The Photographer of Silver Mountain

I

‘PERFESSORS don’t know everything. Why there’s things happened right here in Silver Mountain that would clean stall a perfessor.’

Billy Jackson, proprietor of the Ethiope’s Rest, and frontiersman of a generation’s standing, stared at me belligerently for full ten seconds, and convincing himself that he had a potential listener in his grasp, suggested that we sit on the porch and get a bit of the afternoon’s breeze.

The porch in question was built out over the water. Across from us the fire-charred forest swept down to the water’s edge — a black, violent contrast to the vivid blue of the sky and the soft blue-gray of the placid lake. The day was hot, and Silver Mountain had been almost deserted since early morning, because of a vague rumor of a gold-strike ten miles to the north. Mine host had time on his hands and he liked to talk.

‘No, sir, there’s fellows come along and make you think that everything you know ain’t so.’

He filled his pipe and gazed out over the water, a contented figure of a man, with a round, genial face and graying hair.

‘Now, you ’re a stranger up here, and maybe you ain’t acquainted much with the boys yet,’ he went on, settling himself comfortably to the business of narration. ‘Some of the best of them are up in the Ungava country, and some of them are just ramming around the North here, footloose, friendless, and free — and there might be some of them that had n’t ought to have stayed at home no-how. But you sure must have heard of old Tabby? What! You haven’t? Well, what do you fellows hear of back there?

‘Well, Tabby’s one of the things the books ain’t explaining. He can sit on a safety-valve till a boiler blows up and never even get singed. Read of a big disaster in the North, and you’ll find Tabby in the middle of it. Everybody else dead, and Tabby ain’t even wounded. Fossil Johnson, he’s the camp Socialist, says that Tabby’s been trying to get out from under the ekermonic pressure, but that the system’s so goldarned rotten that a man can’t even die under it. But I never took no stock in that, because Tabby’s been awful lucky. Struck the Little Queen, and sold her to Fossil for three hundred thousand. The system don’t seem to have hurt Fossil none either, but to hear him wolf about it, sure makes you plumb sorry for the man. Fossil’s mean, in a way. Yes, sir, he’s so darn mean that he’d live on milk if Doc told him to — and it’s two hundred miles to a cow.

‘Well, sir, it was Tabby I was thinking about. There’s something phoney about that man. That last time we lost Silver Mountain, — when she was blew up by the powder-cache getting in the way of a forest fire, — Tabby done it again.’

Mr. Jackson meditated a moment, drawing quickly on his pipe.

‘Maybe Silver Mountain was n’t much to look at them days; but we liked her. She was all right for her size. She’s a heap bigger now and better for business, but she ain’t the same. Why, in them days there was n’t a man in camp that would think of shaving oftener than once a week — not even the Logican. Of course, the Logican was different from the rest of the boys, but he meant all right. When he blew into camp he shook us up quite a lot. Just looking at him, I mean. Some sporting-goods house had took him under its wing and wished an awful lot of hardware and leather goods on him. But it was the camera bee that bit him the hardest. We used to put in two, three hours a day trying to dope out what he come up here for. Windy Bill O’Rourke held and maintained that it was blit affections. Windy’s strong on romance — got thrown out of college in Dublin, Ireland, for stabling his horse in his bedroom. But Fossil Johnson sets it down to the kid’s being druv to the jungles by ekermonic pressure. One day we put it up to Tabby, and he suggests that we ask the kid. So Windy puts the question, and the Logican says that he has heard that the greener a man is the better his chance at striking it rich; so he’d come after the big haul. That’s how he got the name, Logican. Windy sewed it on to him.

‘But after that Tabby seems to take a shine to the kid. Acts as though he’s afraid somebody’s going to pick on him. And I guess it did make it easier for the Logican, at that. People don’t p’soom on Tabby’s friends much. There’s that about Tabby — even when he ain’t upsot.

‘Now old Tabby has been rolling into the North and picking up money, and rolling out and spending it, for twenty year; and since Hughie Chapin got drownded while they was shooting the rapids in the Woman River, he’s played a lone hand. He’s been the first to stake in some of the best camps in the North, too, old Tabby has, and he never was tight with the boys. Staked what he wanted and passed the straight tip. Be gone for a year or two, Lord knows where, and then, when you’d most forgot him, you hear that the Dogrib Indians up on the Great Slave has killed all but one man of a party of whites — and dang my soul, if the sole survivor ain’t Tabby every time! Or if it ain’t that, there’s a yarn floating around about a lone prospector crossing ice that’s so rotten that it goes out one jump behind him. Tabby again!

‘Yes, sir, there’s something phoney about that man. And Windy Bill O’Rourke was smart enough to see it while it was worth real money. I’ll admit that he got into me deep. But I was n’t the only one. He rung the bell on Fossil, and he sure did spear Fawghorn McFee.

‘It come about this way, far as I can say. Tabby had got plumb sentimental over Silver Mountain, being as he had staked out the first mine in the district and it had made good, big. He rooted for a library, and even thought maybe we ought to put a preacher on the payroll in case any women and children should blow in. Still, he was n’t parsimious on the point. But he was hot for making Silver Mountain the City Beautiful, and him and Fossil would wrangle for hours about a design for a municipal centre. Every time a shack goes up, Tabby’s right there to see that a false front with windows goes on to give a two-story look to her. And no sooner is the sign calling attention to the new refreshment parlor hung out than the Logican’s on the job with his camera, drawing a bead on the works. Then they get out piture postcards, and Indian Joe the mail-carrier would sure get his. But Joe was wearing a grouch them days, no-how, because the boys was all reading Montgomry Ward catalogues. How that Indian does hate a catalogue!

‘Well, purty soon the Logican takes to feeling mighty important, and you can see him most any time snooping around with his camera, looking for points of general intrest. He was right on hand to get the evidence when Windy Bill O’Rourke paints Fawghorn’s big yellow dawg — red and blue it was he painted her. The Logican drew a bead on the dawg and the paint-cans and on Windy. He’d ’a’ got a piture of the court-room, too, only Windy was that onreasonable the Logican had to hide out a couple of weeks after Fawghorn let on he had the pitures for exhibits. Windy said that, if he could find the Logican, he would get him to take some pitures of his phonographhorn after Fawghorn’s dawg got through chewing on it. But Tabby kept the Logican from coming out just then. He figgered that Windy just wanted to shoot the kid up a little. And all Windy had to pay for humiliating the dawg was four dollars and costs, anyway. Costs come a little higher, as I remember it. Somewheres around a hundred or two. All the boys had to testify one way or the other. That was one of the best trials this camp ever held. Yes, sir, she was a stem-winder.

‘So things kept going along like that — old Tabby orating about the “Garden spot of the World,” “the Model mining-camp,” the “Camp that reminds you of Home,” and what-not, and the Logican working the camera and keeping a record of events, important arrivals, and general progress. I’ll admit, too, they had us kind of buffaloed.’

Mr. Jackson laughed a trifle selfconsciously, and waved a fat arm in the direction of the immense sign which attracted attention to the long, rambling, log building.

‘Now take that sign of mine,’ he continued. ‘It ain’t bad — that is, I’ve seen worse. Used to call the place the “Dead Nigger,” owing to an incident that happened to Black Ben one night when the boys found a couple of kings in his pam. Now she’s called the “Ethiope’s Rest.” There ain’t never been another Ethiope in camp since Ben left us, but the name’s all right, and you got to admit she’s painted so you can see her the minute you hit the town and from clean across the lake.'

He broke off and waited for me to assure him that the sign was an effective sign. Then he put his pipe in his pocket, bit the end off a cigar, and settled himself more comfortably in his chair.

‘Take Fawghorn McFee’s place,’ he proceeded. ‘Before the Logican started flooding the world with piture postcards of Silver Mountain, it was known as “Temptation Bar.” But look at her now! “Here I Succome.” I hand it to Fawghorn. Some men are just natchelly smart when it comes to naming things. Windy’s the world’s champion heavyweight when it comes to describing things right; but Fawghorn sure showed a burst of speed when he thought of “succume.” There’s something about that word that plumb raises a thirst.

‘Well, sir — oh, yes, I was talking about Tabby and the Logican. Well, Tabby took the kid into the jungles two, three times, kind of trying the Logican’s luck, I figger. But it was n’t long before he give it up. Said the Logican might find something if he stayed in bed till an earthquake shook it up and hit him with it, but that there was too many white whiskers in Tabby’s chin to allow him to wait for no miracle. So he kind of grub stakes the kid to be camp piture-taker, and goes on with his gold-hunting lone-handed.

‘The next spring the boom hits Silver Mountain. Shacks sprout all over the camp. Eric, the camp Swede, blows in with his wife, and four kids all looking the same size to me, though maybe some was bigger than the others. We get some regular waitresses and a lawyer, and Hippo Dobbs lays in a barberchair that spins around and rocks this way and that. Then the mining engineers drift in, and half a dozen surveyors, and the old camp gets civilized and all shaved up, and some of the boys send home for the wives.

‘So Tabby drives the Logican like a fat sled-dawg, taking pitures of this and that. But all the same I know that Tabby’s about through with Silver Mountain. He don’t care for civilization, and wherever you see her setting in, you can shove in your stack that there’s going to be an empty shack in the front row of the town. He likes the idee of starting camps, Tabby does; but after they grow up a little bit, he gets all hemmed in.

‘The Little Queen was developing fast, and Fossil Johnson was the big man around here. Everybody was waiting to see her begin to ship gold before they dropped their money on prospects. All the boys what could afford it was sinking shafts on their claims, so as Lo make piture propositions which is easily sold if there’s ever a real strike. And all this work sure keeps the Logican on the jump. Whenever he hears there’s even a new blacksmith-shop going up on a claim, he’s right there to draw a bead on her. And the owners get all washed clean and in range, and buy fifty or a hundred of the pitures. The kid sure does fine and begins to grow fat.

’But when we all pool and build the powder-house, — sheet-metal she was, and a mile from town, — the whole camp gets into the piture. She was some powder-house, too, is what I mean. She was n’t exactly a sky-scraper maybe, being only one-story, but she was all right. Old Fossil Johnson barks out a spiel about the growth of coöperation in the North, and how fine it was to all have an interest in the camp’s powder-house, and how this was the first step toward easing the ekermonic pressure. Course there might have been some there who thought Silver Mountain was coöperating to buy Fossil Johnson a powder-house, being as he had the only big plant in the district; but that was n’t no occasion to start a shooting, and everybody took Fossil’s line of talk in good part. When he gets through speaking, half the crowd drifts over to Fawghorn’s, and half wanders over here, and we all celebrates the completion of the first ownerless building in Silver Mountain.

‘The Logican gets into the spirit of the play, and draws a bead on the “Here I Succome,” and then foots it down here and gets the crowd and the sign in the piture. Then he sends all the pitures and the write-up back home, thinking maybe one of the New York papers might be interested in such a rip-roaring celebration. Maybe they was. We don’t follow the New York papers regular, seeing them only once or twice a year.

‘Well, sir, it was n’t long till there was three hundred ton of giant powder in the powder-house. And we was all interested — somehow. When conversation kind of petered out, you could always start something by remarking that there was a new supply of powder coming up the river, or that you’d heard she was getting low.

‘Then a guy drifts in with a movingpiture show — stirred us considerable, too, for a time, specially the Logican. But the fellow had to go and get all mixed up with Fawghorn in a game of draw, and darned if he did n’t lose the whole works to the “Here I Succome.” Then it is n’t long before Tabby takes it away from Fawghorn in a game of stud, and the old camp gets a new burst of speed and becomes the moving-piture centre of the North.

‘Tabby sends out for a regular camera, and the Logican starts taking pitures of the boys and the lake and the Sunday crowd here at the Ethiope’s Rest. Yes, sir, we get up water-sports and foot-racing, so as to get pitures of real life in the Far North. The Logican wolfs around all the time because it ain’t winter, wanting dawgs and Klondike sleds for atmosphere. But even Tabby can’t pull a blizzard for him in June, so he sticks to canoeing on the lake and swift-water stunts till he has the boys as natural as any play-actors you ever see. Why, when they look into the old camera and grin, you want to holler “Hello" at them. Fossil run some juice into the Ethiope’s Rest here from his power-house at the mine, and the boys sure show up regular at the puformances — specially them that partook of the acting. I noticed that even old Tabby was generally on hand when they run the piture of him riding a canoe standing up; and as for Windy, I was plumb surprised the way he’d laugh and carry on whenever the Logican throwed on the finish of the barrelrace, with Windy edging out Fossil Johnson by a nose through the last barrel. I come in third that race, but the barrel I had seemed smaller than the others. Always thought Windy framed on me that time.

‘Say! Before this town got all burned down and all populaced up again, she was some camp!’

Billy fumbled through his pockets for a match, relit his cigar, and sat gazing out over the lake, lost in happy contemplation of those bygone days.

‘How did the camp happen to burn down? I asked at last.

‘I’m coming to that. I’m coming to that.’

A note of irritation warned me that Mr. Jackson preferred the undiluted monologue.

‘You see,’ he continued with an apologetic air, ‘I’ve got to tell this in my own way. Maybe you think what I’ve been telling you ain’t important. Maybe it ain’t. But since I got to judge from my own prospective, it’s the best I can do.’

II

‘It was dry as a bone up here that summer, and the bush was full of fires. Everybody was burning the underbrush off their claims, to prospect them better. There was fires all around the lake. Anywhere you look, there’s smoke hanging in the air. Nobody’s thinking much about it, though of course old Fossil Johnson burns everything clean for half a mile all around the Little Queen. Leave it to Fossil. Say! If you was to bust his head open, you’d find it lined with jimmy-proof chilled steel. But dang his old hide, Windy got to him once — got me on the same deal; but he got Fossil. But I’m coming to that.

‘Well, sir, the fires keep flaring up and dying down so half the time we think we’re going to be burned out and half the time we forget all about it. It all depends on whether she’ll rain or not, and we ain’t regulating that. Day after day she stays hot and no rain. Never seen the like. She’d cloud and look like rain and feel like rain. But she would n’t quite come across. Just when you got a good bet up that she was going to rain, the sun would bust through and she’d turn white hot. Then for a couple of hours the breeze would spring up and the smoke roll all around. Then the cyclone hit us!’

The old man shook his head slowly.

‘I don’t need no preacher to tell me what hell looks like. I’ve seen it. She comes at noon, with a roar and a crashing of dead timber and a sizzling of spruce-tops. All in a minute, two, three hundred sleeping fires rolls into one big mass of black smoke and dirty red flames, and heads straight for Silver Mountain. The lake’s between the fire and the camp — but halfway down the lake’s the powder-house and three hundred ton of dynamite right in her.

‘Neighbor, you’ve seen Bald Knoll back there on the trail, I reckon. At least you crossed it when you come into this camp. Well, sir, the inhabitants of this here mining town took the trail for Bald Knoll quicker than anything I ever see. The only one to hold back was the wife of Eric, the camp Swede. She was sot on taking the furniture with her. Finally Tabby takes two of her kids and Windy Bill takes the rest of them, and between them they herds the old lady up the trail, lugging a blanket and a pot with a tame flower. Where Eric was, nobody ever found out. Showed up all right next day.

‘The way the wind was blowing it looked as though the fire would miss the knoll clean; and what was more so, the smoke would go along the valley below.

‘The wind whips the lake into a mass of foam, and the sky turns black. Silver Mountain sure does a stampede. Everybody’s carrying something or other, though it looks as though nobody ’s carrying anything worth carrying. Marguerite, the girl Wild Nebbins gets shot up over, is a-moaning and a-weeping and toting a cheap phonograph. She’s plumb forgot her kid, which Fawghorn has fell over and is bringing along on his shoulder. There’s a big prospector with a red beard running for it with one of them plain washstand water pitchers. Halfway up the trail I see him stop and stare at it a minute. Then he rips out something sharp and flings her into the bush.

‘There’s a surveyor that’s been locating corners up that way and has his transit with him. He sets it up on a knoll and takes a squint at the old camp. Right away we all collect around him. He’s the main guy. Everybody stands aside so’s he can see better. He moves the nose of the transit this way and that, and then he stops her short and stares into her hard. Purty soon he says, —

‘“There’s somebody there by the powder-house. I think it’s the photographer.”

‘Old Tabby brushes the surveyor aside, glues his eye to the peep-hole, and begins to shake all over. I’ve seen Tabby smile a thousand times, but I never seen him laugh but once. He laughs then. You could have heard him a mile away.

‘“The Logican’s going to get a closeup of the explosion!” he kind of gasps out. “He’s just waiting for her to pop!”

‘And then, before anyone can say a word, he’s off down the trail.

‘We all holler for him to come back, but Tabby keeps right on going, gaining speed at every jump. Purty soon he’s lost in a curve in the trail; a minute later Windy sees him through the transit, crossing a clearing. Then he’s swallowed up in a mess of black smoke.

‘Down below there the smoke sweeps across all at once, and Silver Mountain is hid. The fire’s racing along the lake, where she would have missed the town clean if it had n’t been for the coöpritive powder-house. That lay right in her trail. The wind was howling. You can hear the trees crack-crack and thump-thump all the while. Even where we were, the air gets kind of thin and cutting, and it tickles to breathe.

‘Nobody on the knoll is doing much talking. The Logican is all right and we kind of like him — but old Tabby made the camp and half a dozen other camps. And while some of the boys was a little afraid of him, maybe, there was n’t a man in camp who was n’t kind of proud when Tabby asked a favor of him. And we was sore, in a way. It looked like he had just gone back out of meanness. Because, what in thunder chance has a man against three hundred ton of giant powder?

‘So we stand there and wait and wait and wait till we ’most strangle, what between the smoke and sort of holding our breath. Once the wind swings and drives the fire straight back the way she come, and we think everything’s all right. But only for two, three minutes. Then she swings back and the fire’s sweeping straight for the powderhouse again. And then she blew!

‘Neighbor, I did n’t know there was so much noise in the world. There’s a great deep boom and the knoll rocks like a rowboat. Then comes the sound of splintering timber and breaking glass. And for five minutes you can hear trees snapping and falling.

“‘Fire or no fire, I’m going back to camp,” says Windy Bill O’Rourke all at once.

“‘What’s the idee?” Fossil Johnson asks him. “They’re blowed up higher than a kite.”

‘“I ain’t so sure,” says Windy.

‘“Ain’t so sure?” says Fossil.

‘“No,” says Windy, “I ain’t so sure. I don’t say nothing about the Logican, but I ain’t so sure about Tabby.” He gets a faraway look in his eye and starts muttering to himself. “No,” he says, “I ain’t so sure.” He says it kind of low, like he don’t care whether we hear him or not.

‘“Say, Windy,” says Fossil, getting kind of het up, “I like Tabby as well as anybody, and I sure am sorry he had to run clear down there and get all blew up. But what’s the sense of all this small talk?”

“‘Oh, shut up!” says Windy, kind of impersonal. “She’s a hunch with me that Tabby’s all right. And I’m backing it with the little end of a two to three bet.”

‘“You know I ain’t a betting man,” says Fossil, “and I sure do hope you are right. But I ain’t never prided myself on being a sucker, Windy, and I calls your bluff and shoves in fifteen hundred against your thousand that Tabby’s blew up.”

‘“Anybody else?” says Windy, pulling out a notebook.

‘“Tabby’s the best there is,” booms out old Fawghorn, “and there ain’t a man the camp could n’t have done without easier. Still, I figger Tabby’s gone, so I covers two thousand of your money with three thousand of mine.”

‘“Anybody else?” says Windy, writing her down.

‘“Oh, I don’t know,” I says to Windy. “All personal feelings for Tabby being thorly understood, I guess maybe I’ll drift in for a thousand.”

‘“Anybody else?” says Windy, jotting her.

‘“Say!” says Fossil, looking oneasy, “what’s the joker, anyway? Have you got some inside dope?”

‘Windy looks at Fossil kind of steady and asks him if he wants to crawl. Fossil starts apologizing and keeps it up halfway down the trail.

‘After a bit, we find a keg sitting in the middle of the trail. Flung up from the “Here I Succome,” she was, and not even busted. “She’s mine,” says Fawghorn. “Unspung her, and we’ll wash some of this smoke out of us.”

‘Well, sir, the worst of the fire had blew on past when we got back to camp. There was n’t enough left of Silver Mountain to wad a gun with. She’d been all crinkled up. All the glass in town had been powdered and laid in the street. You could n’t see where half the shacks had stood. They was plumb gone. Others was all wrapped around each other. Yes, sir, Silver Mountain had sure got hers.

‘Windy don’t linger none in camp, but heads right on through the smoke to where the powder-house had stood. Fawghorn and Fossil and me follows, but we don’t travel so fast. It takes us some time to locate the spot she’d stood on. She was clean missing. And all around the trees was ripped up and standing on their heads and every which-way. We don’t see Windy, so we look around for a boot-heel or a belt-buckle or something to remember Tabby and the Logican by. But we don’t find even a symptom of a bootheel so we start to hunt around for Windy. Not a sign of that Irishman around, so purty soon I hollers and somebody hollers back, but I can’t tell where from. Then we stand still and listen close, and it ain’t long before I hear a voice — but it sounds all fogged up, and we can’t make out where it comes from or who it belongs to. Then I make out some words.

‘“Yes, sir,” I hear a voice saying. “ If you keep on doing things like that, I’ll have to take the camera away from you or you’ll sure get hurt.”

‘Now I ain’t a suruptitous man, as a rule, but I sure did think I was listening to Tabby’s pant. Purty soon another voice says, “But it would have been a realistic picture.” And then the first voice says, “It sure would!”

‘Well, sir, at that the cold sweat is just biling out of me, and old Fossil Johnson’s shaking like a leaf, and Fawghorn’s making passes in the air and talking to himself fast. Then along comes a third voice, all muffled up, too, and says, “The boys is all betting you was blew up higher ’n a kite.”

‘“That so?” says voice number one. “Did they bet free?”

‘“Purty free,” says the other; “only old Fossil Johnson’s gets cold feet and thinks it’s a frame-up when he sees me take all offers.”

‘“Humph!” says the first voice. “Fossil’s all right, but the strain’s catching him. He ain’t looking well lately.”

‘Fossil sure is looking white at that minute.

' “Maybe it’s the ekermonic pressure that’s got him,” the voice goes on.

‘There then comes a lot of muffled laughing, and that’s the worst yet.

‘Well, sir, at that minute I ain’t feeling any too spry myself, and all at once something takes holt of my ankle. I don’t jump — I can’t. But after a bit I look down and there’s a big, dirty hand fastened on my leg. I don’t move any — not for quite a while. Fossil and Fawghorn see it, too, but they ain’t commenting. Only they are bugging their eyes awful. Then the hand gives a heave and my foot sinks quite a lot. I don’t rec’lect just what I do think then. But the hand lets go all at once.

“Bout a minute later, while I’m still standing there, Windy shows up from behind a tree that’s down right beside us. We’re just getting ready to ask him where he’s been, when Tabby looms up behind him; and while we’re staring at. him, who should crop out but the Logican, carrying his movingpiture camera.

‘Well, sir, me and Fawghorn and Fossil looks at them and then looks at each other. We ain’t speaking just yet. I think maybe I’m asleep and take a look around. The powder-house is sure gone. Then the Logican busts the silence wide open. “I’m afraid it’s so dark I can’t get a decent piture,” he says; and we land on the ground again with a bump.

‘Seems that Tabby had arrived at the powder-house about two, three minutes before she blew. He grabs the Logican and drags him away, clinging like a bat to his camera and most crying with vexation, to that bed of muskeg. You don’t know what muskeg is? She’s moss — grows deep, no bottom to it, and you can breathe through it fine. So Tabby and the Logican beavers down into that moss and drifts and sinks till they’re all holed up. Then they stay there till the show’s over, and some more, because the air’s bad outside. So long as a tree don’t fall on them, they’re in the safest place in the country. She’s so limp that the explosion can’t jolt her, and so wet the fire can’t hurt her. And there I was betting my head off that Tabby’s all blew to items.’

Mine host of the Ethiope’s Rest rose and stretched himself slowly. Some canoes were slipping out of the shadows across the lake. The silence of the summer afternoon was broken by the slamming of doors and the voices of men. Silver Mountain was coming home to supper.

‘But how did Windy come to bet that Tabby was safe?’ I asked the old man as he was opening the door to return to his duties.

‘Windy? Windy’s worse than Tabby. He’s some kind of an Irishman and feels things. Did n’t I tell you that there’s things that ain’t in the books? Well, Windy’s the man that named Tabby. Says he knowed when first he see Tabby that he was the reincarceration of a cat. Had it all figgered out that he had three more lives to lose.’