THE PEACE OF EPHRAIM.

Evening Star, Issue 11452, 21 January 1901, Page 2

THE PEACE OF EPHRAIM.

[All Rights Reserved.]

[By Morlet Roberts, author of ' The Ad venture of the Broad Arrow,' etc.]

Old Kphraim came shuffling down the hill-f-i'lc, <:nd slid through the thick dewey brush liM he saw the lake water close at hand. He :-!oo ! on the flat for a long minute, swinging his head from side to side, and with his iic-y lit He eyes he took in the landscape. "Gr-r-r-uniph," said Kphraim, as he rv'ibd against a pine. "Gr-r-r-umph." And. saying so, he slouched to the lake btach and drank. A bald-headed eagle on a dead branch high over head took no -notice, for he was considering the- question of fish for dinner. A striped chipmunk sat on a log and chirped. Far across the wide water v was a blue column of faint smoke, but the lake was utterly calm. Not an Indian's canoe dotted the mirror in which were reflected the great hills. Ancient peace brooded over the forest "Gr-r.r-umph," said Ephraim, and by it meant to remark that it just suited him. He had no complaints to make so long as nobody interfered to r/rowd him. For, as you may guess. Ephrajfea was a bear, and in all his lifexhe had never-seen.a man. He did not know that man was good to eat; he had yet to discover that man makes railroad?, and is a mighty disturber of the peace.

The very nest day there landed on this far off quiet lake beach in British Columbia two animals who -walked upon their hind legs. One oHhem was a silent man, with a bit of the bear jn him. for he sometimes saicj "Gr-r-r-umph," but the other laughed, and was as cheery as a.chipmunk in a newly deserted camp.

"This is the spot; the only possible," said the cheerful Disturber.

"Gr-r-r-umph," answered the gruff Disturber.

"Why. certainly, Harris, it's actu-ally fiat, and with a dozen or bwo men here with axes we'll knock thunder out of this brush and have these infernal trees down, and, sires, we'll build our town right here." "It'll hev to do," said Harris, with discontent.

"You're as bad as'the.old Scotch grumbler who said that the engine bed laid down by his son was ' level, but nae mair,' " cried Sisron. laughing. "Why, siree, we'll have ■a lovely time building. Gimme a railroad."

Tie smacked ruddy lipscand gleamed red in thn westering sun. " Rack to the Narrows, old man."

Next morning more invaders came in many beats and old Indian dug-outs, and there -n-as the sound'of axes laid to the roots "f ancient pines. Epliraim of the woods heard nothing, for he was far off among the siltirit hills on ;; blrteberry picnic. "Look out, now! Stand from under, you!"

" How's she falling:?' The chief axeman stood with his palm against the bole of the biggest monarch there. " One-tmore clip." The tree whimpered and wavered, and cracked loiudly. " This wvxy, my beauty," said the axeman, as hemovedaside, still with his palm to the bark. The tree bowed, and with an everincreasing speed swept to the ground, landing with aouawful crash. So fell many that hour. They built: a road. They marked out a place for the C.P. Store. And Sisson stood with his thumbs in the armbales of his waistcoat. " She moves;," said Sisson. • What moved he did not say. But a town was in the vdry act of arising. The tree took centJiriesi; the town was born in a day. "At Sisson!)* Landing/' they said down the Shushwidi Lake. And yet Sisson's Landing had oialy existed twenty-four hours. "We're otf -up to Sisson's," said half the crowd on the wharf at Kamloops. There were Americans from East Canada and from the United Stai.es just yonder. There were Englishmen, and real or imported British Columbians. With them stood Scandinavians, and sons of Lapland, and Chinamen, and Indians. A Mexican swapped cigarettes with a Spaniard from Castille. " dahya tilicnm, how goes it, partner? Why, I thot as you was bound for Victoria?" "So I wu7„ but> now T ain't.. Sisson's is hii? ; iiess. That's what." !-!o Sisson hummed still more. "Where are you.off to, Johnny, old Fan 'ding?" "sic wnshec Sisson's." " VvV.sh her well, you old galoot." " Mcin Gott! I mis? de boat," said a German. "Miss thunder," said the incredulous crowd ; "We never observed you miss anything. It's we do that. What's in your baggage?" ' The libelled German passed'that disorderly Customs gang, puffing. Then the steamer squealed; an echo answered from the bi? bluff opposite. " Hoot—too—oot!" " Good-bye! Good luck! Send word! Eh. what? I ain't got none! Can't catch a derned word! Oh, yes—by Gosh! Now you're off—here's how } you railroad-building scum, you!"

" Hoot—too—oot—too— oot" And the-Spallumcbeen stern -wheeler swept at twelve knots for SissOfl's. Everybody was bound for Sisson's. They came from the First Columbia Crossing and from Gnklen City. They Sopped iti from Sandy Point. They dropped down frbmSpalliimcheeh ih the rickety rotten tub called the Pearl. They paddled from the Salmon Arm. They came up from Ashford in the Black Canon, from Cache Creek, froirt Yale, from Hope, from Victoria. Good men came, and bad. There were men who sold and men who bought; men who loafed, who worked) hj who gambled, who stole. Sisson's was once a bear-haunt, now it was a hive of bees who made money instead of honey. A corduroyed road led into Eagle Pass ; four-horsed waggons squished in mud, and teamsters howled or sang or were silent according to their progress and the progress of the long daT.

The authorities further West woke up. "There's a town at Sisson's, send'Todd

And Todd, the magistrate, got into the boat. He tried to look after liquor licenses; But then every other man had a keg. Siid Sissort:

" This is my town, by gost !** fie beamed on the saturnine Harris, who w;>s the sleeping partner. ''Now she scoots, she hunts," said Sissom

The long street Which was Sisson's was houses made of canvas, of matched flooring, of clapboards, of logs, of bark shacks* " Come in and eat," said one house in red letters. "We are the Shiishwap House.'i " Pie," said another- lionise.

Another ctie had red blinds. Another was where the gamblers led the wary and unwury to " buck the tigef." They spake the language of Fato, of Kehe, they had a wheel of Fortune, which was a fortune to-tfiera. Bub the greatest fortune was the secret keg. Only wheti Todd landed theja.;was moic sobtietj. Hejuad the Law

behind him, and Berth ef the forty-nine parallel of latitude, which divides the United States from Canada, the Law grows rather well than otherwise. .South of that parallel, the Law is rather a poor weed. You certainly won't get sixty bushels of it to the acre out of the soil in Idaho and Montana. ~

"Law be—yep, that's what!" they say there.

But in British Columbia a warrant runs at times.

Yet when Todd cleared, and especially when he lighted out for home on a Saturday, Sisson's burned and blazed and yelled and bulged, and went on a tearing jamboree, and painted itself as red as some did their cheeks in the Houses with Red Blinds. Law might grow, but .order went rip like a rotten topsail in a. squall. Sisson's howled and rioted, and the long-booted and red-shirted danced till dancing entered their brains and consciousness waltzed out, turning head overheels, Catherine wheel-wise, into tho darkness.

They lay in piles. They stacked Ihemr selves in fine disorder like the truck shot of a capsized waggon on the rough toat road. They lay like pelicans, and no one could disentangle Bill from Jack, or Hans from Mike, or Peter from Paul. There was a universal federation on the beach, of the silver lake. The stars looked down on international quietness at last.

And now the railroad crawled nearer. It came down from the east, and it crawled up from the west. Hard men built it where drink was not. Only in the middle of the yet railless space was sueh a spot as Sisson's. Skson's knew now that the last spike must be driven not so far away from its fiery speck in the wi'.derness. The notion intoxicated all; even Harris, the bear, smacked Sis.son on the shoulder as the news came in. " The end of the track is at the summit. - ' The soberest danced. For Achievement was tasselling like maize. The Federation's labor wa,s nearly over. Finance was to commence fruition. " It's the biggest railroad on earth." That depressed men from the United States. They drooped and dranked, and bucked up, and declared that south of the border it could have been built in about forty-seven seconds and three fifths, by the third best chronometer in Washington. They were given the laugh and the lie, and some joined battle. " You ain't got the mounting as we hev," said a Missourian who had never seen a mountain till he came to British Columbia. " These yer mountains is to the full twenty thousand feet, I swear,"' said one of the men of British Columbia. " Say thirty '." " And so I will 1" He did. And believed it. But it was a big road anyhow. You'll allow that partner ! Come, fill up : what's your poison ''. Give it lip, fill them up again, Mr Smith, and take one yourself. Here's to the last spike of the Canadian Pacific ! Who will drive it home? Oh, happy man, no less happy 'than he who laid the last true stone on the Great, Pyramid, or he who one day shnil sit in Latitude Nothing on the cbnir of the Assembled Longitudes. They did things, these people, and they sweated joy. What time the tall pagodas of the spruces fell, and odorous hemlocks trembled, and the ruddy barked fir declined in meaner brush, their hearts beat full and happy. The surveyed line became real, and broadened ; pick and shovel, bar and drill labored; rock-cut opened, their contents whirled into'fills; and dynamite spoke sharply to gunpowder. The cliffs threw themselves into the river, and gave whv to the road. It was the road to Sisson's.

And below, the forest slipped aside like a split crowd when police enter; and the track-layers fought with the weight of iron and steel. The makers of ties toiled aside in little camps where sudden canvas, seen through opposing enticing brush, showed white like a cataract or a. snowdrift. For the rails stepped eastward on the ties. Eastward to Sisson's. to a l?-?t handshaking, to a lock-fast grip of east and west. The papers talked, adding to the universal noise which roajpd along the rails from Montreal east awny to Winnipeg, east and away to Medicine Hat. and enst to Calgary and the stone steps of mountains to one summit. Each community yelled in print; what the crowd said in subscriptions (cash, hash, or promises) the editor poured forth in a flood of ink.

" The most notable event of the century," for what the thunder is the rest of the world? We are we, the Unanimous, the Surprising, L'prising. Enterprising East and West—we have pretty nigh corralled the Universe! So!

And all this merged into two chutes verging on Sisson's, the dumping ground of Hope, Work and Achievement. What wonder that Sisson almost paled, poor man, and then trombled (lie being optimism) and turned to the Advocatus Diaboli Harris, invoke? of Disaster and the Dark Side of Things. " By Gosh, it's great!" He said so to the stars and the lake in front of him.

"The way you chaps ho»l," said Harris gloomily, " would or should make the earth open; why the blue blazes don't you do things quietly?" For they were- roaring a, new song in a hundred saloon bars at Simon's about the Last Spike.

" The last nail in their coffin, the galoots," said that bear Harris. " The drink sellers have their money and we have their labor, and the financiers have us, and when the spike ifi driven they are out of a job !" But the- crowd said that one job was monotonous, and a railroader couldn't sit down by a built wad and admire his own work even for seventy-five dollars a ftlonth. They hankered now in the back of their minds for new roads. Every man jack of them was a pick and shovel Alexander. " We ain't iookih' for tio soft seat!"

Good lo hear that ill these days when the soft seated howl softly on cushions and do nob know their complaint is suppressed energy. Rise up, rise up, alid cOine to the meeting of the rails ! Even how one end of track can almost catch the clink of hammer oh spike at the other Slid of track. The Atlantic and thfe St. Lawreiice say at the rail tSlephbM: ''Ate you there?"

" We're here,'' sky the Pacific and the ColUm%ia River and the Frasefj "we're here, ybti bet." Those Who have not lived in such mountain air or listened to the music of the stormy river and the cymbals of the crash of snow slides, hear the echo Of it how and eaten the sMell of the theft's kitchens mingled with the odor of stripped bark and pirie chips and sawdust! The saw-mill on the creek humgj the aie talks through the distance, when the tree gives depth to its voice, like a lone bull-frog in a far off marsh. Overhead the show glitters and the feathery pings are princely plumes. And yonder, yonder (the other western side of Sisson's) there are horrors ; sand, alkali, hot sun, the Dry fact, betwiit ifamloops and the Canon of the peht-in Ffasef. With so big a thing as this toad, in so great a scale of Uves and labor,, we am afford 16 give avtyiy everything. We present you with

life and death and many changes of panorama. Heaven opens and hell smokes. How it smoked at Sisson's! Tor, as I have been endeavoring to show you blind mice, Sisson's was peculiar. It had qualities that no other place of achievement had. It was tbfe place of white-hot welding—Sisson's sijszled, the temperature of'men's minds climbed out of the poor thin realm of the norinal and got up notch by notch in fine irepzj heat till enthusiastic lava rolled in waves like a storm in Kilauea's basin. Tom Sieson sank and was melted—black Harris floated red hot slag in molten metal; the very stars were to come down out of the sky. Fused ambitions looked on Heaven above as Little Jack Horner looked on his historic cake. " He put in his thumb And pulled out a plum"—

Sisson's, with its whole corporate hand, reached for constellations. Immortal magic Sisson's I Born yesterday, it was become immemorial. Yesterday was ancient reckoning ; to-day was culmination. To-morrow the new Pole (made of gold in the shape of a Spike) was to be driven in by gods. Day by day drifted past in huge labor. Barrows ran with giants behind them; emujous hills slid obediently into hollows, and the grade grew along the ground, nearer, nearer the event. And as the interest concentrated itself some outside fell off. They had to go j the crowd betwixt end of track and end of track was too great; men stood in each other's way; hammers, bars, and shovels lay in piles—their work done. Displaced sops of labor stood by in imminent sadness ; their niinds wavered' betwjxt this conquered territory and some railroad breaking out in Oregon or thereabouts. Some went with Fet minds; same stayed, anchored for the final triumph.

The-full days tumbled from the calendar of time, and the Day itself arrived. Round yonder bluff could be heard the shriek of one locomotive—across the lake could be seen the white steam of another. One was east and the other west. They were to meet by glorious Sissou'*. Stand back, clear the track for this one dictator of a day doubly triumphing in the gods' capitol <»f mountains !

Sisson's rose early, having never been to bed. All night long that- street of Sisson's wa.s aflare with lights, and men's eves, and stars, and, metaphorically, with a thousand headlights of engine?. Strangers shook hands ; strangers there were none : a Chinaman was a fellow-creature; Sisson himself gave a hand to any thrust-out fist of congratulation. And Sisson was somebody then and always. Sisson and Sisson's sibulalcd on every tongue. They said:' " Sisson's is a town : " " And will be--; —"' An interjected "nothing" produced uproar till the interjector humbly explained that his " nothing " by no means referred to Sisson'?. "What is she now? r ' " And what will she be?' They walked along the Christmas tree forest of imagination and cracked nuts with twenty dollar gold pieces in them. A leaf was at least a dollar bill. " Here"* to the city of Sisson's—the mountain capital!"' They drank to that. The Shack-owner [passed a box of cigars about, and actually forgot and gave the best. And yet they knew that Sisson's was a coruscating symbol only ; cast was hammer, west was anvil, and Sisson's flew, out in sparks. Harris, the devil's advocate of black truth, said so, being melancholy drunk, and was ejected hy the Tirtuous illusionists. " To-morrow— no—to-day." The sun climbed over the hills—and it was the Day. Sisson's turned out with blacked or greased hoots and many clean shirte and somo rasped chins looking like headed stubble, and poured hither and thither. The Bosses came. The big boss and the lesser boss and the little boss and (so to speak) the boss-lets. The whiteheaded surveyor came with many sons—he had opened the pass; the engineers came—they were dynamite and powder and law and order combihed. The police came (B. C. police and Dominion police, mildly jealous of each other, or jealous and despising), and Todd, magistrate, suppressor or mitigator of illicit liquor. Victoria sent men and women ; they came from Montreal, visible, embodied congratulations. Two locomotives stood almost pilot to pilot. Even now the track-layers sweated with the last sis hundred pound rails. Their strong man carried one alone, and was madly cheered by crowd and echo from the hills. " "Now, then—that's it—so " They knew how to do it. Some had handled many thousands and were becoming automatic. " Now a. spike -" The hammer fell. " Another—so !"' " Another!" " No, that's the last, the last. Leave it for the big maa!" How they cheered, stumbling among brush aiid piles of ties. They looked round half aghast l« think it so near done. The autumn of accomplishment suddenly saddened them. " Where shall we be to-m6r-row?'' Sisson's quivefed, and almost knew itself a name. " I'm gJllig to-mbfrdVr or next day—but you ?" ".You will stay, of course, for the greater, solider glory of Sisson's." Now you virtuous arid you temperate must understand how it was that Sisson's proceeded to raise Cain and get full, far t<io full, of various imported adulterations ! They stood in em Illusion, clad with illtisioli, and when the work Was over began to feci cold. For some it was their Fast work, For some their first. Some faced idleness, some faced seeking. An ended job is a cold day always. Who shall provide? Sisson's couldn't say, and therewith proceeded to get very much over the border of strict sobriety; Be it remembered without infinite regret that the Great) the Lesser, and the Little, and all thelf Satellites were just abohfc as full as the Shushwap Lake. Little and great wefe alike itien, and this day swept down dignity and pride of place and all barriei-B. Didn't the biggest shake hands with Sisson's meanest ? And it wasn't a fluke either. Humanity was fused.

They drove that golden spike, and as the roar of golden applause i66senM snow the wires carried echoes to the east and west, to Montreal, to New York, to London, to life world.

"We have been and gone and ddne it! The biggest railroad oh this earth is done! Thai is—it is begun !" " Hip, hip, hip. hurrah \* " Gentlemen, the Queen !' k The gfSat dlhh§f marqUee strained at its supports, afid wondef w6'hdere<l that it do rise like a balloon. " To the President of the tjnited States !" Why not, why not? Veil, yell, ye inside and outside devils. " To the president of this road !" Aye, to the President of this.road, this through road, this only road under otie management fram th§ Atlantic id the Pacific 1 Suck ill your breath, and seind the balanced snow slides down! "Hltfrafi! hurrah! hurrah'!'» flife locomotives hooted. The crowd fifSd off its guns; The steamers on the lake

whooped deliriously, and echo answered from a thousand. precipices: "It's done! it's donej it's done!" Sissy's flamed with lights, and wop $ constellatjon till a&othe> day dimmed jls sparkling crown. * *■•■- .■■• #.-:,'« «

o}d Ephraini, just before hpling-up time, came out of thfc hills and went crashing through the brush towards the lake. For the lake-side was quiet again, and a spirit of curiosity, led by some enticing and curious odors, took him down. He scrambled over a prone pine and came into the open, and into Silent Simon's, where chipmunks onee more, played,- and, where every shapk and shanty was eyeless, with its Windows and sashes gone. He went through the dead city with his suspicious red eyes glaring, and every now and again he stopped and swung bis head from side to side. And when he came to the water he saw, as he drank, the -white steam of a locomotive just across the Narrows. The locomotive said: " Hoot-top-ept." And Ephraim sniffed contemptuously. What he thought of dead Sisson's ho man is smart enough;to tell, but what he said -was: " Gr-r-r-umph!" v : >^yggj^£-