Chapter 10

1.

In the early days of detachable cuffs and ten-cent whisky there had been a difference of opinion manifest in the railroad surveying party at Granger.

Part of the gang headed northward to the salmon country; the rest of them blazed a trail to the southwest, where the sand fleas live on artichokes.

Lily and her escort were headed southwest towards San Francisco. Presently the Wildcat's car was cut into a train whose trail led northward through Idaho and Oregon.

Lady Luck meanwhile had a hard time keeping up. Exhausted finally with her efforts, she set the stage a few hundred miles ahead and lay down and went to sleep. While she was sleeping a pair of hard boiled actors in the drama rummaged around in the woodshed back of a log house near the banks of the Columbia river.

Pete, a skinny character with ears like a loving cup, raked three wheat sacks out of a pile of lumber.

Into two of these sacks he cut a pair of holes two inches in diameter and about four inches apart. The third sack he left intact. He handed one of the sacks to his partner.

"Here she is; see if it fits you."

A fat bad actor by the name of Bill slipped the sack over his head. "Little narrow between the eyes."

Three hours later these two agents of Lady Luck engaged in a little hard work in their search for easy money. The product of their energy took shape in the form of a pyramid of old ties piled between the rails of the line over which the Wildcat was approaching in his twelve-wheeled cage.

Ten minutes before the train was due and while her crossing whistles could be heard in the dusk five miles up-stream, the two bad actors scrambled up the south bank of the Columbia. The skinny one poured a quart bottle of coal oil on the pile of ties and lighted it. The fat man lighted a cigarette.

Both of them drew the wheat sacks over their heads. The fat man carried the third wheat sack slung at his waist on a string which went around his shoulder.

The stillness of evening was broken by the roar of a locomotive whistle, and an instant later the wheels of the train smoked and screeched against the chattering brake shoes. In the cab ahead the handle of the air valve was slammed into the big notch.

The flagman swung down from the rear end of the train and ambled back along the track for half the regulation distance. He set his lantern in the middle of the track and rolled a cigarette. Three lanterns flashed along the train, where the train countered a locked door. Inside the car, on a seat to see what was going on.

Presently they found out and took their places beside the fireman and engineer, hands raised.

With his wheat sack dangling more heavily on his hip as he progressed through the train, the fat bad actor skimmed the Pullman cream on his way forward to the plated jewelry in the day coach.

On the vestibule of the Wildcat's car he encountered a locked door. Inside the car, on a seat beside the rag-head Hindoo, the Wildcat curled himself up as a preface to twelve long chapters of easy sleep.

"Sho's noble when de train stops; boy can sleep peaceful 'thout gittin' his insides scrambled."

"Bam!"

The fat bad actor shot the lock off the door of the Wildcat's car.

"Boy sure can sleep noble. Good mawnin--"

The rest of the sentence was action and not words. On the echo of the shot from the fat bad actor's gun the Wildcat leaped automatically. He ran fast enough to sidestep two more shots that crashed into the night after him. The Hindoo passed him in the darkness.

Down along the track the Wildcat's feet tore up great gobs of right-of-way. He passed the flagman, going like a brunet typhoon ten days overdue. After the first mile he began putting his feet down a little slower before he stepped on them. At the second mile his hind legs were dragging, and then suddenly, instead of the hard ground beneath his feet, there was nothing but a black void.

He rolled a few times like a 'possum falling off a limb. He landed on the hard sand of the river bank. Night had fallen.

"Lady Luck, here us is. Whah at is we?"

The Wildcat curled up and went to sleep.

He woke up five minutes later. "Sho' is peaceful. How come I's so thirsty?"

Beside him the river offered him a solution to his thirst problems. On all fours he crawled to the river edge. He shoved his bow under the water and nearly sank himself absorbing as much of the Columbia river as could flow into his wide mouth.

"Whuff! Sho' is noble water."

The black rippling water before him was suddenly shot with silver. Then it became a solid glistening black. A school of smelt, seeking the quiet water of the bank, fought their way upstream. The Wildcat reached a tentative exploring paw into the stream of fish.

"Fish, howdy. De table sho' is set. Come out heah."

With his bare hands he snatched ashore a breakfast four sizes too big for his optimistic estimate of his stomach's capacity.

"Quit floppin'. Ole Wilecat's done caught you." He felt for the box of Pullman matches in the pocket of his shirt, beneath the folds of the parade-leading Prince Albert. Here was food and a chance to sleep. With the Wildcat, all was well.

He accumulated a pile of firewood from the river bank, and presently a great fire was blazing. For an hour he gorged himself on smelt.

"Whuff! Sho's noble fish. Now I sees kin I sleep me."

The twinkling stars rattled in their orbits in cadence to the Wildcat's snores. Sufficient unto the night was the evil thereof. Here, except for a few sand fleas, was peace. The Wildcat snuggled deeper into the intimate environment of the sand about him. His lower jaw dropped, and his tongue lolled out less than a foot. Three or four mosquitoes landed on him and did a little boring, but the Wildcat slept on. Presently the halo of fish about him quit flopping. In the dark waters of the river's margin their myriad brethren fought their way upstream. The Wildcat mumbled in his sleep,

"Lady Luck sure done noble.
I sleeps mos' all de time.
I don' give a dog-gone
If de sun don't nevah shine."

2.

In the Cascades there had been berries enough for the bears and for the Indians. Now that the salmon run was heralded in the Columbia by the little fish scouts, all of the scattered members of the Flathead tribe not otherwise engaged coagulated from their several loafing grounds and headed for Memloose Island to pay their annual respects to the ghost of the King Salmon.

Included in the tribe were a few solid citizens. Some of these were college graduates. John Running Bear, better known to the business men of The Dalles as John Franklin, left his tailored clothes at home and painted his brown body with yellow ochre. He stained his arms and face with the tribal marks of his people. He drove in his twelve-cylinder car to a point near the upstream tip of Memloose Island, whereon the Flathead salmon dance was to be held. He parked his car in a thicket of willows.

"Safe enough," he said to his companion. "If some bundle-stiff or some drifter from a sheep camp up the line needs the old wagon more than I do, he's welcome to it. Let's go."

At dawn Running Bear and his companions encountered a hundred of their fellows. From the camp the smoke of the cooking fires lifted in the still air. Running Bear opened a tin of chicken. He sighed.

"This is the last civilized meal for the next six days."

He breakfasted slowly, lingering over his coffee, and then half reluctantly the last trace of civilization's veneer was cast aside.

"Clee Hy Yah Skookum Kum chuck. Waugh!"

3.

Half a mile upstream from the Indian camp the Wildcat greeted the dawn. Building a quick fire, he looked about him at the wrinkled little fish, drying in the early morning sunlight. Slithering past him in the water still persisted the mad rush of racing myriads. He threw the dead fish back into the stream and raked out a fresher breakfast.

He poulticed a dozen fish with maple leaves and threw them in the glowing coals of his fire. Ten minutes later he again began the business of gorging himself on free fish.

"Don't cost me nuthin'." He clawed the water for another dozen handfuls. "Free fish, howdy doo.

"I eats when I can git it.
I sleeps mos' all de time."

Gorged to the bursting point, the Wildcat rolled over in the warm sunlight. He preferred not to go to sleep again, but in five minutes he was snoring along at his old sixty-mile gait. He slept all day.

He was discovered and surrounded at evening by Running Bear and the rest of the tribe.

Running Bear sized up the situation and pulled off a pow-wow with three or four of his companions. They arrived at a verdict.

"A little black-face vaudeville might liven things up. These blasted tribal ceremonies need a cabaret attachment to jazz them up. How about it, redskins?"

"Let's go."

The verdict was unanimous.

Somewhere in the Wildcat's dreams there presently developed a rhythm in which the cadence of dancing feet punctuated his slumbers. His eyes opened finally, and within the range of his vision passed a parade of leaping figures. To his ears came the regular booming beat of a deerskin tom-tom, punctuated by an occasional blood-curdling yell.

His memory failed him.

"How come dis voodoo bizness?"

He sat up. He got to his feet and instinctively crouched to a running position.

The ring of dancing warriors about him tightened up.

"Lady Luck, whah is you?"

Running Bear lifted a flint-tipped spear over his head and emitted a shriek compared to which the Rebel yell was a chirp from the weakened lungs of the dove of peace.

In spite of his fish-distended anatomy, the Wildcat shrivelled to boy's size.

Running Bear emitted several mouthfuls of language.

"Naw suh, not me." The Wildcat denied everything. "I ain't only a field han'. Lemme by, boy. Whah at's yo' pants? How come you runnin' around nekked?"

"Waugh!"

Six Indians seized the Wildcat, and a moment later he was seated in the stern of a twenty-foot skiff, which presently embarked upon the surface of the Columbia. Beside the Wildcat sat Running Bear, speaking a fluent mixture of Flathead and Chinook.

In time with Running Bear's measured periods, the Wildcat rolled his eyes. Now and then when the Indian's sense of humour got the best of him he varied his Chinook jargon with Wild shrieks of laughter.

"Sounds like dem crazy folks in dat car comin' from Chicago. Seems like de whole worl' done got crowded wid fools. What you laffin' at, boy?"

In a little while the party landed at Memloose Island. Before them, rising sharply against the evening sky, drooping cottonwoods lifted high above an undergrowth of willows. The party marched down a little trail for half the length of the island, and then, at a point where the trail divided into the sombre interior of the wooded terrain, they left the sunlight.

After a march of a hundred yards they came upon a clearing. About the clearing in the fringing woods were fifty rickety structures lifted on poles. On each of these, with its grinning skull lying towards the east, lay a skeleton.

The Wildcat began to sweat. He counted a dozen skeletons and added a few dozen prayers to his perspiration. In a green alcove opening from the wider clearing seven skeletons stood erect in a ring about a flat stone.

His captors carried the Wildcat to this stone and held him. A little apart from him Running Bear opened the services with a yell which echoed like a chorus from the inferno.

The Wildcat gave up hope.

"They sho' got me. What dey is I don' know. Lemme go, boys."

The smoke from a dozen fires lifted in the clearing. Staggering in from half a dozen paths came as many painted warriors, each bearing on his back a salmon nearly as long as its red-skinned carrier.

Running Bear abandoned the vernacular for a moment and dropped into English.

"The Gods of the waters have sent the salmon. The black man can feast with his red brothers."

"Them words sure sounds noble. How come you pester me talkin' voodoo talk?"

"After the feast the fires of sacrifice will be lighted. It is written that one of our number shall be burned at the stake."

To the Wildcat's ears this sounded homelike, but not reassuring.

"Lemme go! Lemme go!"

He leaped from the rock and plunged through the fringing skeletons. Running Bear and a dozen of his companions loped along after the Wildcat. The galloping party covered the length of the island. Running Bear and his companions deployed in open order, to permit the Wildcat to double on his trail; but that panic-stricken individual had fixed his course, and he sailed true to it.

He headed for a twenty-foot bank, and his racing legs did not stop until the swirling waters of the Columbia had closed heavily over them.

Running Bear, who had followed as swiftly as his civilized muscles would permit, gazed anxiously at the swimming Wildcat for a moment, to reassure himself of his victim's safety.

"Go to it," he commented. "You'll make the mile in nothing flat with that panic crawl." He watched the Wildcat until the current swept him around the bend downstream.

"He's safe," Running Bear commented. "On with the dance."

He resumed the redskin role of a distant yesterday.

"Waugh!"

4.

In the gathering dusk the Wildcat swam and floated for a mile downstream in the currents of the Columbia; then under the insistent drag of a wide-swinging eddy he headed for the leading fences of a great salmon wheel whose plunging buckets dived into the black currents and lifted with their gamble of fifty-pound salmon. Now and then a heavier fish would punctuate the monotony of the catch.

Flopping among their more substantial companions a fleet of leaping steel heads added splashes of silver to the Chinook background.

The swimming Wildcat saw above him the descending framework of the fish wheel. He tried vainly to escape from the cage of wire netting falling from the sky upon him, but he was captured like a moth lost in a butterfly net.

"Lady Luck, good-bye."

The Wildcat dragged in a deep lungful of air as he went under. Five seconds later, preceded by three heavy-set salmon, he slithered down a trough into the storage bin in the hull of the fish wheel. About him were plunging fish. He looked at the square of evening light which glimmered through the hatch.

"Whah at is I?"

A fifty-pound salmon, sliding down the trough, struck fairly against the Wildcat's stomach.

"Fish, how come?"

Another leaping salmon slapped the Wildcat with his tail.

"Don't kick me wid yo' tail. I'll bust you in de haid."

The Wildcat struck wildly at the offending salmon. He slipped and fell into a vast fighting mass of lively fish. He wrestled with fins and tails.

He called loudly for Captain Jack and for Lady Luck. Once he thought his call was answered, but for half an hour the Wildcat led an unstable slippery life. He sought a bed of inert fish, only to awaken five or six gasping demons who flopped upon him heavily. He reached in vain for the hatch coaming five feet above him.

Half erect and with the deck timbers almost in his grasp, time and again his feet slipped from the back of a wriggling salmon.

"Dog-gone you, stand still; get pacified." He hauled off and slammed a kick at a salmon which had tripped him.

"I'll bust you in de belly."

He landed with his equator submerged by nine nervous fish. He sought to embrace a giant salmon. The Chinook slapped at him with his tail.

"Don' kick me wid yo' tail. I'll bust you in de nose."

He swung wildly at the salmon and was completely submerged. He came snorting to the surface of the mass.

"Whuff! Fish, git ca'm. Does yo' lay still I does."

5.

On deck near the hatch coaming in the early night Mr. Ogaloff Skooglund, the proprietor of the fish wheel, massaged his front teeth with Copenhagen snuff and figured his winnings.

"If de salmon fisk been running like dis tree day more Aye cleans oop sax t'ousand doller."

An echo from some unseen source seemed to reply.

Mr. Skooglund called loudly to the echo and then decided that he was crazy, for the call was repeated from the river bank.

The proprietor of the fish wheel yelled a greeting into the darkness.

Down the bank into the circle of light cast by a dim lantern came a fat man and a skinny individual with ears like a loving cup.

The fat man carried a wheat sack whose heavy contents jingled when he sat it on the deck of the fish wheel.

The pair were out of breath. The owner of the fish wheel stepped forward to try his English on his nocturnal visitors.

"Hello, fellers," he said.

The fat man answered, "Evenin'."

The skinny man tightened up on his ears for an instant and swung at Mr. Skooglund with a short club.

"Good evening," he said, accenting the blow. The Swede took the count with a grunt.

The fat man and the skinny one picked up Mr. Skooglund and carried him to the open hatch. Feet first they dropped him upon the slithering mass of salmon five feet below.

"He might drown. What did you hit him so hard for?"

"No chance. He ain't hurt--he'll sleep two or three hours. I only hit him light. You can't kill these fish fighters hittin' 'em in the head, anyway. Ivory--who's that?"

The fish wheel was being boarded by another visitor.

"Talk fish. You an' me owns the boat. We ain't seen nobody." The skinny man whispered quickly to his companion. "Kick that sack in the hold."

The wheat sack with its clinking contents was cast into the open hatch.

The Wildcat made another futile leap at the hatch coaming, just in time to catch the impact of the wheat sack and its jingling contents.

"How come?"

Then he twisted away from there and groaned a groan in which rumbled the anguished accents of horror. In the dim light he saw Mr. Skooglund's face festooned completely by floundering salmon. Fear froze him.

"Salmon wid a man's face. I sho' is crazy."

Then to his ears from the deck of the fish wheel came the diverting tones of a voice which he had heard before. "The fat bad actor!"

"The fat bad actor!"

He listened for a moment to reassure himself, and then the motive of revenge was added to the other sources of inspiration which tensed the muscles of his legs. He leaped once more for the hatch coaming. This time he grabbed it. Silently he swung himself to the deck of the boat. Panting with his efforts, he lay quiet in the darkness.

In the dim lantern light he saw three figures.

The fat bad actor was speaking. "Naw, sir. Sheriff, we ain't seen nobody. We just bought this here wheel from the fellow that owned it yesterday. What did you say them train robbers looked like?"

The Wildcat snaked himself forward toward the fat bad actor. On the way his hand encountered the blade of an oaken oar. Thereafter for the next twenty feet he trailed the oar after him. He came within range and above the head of the fat bad actor lifted the heavy handle of the oar.

"Bam!"

On the instant the Sheriff leaped for the shadows. Out of the darkness came his voice.

"Don't move! Nobody!"

"Cap'n, I don' crave to move, an' de fat boy kain't, any more dan de dead man in de cellar."

The Sheriff's voice came out of the night clear as the cold stars. "Cut a piece of that rope and tie this man's hands."

The Wildcat was a little slow about tying a white man's hands, but he glanced at the blue-nosed equalizer dimly outlined in the Sheriff's steady hand and accelerated his gestures.

"Tie up that other man layin' on the deck. Tie them two men together."

"Cap'n, yessuh. How 'bout de dead boy layin' in de boat cellar?"

The Sheriff, fearing a ruse, hesitated for only a moment.

"Drop a rope down there and crawl down where he is. Tie it under his arms and then come back and haul him up."

"I's skeered to touch dat boy; feared he come back and follow me."

The Sheriff swung the gun at the Wildcat.

"Hurry up, before I spatter a hole through you."

"Cap'n, yessuh." The Wildcat made a line fast and threw the end of it into the hull of the fish wheel. He retrieved Mr. Skooglund from his environment of flopping salmon and tied the line under the arms of the inert man. He scrambled back on deck and hauled the Swede after him.

"Get a bucket of water and throw it on him."

Under this ungentle treatment the victim presently opened his eyes. He reached an unsteady hand to his head and inspected a knob thereon the size of an egg.

"Yust ven I hear de little angels iss singing, de earthquake troo de church down on me."

His vision encountered the Sheriff and the Wildcat.

"Was any salmon saved?"

The Sheriff reassured him.

"You had a wallop on the head. You're all right now." He abandoned Mr. Skooglund for a moment and turned to the Wildcat.

"Where's the dividend?"

"Cap'n, how come?"

"Come through with the clean up. You got enough watches and rings from them passengers to sink this craft."

"Mebbe it's de bag."

Convoyed by the swinging muzzle of the Sheriff's gun, the Wildcat dived again into the open hatch and returned presently with the jingling wheat sack swung about his shoulders.

The Sheriff inspected the contents.

"That's it."

He turned to the Swede.

"You able to walk?"

It seemed that Mr. Skooglund could navigate on his hind legs. The fat bad actor still lay unconscious on the deck. The Wildcat had done a good job with the oar, and it took six buckets of water to bring the fat man out of his slumbers. The quartette preceded the Sheriff down the narrow gang plank to the bank. They made their way a mile upstream and came upon the Sheriff's horse, hitched fast to a cottonwood on the river bank. The Sheriff fired his revolver three times in the air. Half an hour later he yelled loudly, and an answering call came from the distance through the night.

"That's the rest of the gang."

The party was joined presently by half a dozen riders. Two hours later the Wildcat, heavily ironed, rode beside Mr. Skooglund in the smoking car of the train headed for The Dalles. Dawn was breaking as the Sheriff and his companions marched up the street from the station.

Presently, in a cell apart from the rest of the world, the Wildcat heard the clanking of the heavy bolts which made the cell door a barrier.

"Lady Luck, how come?"

6.

Lady Luck was on the job. At eleven o'clock that morning the fat bad actor confessed, and in his confession the Wildcat was cleared.

A Deputy brought a telegram to the Sheriff. The Sheriff read it.

"Thousand dollars, hey? Looks to me like that nigger deserves the reward." The Sheriff was honest. "Fetch him in here."

The Wildcat was hazed into the Sheriff's presence.

"The railroad is paying a thousand dollars reward for roundin' up them two men. Maybe they'd got loose if you hadn't nailed that one in the head. I'll give you a letter to the Portland office and you can go down there and get your money."

"Cap'n, yessuh. Hot dam! Fish always was lucky with me."

Mr. Skooglund augmented the reward with a personal offer.

"Any time you wanting a salmon fisk I give you one free."

"Cap'n, suh, I sho' is much obliged, but if I neveh see a fish again, dat's twice too soon fo' me."