Kabanata Kabanata 6 · BOOK I CHAPTER VI

I slept but fitfully, for the night air was nipping, and the bunkhouse

nigh as open as a cage. A bonny morning it was, and the sun warmed me

nicely, so that over breakfast I was in a cheerful humour. Afterwards I

watched the gang labouring, and showed such an injudicious interest that

that afternoon I too was put to work.

It was very simple. Running into the mountain there was a tunnel, which

they were lining with concrete, and it was the task of I and another to

push cars of the stuff from the outlet to the scene of operations. My

partner was a Swede who had toiled from boyhood, while I had never done

a day's work in my life. It was as much as I could do to lift the loaded

boxes into the car. Then we left the sunshine behind us, and for a

quarter of a mile of darkness we strained in an uphill effort.

From the roof, which we stooped to avoid, sheets of water descended.

Every now and then the heavy cars would run off the rails, which were of

scantling, worn and frayed by friction. Then my Swede would storm in

Berserker rage, and we would lift till the veins throbbed in my head.

Never had time seemed so long. A convict working in the salt mines of

Siberia did not revolt more against his task than I. The sweat blinded

me; a bright steel pain throbbed in my head; my heart seemed to hammer.

Never so thankful was I as when we had made our last trip, and sick and

dizzy I put on my coat to go home.

It was dark. There was a cable line running from the tunnel to the camp,

and down this we shot in buckets two at a clip. The descent gave me a

creepy sensation, but it saved a ten minutes' climb down the mountain

side, and I was grateful.

Tired, wet and dirty, how I envied the Prodigal lying warm and cosy on

his fragrant hay. He was reading a novel. But the thought that I had

earned a dollar comforted me. After supper he, with Ginger and Dutchy,

played solo till near midnight, while I tossed on my bunk too weary and

sore to sleep.

Next day was a repetition of the first, only worse. I ached as if I had

been beaten. Stiff and sore I dragged myself to the tunnel again. I

lifted, strained, tugged and shoved with a set and tragic face. Five

hours of hell passed. It was noon. I nursed my strength for the after

effort. Angrily I talked to myself, and once more I pulled through.

Weary and slimy with wet mud, I shot down the cable line. Snugly settled

in his bunk, the Prodigal had read another two hundred pages of "Les

Miserables." Yet--I reflected somewhat sadly--I had made two dollars.

On the third day sheer obstinacy forced me to the tunnel. My

self-respect goaded me on. I would not give in. I must hold this job

down, I _must_, I MUST. Then at the noon hour I fainted.

No one saw me, so I gritted my teeth and once more threw my weight

against the cars. Once more night found me waiting to descend in the

bucket. Then as I stood there was a crash and shouts from below. The

cable had snapped. My Swede and another lay among the rocks with sorely

broken bones. Poor beggars! how they must have suffered jolting down

that boulder-strewn trail to the hospital.

Somehow that destroyed my nerve. I blamed myself indeed. I flogged

myself with reproaches, but it was of no avail. I would sooner beg my

bread than face that tunnel once again. The world seemed to be divided

into two parts, the rest of it and that tunnel. Thank God, I didn't

_have_ to go into it again. I was exultantly happy that I didn't. The

Prodigal had finished his book, and was starting another. That night he

borrowed some of my money to play solo with.

Next day I saw the foreman. I said:

"I want to go. The work up there's too hard for me."

He looked at me kindly.

"All right, sonny," says he, "don't quit. I'll put you in the gravel

pit."

So next day I found a more congenial task. There were four of us. We

threw the gravel against a screen where the finer stuff that sifted

through was used in making concrete.

The work was heart-breaking in its monotony. In the biting cold of the

morning we made a start, long before the sun peeped above the wall of

mountain.

We watched it crawl, snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its

heat. We saw it drop again behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky

gorgeously barred with colour from a tawny orange glow to an ice-pale

green--a regular _pousse cafe_ of a sunset. Then when the cold and the

dark surged back, by the light of the evening star we straightened our

weary spines, and throwing aside pick and shovel hurried to supper.

Heigh-ho! what a life it was. Resting, eating, sleeping; negative

pleasures became positive ones. Life's great principle of compensation

worked on our behalf, and to lie at ease, reading an old paper, seemed

an exquisite enjoyment.

I was much troubled about the Prodigal. He complained of muscular

rheumatism, and except to crawl to meals was unable to leave his bunk.

Every day came the foreman to inquire anxiously if he was fit to go to

work, but steadily he grew worse. Yet he bore his suffering with great

spirit, and, among that nondescript crew, he was a thing of joy and

brightness, a link with that other world which was mine own. They

nicknamed him "Happy," his cheerfulness was so invincible. He played

cards on every chance, and he must have been unlucky, for he borrowed

the last of my small hoard.

One morning I woke about six, and found, pinned to my blanket, a note

from my friend.

"Dear Scotty:

"I grieve to leave you thus, but the cruel foreman insists on me

working off my ten days' board. Racked with pain as I am, there

appears to be no alternative but flight. Accordingly I fade away

once more into the unknown. Will write you general delivery, Los

Angeles. Good luck and good-bye. Yours to a cinder,

"Happy."

There was a hue and cry after him, but he was gone, and a sudden disgust

for the place came over me. For two more days I worked, crushed by a

gloom that momently intensified. Clamant and imperative in me was the

voice of change. I could not become toil-broken, so I saw the foreman.

"Why do you want to go?" he asked reproachfully.

"Well, sir, the work's too monotonous."

"Monotonous! Well, that's the rummest reason I ever heard a man give for

quitting. But every man knows his own business best. I'll give you a

time-cheque."

While he was making it out I wondered if, indeed, I did know my own

business best; but if it had been the greatest folly in the world, I was

bound to get out of that canyon.

Treasuring the slip of paper representing my labour, I sought one of the

bosses, a sour, stiff man of dyspeptic tendencies. With a smile of

malicious sweetness he returned it to me.

"All right, take it to our Oakland office, and you'll get the cash."

Expectantly I had been standing there, thinking to receive my money, the

first I had ever earned (and to me so distressfully earned, at that).

Now I gazed at him very sick at heart: for was not Oakland several

hundred miles away, and I was penniless.

"Couldn't you cash it here?" I faltered at last.

"No!" (very sourly).

"Couldn't you discount it, then?"

"No!" (still more tartly).

I turned away, crestfallen and smarting. When I told the other boys they

were indignant, and a good deal alarmed on their own account. I made my

case against the Company as damning as I could, then, slinging my

blankets on my back, set off once more down the canyon.