Bucking the Tiger
Chapter I
Broke
RITCHIE MACDONALD was broke for the second time that year, for the fifteenth time since he had left Princeton seven years ago; and this time he was broke for keeps.
There was no doubt of it in his mind.
He had worked all summer and right into the winter in a coal prospect beyond the border, near Fernie, British Columbia, in the heart of the Kootenais. Four dollars a day, five a week for board, and no liquor allowed in camp! So he had saved practically all his pay and had come south, to Spokane, with several hundred dollars jingling pleasantly and invitingly in his mackinaw.
And then! Well, it had been the usual thing. And this morning he had awakened, in the rear room of Tom Williams's saloon, with a splitting headache, a dark-brown taste and ten cents in his pockets.
Therefore he had begged Tom Williams to stake him to breakfast, which Tom, who had once been an officer in the Royal English Mariners, had done in regal style. He had then bought himself a cigar with his last ten cents, and had finally disposed of his overcoat for three dollars to an itinerant lumberjack who had just drifted in from an Idaho camp.
Now he walked along, worried in a way, but jauntily; his five foot ten of broad manhood erect and lithe, muscle answering to muscle. He smiled. He cocked an imaginary beaver at the sombre face of misfortune, and told himself that all things come to an end.
The first thing to do would be to raise some money, the second to procure a job. It was characteristic of Ritchie Macdonald that he thought of the former before considering the possibility of the latter.
Rapidly he ran over the list of what he called his "pawnable acquaintances." All of them were working for wages, and spending as fast as they made, after the manner of the Northwest. There was only Marshall Houghton, who was in business with his father, real-estate, insurance and promoting.
So he walked up to the Peyton Building and a minute later he sat facing his old college mate in the latter's simple but luxurious private office.
"What's on your mind?" Marshall Houghton asked smilingly.
Macdonald stated his demand with brevity.
"Stake me to a hundred."
Marshall Houghton usually was the embodiment of warm, massive solidity. But suddenly a thin, cold, bland atmosphere seemed to settle over him, to envelop him from his neatly parted, honey-coloured hair to his well-polished boots.
"Awfully sorry, old man, but I can't do it. My own account at the Old National is overdrawn, and the bank is raising Cain, … and father's taken a run up to Victoria on business. I don't know when he'll be back."
"Drop him a line."
"No use, old man. You know my father's motto."
He pointed at the wall, where, above father's desk a large bit of pasteboard was fastened. On it was printed in heavy Gothic letters:
WE DON'T LEND MONEY; WE BORROW.
Macdonald read. He flushed under his tan, but he proceeded.
"What about a job?"
The other hemmed and hawed.
"Out with it!" Macdonald commanded; then, as the other did not speak. "What's the matter with you? You've got half a dozen jobs kicking round loose." He pointed at a map which showed the new Houghton Residential Addition in blushing rose and hopeful green. "Turn me loose on this. Let me sell some lots for you. You know I can work like the devil when I have to. I've held more than one job. …."
"That's exactly it," the other replied, and his voice was cold. "You've held more than one job. You've held too many jobs. You've ranched and surveyed and railroaded and God knows what else. You've held too many jobs. That's the whole trouble." He wagged his finger in a didactic manner. "Friendship is friendship, and business is business, and I cannot—"
"You can't let friendship interfere with business. I got you, and I guess you're right."
The other opened his mouth. He was going to say something else. But Macdonald interrupted him with a loud laugh.
"You've on the right track, my boy—the right track for business with a large, fat capital B. Stick to it, and you'll be as rich as that famous King Solomon of whom the Bible says—I forgot the words. But, for the love of Mike, don't try to sugar the pill. Keep that mouth of yours shut tight. You look like a sea-bass with the mumps."
He left the office.
Of course, the other was perfectly right, he said to himself. He had never made good in anything. And he was a college graduate. All his father's fault, he decided. For that staunch old capitalist had given him three thousand dollars a year while he was in college, and as soon as he had got his degree he had expected him to make a living. He had tried, and he had failed. That three thousand dollars a year had spoiled him. He had failed from New York to Winnipeg, and thence to the Coast, and now he was broke again.
He strolled down Riverside Avenue, turned into Sprague Street, and walked into the office of the M. and P. S.
"Mr. Robertson in?" he inquired.
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Don't announce me."
He walked into the private office of Gordon Robertson, the division freight superintendent of the line. He had lost two hundred dollars to that short, black-haired Scotchman during the memorable three days' poker session at the club.
Robertson seemed to be blessed with a full, working portion of that second-sight for which his race is famed.
"I cannot give ye any money, Mac," he greeted his visitor. "I am a very poor man. Have ye a cigar about ye?"
"No." He smiled at the other's naïveté, then he continued. "How did you guess I was going to strike you for a loan?"
Robertson looked perfectly serious.
"It's uncommon cold outside—and ye're not wearing an overcoat, hey?"
"Go to the head of the class, Robertson. What about a job?"
"I cannot give ye a job, Mac," the Scotchman replied and turned to the papers on his desk. "I have made it a principle never to give jobs to people who—"
"Play poker?" Macdonald interrupted.
"No, my lad … who lose at poker," the other said, with a dry chuckle. "And I wish you a very good morning. I am a busy man."
Macdonald walked out into the street. A wind had sprung high in the west, trailing with it the frosty pine scent of the Coast Range. He shivered. He regretted having parted with his overcoat. After all, there wasn't much difference between three dollars and nothing. He turned up his coat collar. Might as well go back to his hotel, he thought.
He crossed the tracks of the O. R. and N., and turned into Railroad Avenue. At some stage of Spokane's development an evil destiny must have struck this part of the town, and it had never been able to shake it off. For the street was lined with dull grey frame houses, mostly empty, and as desolate as a forgotten mining-camp. At the very end of the street a rickety building, with the pretentious designation of "Eslick's Grand Palace Hotel," offered abruptly its towering gables to the skies.
It seemed to be one of those helpless buildings which change owners, but which never change mortgages, which are sold for taxes once every seven years and which are a source of continuous income to the title guarantee companies; one of those pathetic old houses upon which even Fate wars in vain, and which will stand to all eternity, getting more rickety and more desolate as the years swing by, and smiling vaguely, through dusty, broken window-panes, at storms and tornadoes and fires and a dozen other calamities which would bring a right-minded house to the verge of despair.
Macdonald stopped in front of the hotel. He thought of the promise his past had held, of the shabby present, the bleak, barren, hopeless future. He felt weary and utterly despondent.
Then he smiled as he looked at a pine tree which was raising its gaunt, black arms to heaven on the edge of the pavement.
For a little bird was fluttering from branch to branch like a loose autumn leaf, its brown plumage brushed by the evening sun with ruby and old-gold. It was vainly picking at the bark of the tree for a worm or another bit of food.
"Wrong, old top," Macdonald addressed the bird. "It's the early bird that catches the worm; not the late. I know."
He opened the door.
The large, round lobby was thick with smoke. The walls were covered with advertisements of eminent Kentucky distilleries, and the indelible traces of many generations of flies. The whole place was musty, second-hand, unspeakably sordid. It was steeped in an atmosphere of poverty and sloth; a commingling of dust and whisky; of cheese-sandwiches, wet tweeds and cold cigars.
From the ceiling a really magnificent bronze chandelier was hanging down, put there doubtless by the first proprietor in the mistaken hope that the town would grow out his way and that his hotel would be the scene of many and very expensive festivities. Nobody had ever had the energy to take the chandelier down and sell it. So it hung there, and seemed like the sunrise on the wrong end of the day.
Three men were sitting around a huge, cast-iron stove in the centre of the room, which was glowing through the acrid tobacco smoke like an evil thing with ruby eyes.
They mumbled greetings at Macdonald's entry.
"Hullo, Mac."
"Hullo, yourself."
He knew them all. He had only met them a short time ago, but he knew them well; he was familiar with every chapter in their lives. For they were broke, just as he was, and poverty is both sociable and garrulous.
Two of the men had drawn up a box close to the stove and were playing cards. The third, a good-looking, elderly man with pointed moustache and an eyeglass hanging from a broad silk ribbon, which added a mocking note to his shabby coat and grease-stained sweater, was watching the game.
One of the card-players looked up.
"Care to take a hand, Mac?" he asked. "We're playing pitch, and I'm trying to teach this Dutchman to bid even if he hasn't got a cinch high, low, jack, and the game."
Macdonald shook his head.
"Thanks, Andy," he said. "I'm broke."
Andy Walsh looked up, pained surprise in his honest, brown eyes.
"That ain't no reason why you can't sit in and play. We can owe each other, can't we? Broke, hell! Ain't I broke too? Ain't Traube broke?" He pointed at the tall, thin Gerrman with whom he was playing cards "Ain't Frenchie broke too? … Hey, there, Frenchie," he repeated with a loud voice and turned to the man who was watching the game. "Ain't yer broke—busted—no mon', savvy?"
"Yes. I am," the other replied in careful, beautifully modulated English with the faintest trace of an accent. "I am—ah—broke. I am so broke that every morning I have to collect the tiny little pieces of myself and tie them together so that I can leave the room, hein? But I have told you often, oh, so often that my name is not Frenchie. I am the Comte Jean de Salle La Terriere."
"Not on your life! You can't sport them double-barrelled names round this commonwealth. You're Frenchie, and you're broke!" He turned again to Macdonald. "Say, Mac we're all broke. Even our two festive Britishers. They're in the bar-room now, I guess, telling each other what a swell time they useter have before their dads stopped sending them remittances. Say, even Hayes is broke. He tried to borrow two bits off'n the Chink bar-keeper this morning."
"What did the Chink say?"
Walsh smiled.
"Wait and see." He turned in his chair and roared. "Chung—oh, Chung!"
The door at the farther end of the lobby which connected with the bar opened on a slant.
"You call, Andy?" a high-pitched, sing-song voice inquired.
"Yes—you overfattened Yellow peril."
The door opened a little wider.
"What you want, eh?"
"Stake me to two bits."
The reply came low-voiced, passionless, but decisive.
"Me bloke too!"
And the Chinaman shut the door with a bang.