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The Promised Land
by
“I guess you see how it is with me. Anyway, I don’t commonly hev use for stranger-folks in this house. But that little girl of yourn started cryin’ about not havin’ the pump along that she’d been used to seein’ in the yard at home. And I says to myself, ‘Look a-here, Jake, I don’t care if they do ketch on to you and yer blamed whiskey business. They’re not the sort to tell on you.’ Gee! but that about the pump got me! And I says, ‘Jake, you’re goin’ to give them the best you hev got.’ Why, that Big Bend desert and lonesome valley of the Columbia hez chilled my heart in the days that are gone when I weren’t used to things; and the little girl hed came so fur! And I knowed how she was a-feelin’.”
He stopped, and seemed to be turning matters over.
“I’m much obliged to you,” said Clallam.
“And your wife was jest beautiful about Andy. You’ve saw me wicked to Andy. I am, and often, for I rile turruble quick, and God forgive me! But when that boy gits at his meanness–yu’ve seen jest a touch of it–there’s scarcely livin’ with him. It seems like he got reg’lar inspired. Some days he’ll lie–make up big lies to the fust man comes in at the door. They ain’t harmless, his lies ain’t. Then he’ll trick my woman, that’s real good to him; and I believe he’d lick whiskey up off the dirt. And every drop is poison for him with his complaint. But I’d ought to remember. You’d surely think I could remember, and forbear. Most likely he made a big talk to you about that cabin.”
John Clallam told him.
“Well, that’s all true, for onced. I did think he’d been up to stealin’ that whiskey gradual, ‘stead of fishin’, the times he was out all day. And the salary I give him”–Jake laughed a little–“ain’t enough to justify a man’s breaking the law. I did take his rifle away when he tried to shoot my woman. I guess it was Siwashes bruck into that cabin.”
“I’m pretty certain of it,” said Clallam.
“You? What makes you?”
John began the tale of the galloping dots, and Jake stopped walking to listen the harder. “Yes,” he said; “that’s bad. That’s jest bad. They hev carried a lot off to drink. That’s the worst.”
He had little to say after this, but talked under his tongue as they went to the house, where he offered a bed to Clallam and Mart. They would not turn him out, so he showed them over to a haystack, where they crawled in and went to sleep.
Most white men know when they have had enough whiskey. Most Indians do not. This is a difference between the races of which government has taken notice. Government says that “no ardent spirits shall be introduced under any presence into the Indian country.” It also says that the white man who attempts to break this law “shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than two years and by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars.” It further says that if any superintendent of Indian affairs has reason to suspect a man, he may cause the “boats, stores, packages, wagons, sleds, and places of deposit” of such person to be searched, and if ardent spirits be found it shall be forfeit, together with the boats and all other substances with it connected, one half to the informer and the other half to the use of the United States. The courts and all legal machines necessary for trial and punishment of offenders are oiled and ready; two years is a long while in jail; three hundred dollars and confiscation sounds heavy; altogether the penalty looks severe on the printed page–and all the while there’s no brisker success in our far West than selling whiskey to Indians. Very few people know what the whiskey is made of, and the Indian does not care. He drinks till he drops senseless. If he has killed nobody and nobody him during the process, it is a good thing, for then the matter ends with his getting sober and going home to his tent till such happy time when he can put his hand on some further possession to trade away. The white offender is caught now and then; but Okanagon County lies pretty snug from the arm of the law. It’s against Canada to the north, and the empty county of Stevens to the east; south of it rushes the Columbia, with the naked horrible Big Bend beyond, and to its west rises a domain of unfooted mountains. There is law up in the top of it at Conconully sometimes, but not much even to-day, for that is still a new country, where flow the Methow, the Ashinola, and the Similikameen.