As the surrounding shadows of the August night deepened their enveloping itch on the waiting depths of the gigantic forest, covered the outlines of the crags behind us, and left us seated in a little island of camp-fire glow, my companion, Bill Slocum, ceased mending his moccasin and filled a recreative pipe.
“Men are like pipes,” he finally said. “Some are nice, fancy ones that break on the trail. Some char out and get thrown away. Some, clean and white, start out to destroy a world of unconquerable, yearly growing weeds, but get polished and take on color for a final resting place on a mantel; but they're all alike in the end, broken, used-up, and by and by gone. And no one cares where.”
I waited in silence, for I knew that more would follow when this gray-headed, grizzle-faced and square-jawed old adventurer was driven from his habitual taciturnity, spurred on by the easy-paced steeds of reminiscence. I waited because I knew that naught but mood could wrest from his lips another chapter from a life's history of turbulence in which all waters were not clear.
From our camp in the unfrequented and majestic Olympics we sat and watched the distant lights of Seattle, paying no heed to the palpitant little noises of night life that began to rustle and quiver, and murmur the doings of forest darkness.
In the remote black curtain a row of glittering points suddenly appeared, so distant and slow-moving that it took more than a glance to read the riddle of formation and understand that they were those of a Sound steamer, inward bound.
Bill, too, noticed it, and again broke silence.
“I bought a steamship once. Thought I'd go into the excursion business and be a shipping trust. Dreamed for a week that some day I'd transplant the old 'Bar-S' sign, I used to burn into the hides of wandering Texas steers, on to a nice blue flag that would float over all the Pacific water hole. But I didn't.”
“Run out of bunting?” I suggested, interrogatively.
“No; gold-bricked,” replied Bill, sententiously. “But I'm glad the way it happened.” Then, at intervals, “I never did much good for myself or any one else; but one thing I've had the pleasure to do was Wong Yet. If there's any stone sodded over the place where my blankets are finally tucked and the trail ends, I want cut into its features for a autobiography, 'Bill Slocum's under here—him that played even on Wong Yet.'”
Startled, I straightened myself and laughed at the recollection of a whimsical tale told me by Bill—long years before—of a smuggling adventure in China wherein he had been betrayed by a trusted Chinese partner, robbed of a mighty venture, forced to flee the Orient and had been enabled to return to Arizona only through the beneficence of the American consul at Bombay.
“Yes, I guess you remember,” grinned Bill; “but you don't know the last chapter—how I played the game of tag, until old Mrs. Chance rapped me on the shoulder and said, 'You're it.' And this time it was my steamer line coppered and the Wong Yet bet to win.
“After I sold the 'Holy Molly' mine down in Yavapai County for eighteen thousand cash, I felt pretty Russel Sageish. 'From this on, Bill,' says I, taking the great oath, 'you'll live like a gentleman, a capitalist and a conosser on grub. No more beans. Nothing too good for your palate.' And to make my pledge good, goes to San Francisco town, where nobody but a capitalist can afford to eat delicacies. I buys a new white Stetson, long-tailed coat, velvet vest and red tie, a few sparklers and a striped shirt before I gets tired of spending money, and then the fun really begins.
“One morning I goes by a place from which comes a hilarious noise like a Pueblo wedding or a Chinese funeral, and sees a lot of fellows inside putting nickels in slots and pipe stems in their ears.
“'What might them things be?' I asked a feller standing outside, wearing a giddy suit that looked like a camp-made checker board.
“'Oh—go to the devil!' he says, as contemptuous as the man that owns the railway station down at Beaver Flat, Arizony, when you ask him if the trains is running all right.
“I looked at him mournfully, my fingers feeling an attraction like a magnet towards my gun, to answer his ungenteel conversation. Then he slides into another place, and when I saw the sign, it reminded me that I had business in there too. It wasn't none of them newfangled names, 'Buffet' or 'Cafy,' but just that good old heart-warming sign to steer men onto the right path—'saloon.' So in I goes.
“Deacon Checkerboards was in there too, hears me order mine and pretty soon looks friendlier. 'Guess his dispepsy warmed up when he got something for it,' thinks I.