Book: The Shagganappi

E >> E. Pauline Johnson >> The Shagganappi




Instantly Banty found his heart warming towards this big pink cousin,
who bore with such sturdy good humor the affliction of such a terrible
name. "It _is_ bad," he assented, "but it might be doctored. Haven't you
got a middle name?"

"It's worse," grinned the victim. "It's St. Ives. I tried it on the
second term, and the crowd called me 'Ivy,' and one smartie sent me a
piece of blue ribbon to tie my yellow curls with--he wrote _that_ in
an insulting note."

"What'd you do?" gasped Banty.

"Licked him in full view of the whole school, and he was a senior;
trimmed him till he couldn't see," was the smiling reply.

"Good boy!" almost shouted Banty. "You're the stuff for out West. I'm
glad you came."

"I'm glad, too," answered his cousin, "but I'll be 'gladder' if you will
tell me where I can get some togs like yours. I declare, but I like that
outfit," and he looked enviously at Banty's leather chaps, blue flannel
shirt, scarlet silk neckerchief and cowboy hat.

"These duds?" questioned Banty. "Oh, you can get them anywhere. They'd
hardly suit you, though." And he measured the stranger with a critical
eye.

"Suit or not, I'm going to have them," said "Con"--as his genial father
called him. "Let's go right to the shops and get an outfit now."

So Banty tied up the horses, stowed the luggage away in the afterpart of
the trap, and led the way to the trader's.

When they started for the ranch, Con had, in addition to his English
bags, boxes, shawl-straps and portmanteaus, a most beautiful outfit of
typical Western finery, a handsome Mexican saddle, a crop, a quirt,
fringed gauntlet gloves, chaps, Stetson hat, silk handkerchief, ties,
and three pairs of sporting and riding boots.

"We'll put these patent leathers gently into the river, or on a shelf,
until I face the East again," he said, half apologetically. Then with a
quick burst of English simplicity, he said: "Oh, Banty, I want to be one
of you!"

"And you're going to be one of us," said that sturdy young Westerner.
"In fact, Con--well, you just _are_ one of us," he added.

The lanky, pink-faced boy grew pinker.

"I know I'm an awful length and all that," he said, "but I'm only
sixteen, don't you know!"

Banty grinned. The "Don't you know," which at first horrified him, was,
oddly enough, growing to be almost fascinating. Banty would have felt
himself an awful owl were he to say it, but it somehow suited the tall,
pink boy, and did not sound one particle "dudish," or offensive, and
during the ten-mile drive across the Kamloops Hills Banty decided that
Con was a first-rate fellow, notwithstanding his abominable clothes and
"swagger" English accent. At the ranch house door they were greeted
by Banty's parents and a couple of range riders, and Eena, who,
Indian-like, never revealed the fact by word or look that he had
observed the patent leather shoes, and the wonderful high collar; who,
also Indian-like, in spite of these drawbacks, liked the stranger
without cause, a peculiar instinct of liking that came when the young
King Georgeman shook hands with him, a wholesome British "shake" that
engendered confidence.

"You will be tired, Constantine," said Mrs. Clark, with motherly care,
"and not accustomed to this extreme heat. Come at once and rest. I have
made a great jug of lemonade. Do come in at once."

"If it's all the same to you, aunt, may I have some tea? And do _please_
call me 'Con,'" he replied. No shadow of expression crossed The Eena's
face, but when Mrs. Clark had led Con indoors, the Indian turned to
Banty and remarked quietly, "You're right some ways; he wants tea, and
the sun shines in his shoes, but he good King Georgeman all same, I
know, me."

"Guess you're right, Eena," said Banty. "There's something about him
that's fine, just fine and simple and--English." The Indian nodded and
he made but one more comment. "He brave," he muttered.

"How do you know that?" asked Banty.

"The--what you name it? I think you call it _nostril_ of his nose long,
thin, fine. That shows brave people. When nostril just round and thick
like bullet-hole it shows coward."

Banty laughed aloud, but all the same his fingers flew to his own
nostrils, and notwithstanding his merriment he was gratified to find
fairly long, narrow breathing spaces at the edge of his own nose.

"What queer old ideas your people have, Eena," he commented.

"But it's right, even if queer," smiled the Indian. "You see, maybe this
summer, Indian's right about that nose."

But Mrs. Clark and Con were now returning, Con having swallowed his tea,
and, looking refreshed by it, he settled himself in a porch chair,
stretched out his long legs and thoughtfully regarded the toes of his
patent leathers. Banty grinned openly, but The Eena gravely shook his
head, and, with the tip of his little finger, touched his own fine,
narrow nostril. Banty understood, but then he and The Eena always
understood each other, and now the boy knew that the old hunter meant to
remind him of the best qualities of his English cousin, and to overlook
the little oddities that after all did not carry weight when it came to
a boy's character.

"King Georgeman, you come with me to-morrow, me fish, or hunt?" asked
the Indian, his solemn eyes regarding Con kindly. Banty explained the
term "King Georgeman."

"Indeed I will, if you'll have me!" exclaimed Con, excitedly. "I've
bought some decent clothes, and will look fitter in them than I do
in these togs. Don't I look bally in them?"

"I not sabe 'bally,' me," answered the Indian.

The pink King Georgeman looked puzzled.

"He means he doesn't understand what 'bally' is," explained Banty.

Con laughed. "Tell him that _I'm_ 'bally,' in these clothes; he'll grasp
then what a fearful thing 'bally' means."

It was that remark, "poking fun" at his own appearance, that thoroughly
won Banty's loyalty to his cousin from over seas. A chap that could
openly laugh and jeer at his own peculiarities must surely be a good
sort, so forthwith Banty pitched in heart and soul to arrange all kinds
of excursions and adventures, and The Eena planned and suggested, until
it seemed that all the weeks stretching out into the holiday months were
to be one long round of sport and pleasure in honor of the lanky King
Georgeman, who was so anxious to fall easily into the ways of the West.

Just as The Eena predicted, Con proved an able fisherman and excellent
"trailsman." He could stay in the saddle for hours, could go without
food or sleep, had the endurance of a horse and the good nature of a big
romping kitten. He was generous and unselfish, but with a spontaneous
English temper that blazed forth whenever he saw the weak wronged or the
timid terrified.

"I'll never make a really good hunter, Eena," he regretted one day, "I
can't bear to gallop on a big cayuse after a little scared jack rabbit,
and run him down and kill him when he's so little and doesn't try to
fight me with his claws or fangs like a lynx will do. It's not a fair
deal."

"But when one camps many leagues from the ranch house, one must eat,"
observed the Indian.

"Yes, that's the pity of it," agreed Con, "but it seems to me a poor
sort of game to play at."

Nevertheless he did his part towards providing food when they all went
camping up in the timberline in August, and frequently he, Banty and the
Indian would go out by themselves on a three or four days' expedition
away from the main camp, "grubbing" themselves and living the lives of
semi-savages. And it was upon one of these adventures that the three
got separated in some way, Banty and the Indian reaching camp a little
before sunset, and waiting in vain for Con's appearance while the hours
slipped by, and they called and shouted, and fired innumerable shots
thinking to guide him campwards, while they little knew that all the
gold in British Columbia could not have brought Con's feet to enter that
little tent for many days to come; that with all his newborn affection
for Banty, Con would make him most unwelcome should chance bring them
face to face again.

II

It happened so strangely, so quickly, that Con gave himself no time
to think. They had been trailing a caribou, just for sport, for the
hunting season was closed, and Con struck into the wrong trail on the
return journey. Thinking to overtake the others, he worked his cayuse
hard, galloping on and on until the hills and canyons began to look
unfamiliar. Feeling that he was lost, he fired his gun, once, twice.
Far down in the valley came a response, so he loped down the winding
trail until he suddenly came upon a little shack surrounded by fields
of alfalfa, and a few cattle grazing along a creek.

As he neared the ranch a shot was fired from the shack window, he jerked
his animal up shortly, and was about to wheel and gallop back, when a
pitiful groan reached his ears, and a man's voice begged: "Water, water,
for the love of heaven bring me water!" Then, unfamiliar as Con was to
Western life, instinct told him that the revolver shot was meant to call
him to some one's aid.

"Coming," he shouted, slipping from his saddle, "buck up, I'll fetch
water," but before he could enter the door, a terrible, repulsive face
was lifted to the window, and the man almost shrieked:

"Don't come in, don't, I say; just hand me some water from the creek.
I'm too weak to walk."

"Of course I'm coming in," blurted Con, indignantly. "Why, man, you're
dead sick!"

"Don't!" choked the man; "oh, boy, don't come near me, _I've got
smallpox_."

For one brief second Con stood, stiff with horror. "Who's with you,
helping you, nursing you?" he demanded.

"No one, I'm alone, alone; oh! water, water," moaned the man.

Con flung open the door. There was no hesitation, no fear, no thought of
self; just a great human pity in his fair young face, and a wonderful
tenderness in his strong young arms as he lifted the loathsome sufferer
from the floor where he had fallen in his weakness, after crawling to
the window in that last, almost hopeless effort to call assistance.

On the soiled and tumbled bed he laid the man, who still shrieked: "Go
away, go away, you're crazy to come in here!" Then without a word of
even kindly encouragement the boy seized a bucket and dashed down to
the creek. "It's water, not words, he wants now," he said to himself,
running back, and in another moment his good right arm was slipping
under the sick man's shoulders, and he was lifting him up and holding
to the fever-cracked lips a cup of gloriously cold water.

"Bless you! The dear good God himself bless you! But, oh, boy, go away,
go away!" murmured the man, weakly.

"Go away and leave you here alone, perhaps to die? And then have to face
my parents and Banty and The Eena, and--and England again and tell what
I've done? Not I!" cried the boy, indignantly. "Look at this shack, the
state it's in; look at you. How did you come to be here alone?"

"I had a pardner, but he left me, just skinned out, when he suspected
what I had," said the man, hopelessly. It was then that Con burst forth
in that quick flashing English temper that was always aroused at the
sight of injustice, of unmanliness, or of underhand dealings. He was
so furious that he took his temper out in cleaning up the shack, and
cooking some soft foods for the patient, and every time the wretched man
begged him to go away he got so indignant and abusive that the sick one
finally laughed outright, thereby lifting them both out of the depths of
grey despair.

"That's the way, 'Snooks,'" commented Con. (He had nicknamed his
shack-mate "Snooks.") "Just you laugh, it will do you no end of good,
don't you know."

But in spite of his heroic attempts at cheering up the sick man, Con
was undergoing a frightful experience. In the first place, there were
practically no medicines and no disinfectants in the shack. The boy
found a cake of tar soap, a bottle of salts, and a package of sulphur.
The latter he burnt daily, sprinkling it on a shovel of coals. The tar
soap was a blessing both to himself and the patient, and the salts they
both swallowed manfully and daily. There was rice, oatmeal, tapioca,
jam, tinned stuffs and prunes, and Con knew as little of cookery as he
knew of nursing, but he made shift with the little store in hand. Snooks
kept alive and the boy remained well. But the nights were long periods
of horror. Snooks would become delirious with fever, and the torture of
the foul disease would become unbearable.

Once they had an out-and-out fight. Snooks, fever crazed, struggled to
get out of bed, crying that he was going to sink his agonized body in
the creek, and Con gripped the poor abhorrent wrists, forcing the man
to his back. Then flinging his whole weight above the prostrate body he
held him by sheer force, conquering and saving this life which had no
claims on him except that of all common humanity. An onlooker would have
thought that the dread disease had no horrors for the boy, but Con was
only human, and many a time he fought it out with himself when the
terrors of the threatened infection were upon him. Then he would say
to himself, "Con, are you going to try and be a gentleman through your
whole life, or just be a cad?" Then all thought of quitting would
vanish, and back he would go to the shack, to be rewarded by a wonderful
look of dog-like gratitude that would shine in Snooks' festered eyes,
replacing the haunting fear that always lurked there whenever the boy
remained outside any length of time--the fear that Con, too, had gone,
as had his "pardner," leaving him forever alone.

"Don't you get scared," Con would say on these occasions. "I'm with you
to the finish for good or ill, and it will be for good, I think."

"It sure is for _my_ good," Snooks had said once. "If I pull out of this
I'll be another man, and it will be owing to having known you, pard. I
had forgotten that such bravery and decency and unselfishness existed.
I had--"

"Oh, quit it! Stop it!" Con smiled. "This isn't anything--don't you
know." But Snooks shook his head thoughtfully, muttering, "I _do_ know,
and you're making another man of me."

One day, after two weeks had dragged wearily past wherein no human being
had passed up the unfrequented trail, Con heard gun shots, distant at
first, then nearing the shack. Like a wild being he sprang to the door,
hoping some range rider, chancing by, would at least bring food and a
doctor, when, to his horror, he saw Banty riding by, almost exhausted,
peering to right and left of the trail, searching--searching, he well
knew, for his lost cousin. Con made a rapid bolt for a hiding place, but
Banty, whose quick eyes had caught sight of the fleeting figure, gave a
yell of delight as he leaped from his saddle.

"Don't you come _near_ this place! Get out, _get_ out, I tell you!"
screamed Con, while Banty stood as if petrified, staring wide-eyed at
his seemingly insane cousin.

"You come near here and I'll trim you within an inch of your life," Con
roared anew, shaking his fist menacingly. "I'll trim you the way I did
the fellow who sent me the blue ribbon for my hair. We've got smallpox
here. I'm looking after a chap who is down with it. Get us a doctor and
beef tea and more tar soap and food, but don't you come an inch nearer,
Banty, _don't_. Think of aunt and the people at the ranch. You can't do
any good, and I'll go clean crazy if you expose yourself to this. Oh,
Banty, get out of this, get out of this, or, I tell you, _honest_, I'll
lick you if you don't."

Banty was no coward, but Con looked terrifyingly fierce and in dead
earnest, and the boy's common sense told him that he could far better
serve these stricken shackmen in doing as he was bidden. So after
more explanations and instructions, he mounted and rode away like one
possessed, Con's last words ringing in his ears: "Don't forget _barrels_
of tar soap, and _tons_ of tea. I haven't had a drink of tea for ten
days."

Late that night a young doctor rode up from Kamloops, and in his wake
a professional nurse with supplies of food, medicines, and exquisitely
fresh, clean sheets. While the physician bent over the sick man, Con
seized a package of groceries and in five minutes was drinking a cup of
his beloved English tea, as calmly as if he had been nursing a friend
with a headache.

Presently the doctor beckoned him outside. Con put down his cup
regretfully and followed.

"Young man," said the doctor, eyeing him curiously, "Do you know who
this man is you've been nursing, exposing yourself to death for?"

"Haven't an idea; I call him 'Snooks,'" said Con.

"Much better call him 'Crooks,'" said the doctor, angrily. "You've been
risking your life and that pretty pink English skin of yours for one of
the most worthless men in British Columbia; he's been a cattle rustler,
a 'salter' of gold mines, and everything that is discreditable; it makes
me indignant. He tells me he at least had the decency to warn you, when
you came here. What ever made you come on--in?"

Con stared at the doctor, a cold, a "stony British" stare. "Why,
doctor," he said, "because Snooks has been a--a--failure, I don't see
that's any reason why I should be a cad."

The doctor looked at him hard. "I wish I had a son like you," he
remarked.

"My father is an army surgeon; he's been through the cholera scourge in
India twice. I never could have looked him in the face again if I hadn't
seen Snooks through," said Con, simply.

"Well, you can look him in the face now all right, boy!" the doctor
replied, gravely. "Say good-bye to your sick friend, for we've brought a
tent and you are to be soaked in disinfectants and put into quarantine.
No more of this pest-shack for you, my boy."

So Con went back to shake hands with "Snooks," who said very quietly: "I
can't even say 'Thank you,' as I want to; I guess the best way to thank
a pard is to live it, not speak it. I ain't said a prayer for years till
the day you came here, and I've prayed night and day, _real_ prayers,
that you wouldn't get this disease. Maybe that'll show you, pard, that
I've started to be a new man."

"Yes, that shows," answered Con confidentially, and with another
handclasp, he left for his little tent, with a great faith in his heart
that the sick man's prayers would be answered.

At last one joyous day the doctor sent for Banty, who rode over with a
led horse, and Con, leaping into the saddle, waved good-bye to Snooks,
who, now convalescent, stood in the door of the distant shack. As the
boy galloped off up the trail, Snooks turned to the nurse and said:

"I'm going to live so that youngster will never regret what he's done.
That's about the only reward I can give him."

The nurse looked up gravely. "If I have estimated that boy right," she
said, "I think that's about the only reward he would care to have."

That was a great night at the ranch. Most delicious things to eat and
drink awaited Con after his long isolation, and Mr. and Mrs. Clark
welcomed him as if he had been a son instead of a nephew. The range
riders came in, each one getting him to tell of his antics with the
sulphur and shovel of coals, over which they roared with laughter.
Banty's delight at having his comrade back from danger knew no bounds,
and when The Eena appeared Banty flung an arm about Con's shoulders,
exclaiming: "Isn't this old chap a splendid King Georgeman, Eena?"

The old hunter replied with much self-satisfaction: "Maybe now you not
think old Indian saying so queer. Did I not say, me, that narrow,
thin--what you name it,--nostril, shows man that is brave, man that has
no fear? Me sabe now. He _not_ 'bally.'"



Gun-Shy Billy


"No, sir! Not for me," Bert Hooper was saying. "I won't join the crowd
if Billy is going. Do you fellows suppose I'm going to have my holiday
all spoiled, and not get any game, all because you want Billy? _He's_
no good on a hunting trip. I tell you he's gun-shy."

"That's so," said another boy. "I've seen him stop his ears with his
fingers when Bert shot his gun off--more than once, too."

"Ought to be named 'Gussie,'" said Bert. "A great big fellow like Billy,
_scared of a gun_! He must be sixteen, and large for his age at that.
He's worse than that dog I had last year--don't you remember, boys? He'd
follow us for miles through the bush, raise game, point a partridge all
right, and the second we shot a gun off--no more dog. All you'd see was
a white-and-tan streak with its tail curled under it, making for home."

"Well," said Tommy McLean, a boy who never spoke until all the rest had
thrashed a subject out, "I'd rather see a fellow gun-shy than see him
a bally idiot with fire-arms. I know when I got my gun, I got a lesson
with it. Father gave it to me himself, when I was fourteen, last year.
I never saw him look so serious as when he put it in my hands and said,
'Tom,' (he always calls me Tom, not Tommy, when he's in earnest)--'Tom,'
he said, 'a gun is a good thing in the right hands, a bad thing in the
wrong. A boy that is careless with a gun is worse than a born idiot; a
boy that in play points a gun, loaded or unloaded, at any person, place,
or thing, should be, and often does, land in prison. A gun is made for
three things only: the first, to shoot animals and birds for food alone,
not for sport; the second, to defend one's life from the attack of wild
beasts; the third, to shoot the tar out of the enemy when you are
fighting as a soldier for your sovereign and your flag.'"

"Bully for Tommy's father!" yelled Bert. "I hate being lectured, but
that sounds like good common sporting sense, and we'll all try to stick
by it on this hunting trip."

They were a nice lot of boys, all jolly, sturdy, manly chaps, who,
however, seldom included Billy Jackson in their outings, for every
holiday seemed to find him too busy to join them. For notwithstanding
his unfortunate fear of a gunshot, Billy had always been a great lover
of a uniform. As a youngster he would follow the soldiers every parade
day, not for the glory of marching in step to the music of the band, but
for the chance it gave him to throw back his shoulders, puff out his
small chest, and blow on his tin pipe-whistle in adoring imitation of
the bugler. He thought there was nothing in the world so important as
the bugler. Billy thought it did not matter that the shining little
"trumpet" merely voiced an officer's commands. The fact always remained
that at the clear, steady notes the soldiers wheeled to do his bidding;
that the bugler was a power for courage or cowardice, whichever way a
boy was built.

Then, as he grew older, he, too, began to practise on a bugle. He would
sit out on the little side verandah, early and late, tooting every
regimental call he could remember, until the time came when his
perseverance met with reward. He actually found himself installed as
bugler to the little regiment of smartly-uniformed men that was the
pride of the gay Ontario city that Billy called home.

Then it was that the other boys never got Billy on a holiday. When
Victoria Day came the soldiers always went "into camp" for three days,
strict military discipline reigned, and Billy must be with his company.
When Dominion Day arrived the regiment always visited some distant city
to assist in some important patriotic celebration. Thanksgiving Day
always found them in the thick of annual drill, and there was sure to be
a "sham battle" at which poor Billy had to toot the commands, his eyes
blinking and the nerves chasing themselves up and down his back, while
the blank cartridges peppered away harmlessly, and the field-pieces
roared innocently past his ears.

"The boys" usually came with throngs of citizens to see the "sham
fights." They would range themselves on a slope of hills, as near as
possible to the "battlefield," and often above the bellowing guns, above
the colonel's command, above his own shrill bugle calls, Billy could
hear Bert Hooper and Tommy McLean egging him on, sometimes with jeers,
sometimes with admiration, telling him to "Look up plucky now, Billy,
and don't stop your ears with your fingers!" He used to be astonished
at himself that he cared so little whether they teased or cheered. He
seemed to care for nothing in all the world but the Colonel's voice
and his bugle.

Then the day came when he knew there was something greater than the
colonel to be obeyed, something dearer than his bugle to be proud of.
For many weeks the newspapers had teemed with little else but news of
the South African War. Nothing was talked of in all Canada, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, but the battles, the hardships, the
privations, of the gallant British regiments in the far-off enemy's
country. Then came the cry, wrung from England's heart to her colonies,
"Come over and help us!"

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, sprang to their feet like obedient
children, ready and anxious to fight and die for their mother at her
first call.

Billy and his father faced each other--one was sixteen, the other forty.
They did not stand looking at each other as father and son, but as man
and man.

"Billy," said his father, "you don't remember your mother; she died
while you were still a baby. If she were living, I would not hint of
this to you, but--_I_ go to South Africa with the very first Canadian
contingent. You are the best bugler in Canada. What do _you_ want to
do?"

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