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The Promised Land
by
“He’s going away, and can’t ferry us over,” said Mrs. Clallam.
“And the other man thought he’d gone,” said Nancy, “and he came and caught him in his house.”
“This don’t suit me,” Clallam remarked. “Mart, we’ll go to the shore and talk to him.”
When the man saw them descending the hill, he got on his horse and swam the stream. It carried him below, but he was waiting for them when they reached the level. He was tall, shambling, and bony, and roved over them with a pleasant, restless eye.
“Good-morning,” said he. “Fine weather. I was baptized Edward Wilson, but you inquire for Wild-Goose Jake. Them other names are retired and pensioned. I expect you seen me kick him?”
“Couldn’t help seeing.”
“Oh, I ain’t blamin’ you, son, not a bit, I ain’t. He can’t bile water without burnin’ it, and his toes turns in, and he’s blurry round the finger-nails. He’s jest kultus, he is. Hev some?” With a furtive smile that often ran across his lips, he pulled out a flat bottle, and all took an acquaintanceship swallow, while the Clallams explained their journey. “How many air there of yu’ slidin’ down the hill?” he inquired, shifting his eye to the wagon.
“I’ve got my wife and little girl up there. That’s all of us.”
“Ladies along! Then I’ll step behind this bush.” He was dragging his feet from his waterlogged boots. “Hear them suck now?” he commented. “Didn’t hev to think about a wetting onced. But I ain’t young any more. There, I guess I ain’t caught a chill.” He had whipped his breeches off and spread them on the sand. “Now you arrive down this here hill from Ioway, and says you: ‘Where’s that ferry? ‘Ain’t we hit the right spot?’ Well, that’s what you hev hit. You’re all right, and the spot is hunky-dory, and it’s the durned old boat hez made the mistake, begosh! A cloud busted in this country, and she tore out fer the coast, and the joke’s on her! You’d ought to hev heerd her cable snap! Whoosh, if that wire didn’t screech! Jest last week it was, and the river come round the corner on us in a wave four feet high, same as a wall. I was up here on business, and seen the whole thing. So the ferry she up and bid us good-bye, and lit out for Astoria with her cargo. Beggin’ pardon, hev you tobacco, for mine’s in my wet pants? Twenty-four hogs and the driver, and two Sheeny drummers bound to the mines with brass jew’lry, all gone to hell, for they didn’t near git to Astoria. They sank in the sight of all, as we run along the bank. I seen their arms wave, and them hogs rolling over like ‘taters bilin’ round in the kettle.” Wild-Goose Jake’s words came slow and went more slowly as he looked at the river and spoke, but rather to himself. “It warn’t long, though. I expect it warn’t three minutes till the water was all there was left there. My stars, what a lot of it! And I might hev been part of that cargo, easy as not. Freight behind time was all that come between me and them that went. So, we’d hev gone bobbin’ down that flood, me and my piah-chuck.”
“Your piah-chuck?” Mart inquired.
The man faced the boy like a rat, but the alertness faded instantly from his eye, and his lip slackened into a slipshod smile. “Why, yes, sonny, me and my grub-stake. You’ve been to school, I’ll bet, but they didn’t learn yu’ Chinook, now, did they? Chinook’s the lingo us white folks trade in with the Siwashes, and we kinder falls into it, talking along. I was thinkin’ how but for delay me and my grubstake–provisions, ye know–that was consigned to me clear away at Spokane, might hev been drownded along with them hogs and Hebrews. That’s what the good folks calls a dispensation of the Sauklee Tyee!–Providence, ye know, in Chinook. ‘One shall be taken and the other left.’ And that’s what beats me–they got left; and I’m a bigger sinner than them drummers, for I’m ten years older than they was. And the poor hogs was better than any of us. That can’t be gainsaid. Oh no! oh no!”