The Cattle Man

Book II Chapter I Pack Angiolina Shote . . . . . 102

CHAPTER II

A WELCOME MEAL . . . . . Il8

CHAPTER III

"JECKS" ...... 132

CHAPTER IV

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF . . 1 44

CHAPTER V CRANBY FALLS ILL AGAIN

.... l6l

Book III Chapter I The Snake-witch . . . . . 177

CHAPTER II THE OTHER WOMAN

..... 190

CHAPTER III THE TENTH WOMAN

. . . . .202

CHAPTER IV EXPLANATIONS

. . . . .215

CHAPTER V FATHER BONIFEAU TRAVELS.

. . .227

CHAPTER VI FATHER BONIFEAU'S MISSION

, . . 2%6 A THE CATTLE MAN

PROLOGUE.

A BIRD peered through the half-open door of the little forest hut ; but Father Bonifeau lay, face for ward, motionless, before a carved crucifix, mutely praying that it might shut out from his sorrow stricken eyes the woman for whose sake he had been willing to become a priest. As he gazed up ward, her eyes glanced down into his. The muscles of the tortured face were strained and tense ; its eyes, serene, beautiful, smiling, transfixed the soul of the unfortunate priest who had brought his burden to the foot of the Cross, who had left everything behind him in the happy world from which he had fled, save his own breaking heart. And the soul of the woman shone through the mild eyes of the Christ and slighted the man who had thus sought to escape her. The bird flew away as a little lad danced along the narrow path which led to the edge of the clearing.

He paused a moment, then followed after a gaily-painted butterfly, missed it and his footing at the same time, stumbled over the doorway and fell into the outstretched arms of the priest, who had half-risen to wipe away the blinding sweat from his brow. With a low moan of pain, Father Bonifeau caught the little lad to his heart and covered him with kisses. When he again looked at the carved crucifix, the woman's eyes were no longer there. As Father Bonifeau staggered into the open air, still pressing the boy in his arms, the morning sun played over sombre-foliaged pines and cedars of eld ; a warm west wind wafted benedictions through funereal boughs upon all sentient things. By the door of the hut, a pair of Canadian robins wove a cosy nest, the female bird coquettishly pausing to preen a rumpled feather whilst her mate worked with feverish energy.

The whole responsibility for this tiny home was his ; he did not see that she flirted her pretty wings toward a bachelor bird who had just flown over from Florida and, in his flight, had forgotten to furnish himself with a mate. The bachelor bird caught the look in her beady bright eyes. " You want to be fought for," he twittered back. " Very well ; I '11 soon settle that stupid fellow there, though he is working so hard " ; and he prepared to do battle with her husband. The fight, alas ! was very short ; for, weakened by toil, the hard-working robin fell an easy prey to the stranger, who fiercely hustled him to the ground and began to peck at his eyes. When he had sufficiently proved his superiority, he flew to the bough whence the hen-bird followed the struggle she had provoked, and clattered his bill against hers.

He was so busy ingratiating himself with the coquettish fair one that he did not notice Father Bonifeau put down the little child, steal softly up, and seize him. The next moment the priest

PROLOGUE.

3 twisted off his head and flung the quivering little body into a bush ; but the hen-bird was too nimble for the avenging Father Bonifeau and flew to the top of a branch, where she again preened her feathers and looked down with an air of con scious innocence. Father Bonifeau went into the hut and returned with a saucer of water, which he flung over the fainting bird upon the ground. " Poor feathered fool," he said, lifting the worn-out warrior in his hand, " why waste your little life for yonder winged wanton who repays you thus ! " The bird staggered to his feet with a bewildered look, pecked the hand which had restored his life, and flew feebly up to the top of the bush, where the hen made much of him, with many a wel coming flirt and flutter of her pretty wings. " I knew you would win," her manner implied.

" I did not come to help you because it was so easy. Now finish the nest, whilst I preen my feathers." The priest held up the round-eyed child towards the bush. " Look, my lad, look ! Such is every thing feminine in this fair world. It lives but to destroy ; to break hearts ; to gratify its own lusts and vanities ; to betray the faith of something nobler than itself; to turn God's world of sunshine and of light into sorrowful darkness. Look at yon bird, my child, and remember." The child put out his tiny hands towards the bird with a cry of delight. " Pretty ! pretty ! " he cooed ; and struggled to his feet. Father Bonifeau followed the child as the female robin flew away a few yards and looked back at her pursuer with a coquettish turn of her glossy neck. "Ah — h! I had forgotten that you are a man child," said the priest.

" Come ! we will find your friends in the village below. A woman has destroyed my life ; let me see whether I can save yours." But the child, although trotting eagerly by the side of the emaciated priest, glanced back every now and then at the bird on the bush as she flirted her wan ton wings in the sun. " Pretty ! pretty ! " he cooed. Father Bonifeau stopped. "Pretty! Yes, my child. Pretty ! Oh yes. The prettiness of one half of the world everlastingly damns the other half. Now, we will go down to the village and find your friends." He picked up the sturdy little lad and put him on his shoulder. " So shall I hope to set you above the ordinary frailties of your kind, my little one. What is your name ? " The boy plucked at the branches of the pines and clapped his hands. " Cranby Miller," he lisped.

" ' Cranby Miller.' Very well, Cranby ; in spite of yourself I am going to save you, dear little soul, from destruction. I will teach you to shun every thing feminine ; you shall be as a son to me. You shall never be contaminated by association with worn ! " " Pretty ! pretty ! " cooed the child, as another hen-robin flew past. The priest groaned, and passed onward in peni tential prayer for the life which he had destroyed. In this wise, Father Bonifeau taught Cranby Miller until he came to man's estate.

Book I Chapter

I CONCERNING BULLOCKS Cranby MILLER was gaily dissatisfied with Can adian art. It seemed to him crude ; that it needed his personal supervision and encouragement. At least, that was the excuse which he gave to friends who credited him with too much modesty to fancy anything he could ever do would have any effect on his artistic contemporaries — especially in a place like Montreal. The friends, however, unfeelingly retaliated by affecting to believe that Cranby's yearning to study art in the Old World was, owing to Father Bonifeau's misogynistic teaching, simply an excuse for getting away from Miss Pamela Blackmore. It had been rumoured that Miss Blackmore liked Cranby with the secret liking of a modest maiden's dreams. The mere hint of such a thing from mocking friends made the mercurial yet shy Cranby long to flee into the wilderness and hide himself after the manner of the proverbial ostrich.

He did not believe that Miss Blackmore even thought of him, except to wonder why he cumbered the ground. She was much too lovely and opulent to care for anyone whose first artistic attempts had taken the form of painting buggy wheels. Still, his disbe lief was only another reason for fleeing to a place where people had never heard of him. Thanks to the natural gaiety of his disposition, most people had heard of him in Montreal ; they had also heard of the buggy wheels and longed to know more about them. One man even gave him an order to fresco a fence, and was seriously offended when Cranby charged him for the whitewash only and made no mention of the artistic way in which it was applied. The innate chivalry of this light-hearted Galahad made him think how unpleasant it would be for Pamela Blackmore should some kind friend also inform her of the rumour which busy tongues had so industriously spread.

Yes ; he must certainly go to London and study art. Had he not that very morning, overcome by an unexpected combination of sadness and sweet champagne, transferred two thirds of an exceedingly modest patrimony to his newly-married sister ! At the present moment, after paying for her wedding festivities, there remained but two dollars in his pocket. The bride had promised to send him his share in the profits of the family farm at quarterly intervals, provided there should be any profits to remit. At the best, these visionary amounts were not likely to exceed the sum of twenty pounds per annum ; while there was every probability that, under the unskilful management of his sister's dreamy husband, they would gradually diminish to vanishing point. " But what," Cranby said to himself, in a moment of youthful enthusiasm, " is money save a sordid chain which links us to everything from which we wish to escape ?

It amuses me to think that I can paint a little. Have I not decorated every sign board and tavern for ten miles round my native village ; have I not invented joyous ' colour-schemes ' to gladden the hearts of the gay habitants of the Ottawa Valley ? Sure am I that they have derived as much pleasure from my photographic enlarge ments of their numerous progeny as an Englishman experiences when he pays his cheque for an Academy picture. Why shouldn't I some day do an Academy picture ? I '11 run over to England, and put a little life into that money-grubbing old country ; all the tourists who come to Montreal say that no one really lives until he sees London, although if a Canadian sees it in winter he generally dies. Still, I should like to paint London in a November fog. If I can't sell my work, I can always put in a few tortured souls, call it a picture of ' Purgatory,' and give it to my good friend, Father Bonifeau, the priest.

I wonder whether there are as many London fogs as people say. Perhaps it is on account of the women. ' The more women in a place, the more gloomy the atmosphere,' says Father Bonifeau ; and yet I have been but six months in Montreal, and the sky is always bright. " No ; I shall paint landscapes ; ' they are more truthful than women,' says Father Bonifeau. Women are a nuisance. You begin to paint a girl, and fall in love with her ; and when you are once in love there's no need to talk of — a place much too hot to mention in polite society. You 're in it ; without a chance of getting out again. Bah ! bah ! bah ! What a stupid old world it is ! Young as I am, it seems to me that human nature hasn't developed at all for the last ten centuries ; at least, I can't gather anything else from Father Bonifeau's books, whose pages are as wrinkled as an old woman's cheeks.

Scratch off the varnish, and there's the same sinful ground-work below. 'Always will be,' says Father Bonifeau. People are born, marry, die, and think they are doing something original ; whereas, they 're about as original as my first sign-board, when I had to write under neath it, ' This is a wolf ' Eh, bien,' as Father Bonifeau would say, he need not have taught me to think. If he hadn't kept me away from the girls all my life, I shouldn't look such a fool now when a pretty one glances at me. Why has he made me hate 'em so much ? Wouldn't it be only fair to begin by loving one a little, just to — just to find out if they are all as wicked as the books say ? " He stopped in the middle of Notre Dame Street, and jingled the two dollars. This colossal sum and a suit of new clothes, were all that remained to Cranby of his patrimony.

In his desire to start afresh, he had given his sister everything, including his sketches — with a magnanimous disregard for the cost of the materials. " When you are hard up," he had said to the blushing bride, " and with a schoolmaster for a husband — particularly such a schoolmaster — you will always be hard up, you can sell a sign-board. Here are eighteen, which I have painted as a wedding dowry for you. Eighteen sign-boards at ten dollars each ! Why, Cerissa, it is a fortune. The canvas alone is worth eighteen dollars. You don't often see canvasses with the merits and demerits so evenly balanced ; they are unique." Cranby Miller again jingled the two dollars and put his good-looking head on one side with the air of an inquisitive bird. He was neatly knit, with curly black hair, an adorable nose, determined chin, and beautiful innocent blue eyes — eyes which were so like a woman's that, as Father Bonifeau told him, they made him look at the world from a woman's point of view ; " and that," added the reverend father, who hated a woman as much as he hated the devil, although of the two he had a kindlier feeling for the latter, " is as much as to say that you are already half lost.

Kiss a woman, and it will set the seal on your perdition ; you '11 go the rest of the way at a run. The man who loves a woman has no love for himself ; the woman who loves a man is a shade worse than the woman who hates one : she kills his soul far more effectu ally." And Father Bonifeau glared ferociously at imaginary women, quite ignoring the fact that when a woman slays a man's soul, she is in most cases avenging but a tithe of the wrongs which her sex has suffered from time immemorial. Cranby, out of love for Father Bonifeau, and quite contrary to his own theories, which were rather inclined to experiment in feminine directions, had never kissed any other woman than his sister. Kissing his own sister, he speculatively admitted to himself, was not in the least likely to endanger his hopes of heaven, whatever might be the effect pro duced on him by kissing the sister of some other man.

Sometimes he could not help thinking that, with the assistance of the lovely guides against whom Father Bonifeau so persistently railed, the descent to Avernus must be a pleasant one. Father Bonifeau often declared that his own soul was in peril for loving a heretic like Cranby ; but it seemed to his protege" that, in thus losing his soul, Father Bonifeau would surely find it again some day. It occurred to the youth that to be strenuously con cerned about his own soul at the age of twenty, betokened a selfishness which might increase pro portionately with the passing years, and make him a nuisance to himself and everyone else. When Cranby reached the Canada Pacific Railway depot, the momentary exhilaration produced by sweet champagne vanished ; only its sad stickiness remained. Not even the last flicker of the boats he had burned remained to warm him when the night came on.

Eight shillings and a wedding garment were all his worldly gear. How was he to get to London for eight shillings? The thing was im possible, even though he pawned the wedding garment, or offered it up to Neptune for good luck. Recalled by a derisive chirrup from the vexed consideration of poverty-stricken realities, he threw a careless stone at an imported English sparrow, which had reached Canada for nothing and thriven upon the voyage. The cosmopolitan bird dodged the stone and chattered a cheery defiance from the nest box provided for it by the mistaken philan thropist who had brought it over. " Yah," it said, inelegantly gay. " You want to go to England for eight shillings, do you, you buggy-spoiling habitant ! You have about as much chance as I have. They know how to paint in England.

You paint ! Paint, you say ! Pooh ! you couldn't even paint me ! " The next moment Cranby felt himself knocked flat upon his back, and half-choked by a cloud of pungent dust. For some tumultuous seconds he was painfully conscious of the heavy pressure of a huge hoof on the pit of his stomach ; then he opened his eyes only to find himself being dragged along the ground, as the last of a herd of bullocks entered the yard at an ungainly trot. " Bullocks nearly done for you ? " asked his old chum, Hiram Churton, as he propped Cranby up against the wall, and began to pummel his ribs. " Thought it rather funny until I found out who you were. Never saw a man before who seemed to have so many legs waving round. You looked all bunched up. Punch," he hummed, Punch, brothers, punch with care, Punch in the presence of the passenjare !

That 's broken ! No, 'tisn't. I 'm not sure — No ; oh, you 're all right, Cranby, barring your slim little tummy ; that seems a bit out of shape. Bruised much ? You '11 be better when you 've done gasping like a fish out of water. Sit up, man, sit up and swear a little ; that '11 relieve you. You don't own the place ; the dock people will resent your not paying ground rent if you don't move. That 's it. Gently ! What on earth possessed you to go moon ing about the middle of the street when my bullocks came charging round the corner for the Lake Winamucca? You simply sat down and let them trample the life out of you. Any man who lies down like that openly invites oppression. Now, lean on me, and swell out again to your proper shape. You want pumping up like a bicycle." " Oh — h my ! Oh — h — h !

Let me get my wind again. It was — it was bullocks, eh, not an earth quake?" ungrammatically queried Cranby, still agonisedly clasping the pit of his stomach, and feeling that there were worse things in the world than even cheap champagne. " I — I seem to be spread out all on one side." " They were bullocks," said the chum. " Hinc illce lacrimce, which, being translated, means, ' Hence these steers.' As our old class-mate from the wild west would say, ' It was several bullocks in concession.' " Cranby, still sitting on the ground, mechanically dusted himself and began to laugh with hysterical gulps. " In succession, I should say ; they didn't make many concessions to me. A more unfeeling, ungainly, uncompromising, heavy-hoofed, remorse less set of brutes I never came across." " Ha, ha ! They came across you, my boy ; it was their way of taking revenge for your signposts.

I 've heard of them — even in Toronto. But don't call the poor brutes names simply because they flattened you out. They 're not at all bad bullocks if you treat them decently. If you got under one in the cars, though, you 'd never live to tell the tale. Fortunately, you were in the open and they only ran over you. Few people have your luck, Cranby. You seem to like being trampled on." Cranby got up on one knee. " Luck ! I like your idea of luck! What in the name of common sense are you doing in this iniquitous combination with bullocks? It looks like a plot to assassinate me. Or is it a bet? Have you at last fulfilled the predictions of all your friends and gone mad ? Oh — h — h ! I 've got such a pain ; that last beast put his hoof right through my — low — er chest ! Are you really mad at last, or only pretending to be so?"

" Not much. Down on my luck — stoney broke. I 'm to be the guide, philosopher, and friend of those stolid brutes all the way to England. They want a friend to look after their physical and moral welfare and deliver them in good condition so that they can be sold as prime English beef. When they are skinned no one can tell the difference, not even the English buyer, who, metaphorically speak ing, is skinned also." " That 's not your affair, Hiram. How much are you to get for pandering to the affectations of these disgusting brutes?" " I don't know how much they '11 fetch. I am to get £4 the trip. There's a girl wants to see me in Winnipeg when I return, so I hope we shall have a quick voyage. I 've shut the gate, and they're all right now." Cranby noted the pathos in Hiram's voice and carefully dusted his own left knee.

" Why didn't you come to me, instead of going to the devil after some girl? Father Bonifeau would have told us what to do. He can always be relied on to give advice about women. He 's given me advice on the subject ever since he taught me to read, ' W-o-e-m-a-n, which means man's woe, and quite right too.' That was his way of treating the subject. You might have come to me if you were hard up." " Oh, of course I couldn't come to you ; you would have helped me in spite of your woman hating old Bonifeau. I wanted to help myself. You'd have painted buggies for the rest of your life in order to supply my wants. My girl wouldn't have liked it." " All nonsense," said Cranby. He took a dollar from his pocket. " I 've two ; here 's your half. Never mind what your girl says. She need never know." " Shows what a duffer you are.

Of course she 'd worm it out of me. A lot you know about women. Shut up, with your beastly coin. D' you remember — (wait till I round-up that bald-faced brute that's trying to open the gate and finish you. Shoo, that 's it) — D' you remember how I 've always wanted to do something romantic, go over ' the wine-dark wave' in quest of adventure, and all that sort of thing ? " "Rubbish," said Cranby. "You'd much better go to see your sweetheart in Winnipeg. Father Bonifeau says " Then he remembered that Father Bonifeau would not have advised any man to go to Winnipeg to see a woman, young or old. " If you tell me any more of that hardy perennial, that single-petalled old Father Bonifeau, I '11 choke you and bring back the bullocks to trample on your lop-sided remains. What does he know about my girl ?

He 's nothing but a priest anyway, a sort of antediluvian fossil." " Is he, Hiram ? That 's all you know about him, my boy. He 's taught me lots, so he must be clever. Well, I want to go to England ; and you know very well you want to go to Winnipeg. It's all humbug about your ' wine-dark wave,' or any other coloured wave, when you know very well that you can't swim worth a cent. Take my clothes and watch and two dollars and go straight to perdition, which, in this instance, is only another name for Winnipeg. Then I can have your clothes and your place, and go to England and learn how to paint." Churton hesitated. " Better not ask me, or I might consent. It 's a sad thing to put the sea between you and the girl you love. Frankly, I 'm too much in love to care about doing it, but I don't want to back out.

I 'm stoney broke — dead down on my luck. Besides, I should lose sr.ch a lot of fun. You only know the domestic bullock from seeing him loaf round in a pasture. He's not that Sunday-school sort of animal when you get him on board ship. No, sir. He's commonly supposed to be stupid, but that's only his fun. You think him gentle, yielding, acquiescent as — well he's about as acquiescent as your old Father Bonifeau would be if you asked him to kiss a pretty girl. You won't like him, and you won't care to work from four in the morning until ten at night with seasick bullocks pathetically bellowing round you. You've never tried to nurse a sick bullock, have you ? " " I don't mind that at all. And I sha'n't have time to be seasick." "Oh yes, you will. It's one of those things for which one generally manages to make time somehow."

"Well, I want to go to England anyway. Fath " " Come along and take Father Bonifeau with you and drop him overboard. I 'd like to know what he'd say to the mermaids, and what they'd say to him ? Swelling gone down any ? " "Where do you put up? I say, Hiram, I am a bit stiff. My stomach 's as flat as a wall ; it seems spread out all over me." " I don't put up," and Hiram hurried him along. " I pig it in a little attic where I can catch the first glimpse of the morning sun and go to sleep again — when the mosquitoes will allow me. Mos quitoes are such sycophants. When I 'd money, they always let me alone. Now, they mock my misery and pounce upon me." " Do you know why ? " " N— no." " Father Bonifeau says it 's the feminine mos quito only that bites ; that 's his explanation of the venom in it."

"Ah well, for once in his life he is right. He must have kissed something feminine or he'd never have found that out. Come on, Cranby. I 'm hungry. Wish we could get a steak out of one of those beasts and sew him up again ; but the owners and the bullock mightn't like it. This way, round the corner and first on the right. That 's it, old fellow. Stop patting yourself and come along." Cranby followed his guide. The place where Hiram Churton " pigged it " was a small room over a low, malodorous pot-house, and the getting up the narrow uneven stairs which led to it involved a great deal of elbow - bruising and knocking in of hats. Churton's wideawake had been smashed so often that nothing could change its appearance for the worse ; at its best it was enough to frighten the crows ; but Cranby's glossy silk hat, newly purchased for the wedding, was a sorry spectacle long before he reached the top of the stairs.

He took it off, and ruefully surveyed the once shining but now dustily cobwebbed surface. Was it for this that it had so miraculously rolled away from the hoofs of Churton's bullocks ? With a B sigh, he doffed his well-fitting coat and laid it on the narrow bed, mournfully eyeing the grimy coverlet. His waistcoat followed, his trousers, and varnished shoes. One hand outstretched towards Hiram's cowboy pants, he began to dream of the future — that future which did not appear to reach beyond horizons limited by bullocks. At last he succeeded in detaching himself from the future and returned to the present. What would Father Bonifeau say to this degradation of his outer man ? People would take him for a common tramp. However, art was long and life was short. He must get to England somehow, no matter how disreputable he looked.

But those greasy pants ! Faugh ! " You '11 have a lot of mosquitoes, both male and female, settling on you, if you don't get into my pants," Churton suggested. " Can't you hear 'em buzzing at you through the keyhole? These aren't really bad pants for the kind of work one has to do. I 've seen worse. Look workmanlike, you know, though they may be a bit stained." Cranby gaily came back to his surroundings and thrust the other leg into Churton's greasy garment. Hiram laid one hand on his shoulder. " Come out of them, old man ; give it up. You 're not fit for it — the work's too rough for a lily-handed chap like you. Stop at home and desecrate buggy wheels and sign-boards and fences and things." " Providence planted the hoofs of your bullocks in the pit of my stomach in order that I may take your place on board the Winamucca.

It was a liberty on the part of Providence; still, one can learn a lot from bullocks." " One can — in some ways. You '11 want to toma hawk me in three or four days. The smells, the bullocks, the ruffians with you — oh, I can imagine it all ; and then, in the middle of the night, some beastly bullock will be taken ill, and you '11 have to sit up with its head on your knees. Don't go, Cranby, don't go. You '11 throw up your immortal soul to the four winds of heaven." " That 's better than throwing up my plan. Don't be beastly, Churton ; you 've about as much refine ment as a ground hog. What time must I be on board ? " Cranby drew the disgraceful wideawake over his sunny face. Nothing mattered much after that. Anyone would have been justified in shooting him on sight. " How long is it since you kissed your girl, Churton ?