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The Trail of '98: A Northland Romance, a novel by Robert W. Service |
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Book 3. The Camp - Chapter 9 |
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_ BOOK III. THE CAMP CHAPTER IX Turning the windlass over the shaft was a little, tough mud-rat, who excited in me the liveliest sense of aversion. Pat Doogan was his name, but I will call him the "Worm." The Worm was the foulest-mouthed specimen I have yet met. He had the lowest forehead I have ever seen in a white man, and such a sharp, ferrety little face. His reddish hair had the prison clip, and his little reddish eyes were alive with craft and cruelty. I noticed he always regarded me with a peculiarly evil grin, that wrinkled up his cheeks and revealed his hideously blackened teeth. From the first he gave me a creepy feeling, a disgust as if I were near some slimy reptile. Yet the Worm tried to make up to me. He would tell me stories blended of the horrible and the grotesque. One in particular I remember. "Youse wanta know how I lost me last job. I'll tell youse. You see, it was like dis. Dere was two Blackmoor guys dat got into de country dis Spring; came by St. Michaels; Hindoos dey was. One of dem 'Sicks' (an' dey looked sick, dey was so loose an' weary in der style) got a job from old man Gustafson down de shaft muckin' up and fillin' de buckets. "Well, dere was dat Blackmoor down in de deep hole one day when I comes along, an' strikes old Gus for a job. So, seein' as de man on de windlass wanted to quit, he passed it up to me, an' I took right hold an' started in. "Say, I was feelin' powerful mean. I'd just finished up a two weeks' drunk, an' you tink de booze wasn't workin' in me some. I was seein' all kinds of funny t'ings. Why, as I was a-turnin' away at dat ol' windlass dere was red spiders crawlin' up me legs. But I was wise. I wouldn't look at dem, give dem de go-by. Den a yeller rat got gay wid me an' did some stunts on me windlass. But still I wouldn't let on. Den dere was some green snakes dat wriggled over de platform like shiny streaks on de water. Sure, I didn't like dat one bit, but I says, 'Dere ain't no snakes in de darned country, Pat, and you knows it. It's just a touch of de horrors, dat's all. Just pass 'em up, boy; don't take no notice of dem.' "Well, dis went on till I begins to get all shaky an' jumpy, an' I was mighty glad when de time came to quit, an' de boys down below gives me de holler to pull dem up. "So I started hoistin' wid dose snakes an' spiders an' rats jus' cavortin' round me like mad, when all to once who should I hoist outa de bowels of de earth but de very devil himself. "His face was black. I could see de whites of his eyes, an' he had a big dirty towel tied round his head. Well, say, it was de limit. At de sight of dat ferocious monster comin' after old Pat I gives one yell, drops de crank-handle of de windlass, an' makes a flyin' leap down de dump. I hears an awful shriek, an' de bucket an' de devil goes down smash to de bottom of de shaft, t'irty-five feet. But I kep' on runnin'. I was so scared. "Well, how was I to know dey had a Blackmoor down dere? He was a stiff when dey got him up, but how was I to know? So I lost me job." On another occasion he told me: "Say, kid, youse didn't know as I was liable to fits, did youse? Dat's so; eppylepsy de doctor tells me. Dat's what I am scared of. You see, it's like dis: if one of dem fits should hit me when I'm hoistin' de boys outer de shaft, den it would be a pity. I would sure lose me job like de oder time." He was the most degraded type of man I had yet met on my travels, a typical degenerate, dirty, drunken, diseased. He had three suits of underclothing, which he never washed. He would wear through all three in succession, and when the last got too dirty for words he would throw it under his trunk and sorrowfully go back to the first, keeping up this rotation, till all were worn out. One day Hoofman told me he wanted me to go down the shaft and work in the drift. Accordingly, next morning I and a huge Slav, by name Dooley Rileyvich, were lowered down into the darkness. The Slav initiated me. Every foot of dirt had to be thawed out by means of wood fires. We built a fire at the far end of the drift every night, covering the face we were working. First we would lay kindling, then dry spruce lying lengthways, then a bank of green wood standing on end to keep in the heat and shed the dirt that sloughed down from the roof. In the morning our fire would be burned out, and enough pay-dirt thawed to keep us picking all day. Down there I found it the hardest work of all. We had to be careful that the smoke had cleared from the drift before we ventured in, for frequently miners were asphyxiated. Indeed, the bad air never went entirely away. It made my eyes sore, my head ache. Yet, curiously enough, so long as you were below it did not affect you so much. It was when you stepped out of the bucket and struck the pure outer air that you reeled and became dizzy. It was blinding, too. Often at supper have my eyes been so blurred and sore I had to grope around uncertainly for the sugar bowl and the tin of cream. In the drift it was always cool. The dirt kept sloughing down on us, and we had really gone in too far for our own safety, but the laymen cared little for that. At the end of the drift the roof was so low we were bent almost double, picking at the face in all kinds of cramped positions, and dragging after us the heavy bucket. To the big Slav it was all in the day's work, but to me it was hard, hard. The shaft was almost forty feet deep. For the first ten feet a ladder ran down it, then stopped suddenly as if the excavators had decided to abandon it. I often looked at this useless bit of ladder and wondered why it had been left unfinished. Every morning the Worm hoisted us down into the darkness, and at night drew us up. Once he said to me: "Say, wouldn't it be de tough luck if I was to take a fit when I was hoistin' youse up? Such a nice bit of a boy, too, an' I guess I'd lose my job over de head of it." I said: "Cut that out, or you'll have me so scared I won't go down." He grinned unpleasantly and said nothing more. Yet somehow he was getting on my nerves terribly. It was one evening we had banked our fires and were ready to be hoisted up. Dooley Rileyvich went first, and I watched him blot out the bit of blue for a while. Then, slowly, down came the bucket for me. I got in. I was feeling uneasy all of a sudden, and devoutly wished I were anywhere else but in that hideous hole. I felt myself leave the ground and rise steadily. The walls of the shaft glided past me. Up, up I went. The bit of blue sky grew bigger, bigger. There was a star shining there. I watched it. I heard the creak, creak of the windlass crank. Somehow it seemed to have a sinister sound. It seemed to say: "Have a care, have a care, have a care." I was now ten feet from the top. The bucket was rocking a little, so I put out my hand and grasped the lowest rung of the ladder to steady myself. Then, at that instant, it seemed the weight of the bucket pressing up against my feet was suddenly removed, and my arm was nigh jerked out of its socket. There I was hanging desperately on the lowest rung of the ladder, while, with a crash that made my heart sick, the bucket dashed to the bottom. At last, I realised, the Worm had had his fit. Quickly I gripped with both hands. With a great effort I raised myself rung by rung on the ladder. I was panic-stricken, faint with fear; but some instinct had made me hold on desperately. Dizzily I hung all a-shudder, half-sobbing. A minute seemed like a year. Ah! there was the face of Dooley looking down on me. He saw me clinging there. He was anxiously shouting to me to come up. Mastering an overpowering nausea I raised myself. At last I felt his strong arm around me, and here I swear it on a stack of Bibles that brutish Slav seemed to me like one of God's own angels. I was on firm ground once more. The Worm was lying stiff and rigid. Without a word the stalwart Slav took him on his brawny shoulder. The creek was downhill but fifty yards. Ere we reached it the Worm had begun to show signs of reviving consciousness. When we got to the edge of the icy water he was beginning to groan and open his eyes in a dazed way. "Leave me alone," he says to Rileyvich; "you Slavonian swine, lemme go." Not so the Slav. Holding the wriggling, writhing little man in his powerful arms he plunged him heels over head in the muddy current of the creek. "I guess I cure dose fits anyway," he said grimly. Struggling, spluttering, blaspheming, the little man freed himself at last and staggered ashore. He cursed Rileyvich most comprehensively. He had not yet seen me, and I heard him wailing: "Sure de boy's a stiff. Just me luck; I've lost me job." _ |
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