THE BANKS OF THE SACRAMENTO
"And it's blow, ye winds, heigh-ho, For Cal-i-for-ni-o; For there's plenty of gold so I've been told, On the banks of the Sacramento!"
It was only a little boy, singing in a shrill treble the sea chanteywhich seamen sing the wide world over when they man the capstan bars andbreak the anchors out for "Frisco" port. It was only a little boy whohad never seen the sea, but two hundred feet beneath him rolled theSacramento. "Young" Jerry he was called, after "Old" Jerry, his father,from whom he had learned the song, as well as received his shock ofbright-red hair, his blue, dancing eyes, and his fair and inevitablyfreckled skin.
For Old Jerry had been a sailor, and had followed the sea till middlelife, haunted always by the words of the ringing chantey. Then one dayhe had sung the song in earnest, in an Asiatic port, swinging andthrilling round the capstan-circle with twenty others. And at SanFrancisco he turned his back upon his ship and upon the sea, and wentto behold with his own eyes the banks of the Sacramento.
He beheld the gold, too, for he found employment at the Yellow Dreammine, and proved of utmost usefulness in rigging the great ore-cablesacross the river and two hundred feet above its surface.
After that he took charge of the cables and kept them in repair, and ranthem and loved them, and became himself an indispensable fixture of theYellow Dream mine. Then he loved pretty Margaret Kelly; but she had lefthim and Young Jerry, the latter barely toddling, to take up her lastlong sleep in the little graveyard among the great sober pines.
Old Jerry never went back to the sea. He remained by his cables, andlavished upon them and Young Jerry all the love of his nature. When evildays came to the Yellow-Dream, he still remained in the employ of thecompany as watchman over the all but abandoned property.
But this morning he was not visible. Young Jerry only was to be seen,sitting on the cabin step and singing the ancient chantey. He had cookedand eaten his breakfast all by himself, and had just come out to take alook at the world. Twenty feet before him stood the steel drum roundwhich the endless cable worked. By the drum, snug and fast, was theore-car. Following with his eyes the dizzy flight of the cables to thefarther bank, he could see the other drum and the other car.
The contrivance was worked by gravity, the loaded car crossing the riverby virtue of its own weight, and at the same time dragging the empty carback. The loaded car being emptied, and the empty car being loaded withmore ore, the performance could be repeated--a performance which hadbeen repeated tens of thousands of times since the day Old Jerry becamethe keeper of the cables.
Young Jerry broke off his song at the sound of approaching footsteps, Atall, blue-shirted man, a rifle across the hollow of his arm, came outfrom the gloom of the pine-trees. It was Hall, watchman of the YellowDragon mine, the cables of which spanned the Sacramento a mile fartherup.
"Hello, younker!" was his greeting. "What you doin' here by yourlonesome?"
"Oh, bachin'," Jerry tried to answer unconcernedly, as if it were a veryordinary sort of thing. "Dad's away, you see."
"Where's he gone?" the man asked.
"San Francisco. Went last night. His brother's dead in the old country,and he's gone down to see the lawyers. Won't be back till tomorrownight."
So spoke Jerry, and with pride, because of the responsibility which hadfallen to him of keeping an eye on the property of the Yellow Dream, andthe glorious adventure of living alone on the cliff above the river andof cooking his own meals.
"Well, take care of yourself," Hall said, "and don't monkey with thecables. I'm goin' to see if I can't pick up a deer in the Cripple CowCanon."
"It's goin' to rain, I think," Jerry said, with mature deliberation.
"And it's little I mind a wettin'," Hall laughed, as he strode awayamong the trees.
Jerry's prediction concerning rain was more than fulfilled. By teno'clock the pines were swaying and moaning, the cabin windows rattling,and the rain driving by in fierce squalls. At half past eleven hekindled a fire, and promptly at the stroke of twelve sat down to hisdinner.
No out-of-doors for him that day, he decided, when he had washed the fewdishes and put them neatly away; and he wondered how wet Hall was andwhether he had succeeded in picking up a deer.
At one o'clock there came a knock at the door, and when he opened it aman and a woman staggered in on the breast of a great gust of wind. Theywere Mr. and Mrs. Spillane, ranchers, who lived in a lonely valley adozen miles back from the river.
"Where's Hall?" was Spillane's opening speech, and he spoke sharply andquickly.
Jerry noted that he was nervous and abrupt in his movements, and thatMrs. Spillane seemed laboring under some strong anxiety. She was a thin,washed-out, worked-out woman, whose life of dreary and unending toil hadstamped itself harshly upon her face. It was the same life that hadbowed her husband's shoulders and gnarled his hands and turned his hairto a dry and dusty gray.
"He's gone hunting up Cripple Cow," Jerry answered. "Did you want tocross?"
The woman began to weep quietly, while Spillane dropped a troubledexclamation and strode to the window. Jerry joined him in gazing out towhere the cables lost themselves in the thick downpour.
It was the custom of the backwoods people in that section of countryto cross the Sacramento on the Yellow Dragon cable. For this service asmall toll was charged, which tolls the Yellow Dragon Company applied tothe payment of Hall's wages.
"We've got to get across, Jerry," Spillane said, at the same timejerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his wife. "Herfather's hurt at the Clover Leaf. Powder explosion. Not expected tolive. We just got word."
Jerry felt himself fluttering inwardly. He knew that Spillane wanted tocross on the Yellow Dream cable, and in the absence of his father hefelt that he dared not assume such a responsibility, for the cable hadnever been used for passengers; in fact, had not been used at all for along time.
"Maybe Hall will be back soon," he said.
Spillane shook his head, and demanded, "Where's your father?"
"San Francisco," Jerry answered, briefly.
Spillane groaned, and fiercely drove his clenched fist into the palm ofthe other hand. His wife was crying more audibly, and Jerry could hearher murmuring, "And daddy's dyin', dyin'!"
The tears welled up in his own eyes, and he stood irresolute, notknowing what he should do. But the man decided for him.
"Look here, kid," he said, with determination, "the wife and me aregoin' over on this here cable of yours! Will you run it for us?"
Jerry backed slightly away. He did it unconsciously, as if recoilinginstinctively from something unwelcome.
"Better see if Hall's back," he suggested.
"And if he ain't?"
Again Jerry hesitated.
"I'll stand for the risk," Spillane added. "Don't you see, kid, we'vesimply got to cross!"
Jerry nodded his head reluctantly.
"And there ain't no use waitin' for Hall," Spillane went on. "You knowas well as me he ain't back from Cripple Cow this time of day! So comealong and let's get started."
No wonder that Mrs. Spillane seemed terrified as they helped herinto the ore-car--so Jerry thought, as he gazed into the apparentlyfathomless gulf beneath her. For it was so filled with rain and cloud,hurtling and curling in the fierce blast, that the other shore, sevenhundred feet away, was invisible, while the cliff at their feet droppedsheer down and lost itself in the swirling vapor. By all appearances itmight be a mile to bottom instead of two hundred feet.
"All ready?" he asked.
"Let her go!" Spillane shouted, to make himself heard above the roar ofthe wind.
He had clambered in beside his wife, and was holding one of her hands inhis.
Jerry looked upon this with disapproval. "You'll need all your hands forholdin' on, the way the wind's yowlin.'"
The man and the woman shifted their hands accordingly, tightly grippingthe sides of the car, and Jerry slowly and carefully released the brake.The drum began to re
volve as the endless cable passed round it, and thecar slid slowly out into the chasm, its trolley wheels rolling on thestationary cable overhead, to which it was suspended.
It was not the first time Jerry had worked the cable, but it was thefirst time he had done so away from the supervising eye of his father.By means of the brake he regulated the speed of the car. It neededregulating, for at times, caught by the stronger gusts of wind, itswayed violently back and forth; and once, just before it was swallowedup in a rain squall, it seemed about to spill out its human contents.
After that Jerry had no way of knowing where the car was except by meansof the cable. This he watched keenly as it glided around the drum."Three hundred feet," he breathed to himself, as the cable markings wentby, "three hundred and fifty, four hundred; four hundred and----"
The cable had stopped. Jerry threw off the brake, but it did not move.He caught the cable with his hands and tried to start it by tuggingsmartly. Something had gone wrong. What? He could not guess; he couldnot see. Looking up, he could vaguely make out the empty car, which hadbeen crossing from the opposite cliff at a speed equal to that of theloaded car. It was about two hundred and fifty feet away. That meant, heknew, that somewhere in the gray obscurity, two hundred feet above theriver and two hundred and fifty feet from the other bank, Spillane andhis wife were suspended and stationary.
Three times Jerry shouted with all the shrill force of his lungs, butno answering cry came out of the storm. It was impossible for him tohear them or to make himself heard. As he stood for a moment, thinkingrapidly, the flying clouds seemed to thin and lift. He caught a briefglimpse of the swollen Sacramento beneath, and a briefer glimpse of thecar and the man and woman. Then the clouds descended thicker than ever.
The boy examined the drum closely, and found nothing the matter with it.Evidently it was the drum on the other side that had gone wrong. He wasappalled at thought of the man and woman out there in the midst of thestorm, hanging over the abyss, rocking back and forth in the frail carand ignorant of what was taking place on shore. And he did not like tothink of their hanging there while he went round by the Yellow Dragoncable to the other drum.
But he remembered a block and tackle in the tool-house, and ran andbrought it. They were double blocks, and he murmured aloud, "A purchaseof four," as he made the tackle fast to the endless cable. Then heheaved upon it, heaved until it seemed that his arms were being drawnout from their sockets and that his shoulder muscles would be rippedasunder. Yet the cable did not budge. Nothing remained but to cross overto the other side.
He was already soaking wet, so he did not mind the rain as he ran overthe trail to the Yellow Dragon. The storm was with him, and it was easygoing, although there was no Hall at the other end of it to man thebrake for him and regulate the speed of the car. This he did forhimself, however, by means of a stout rope, which he passed, with aturn, round the stationary cable.
As the full force of the wind struck him in mid-air, swaying the cableand whistling and roaring past it, and rocking and careening the car, heappreciated more fully what must be the condition of mind of Spillaneand his wife. And this appreciation gave strength to him, as, safelyacross, he fought his way up the other bank, in the teeth of the gale,to the Yellow Dream cable.
To his consternation, he found the drum in thorough working order.Everything was running smoothly at both ends. Where was the hitch? Inthe middle, without a doubt.
From this side, the car containing Spillane was only two hundred andfifty feet away. He could make out the man and woman through thewhirling vapor, crouching in the bottom of the car and exposed to thepelting rain and the full fury of the wind. In a lull between thesqualls he shouted to Spillane to examine the trolley of the car.
Spillane heard, for he saw him rise up cautiously on his knees, and withhis hands go over both trolley-wheels. Then he turned his face towardthe bank.
"She's all right, kid!"
Jerry heard the words, faint and far, as from a remote distance. Thenwhat was the matter? Nothing remained but the other and empty car, whichhe could not see, but which he knew to be there, somewhere in thatterrible gulf two hundred feet beyond Spillane's car.
His mind was made up on the instant. He was only fourteen years old,slightly and wirily built; but his life had been lived among themountains, his father had taught him no small measure of "sailoring,"and he was not particularly afraid of heights.
In the tool-box by the drum he found an old monkey-wrench and a shortbar of iron, also a coil of fairly new Manila rope. He looked in vainfor a piece of board with which to rig a "boatswain's chair." There wasnothing at hand but large planks, which he had no means of sawing, so hewas compelled to do without the more comfortable form of saddle.
The saddle he rigged was very simple. With the rope he made merely alarge loop round the stationary cable, to which hung the empty car. Whenhe sat in the loop his hands could just reach the cable conveniently,and where the rope was likely to fray against the cable he lashed hiscoat, in lieu of the old sack he would have used had he been able tofind one.
These preparations swiftly completed, he swung out over the chasm,sitting in the rope saddle and pulling himself along the cable by hishands. With him he carried the monkey-wrench and short iron bar and afew spare feet of rope. It was a slightly up-hill pull, but this he didnot mind so much as the wind. When the furious gusts hurled him back andforth, sometimes half twisting him about, and he gazed down into thegray depths, he was aware that he was afraid. It was an old cable. Whatif it should break under his weight and the pressure of the wind?
It was fear he was experiencing, honest fear, and he knew that there wasa "gone" feeling in the pit of his stomach, and a trembling of the kneeswhich he could not quell.
But he held himself bravely to the task. The cable was old and worn,sharp pieces of wire projected from it, and his hands were cut andbleeding by the time he took his first rest, and held a shoutedconversation with Spillane. The car was directly beneath him and only afew feet away, so he was able to explain the condition of affairs andhis errand.
"Wish I could help you," Spillane shouted at him as he started on, "butthe wife's gone all to pieces! Anyway, kid, take care of yourself! I gotmyself in this fix, but it's up to you to get me out!"
"Oh, I'll do it!" Jerry shouted back. "Tell Mrs. Spillane that she'll beashore now in a jiffy!"
In the midst of pelting rain, which half-blinded him, swinging from sideto side like a rapid and erratic pendulum, his torn hands paining himseverely and his lungs panting from his exertions and panting from thevery air which the wind sometimes blew into his mouth with stranglingforce, he finally arrived at the empty car.
A single glance showed him that he had not made the dangerous journey invain. The front trolley-wheel, loose from long wear, had jumped thecable, and the cable was now jammed tightly between the wheel and thesheave-block.
One thing was clear--the wheel must be removed from the block. A secondthing was equally clear--while the wheel was being removed the car wouldhave to be fastened to the cable by the rope he had brought.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, beyond making the car secure, hehad accomplished nothing. The key which bound the wheel on its axle wasrusted and jammed. He hammered at it with one hand and held on the besthe could with the other, but the wind persisted in swinging and twistinghis body, and made his blows miss more often than not. Nine-tenths ofthe strength he expended was in trying to hold himself steady. For fearthat he might drop the monkey-wrench he made it fast to his wrist withhis handkerchief.
At the end of half an hour Jerry had hammered the key clear, but hecould not draw it out. A dozen times it seemed that he must give upin despair, that all the danger and toil he had gone through were fornothing. Then an idea came to him, and he went through his pockets withfeverish haste, and found what he sought--a ten-penny nail.
But for that nail, put in his pocket he knew not when or why, he wouldhave had to make another trip over the cable and back. Thrusting thena
il through the looped head of the key, he at last had a grip, and inno time the key was out.
Then came punching and prying with the iron bar to get the wheel itselffree from where it was jammed by the cable against the side of theblock. After that Jerry replaced the wheel, and by means of the rope,heaved up on the car till the trolley once more rested properly on thecable.
All this took time. More than an hour and a half had elapsed since hisarrival at the empty car. And now, for the first time, he dropped out ofhis saddle and down into the car. He removed the detaining ropes, andthe trolley-wheels began slowly to revolve. The car was moving, and heknew that somewhere beyond, although he could not see, the car ofSpillane was likewise moving, and in the opposite direction.
There was no need for a brake, for his weight sufficientlycounterbalanced the weight in the other car; and soon he saw the cliffrising out of the cloud depths and the old familiar drum going round andround.
Jerry climbed out and made the car securely fast. He did it deliberatelyand carefully, and then, quite unhero-like, he sank down by the drum,regardless of the pelting storm, and burst out sobbing.
There were many reasons why he sobbed--partly from the pain of hishands, which was excruciating; partly from exhaustion; partly fromrelief and release from the nerve-tension he had been under for so long;and in a large measure from thankfulness that the man and woman weresaved.
They were not there to thank him; but somewhere beyond that howling,storm-driven gulf he knew they were hurrying over the trail toward theClover Leaf.
Jerry staggered to the cabin, and his hand left the white knob red withblood as he opened the door, but he took no notice of it.
He was too proudly contented with himself, for he was certain that hehad done well, and he was honest enough to admit to himself that he haddone well. But a small regret arose and persisted in his thoughts--ifhis father had only been there to see!