Part 3 (1/2)
The Too Sure Man of this story was one of the latter. He had found a piece of ”float rock” with a s.h.i.+ning speck in it near where the n.i.g.g.e.r'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 s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.sessment 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 acc.u.mulates a burden greater than he can carry. When he begins to totter he tries to pa.s.s some of the load over to others, and it is usually the storekeepers who are willing to a.s.sist him to the limit if his a.s.sets are in good retrospect. And what could be a greater security than a whole mountain full of gold? So the storekeepers a.s.sumed 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 s.e.x, although he had reached the age of two score and two, and had a great longing to have one included in his a.s.sessable 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 ook.u.ms,” 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 s.e.x 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 b.u.t.ter. 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 a.s.sociation 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 superst.i.tion 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 s.e.x 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 fis.h.i.+ng with all his might. In the meantime it came to pa.s.s 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 a.s.set, should be so unmercifully neglected. His efforts to catch a wife by the legitimate method, according to his idea, had ended like a fis.h.i.+ng 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 s.p.a.ce 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.