The Prospector Part 45

Shock made no reply, but stood looking at the doctor.

"I would like to say," continued Macfarren, "that I regret your leaving us. I believe, on the whole, it is a mistake; we require preaching like that." There was a touch of real earnestness in Macfarren's tone.

"Mr. Macfarren," said Shock, "I am sorry I have not been able to help you. You need help, you need help badly. Jesus Christ can help you.

Goodnight." He took the doctor's arm and, helping him up, walked off with him.

"What do you want?" said the doctor fiercely, when they were outside.

"Doctor, I want your help. I feel weak."

"Weak! Great Heavens above! YOU talk of weakness? Don't mock me!"

"It is true, doctor; come along."

"Where are you going?" said the doctor.

"I don't know," said Shock. "Let us go to your office."

The doctor's office was a cheerless room, dusty, disordered, and comfortless. The doctor sat down in a chair, laid his head on the table, and groaned. "It is no good, it is no good. I tried, I tried honestly. I prayed, I even hoped for a time--this is all gone I broke my word, I betrayed my trust even to the dead. All is lost!"

"Doctor," said Shock quietly, "I wish that you would look at me and tell me what's the matter with me. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, and yet I am weary. I feel weak and useless--cannot you help me?"

The doctor looked at him keenly. "You're not playing with me, are you?

No, by Jove! you are not. You do look bad--let me look at you." His professional interest was aroused. He turned up the lamp and examined Shock thoroughly.

"What have you been doing? What's the cause of this thing?" he enquired, at length, as if he feared to ask.

Shock gave him an account of his ten days' experience in the mountains, sparing nothing. The doctor listened in an agony of self-reproach.

"It was my fault," he groaned, "it was all my fault."

"Not a word of that, doctor, please. It was not in your hands or in mine. The Lost River is lost, not by any man's fault, but by the will of G.o.d. Now, tell me, what do I need?"

"Nothing, nothing at all but rest and sleep. Rest; for a week," said the doctor.

"Well, then," said Shock, "I want you to come and look after me for a week. I need you; you need me; we'll help each other."

"Oh, G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d!" groaned the doctor, "what is the use? You know there is no use."

"Doctor, I told you before that you are saying what is both false and foolish."

"I remember," said the doctor bitterly. "You spoke of common sense and honesty."

"Yes, and I say so again," replied Shock. "Common sense and honesty is what you need. Listen--I am not going to preach, I am done with that for to-night--but you know as well as I do that when a man faces the right way G.o.d is ready to back him up. It is common sense to bank on that, isn't it? Common sense, and nothing else. But I want to say this, you've got to be honest with G.o.d. You've not been fair. You say you've prayed--"

"G.o.d knows I have," said the doctor.

"Yes," said Shock, with a touch of scorn in his voice, "you've prayed, and then you went into the same old places and with the same old companions, and so you find yourself where you are to-night. You cannot cure any man of disease if he breaks every regulation you make when your back is turned. Give G.o.d a chance, that's all I ask. Be decently square with Him. There's lots of mystery in religion, but it is not there. Come along now, you are going home with me."

"No, sir," said the doctor decidedly. "I shall fight it out alone."

"Will you walk, or shall I carry you?" said Shock quietly.

The doctor gazed at him. "Oh, confound you!" he cried, "I'll"--He stopped short and putting his face down upon the table again he burst into a storm of sobs and cried, "Oh, I am weak, I am weak, let me go, let me go, I am not worth it!"

Then Shock got down beside him, put his arm around his shoulder, and said: "I cannot let you go, doctor. I want you. And your Father in Heaven wants you. Come," he continued after a pause, "we'll win yet."

For half an hour they walked the streets and then turned into Father Mike's quarters.

"Father Mike," said Shock, opening the door, "we want coffee, and I'm hungrier than I've been for three days."

"Come in," said Father Mike, with a keen glance at the doctor, "come in, brother mine. You've earned your grub this day."

XVI

"STAY AT YOUR POST, LAD"

Relieved from his station at the Fort, Shock was able to devote himself entirely to the western part of his field, which embraced the Loon Lake district and extended twenty-five miles up to the Pa.s.s, and he threw himself with redoubled energy into his work of exploration and organisation. Long ago his little cayuse had been found quite unequal to the task of keeping pace with the tremendous energy of his driver, and so for the longer journeys Shock had come to depend mainly upon Bob, the great rangey sorrel sent him by the Hamilton boys, the only condition attached to the gift being that he should allow Bob to visit the ranch at least once a month. And so it came that Shock and his sorrel broncho became widely known over the ranges of all that country.

Many a little shack in far away valleys, where a woman with her children lived in isolated seclusion from all the world, he discovered and brought into touch with the world about, and by means of books and magazines and ill.u.s.trated papers brought to hearts sick with longing some of the colour and brightness from the great world beyond, so often fondly longed for. Many a cowboy, wild and reckless, with every link of kin-ship broken, an unrelated unit of humanity keeping lonely watch over his bunch of cattle, found in Shock a friend, and established through him anew a bond with human society. The hour spent with Shock in riding around the cattle often brought to this bit of human driftwood a new respect for himself, a new sense of responsibility for life, and a new estimate of the worth of his manhood. Away up in the Pa.s.s, too, where the miners lived and wrought under conditions wretched, debasing, and fraught with danger, and where in the forest-camps the lumbermen lived lives more wholesome, but more lonely, Shock found scope for the full energy of his pa.s.sion to help and serve.

"A hospital is what they need up here, doctor!" he exclaimed one day after they had made a tour through the shacks and bunks where men sick and injured lay in their uncared for misery. "A hospital is what they want, and some kind of a homelike place where they can meet together.

And by G.o.d's help we'll get this, too, when our hands are somewhat free. We have all we can do for the next few weeks." And so they had.

Shock had early recognised that the evils which were so rampant, and that exercised such a baneful influence in the community, were due not so much to any inherent love of vice as to the conditions under which the men were forced to live. Life was a lonely thing on the ranges, without colour, without variety, and men plunged into debauchery from sheer desperate reaction from monotony. Shock believed that, if there could be established a social centre offering intellectual interest and physical recreation, much could be done to banish the vices that were fast becoming imbedded in the very life and character of the people.

And so he planned the erection of a building that would serve for church, manse, club-house, schoolroom, and library, and would thus become a spot around which the life of the community might gather in a clean and wholesome atmosphere. He appealed to the Church Manse Building Fund for a grant, he drew his plans for his building, and throughout the summer quietly set about gathering his materials. One and another of his friends he would persuade to haul a load of logs from the hills, and with good-natured persistence he would get a day's work now and again from the young fellows who frequently had more time on their hands than they knew how to reasonably make use of, with the result that before they were well aware of what was being done a log building stood ready for the roofing and plaster. His success stimulated his friends to more organised and continued effort. They began to vie with each other in making contributions of work and material for the new building. Macnamara furnished lime, Martin drew sand, Sinclair and The Kid, who had the best horses and wagons, drew lumber from the mill at the Fort; and by the time summer was gone the building, roofed, c.h.i.n.ked, and plastered, only required a few finishing touches to be ready for the opening. Indeed, it was a most creditable structure. It was a large, roomy, two-story building, the downstairs of which was given up to a room to be devoted to public uses. The upstairs Shock planned to contain four bed-rooms.

"What do you want of four bed-rooms, Mr. Prospector?" said Ike, as they were laying out the s.p.a.ce. "You can't sleep in more'n three of 'em at a time."

"No, but you can sleep in one, Ike, and some of the boys in another, and I want one myself."

"Oh!" said Ike, much pleased. "Going to run a kind of stoppin' place, are you?"

"Yes; I hope my friends will stop with me often."

"Guess you won't have much trouble with that side of it," said Ike.

"And this here room," he continued, "will do first rate for a kind of lumber-room, provisions, and harness, and such like, I guess?"

"No," said Shock. "This room will be the finest room in the house. See: it will look away out toward the south and west, over the lake, and up to the mountains. The inside of the room won't be hard to beat, but the outside cannot be equalled in all the world, and I tell you what, Ike, it cannot be too good, for this room is for my mother." There was a reverent, tender tone in Shock's voice that touched Ike.

"Is she really goin' to come out here?" he asked.

"I hope so," said Shock. "Next spring."

"I say," said Ike, "won't she find it lonely?"