun?" repeated French sternly. "Bring it to me."

Mackenzie stood in sullen, defiant silence, his gun thrown into the hollow of his arm. French walked deliberately toward him.

"Give me that gun, you dog!" he said with an oath, "or I'll kill you where you stand."

Mackenzie hesitated but only for a moment, and without a word surrendered the gun, the fiendish rage fading out of his face, the aboriginal blood lust dying in his eyes like the snuffing out of a candle. In a few brief moments he became once more a civilized man, subject to the restraint of a thousand years of life ordered by law.

"Kalman, come here," French called to the boy, who stood far off.

"Mackenzie," said French with great dignity as Kalman drew near, "I want you to know that this boy is a ward of a dear friend, and is to me like my own son. Remember that. Kalman, Mackenzie is my friend, and you are to treat him as such. Where did you get that?" he continued, pointing to the bottle which Kalman had kept clutched in his hand through all the exciting pursuit.

The boy stood silent, looking at Mackenzie.

"Speak, boy," said French sharply.

Kalman remained still silent, his eyes on Mackenzie.

"It iss a bottle myself had," said Mackenzie.

"Ah, I understand. All right, Kalman, it's none of your business what Mackenzie drinks. Now, Mackenzie, get dinner, and no more of this nonsense."

Without a word of parley or remonstrance Mackenzie shuffled off toward the field to bring in the team. French turned to the boy and, taking the bottle in his hand, said, "This is dangerous stuff, my boy. A man like Mackenzie is not to be trusted with it, and of course it is not for boys."

Kalman made no reply. His mind was in a whirl of perplexed remembrances of the sickening scenes of the past three days.

"Go now," said French, "and help Mackenzie. He won't hurt you any more. He never keeps a grudge. That is the Christian in him."

During the early part of the afternoon Mackenzie drove the harrows while French moved about the ranch doing up odds and ends. But neither of the men was quite at ease. At length French disappeared into the house, and almost immediately afterwards Mackenzie left his team in Kalman's hands and followed his boss. Hour after hour passed. The sun sank in the western sky, but neither master nor man appeared, while Kalman kept the team steadily on the move, till at length the field was finished. Weary and filled with foreboding, the boy drove the horses to the stable, pulled off the harness as best he could, gave the horses food and drink and went into the house. There a ghastly scene met his eye. On the floor hard by the table lay Mackenzie on his face, snoring heavily in a drunken sleep, and at the table, with three empty bottles beside him and a fourth in his hand, sat French, staring hard before him with eyes bloodshot and sunken, and face of a livid hue. He neither moved nor spoke when Kalman entered, but continued staring steadily before him.

The boy was faint with hunger. He was too heartsick to attempt to prepare food. He found a piece of bannock and, washing this down with a mug of water, he crept into his bunk, and there, utterly miserable, waited till his master should sink into sleep. Slowly the light faded from the room and the shadows crept longer and deeper over the floor till all was dark. But still the boy could see the outline of the silent man, who sat without sound or motion except for the filling and emptying of his glass from time to time. At length the shadowy figure bowed slowly toward the table and there remained.

Sick with grief and fear, the boy sprang from his bunk and sought to rouse the man from his stupor, but without avail, till at last, wearied with his ineffectual attempts and sobbing in the bitterness of his grief, he threw a blanket over the bowed form and retreated to his bunk again. But sleep to him was impossible, for often throughout the night he was brought to his feet with horrid dreams, to be driven shivering again to his bunk with the more horrid realities of his surroundings.

At length as day began to dawn he fell into a dead, dreamless slumber, waking, when it was broad day, to find Mackenzie sitting at the table eating breakfast, and with a bottle beside him. French was not to be seen, but Kalman could hear his heavy breathing from the inner room. To Kalman it seemed as if he were still in the grip of some ghastly nightmare. He rubbed his eyes and looked again at Mackenzie in stupid amazement.

"What are you glowering at yonder, Callum, man?" said Mackenzie, pleasantly ignoring the events of the previous day. "Your breakfast iss ready for you. You will be hungry after your day's work. Oh, yes, I haf been seeing it, and it iss well done, Callum, mannie."

Somehow his smiling face and his kindly tone filled Kalman with rage. He sprang out of his bunk and ran out of the house. He hated the sight of the smiling, pleasant-voiced Mackenzie. But his boy's hunger drove him in to breakfast.

"Well, Callum, man," began Mackenzie in pleasant salutation.

"My name is Kalman," snapped the boy.

"Never mind, it iss a good name, whatefer. But I am saying we will be getting into the pitaties after breakfast. Can ye drop pitaties?"

"Show me how," said Kalman shortly.

"And that I will," said Mackenzie affably, helping himself to the bottle.

"How many bottles of that stuff are there left?" asked Kalman disgustedly.

"And why would you be wanting to know?" enquired Mackenzie cautiously. "You would not be taking any of the whiskey yourself?" he added in grave reproof.

"Oh, go on! you old fool!" replied the boy angrily. "You will never be any good till it is all done, I know."

Kalman spoke out of full and varied experience of the ways of men with the lust of drink in them.

"Well, well, maybe so. But the more there iss for me, the less there iss for him," said Mackenzie, jerking his head toward the inner door.

"Why not empty it out?" said Kalman in an eager undertone.

"Hoot! toot! man, and would you be guilty of sinful waste like yon? No, no, never with Malcolm Mackenzie's consent. And you would not be doing such a deed yourself?" Mackenzie enquired somewhat anxiously.

Kalman shook his head.

"No," he said, "he might be angry. But," continued the boy, "those potatoes must be finished to-day. I heard him speaking about them yesterday."

"And that iss true enough. They are two weeks late now."

"Come on, then," cried Kalman, as Mackenzie reached for the bottle. "Come and show me how."

"There iss no hurry," said the deliberate Mackenzie, drinking his glass with slow relish. "But first the pitaties are to be got over from Garneau's."

Again and again, and with increasing rage, Kalman sought to drag Mackenzie away from his bottle and to his work. By the time the bottle was done Mackenzie was once more helpless.

Three days later French came forth from his room, haggard and trembling, to find every bottle empty, Mackenzie making ineffective attempts to prepare a meal, and Kalman nowhere to be seen.

"Where is the boy?" he enquired of Mackenzie in an uncertain voice.

"I know not," said Mackenzie.

"Go and look for him, then, you idiot!"

In a short time French was summoned by Mackenzie's voice.

"Come here, will you?" he was crying. "Come here and see this thing."

With a dread of some nameless horror in his heart, French hurried toward the little knoll upon which Mackenzie stood. From this vantage ground could be seen far off in the potato field the figure of the boy with two or three women, all busy with the potatoes.

"What do you make that out to be?" enquired French. "Who in the mischief are they? Go and see."

It was not long before Mackenzie stood before his master with Kalman by his side.

"As sure as death," said Mackenzie, "he has a tribe of Galician women yonder, and the pitaties iss all in."

"What do you say?" stammered French.

"It iss what I am telling you. The pitaties iss all in, and this lad iss bossing the job, and the Galician women working like naygurs."

"What does this mean?" said French, turning his eyes slowly upon Kalman. The boy looked older by years. He was worn and haggard.

"I saw a woman passing, she was a Galician, she brought the others, and the potatoes are done. They have come here two days. But," said the boy slowly, "there is nothing to eat."

With a mighty oath French sprang to his feet.

"Do you tell me you are hungry, boy?" he roared.

"I could not find much," said Kalman, his lip trembling in spite of himself.

"What are you standing there for, Mackenzie?" roared French. "Confound you for a drunken dog! Confound us both for two drunken fools! Get something to eat!"

There was something so terrible in his look and in his voice that Mackenzie fairly ran to obey his order. Kalman stood before his master pale and shaking. He was weak from lack of food, but more from anxiety and grief.

"I did the best I could," he said, struggling manfully to keep his voice steady, "and--I am--awful glad--you're--better." His command was all gone. He threw himself upon the grass while sobs shook his frame.

French stood a moment looking down upon him, his face revealing thoughts and feelings none too pleasant.

"Kalman, you're a good sort," he said in a hoarse voice. "You're a man, by Jove! and," in an undertone, "I'm hanged, if I don't think you'll make a man of me yet." Then kneeling by his side, he raised him in his arms. "Kalman," he said, "you are a brick and a gentleman. I have been a brute and a cad."

"Oh, no, no, no!" sobbed the boy. "You are a good man. But I wish--you would--leave--it--alone."

"In God's name," said French bitterly, "I wish it too." _

Read next: Chapter 13. Brown

Read previous: Chapter 11. The Edmonton Trail

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