Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Hard Times Hance was living on first principles; but then, if a man wishes to save any coin in this world he must make great personal sacrifices; and so he was perfectly happy in his temporary aboriginal condition. There were no restrictions upon him. He was even outside the circumference of any ministerial jurisdiction, and had never been cautioned about the hereafter. Like an Indian, he moved just as the impulse seized him. How this man expected to submit to the personal restrictions and embargoes imposed by modern fashions and society was known only to himself. The song of the forest had been his only concert; the whisper of the creek his sole heart companion. When occasion permitted he would wander the entire day on the high mountains, at the end of his trail, hunting for game, and little caring whether he found it or not, so long as he had the wild and congenial environs to admire and embrace. What was city life in comparison with this?

At last the day arrived when he realized that he must develop wings, so he wrapped himself up in a cocoon; and while the metamorphosis was in process of development he had ample time to study Hamlet's soliloquy. It would mean a divorce from everything he held dear; a parting with his very soul. It would mean the most sorrowful widowhood that could be imposed on man. It would be equivalent to leaving this earth and taking up his abode in Mars. He must sacrifice his love for the creek and the trail. He must renounce his freedom and go into social slavery. It was the emerging from the woods into the prairie; the coming from darkness into the light; a resurrection from the dead. In future he must tread the smooth cement walk between cultivated lawns and plants, instead of climbing the rude, uneven trail obstructed by fallen trees and surrounded with vegetation in its wildest and most primeval forms. He would walk the polished mahogany floor with patent boots, instead of the terrestrial one of his dug-out with obsolete overshoes.

But it must be. For years he had been preparing and planning. The object of his past had been a preparation for a better future; and why not? Others enjoyed the good things of this life, and why not he? Had he not paid the price. Others reaped where they had not sown; he had sown, yes, sown in persecution, now he would reap in envious joy. He had lived the first half of his life in squalor and darkness, that the latter half might be clean and cheerful. When he had set out in his young days to live his pre-arranged history it was with an ambition to be wealthy, no matter by what means it should be acquired, so long as it was honest. Now he was wealthy. He had been poor; now he was rich, and money would put the world at his feet, which henceforth had been over his head. He had been an animal; from now on he would be human.

But in his enthusiasm of development he forgot that he had grown attached to the wild, aboriginal life; that the parting might snap thongs and inflict wounds which even time would not mend or cure. At times the creek would sing, and the trail would speak, but he banished the tempters from his mind to make room for his illuminating prospects, and his wings continued to grow towards maturity. He struggled and freed himself from the cocoon. He went to Vancouver a caterpillar and returned a butterfly, and the earthquake which accompanied his debut was equal to that which destroyed San Francisco. He had sold his farm, which included the creek, and the trail, and the dug-out, and his salt pork barrel, for a song, and with his coin and icties about him, and in his lately acquired form, he invaded Clinton with an accentuated front. The street was lined with people as though a procession had been going by--all the sweet and familiar sounds and sights had been sacrificed criminally, and he was on his way to sip honey from flower to flower.

He sounded about Clinton for some time for a suitable anchorage on which to materialize the plans and specifications of his mansion, but he did not drive a stake, because Clinton was very much inferior to his "class" ideal; it had no electric light, and no water system. So he migrated south to Ashcroft, and there he pre-empted a large lot and made arrangements for the foundation of his castle. Out of the ground in a short period arose one of the most up-to-date bungalows. While the building was in course of construction Hard Times Hance, who had repudiated this headline, moved about in his dress suit, stiff hat, silk gloves, and a cane, and gave such orders to the contractor as he saw fit. He was looked upon as the most remarkable freak that had ever invaded the dry belt. And he sprang into society spontaneously. The people clamored for him. Progressive socials were arranged in his honor at all the leading social centres in their eagerness to cultivate his society. Some had faint recollections of having seen him at times, others claimed to have heard of him at his hermitage, but they all pretended to have known him personally and thoroughly, and many even suspected that he possessed more, intrinsically, than he had revealed superficially. He was the lion of the hour, and he did not forget to hand around the coin in his efforts to retain the position which he had secured.

When his mansion was turned over by the contractor, and had been accepted by the architect, he issued invitations to one of the most magnificent social functions which had ever erupted at Ashcroft. Those who were invited were flattered, and those who were not called were grossly insulted and wondered what disqualified them. They danced the "tango," and the "bango," and the "flango," and all the "light fantastics" until their feet went on strike, and their ear drums had become phonographic and reproduced the music with a perpetual motion which could not be stopped. Every lady was eager to reveal the dancing secrets to mine host, and before the evening was over he could waltz, tango, and do many of the up-to-date ridiculous "stunts."

And then they dined on a French dinner. It was cooked in French style, and they ate it in French; and then they drank French toasts to the King of England, the Governor-General of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and the gentlemen drank to the ladies in general all over the world. Then the ladies proposed a French toast to "mine host." Not one of them could speak French, although a few of them could repeat, parrot-like, the words "Parlez-vous Francais?" but they only knew it as a "foreign phrase" which sounded extremely cultured.

And the menu was as follows: "Canape of Anchovies," "Celery en Branch," "Potage a la Reine," "Consomme au Celeri," "Calves' Sweetbreads a la Rothschilds," "French Lamb Chops a la Nelson," "Café noir," etc., etc.

In the midst of all this foreign celestialism mine host forgot the creek, the trail, the dug-out, the beans and bacon, and the kin-i-kin-nick pipe; and he prided himself on his rapid and agreeable transition into swift channels of life. He was taking to society as a duck takes to water.

In mode of living, as well as in personal appearance, it was the greatest metamorphosis that had ever taken place in a human being in the memory of man. It was a miniature "Log Cabin to White House" episode. He furnished his castle with the most elaborate fittings and ornaments that the world could produce. He had steam heated rooms and electric lighting from cellar to attic. Every floor was carpeted with the most expensive of imported Brussels. The walls were most elaborately painted and decorated. To secure a final footing in society he had acquired a collection of obsolete paintings, which were very unattractive and vulgar, and could only have been of value as heirlooms to some private family. These were conspicuously displayed on the panelled walls, in partnership with other more or less modest busts and imaginary landscapes. His ceilings were frescoed and figured in most extravagant, but unappealing designs. It was plainly seen that the building had been erected more to satisfy the taste and please the eye of the architect, who had received an unrestricted contract, than for acceptance by the purchaser. The furnishings were very much in keeping with the fixtures and fittings, and his musical instruments were all electrically-automatic machines; and his "canned" music filled the halls and stairways from morning till night. There was no modern convenience or indulgence that he did not lasso and drag home to his castle.

Before, he had wallowed in the one extreme of society, but now he lolled at the other. While before he had been neglected and despised by his fellow rivals, he was now courted, and admired, and feasted almost to death: so much does the possession of the coin-asset change people's opinions with regard to others.

His auto was the envy of all the chauffeurs and private car owners in the interior, and there was great rivalry among the licensed drivers as to who should secure the position as his private chauffeur. One engineer offered his services gratis to have the privilege of sitting behind such wind-shields.

Hard Times Hance persuaded himself that he had reached his "Utopia," and that his past forty years of loneliness and savagery was the price he had paid for the present heaven-rivalling blessings.

A man of his standing in society could not long remain in single dormancy; he was therefore besieged by many of the fair sex. This was very pleasing and flattering to him, although he concealed his appreciation. Of course a palace such as his, without a wife, was like a garden of Eden without an Eve. He had no one to use the electric vacuum cleaner on his linoleums and tapestries. He had no one to meet him when he reached home to take his hat, and gloves, and cane, and place them on the hall rack. He had no one to kiss and afford companionship throughout the long evenings, no one to arrange for social entertainments and meet and welcome the guests; no one to direct and manage the culinary department, and place the furniture in appetizing arrangement. Of course he had the Chinese cook, but he was stale and without spice. There were millions of qualified candidates in the world, looking for partners, who would be more than pleased to have the opportunity to manipulate his vacuum cleaner.

No sooner had he made up his mind to organize a family partnership concern than he set out to have the necessary forms of contract drafted and prepared. A great many fair ones nominated themselves as candidates for election, but as he was living under Christian methods he could only accept one--which was annoying--no matter how eager he may have been to Mormonize himself. They fluttered around him like moths about an electric arc, and they even deserted their former pre-emptions for the new float prospects. In due course the successful candidate was introduced to the Legislature as a new member.

The nuptials over, they migrated in the fall with the swallows to California, on their honeymoon, and, after escaping the earthquake, returned to their happy and beautiful home. There was a great eruption among the marriageable prospects of Ashcroft, because many of them had dropped a real bone into the water in snapping at the illusory shadow.

An indignation meeting was arranged at which it was resolved that the least prepossessing and most unlikely of the nominees had secured the winning majority. But love is a very contrary commodity, and a defect may be a virtue in the eyes of a hero-worshipper; and "My Lady" was serenely happy in spite of her unpopularity with her rivals. Hard Times Hance had sprouted from pauperdom and had bloomed into princedom, and his newly acquired partner placed the final mouldings and decorations to his life.

They gave frequent balls and banquets, and the most select society in the environs clamored for admittance. To his wife the prince was a modern Aladdin. She had but to wish and the wish was granted. "Eaton's" catalogue was her Bible, and it was her only food between meals; packages arrived daily with the regularity of the _Vancouver Province_. She had a standing order there for hats, dresses and kimonas, to be rushed out the moment the fashions changed. While before Hance had taken a pleasure in saving, he now had a mania for spending money; and their merry marriage bells continued to ring for a few sweet years without ceasing.

But gradually the spell wore off the self-made prince. The little creek, the long trail, the deep woods, the dug-out, and the salt pork barrel loomed up occasionally before his mind's eye. In absent-minded dreams he would find himself wandering among the stock on the range at his old ranch; or he would be drinking water from the creek in the old-fashioned, natural way; or chasing a deer at the other end of the long trail. His wife's sweet voice would recall him to the immediate, and in her presence he would regret his meditations. But it would be but temporary. What profits a man to gain the world, if he lose his peace of mind? "What! I unhappy among all this kingly paraphernalia, and with a queen wife?" he would ask himself, going down into the basement to replenish the furnace. With every shovelful of coal he would curse himself for his feebleness of mind.

The charm was beginning to wear off. The sound of the singing creek and the wild wood noises were beginning to knock at his door. He was beginning to long for the old, wild life--the life of the wild man of the woods. He was like a coyote in confinement, walking backward and forward at the bars seeking release. He was a fish out of water gasping for its natural element, and his soul was languishing within him.

He made desperate but vain efforts to enjoy his beautiful environs, and for a long time he sustained the "bluff." The piano became a bore to him; its music was not half so sweet as the creek song. The tapestry was not half so pleasing to the eye as the green foliage of the trees had been; his cement walk not so agreeable to his feet as had been the long, wild trail. The "icties" which had cost him thousands of dollars became to him like so much junk, and his beautiful home became a prison--so much does man become attached to mother earth. Among all this junk one jewel still continued persistently to shine, however, and that gem was his wife; she was all he had left, next his heart, to balance against the thousands of dollars which he had squandered. A man's best comfort is his wife, and Hance had fallen into the trap in the usual man-like way.

His attraction for the modern in society had dwindled down to a single item--his love for his wife; and between this fire, and the fire of the old life, he remained poised. Of course it would be madness to suggest that she return with him to the woods and adopt the Adam and Eve mode of society, so he kept his skeleton securely locked up.

He had sold his farm for a song, but now he found it could not be re-bought for real money. The situation was hopeless. There was no retracing of steps. But still the old sounds could not be divorced from his ears; and the old salt-pork barrel was an unpardonable culprit. If he could only sit once again on the old stump which had not been hewn away in the centre of his dug-out, it would be a source of joy to him. If he could only smoke the old kin-i-kin-nick pipe, his appetite would be satisfied.

One day he climbed into his auto and made a bee-line for the old ranch. He would have a rock on that old stump if it should cause a scandal in society. But the spot where the dug-out once stood was now bare. The cabin had been burned to the ground by the new proprietors. He went home like a whipped cur. A link in his beautiful past had vanished. An impassable chasm, of his own making, yawned between him and his desire, and he cursed the day which lured him away from his natural, green pastures.

One day he disappeared entirely, and when he did not return for several days, and his wife was insane with grief, a search party was sent out in quest of him. They found him camping on the old trail, dressed in his aboriginal attire, eating beans and bacon with his knife, and chewing venison Indian fashion.

"This is the only square meal I have had since I left the woods," he said, when they captured him; and he filled his pipe with kin-i-kin-nick and puffed the sweet, mild fumes. He had returned to his natural element.

"I have been rounding up stock," he said, "and I shot this buck just over the hill there. Here, dig in, it is jake."

He had to live among the steers, and the coyotes, and the wild trails in accordance with his early training; original things were his food. Society, and his wife, demanded that he remain on the surface, but his aboriginal inclinations lured him to the woods; so, during six months of every year he was an Indian to all intents and purposes. Early in May he would load a cayuse with beans, bacon, canned milk, frying pan and blankets, and with this treasure he would take to the hills and bask the livelong summer among the junipers, the firs, and the spruces; and he would eat huckleberries, choke-cherries and soap-o-lalies, and smoke kin-i-kin-nick until his complexion assumed the tan of the Chilcoten Indian.

The lure of the limelight had been great, but it had worn off just as soon as he had a surfeit of its false glories. He found that beans and bacon eaten with a knife were sweeter and more wholesome than "blanc mange," "consomme," or "café noir" cooked in French style, and served by a French chef.

Of the Too Sure Man

Once upon a time, in the town of Lillooet, county of Lillooet, Province of British Columbia, there lived a man who was so sure of his footing that he closed his eyes and floundered along in the dark. When people told him there were chasms in front of him, or that there was ice on the trail ahead, he would not believe them, but put his fingers in his ears so that he could not hear, and thus became deaf and blind to his own interests. The people pestered him so much about his folly, and he learned to hate them so much for their interference in his personal matters, that he crossed the names of all his friends from his list of social possibilities, would recognize none of them, and refused to speak even when addressed; he thus became a blind, deaf and dumb mute. The result was that he ultimately slipped upon the ice on the trail, and fell into a chasm and has not been seen since. It was in the first days of the Lillooet quartz discoveries. Gold had been mined from Cayuse Creek, Bridge River, and the Fraser River, in uncountable ounces, in the free state, by the placer or hydraulic process of mining, for a great number of years, but the source of supply from which the free gold had originated had not yet been located. It was even doubted if there was any source of supply, although it was generally conceded that all gold was originally pilfered by the streams and rivers from the hard quartz-rocks of which the great mountains of Cayuse Creek and Bridge River were formed. While some of the miners contented themselves with making wing-dams, turning streams from their natural courses, and scraping about the mud and gravel of the exposed beds for the pure, free gold, picking up nuggets at sight and capturing the "dust" with quicksilver, others, looking for bigger game, climbed the high mountains, tore the moss from their sides to expose the rock, and pounced upon every piece of "float" which would indicate the possible existence of a "mother lode" somewhere near at hand or higher up.

The Too Sure Man of this story was one of the latter. He had found a piece of "float rock" with a shining speck in it near where the nigger's cabin now stands on Cayuse Creek in the vicinity of Lillooet, and he traced it to the very spot where it had dropped from the mountain above. There he discovered a ledge several feet wide full of shining specks, and he traced it with his eyes right to the bed of the creek.

"All mine! All mine!" he shouted.

Now, he was a poor man, and he had a family--which made him poorer; but the sight of this precious piece of "float" with the gold sticking out of it, and the possession of this enormous ledge of gold-bearing quartz made him a millionaire in an instant. Here was a whole mountain "lousy" with gold, all his! Why, Solomon or Vanderbilt would be so small in the puddle that he would splash mud on them with his superior tread in the sweet "very soon."

Now, the B.C. law prevented him from staking off the entire Lillooet district for himself, so he took in a friend (who luckily died before the crash came), and they appropriated as large a portion each of the district as the Government at that time would allow. Both of those men had good, steady, paying jobs at the time of the discovery, but the next day they threw down their tools--work was too cheap for them. The only thing that prevented them from buying an automobile right away on the instalment plan was the fact that the auto had not yet been invented. However, they had to do something to elevate themselves from the common, so they became extravagant in their domestic curriculum. Having no money, the stores had to "carry them." And then they had their assessment work to do on the mine to enable them to hold the claim. They hired men to do this and gave them promissory notes payable by the claim at an indefinite period. When a man ceases work and begins to live on his "rainy day" money, or on the storekeeper, it does not take very long before he accumulates a burden greater than he can carry. When he begins to totter he tries to pass some of the load over to others, and it is usually the storekeepers who are willing to assist him to the limit if his assets are in good retrospect. And what could be a greater security than a whole mountain full of gold? So the storekeepers assumed a large portion of the Too Sure Man's burden. And their loads became heavier and heavier. One day a company came along, attracted by the noise that had been made, and bonded the claims for a few hundred "plunks" down and the balance of one hundred thousand dollars in three months if they decided to take the claims over. The offer was gladly accepted, although they wondered why the company hesitated. This few hundred dollars enabled the Too Sure Man to tide his family through the winter with warm and expensive clothing from the T. Eaton Co., of Toronto, Ontario, while the local grocery man's burden got heavier and heavier. It was during, all this time that the people had been cautioning him for his personal benefit. And it was during this time that the Too Sure Man closed his ears, and his eyes, and his mouth, and became a blind, deaf and dumb mute. When the three months were up the company decamped, forfeiting their few hundred dollars, and then there was "something doing." The Too Sure Man opened his eyes and his ears and his mouth all at the same time as far as ever he could. The claim had proved a failure, there was no gold, and only a slight trace on the surface. The local storekeepers, groaning under their load, asked him to relieve them, but he might just as well have tried to lift the mountain that held his worthless quartz ledge. It was just at this point of our story that he slipped on the ice and fell into the chasm. He disappeared, bag, baggage, and family; and in truth it was the only course open to him.

To remain and work off his debt and sustain his family at the same time with the increasing pressure of the high cost of living holding him under, would have been an utter impossibility. The impending shock killed his partner, for he died before the crash came. The Too Sure Man has a burden in Lillooet supported by others which he can come and lift at any time, and welcome.

Of the Unloved Man

Once upon a time in Ashcroft a bachelor fellow realized abruptly that he had never been loved by one of the opposite sex, although he had reached the age of two score and two, and had a great longing to have one included in his assessable personal property. Now, as truth is stranger than fiction, the discovery staggered him. What was wrong? What machinery required adjusting? He had the sensation of a boycotted egg, and was in danger of spoiling before reaching the consuming market. So one day he perched himself on the sandhill and began to survey the environs for a solution to the problem. Why should he be denied this one sweet dream? Just think of it--no one had ever sympathized with him in his utter loneliness of bachelorhood. No girl had ever called him her "snooky ookums," and he had never had the opportunity of calling any fair vision his "tootsy wootsy." The horror of the situation was sufficient to stagger an empire. No girl had ever waited at the post-office corner for him. No girl had ever tapped on his office window on Railway Avenue and smiled back at him on her way home from the meat market. No girl had ever lingered outside for him that she might have the pleasure of his society home to lunch. He had to walk the bridge evenings and Sundays alone, while others went in limited liability companies.

Once, when he was ill, no angel had volunteered to smooth his pillow, and a Chinaman brought up delicacies left over from some other person's previous meal. He had no silent partner. None of the girls knew he had been ailing, and when he told them weeks after they feigned surprise. There seemed to be an unsurmountable stone wall between him and the sweet things of this world. So, day after day, in his leisure moments, he would pace the brow of the sandhill seeking in his mind for a solution to an issue that seemed unfathomable. Was he ugly? No. Was he repulsive? No. Was he a woman hater? No. Was he a criminal? No. Had he offended the fair sex in any way? No. Was he poor? No. Did he belong to the human family? Yes. With what disease then was he afflicted? Was it heredity? Could he cast the blame upon his ancestors? Up and down the Thompson valley he searched and searched but he could find no answer--even the echo would not speak. Other fellows seemed to have no difficulty in getting themselves tangled up in the meshes of real beautiful love nets. Even the young bucks who had no visible means of support for their own apparently useless avoirdupois, picked up the local gems before his eyes and had them hired out at interest to supply the new family with bread and butter. And all this in the face of the fact that _he_ was one of the most prodigious admirers of womankind that ever left his footprints on the sands of Ashcroft.

"The most flattering appointment a man can have is to be chosen the custodian of one woman," he said to himself. "Life, to a man, is nothing if barred from an association of this kind."

At last in despair he wrote to a correspondence paper, and put the whole case before them.

"I am a young man, aged forty-two, unmarried. I want a solution to the problem why I am unmarried. I have tried and failed. I have had Cupid working overtime for me, but he has failed to pierce any of the bosoms I have coveted. No woman has ever loved me, and although I am aware that it is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all, I may say that this affords very poor manna for my hunger."

He received this answer:--

"Young man"--(emphasis was placed upon the young)--"you are too slow. You are asleep, stagnant, dormant, hibernating. The whole world is 'beating you to it.' Get over your baby superstition about love, and 'get busy.'"

The letter dropped from his fingers as though it had been his monthly grocery bill. "Heavens!" he exclaimed, "here is the solution to the whole mystery.--Forget love and 'get busy.'" Instead of expecting to be loved, he would love. If he could not get one who would want _him_, he would get one he wanted himself.

Now, he had had such an admiration for the fair sex as a whole, that he could not concentrate his attention on the individual one. He had been trying to extract a cinder from the eye of the opposition when he could not see properly owing to having a large obstacle in his own eye. However, he proceeded to "get busy." But what vision would he "get busy" on? Every woman had an attraction peculiar to herself, one of which could not be said to extinguish the other. And then, most of them were "staked off." One fellow or another had "strings" on every one he approached. But he kept on fishing with all his might. In the meantime it came to pass that the girls continued to cast their spells upon almost anyone but him; even the itinerant stranger who just chanced along "hitting the high spots," and "travelling on his face" came in for large portions of the "sweet stuff" that was being cast lavishly abroad.

It seemed cruel that he who had such an admiration for those on the other side of the house, and who had such an ambition to own one as an asset, should be so unmercifully neglected. His efforts to catch a wife by the legitimate method, according to his idea, had ended like a fishing expedition in the off season in the Thompson river. About this time he found that the nomads were catching all the fish. He made up his mind to become a nomad and be a wanderer on the face of the Cariboo district. He could not love.

He resigned his position in Ashcroft and migrated up the Cariboo road. He invaded Lillooet, Clinton, 150 Mile House, Soda Creek, Quesnel, Barkerville and Fort George. To secure a wife he became an itinerant. Within the space of a year he was back at his position at Ashcroft more lonely than ever. It was of no avail--he was hoodooed. He could not love.

At this juncture he made another and final discovery, and it was the most important one he had made at this period of his renaissance. He found out that "get busy" had two meanings. It meant "forget love of all kinds and go to it in a business-like way." This had been a chronic case of a man, in his ignorance, who was prospecting around the hills of this British Columbia of ours for a metal that had no existence. He did not know that ninety out of every hundred marriages resulted merely from convenience, or a mere desire to be married on the part of the man, and the love of a private home on the part of the woman; that nine out of the remaining ten were marriages in which one of the parties only was the love-giver, and that the remaining one was the ideal, in which love was mutual and beautiful. This Ashcroft bachelor fellow was a sentimental monstrosity. He was imbued with the superstition that one must love, and be loved, before one could marry. No aphorism could be further removed from the truth. The glaring realism dawned upon him that it was quite possible for a person to flounder through this world and be entirely immune from the love epidemic; that few people ever marry the one they do really love, that some are never sought after by one of the opposite sex during their whole life, only in a business-like way; that modern society was too busy to entertain such a silly superstition as love--that Cupid was a dead issue. He had been waiting until he fell in love or till someone fell in love with him, and thus opportunity had been knocking at his door all those years in vain. When he had joined the iconoclast society, and had shattered this pet idol of his, he began to look around for a wife in the same manner as he would for a car of Ashcroft potatoes--and he soon "landed" one branded with the "big A." And the amusing part of it is they lived happily--all of which goes to prove our contention that those who love before marriage are not always the happier after their nuptials; and sometimes it is a mere matter of making the best of a bad bargain, and you will be perfectly happy though married, even if your stock in trade of the love commodity is very much impoverished.

Of the Chief who was Bigger than He Looked

Once upon a time in the Thompson valley there lived a mighty warrior kookpi (chief) called Netaskit. He was chief of all the Shuswaps. His name had become a household word the entire length and breadth of the Pacific coast, and the tribes along the Fraser river and the Pemberton Meadows had knowledge, through many sad experiences, of his bravery and daring. Among his own people his word was law, and to show the white feather in the face of an enemy meant certain court martial and death at his hands. Although his subjects feared him, they respected him beyond belief; and to serve him was considered a great honor. It is not our purpose to convey the impression that this kookpi was cruel, treacherous, cold-blooded and selfish only, and a man who had no other ambition than war and the spoils of war. No, if he was a fiend on the battlefield, he was a lamb at home. He had a soft side that battled with the concrete in him at times. His weakness was his insane love for woman, and in his own kikwilly house (home) he was as timid as the smumtum (rabbit). His respect for Cupid had as much avoirdupois as his respect for Mars. His love for his wife was an insane love--it far outdid his love for his chiefdom. And he had a wife who was worthy of him and as faithful to him as he was to her--she adored the very skins he wore across his shoulders. Being happily united himself, and having such a respect for Cupid and the fair sex, he passed a law that no man or woman should take unto themselves a partner for life until thoroughly satisfied and convinced that the love flames between them would be of everlasting duration, and were genuine.

"Woman," he said, "was made to be loved, and not enslaved. My consideration for the welfare of our women exceeds that for our men, because man is so constituted as to be more able to take care of himself." So much was this old prehistoric chief away ahead of his dark, heathen times. But this masculine weakness of his was nearly his undoing with his warriors, as we shall see.

One day a rumor went abroad that the Statlemulth (Lillooet Indians) were making their way through the Marble Canyon, and down Hat Creek, to attack the Shuswaps on the Bonaparte, in revenge for some misdemeanor at some former time, on the part of the latter. It was just about the time of the year when the Shuswaps were in the habit of invading the Fraser river at Pavilion for their winter supply of salmon; and, to be cut off from this source of revenue would mean a great deal to the Bonaparte Indians. The invading army must be met and the entire band put to death, or made prisoners.

Telephone messages in Indian fashion were flashed from kikwilly house to kikwilly house, and in a couple of days the entire strength of the Shuswaps was gathered in a great army with Netaskit at its head. The march began at an early hour the following morning, and the enemy was met near the mouth of the canyon where they had called a halt for the purpose of hunting and putting up o-lil-ies (berries). In a moment the air was filled with war whoops, and the arrows flew thick and fast. The women took to their heels and ran the moment the fray began, and they did not stop until they reached Squilachwah (Pavilion) near the Fraser river. The smumtum and the groundhog betook themselves to the high mountains, so great was the battle, and their fright--and it is only within recent years that they have ventured back to that spot. The battle raged loud and long. Netaskit was in the thick of the fight and claimed that he had killed twenty of the enemy with his own bow. Many were wounded and slain on both sides; but the Shuswaps won the day, and they led home in triumph fifty prisoners. And now comes the most interesting part of our story. A counsel of war was held, and it was decided that the prisoners should be put to death the following day. When the time arrived, the unfortunate men were brought out, bound with thongs hand and foot and placed in line near the big chief's wigwam. Fifty victors were lined up in front of them with their bows and arrows ready to shoot at the word of command from their chief, who was pacing up and down in his dignity and anger. Suddenly the love demon took possession of him. He thought of his love for his wife--her love for him. He pictured to himself his possible death and the agony of his widow. He pictured her death and his own agony of mind at his loss. He shuddered as the messages flashed through his mind. He looked at the unfortunate victims--he thought of their women--sweethearts, wives.

"Halt!" he shouted to his men. And turning to the wretches before him he said:

"Statlemulth! listen. You have committed a great wrong in making this expedition against the Shuswaps. The Ko-cha Kookpi (god) is very angry. You should be shot dead but you can save yourselves. Listen. I will pardon every man of you who can produce a wife or a sweetheart who can prove to my satisfaction that her love for you is greater than the voice of the Thompson, and fiercer than the roar of the Fraser."

"Never!" shouted the tribesmen, and every bow and arrow was turned simultaneously upon the chief.

"Slaves! Cowards!" thundered the enraged and fearless kookpi, like a mountain lion in pain. In a moment every bow and arrow fell by its warrior's side.

As the consequence of this act on the part of his subjects is of no importance to this story, we will leave it to the reader's imagination just what sort of punishment was doled out to them. It is safe to say, however, that Netaskit was too wise a kookpi to order the death of so many brave followers, as this means of gratifying his wounded pride would simply mean the weakening of the tribe, and would put his own life in jeopardy.

A message was sent to the Lillooet illihae (country) with the glad tidings, and at the close of two days a swarm of smootlatches (women), and keekas (girls), rushed into camp breathless, and began hysterically searching for their respective sweethearts or husbands among the prisoners. The scene was more than poetic; and it was pathetic in the extreme. It was a scene that had not occurred before on the broad surface of the earth--those fifty distracted squaws rushing into the jaws of death in their eagerness to rescue the ones without whom life would be empty, useless, aimless. It is said that it melted the heart of the very rocks about the place, so that to this day the surface of the earth at that spot betrays evidence of having at one time been running lava.

The captives were lined up before the kookpi's kikwilly house, and the little army of love-mad squaws, awful in their primitiveness, rushed at the line, selected their respective skiuchs (men), and clung to them, hugged them, kissed them wildly in the awful heat of their passion, each in her eagerness to save one at all hazards for her own selfish, but natural self. And no power on earth could tear them asunder. It melted the hearts of the victors so that they called out with one voice: "Go, you have won!" and as they moved away shouting, and laughing, and dancing, Netaskit was seen to weep, so great was his respect for Cupid.

"O woman! woman!" he was heard to exclaim. And this is the reason there is so much harmony between the Statlemulth and the Shuswap to-day.

Of Simple Simon Up To Date

Once upon a time in Ashcroft there lived a "Simon" who had no knowledge of the purchasing value of his salary asset. He did not know that its buying powers were narrowed down to bread and butter and overalls; and as a consequence he was victimized down into a very precarious financial predicament, to say nothing about the valuable and most vigorous and productive years of his life, that were thrown into the scrap heap of time, and had to be cancelled from his list of revenue-producers.

When you contemplate a steady wage asset of one hundred dollars per month coming in with the regularity of clockwork and as sure as the first day comes around (and the months go by very quickly), you think you are in a fair way to make some of the local financiers look very cheap in a few years to come. Why, this means twelve hundred dollars every time the earth circumnavigates the sun, and is sixty thousand dollars in fifty years, which is not very long to a man if he can start just as soon as he passes the entrance and can build on no intervening lay-off by getting on the wrong side of the boss. But when we offset with our liabilities, such as tobacco money, moving picture money, car fare, gasoline, rent, taxes, repairs to the auto, and other trifling incidentals such as food and clothing, we find at the end of the lunar excursion that there is no balance to salt down on the right side of our ledger, and our little castle becomes submerged because it was built with its foundation on the shifting sands.

But for all that, if a man and his money could be left alone--if money were not such an envy-producer--if a man with money had not so many friends and admirers and strangers who love him at first sight--all might yet be well; and though he might not outclass some of the most corpulent magnates, he might in time acquire considerable moss in his own private, insignificant, Simple-Simon sort of way. But the laws of nature have willed otherwise, and the strongest of us know that it is needless to go into litigation with the laws of gravitation, or spontaneous combustion.

Among the workings of nature (which some people say are all for the best), there is a class of men who have, rather truthfully, been called "sharks" on account of their fishlike habit of pouncing upon suckers unawares and without the legal three days' grace being given, and of loading them into their stomachs--finances and all--before the person has time to draw and throw his harpoon. It all happens while you are taking a mouthful of tea, or while you are reading the locals in the _Ashcroft Journal_, and when the spell leaves, you find that you have endorsed a proposition with a financial payment down, and the balance subject to call when you are very much financially embarrassed indeed.

Simple Simon was one of those men who move about this world unprotected and without having their wits about them. He was not a sawfish, or a swordfish. So one day when he was walking up Railway Avenue--it was just the day after he had told someone that he had five hundred dollars of scrapings salted down, which was earning three per cent, at the local bank--a very pretentious gentleman, spotlessly attired, accosted him:

"Pardon me. Are you Mr. Simon?"

"I have that asset," said Simple, wondering how the aristocratic stranger had known him.

"I thought so. I knew at a glance. The fact is, I have just been speaking with Mr. C. Quick." (This was a lie. Mr. C. Quick was one of the money magnates of Ashcroft, but had not hired out his name as an endorsement)--"and he recommended you to me as one of the leading men of the town." (This was a ruse, but it hit the bull's eye, and at the final count was one of the most telling shots.)

"I am pleased to meet you," said Simple. "And so am I," said the shark. "As a matter of fact, I only approach the better part of any community," he continued, pulling in on the line. "To tell you the truth, Mr. C. Quick said you were the only man in the town who had both foundation and substantial structure from your roots up," and he laughed a broad sort of "horse-laugh," and slapped Simon on the shoulder.

"You see, with a proposition such as I have there is little use going to any but men of the greatest intelligence--those are the ones who understand the magnitude and the security and the ultimate paying certainties of the proposition which I have to offer you. You may consider yourself fortunate. It is not everyone who has the opportunity to get in on the ground floor, as it were, on a sure thing money-accumulating business. By the way, where is your office?"

Simon led the shark to his private dug-out on Brink Street, and showed him into one of his cane-bottomed thrones, while he himself sat on the yet unlaundered bed.

"Of course you understand all about joint stock companies, trust fund companies, municipal bonds and debentures," said the magnate, unrolling a bundle of unintelligible papyrus showing assets which did not exist, and spreading them out on the bed in front of his victim. The whole system had been premeditated and had been systematically worked out. "Now," said the shark, pointing at long and encouraging figures, "those are assets and these are our liabilities; and besides we have a million dollar Government endorsement. Now, the fact of the matter is this. You have a few dollars. I have a few dollars; Tom, Dick and Harry have a few dollars, and so have Jessie and Josie. Now, those little private funds which we all cherish and fondle, and hug to our bosoms, and jingle in our pockets, are of no use to us. They are dead. Of course they are earning three per cent, at the B.N.A. or the Northern Crown--what bank do you deposit with?--of course, it does not matter; there is no competition among them; they pay you three per cent. and charge you ten per cent. Now, we are very much different. We give you all your money will make--if it is ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, or one hundred per cent. See?

"Now, the fact of the matter is this: as I said before, those small individual fortunes are of no use to us individually; they have no earning power; they will not buy anything. But, put them all together--ah! the result is magical. You see, it is the aggregate that counts. Now with this theory in view, our company gets to work and canvasses the country and it gathers together thousands of little, useless, insignificant, unproductive funds like yours and mine and joins them together into one vast, giant aggregate which we call a trust fund. I see it is appealing to you. It could not be otherwise. Now, with this aggregate, you, and I, and everyone can own vast estates, buy forty-year debentures, lend money on approved security, buy real estate, the unearned increment of which will net in some cases two or three hundred per cent. interest, besides an increased valuation on the original sum invested."

Perhaps every living man in the Dominion of Canada and the United States who betrays the least pretensions to having any money in his possession has heard a harangue of this kind many times in his life, and it is just as certain that the first time he heard it he was stung. Now, Simon was no exception to the rule, which proves that we are not all swordfish. He felt himself being hypnotized, magnetized, charmed. He pictured himself as personal owner of lots, houses, acres--a joint owner of vast tracts of land along the G.T.P. or C.N.R.; and the shark showed him a facsimile of the certificates that would be issued to him when his shares were paid up in full. They were very neat and legal-like, and a man should be proud to own one of them.

"You see," said the magnate, as he realized that he had the victim falling into his trap, "we do not require to sell any more shares; we are doing well enough now, and some say we should leave well enough alone. But, a corporation of the nature of ours cannot rest on its oars; we must reach out for greater and better things, and to accomplish this we must have more capital. The fact is, a proposition has just been put to us, the nature of which I am not just now at liberty to divulge, but it is a sure winner. But it takes capital, as I said before, and we are compelled to sell some more stock. And, after all, it will be you and I who will benefit, and a hundred or more favored ones who have small savings which are netting them nothing at present, and the principal of which is rusting in the bank at three per cent.

"Now, to come down to business. Will you join us? Now, I am not going to press you. There are hundreds too willing; but remember, you will regret it if you lose this chance of a lifetime. Opportunity is knocking at your door; seize it by the fore-lock.

"The proposition I have to put before you is this: We are selling shares at one hundred dollars each, but if you have not the cash now, we will allow you six, twelve and eighteen months on the balance with a payment of five hundred dollars down if you buy twenty shares. The reason we are able to make such liberal offers is that we receive the same terms in buying up debentures."

Simon was completely victimized. His tormentor might just as well have addressed him in Latin, for he knew so little about debentures, joint stock funds and the intricacies of high finance that he could not follow the promoter and was completely dazzled with the obscurity and eloquence of the language. And then the magnate spoke so rapidly that only lightning could keep up with him. The result was that Simon fell into the trap and was pinched. He not only gave away all his rainy day money, but he burdened himself with a debt, which, to a working man, was a mountain, and more than he could carry. He sold his house to meet the next two payments, and just as the third payment came due the company went into liquidation, and it consumed all their available assets to discover that there was nothing left for the shareholders. And Simple Simon began life over again.

Of the High Class Eskimo