The Garrulous and the Mute

by Roy Norton

 

THE GARRULOUS AND THE MUTE

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Entry No. 102 in Our Prize Story Competition By ROY NORTON

THEY were a strangely assorted pair when first we saw them toiling up the gulch on that summer's day, with the afterglow of the sunset surrounding them, and the stillness of the wilderness rendering their soft footsteps audible. They were old, with the picturesqueness of age that comes to those who dwell in that mysterious place called Out of Doors. One was a bent little fellow, with white hair and straggling mustaches that wandered down from the corners of his mouth as if uncertain whether to keep on striving to become whiskers; while the other, a mountain of a man, with shoulders that projected beyond the confines of a bulging pack, wore a flowing white beard which came to his belt. He looked like a savage old viking intent on conquering some land up at the skyline, where the white tops of the peaks were still aglow with the last red of the day.

They paused to rest below Tom's and my cabin, where in the fading light, we were mending wooden riffles; but either they did not observe us as they stood there on the trail, or did not care to favor us with a gratuity of attention. Apparently the mountain of a man was solicitous for his comrade's endurance, and, although his pack was by far the larger, wished to share the other's burden. He turned and made strange signs, without sound. His companion, panting, leaned his pack over a treestump and smiled bravely.

“Nope,” he said, in a thin, querulous voice. “I kin git through all right, Knute. Don't you worry none about me. Why, I used to could carry a house if I could git someone to put pack straps around it. That's what I could! Don't you believe it hey? But you might give me a breathin' spell. My wind aint as good as it uster was! It ain't, is it?”

The viking studied his partner's face for a moment, discovered us with a fiercely questioning stare from eyes as cold and blue as arctic ice, and then, without resting his pack against anything, stood patiently waiting for the man who “uster was” to continue their journey. The latter now sighted us, as we stood above him, and grinned.

“How far do you reckon it is up to Seventeen?” he asked, and then without waiting for a reply went on. “We bought that claim, and we're tryin' to make it tonight. Knute here, he's afraid I cain't hold out. He-heh! But I'm a heap stronger'n he reckons I be. I am that! Says he to me, 'Joshua, you're not good to tote your little pack much furder.' Says I to him, 'Knute, I'll be toddlin' along inter the claim when you git there.' He-heh! But I cain't make old Knute believe I'm good for much when it comes to packin'.”

Tom and I did not answer. It would have seemed too much of an insult, too discouraging a comment, to admit that we agreed with the viking; for the little man with the cheery face could scarcely appear a standard of strength.

“Seventeen is about two miles farther on,” I answered, and then, in view of his fatigue, “but you and your partner might bunk with us tonight.”

The little man shifted his gaze and looked into the inquiring blue eyes. “They say we kin sleep here,” he shrilled in his ridiculous treble, motioning toward our cabin.

His companion looked him over as if asking a question.

“Oh, you needn't worry' about me. I'm good for it!”

The big man gave an inarticulate grunt, looked at our cabin, then up the gulch.

“Knute thinks we better go on,” the small man said, adjusting his pack straps for further effort. “He says there's a cabin of our own up there, and we orter go ahead and git it over with.”

Yet, to our certain knowledge, the viking had not uttered a word. My partner and I stared at each other, wondering if they were insane, and when we again looked at them the smaller man was standing erect, and the other, without curtsy, had started onward.

The little man moved after him as a small and lame old dog would follow a healthy St. Bernard. He turned, after traversing some twenty yards, and shouted back, “Much obleeged, just the same. Knute says so too!”

W'E did not see them again until, several days later, they came down over the ridge trail that saved a long bend of the creek. They approached us as neighbors.

“Good evenin',” called the small man quite sociably. “We're settled all right. Cabin's not much; but she's quite a nice home. 'Bout as good as me and Knute's had in twenty year, ain't she, Knute?”

The giant gravely nodded.

“Some feller's toted off the lumber we reckoned we bought for sluice boxes,” the garrulous one continued. “They ain't none there. I reckon some poor cuss needed it. Hope it does him good. Some fellers cain't help this thing of stealin'. They're just born without knowin' what's right and what's wrong.” He gave a great sigh as if mentally surveying the frailties of humanity, and then smiled at me almost affectionately. “You all was so kind to us when we was comin' up here,” he said with that irresistible warmth of face, “that when we found we didn't have nothin' to work with Knute says to me, says he, 'Them fellers down the creek is the right sort. Let's go down,' says he, 'and see if they cain't spare us lumber for three or four sluice boxes so's we can tear out expenses while lookin' for better pay.' Knute's a great man. I always takes his advice. He's a fine pardner, even if he don't talk much.'

“For the Lord's Sake, Don't Kill Him!”

The giant was staring abstractedly at the ground, and the little man, after a quick observation of this abstraction, put his hand up to the side of his mouth, as if seizing opportunity, and whispered hoarsely, “Don't think him unsociable like because he don't talk. He cain't help it. You see, he's deef and dumb!”

My partner and I exchanged cynical stares.

“Why, I thought you said he talked to you!” I blurted.

“Well, now, you see that's the funny part of it,” the little man asserted without abashment, and smiling at me. Then his ruddy face suddenly grew grave and the laugh died out of his eyes to give way to a strange tenderness. “Knute and me's been pardners for more'n twenty years,” he said softly, as though still fearing that his voice would reach the deaf ears of the viking. “And somehow we've got so we understand each other. Why, do you know, he's one of the most companionable pardners a man ever had! He can talk about things that you and me'd never think of,—flowers, and sunsets, and rainbows, and the little tremblin' of a bird's throat when it's singin'. Knute sees 'em all, and points 'em out to me, until I'm beginnin' to see the same things.”

I think we felt a trifle ashamed of having observed the ridiculous side of the garrulous man before reading his depth of feeling. We gave way to a slow, dumb wonder, as those who walk in sleep to the borders of strange lands. We had peered through the curtains of one of God's mysteries. But my partner was more inquisitive than I.

“I suppose he writes it down for you, doesn't he?”

“Knute? No, you see he was born that way. He cain't read nor write. He's a Norwegian. I used to try to learn him; but it's mighty hard for a poor cuss that cain't do much more'n read and write himself to learn a deef and dumb man. It don't matter, though. He don't need to know them things.”

He stopped abruptly as if silenced. We too felt an embargo. The giant was staring us a request to forbear discussion of his misfortune, and for one brief instant it was a hurt stare. Then, as he read our sympathy, his eyes softened, and he turned the conversation. His hands were marvelous, or else there lived something in the man's soul that spoke; for he made a single gesture that brought us back to the cause of their visit. It was directed to a pile of new sluice boxes beside our cabin.

“How many?” I asked, forgetting his infirmity.

Four of his huge, toil hardened fingers flashed into the air.

“Sure you can have them,” my partner answered. Perhaps he nodded, I am not certain; but Knute at once rose, walked to the pile with the deliberate, slow strength of a polar bear, and picked one up. He examined it, and then, as easily as if playing with straws, caught a side plank in his hands and started to pull it off. His strength was incredible. I jumped to my feet in astonishment. But one of the heavy spikes, farther down, threatened to split the plank, and he turned to me with a question. I do not know why I said, “Yes, I see. Wait and I'll bring a chisel ”

I brought it to where he stood complacently holding a twelve-foot box in his hands and, with care lest it be broken beyond repair, he removed a plank. He thus unceremoniously took the sides from two more boxes, nested them and the loosened boards together, backed beneath them until his broad, bent shoulders bore their weight, and walked away with a burden that a horse would have found awkward and heavy. The little man, who had been harmlessly babbling to Tom, sprang up, ran valiantly forward, and protested.

“Hey, you!” he expostulated. “I kin carry my half. You put one of them down!”

But the giant smiled tolerantly and never halted. His comrade, with increasing exasperation, stood shaking his fists until the retreating viking had disappeared in the hollows of the pines where the trail was lost in a lacework of shadow and sun.

“Drat him!” he said, with an angry gesture. “He thinks I ain't no good!”

He grumbled and growled while shouldering the small remaining sluice box, and manfully endeavored to walk away with it without displaying effort until the pines concealed him. Doubtless he often rested, gritted his teeth, and vowed he would not give up.

IN time, being neighbors, we came to know them well. Frequently we went to their homely little cabin beneath the pines; frequently they came to ours, always the garrulous and the mute. Sometimes, when visiting, we looked down on their cabin, far below, to see them occupied in a most ridiculous task for two oldtime miners,—weeding flower beds which, with absurd and primitive love for the beautiful, they had planted in rows around their home. Hollyhocks of flaming red, asters of brilliant yellow, daffodils in infinite variety, and homely sunflowers with fat faces, turned to the west. We would start the deep descent, and a voice would come to us, talking along in shrill loneliness.

“These here daffydowndillics ain't doin' as well as they did down in Sonoma County, are they, Knute? But them johnnyjumps is sure cornin' along all right. Wish we could git some of them old fashioned pinks.

We used to stop and grin at each other, Tom and I, when this one-sided conversation wafted itself to our impertinent ears. They were so foolish, the garrulous and the mute, in this strange familiarity of telepathy! Yet they were good miners, taking more from their ground than had its original owner who sold them a “gold brick.” They were always cheerful in their poor pay, however, and we, the prosperous, wished them better luck and listened, diverted, to their plans.

“You see. it's sure here, somewhere,” Joshua would assert. “The feed for this gulch came right out of a rotten ledge on this claim. They ain't no pay above; so it stands to reason this here claim fed all below. She's a winner, Seventeen is, if we can only find that lead!”

They had no luck; but adversity could not dampen their hope. They made no complaint. Joshua's faith was as great as that of the prophet who stopped the sun in its course and arrested a hurrying world. The viking would sit, sometimes smiling at his partner's sanguinity, and sometimes looking upward with an expression in his eyes that asked High Heaven why speech and sound had been denied one with a flaming soul. And his was a soul that could flame, as we learned on that day we four went to the camp, four miles away, and across two divides, for little necessaries.

THAT occasion revealed-to us the possibilities of a man's strength. We purchased our supplies and wandered about, staring at the metropolitan sights of a town of four hundred inhabitants, of whom two hundred were gamblers and worse. Tom and I had stopped to reminisce with an old acquaintance, and Knute had gone to the banks of the stream to watch some new hydraulic experiment. Joshua had strolled away to visit various bibulous resorts, where he drank soda water and preached temperance, holding himself up as he “uster be” as a bad example.

Seeking him an hour later, Tom and I approached the Diamond Hitch just in time to discover a leaping, infuriated little man dancing truculently up and down in front of one who had insulted him. It was Joshua, expending a profuse vituperative vocabulary on a fellow called Red Lyons. The latter was a “bad man,” whose reputation for evil exceeded any other reputation he ever established. We marveled at Joshua's brave audacity, and ran to interfere lest Lyons do him harm; but not quickly enough. Disdaining a gun, for once, the ruffian suddenly lashed out with his fist, and the little man's hands and feet seemed to double forward together in midair, he described an arc, and landed in a sitting position on the edge of the board walk, bewildered. His assailant started toward him and raised his foot as if to kick him over, which might have been fatal; for twenty feet below were sharp rocks.

We shouted as we ran; but we were not needed. Other men, opposite, hurrying forward, were thrust aside like intruding atoms, and into the open space leaped the Norseman. Ten centuries had dropped from him; for he was the real viking now, a magnificent, pitiless fighting man. the perfection of muscular symmetry and power, a warrior coming to the relief. Silent and fierce, he launched himself through the air upon Lyons. The bad man tried to strike, tried to escape this annihilating peril: but he could as ably have defended himself against a gorilla.

I cannot say how it was done. It was kaleidoscopic, and in that instant's shift Knute caught him by the back of his neck and belt, and he was held, vainly struggling, high above the giant's head. For a second he cursed, then rage melted to cowardice. He screamed like a rabbit gripped by a hound. Quite slowly, and with undoubted intent to kill, the Norseman strode to the edge of the walk and planted himself to dash his prey heavily downward. The crowd seemed paralyzed, awed, with the inflexible certitude of the coming tragedy, or perhaps, having no sympathy for the bad man, they calmly awaited his execution.

“Don't, Knute! Don't!” Joshua was scrambling dizzily to his feet. He put his hands on his partner's nearest upraised arm. His plea rose to a shrill falsetto. ”For the Lord's sake, don't kill him! He'd bust like a month-old egg if you chucked him down there!”

Someone in the crowd laughed. Knute's arms came slowly down, as if with regret. He planted Red Lyons on his feet and gave him a kick that sent him flying into the edge of the crowd, where, before he could recover, he had been disarmed. The little man clung to the viking's arm with both hands and pulled him away. The crowd opened for them, and Tom and I hurried after. Fearing a further collision, we decided it was better to return at once to the gulch, and so speedily left the camp behind.

Sometimes we talked of it afterward, and the Norseman's stern face would relax into a sheepish grin, as if he were a trifle ashamed of that outburst: but always in the end his eyes came to rest affectionately on his friend.

TOM and I learned to love them both,—one for his unfailing cheerfulness and kindly philosophy, the other for his great solitude, his hampered potency, his shackled strength. In the mute's handgrasp were words. In his gestures was eloquence. In his gaze there was truth.

Day after day the scanty pay of Seventeen dwindled to nothingness. Day after day the strange partners worked harder, yet never admitted defeat nor lost hope. They did not bewail their luck. Once I tried to sympathize with them.

“Knute and me thinks it's here, somewhere,” Joshua answered: “but maybe the Lord don't want us to have it. 'Tain't his fault. You see, He has to be mighty careful who He gives things to, what with so many people in the world beggin' for this and that every time things goes against 'em. Why, I reckon if I was the Lord I'd go clean nutty about prayer time, try in' to listen to all the poor cusses asked of me! I've got a heap of sympathy for the Lord, I have, and if He sometimes has to overlook a little fellow like me, I cain't blame Him at all, I cain't!”

As Tom and I took the homeward trail in the moonlight that night we shook our heads doubtfully: for we had not their simple faith. We could not discourage them: we could not advise them. They clung to their belief and their rude home. I remember going over, after the first white frost, to find the elder man stooping over his dead flowers while the giant paused, restlessly, to watch the flight of an eagle, as if envying him the glory of his full senses.

The Viking Man Was Trying to Rouse His Partner.

“I always hates to see 'em die,” Joshua said, blinking up. “It's so much like friends goin' away to leave you goin' out over there to where you cain't see 'em and talk to 'em no more. Here, Knute, drat ye! Quit walkin' over that nastu'tium bed. I wants to save the seed. You're always a tromplin on somethin'!”

By midwinter their money and credit gave out, and, although they did not know it, we stood responsible for them at the trading post and often had the pleasure of hearing the camp Shylock referred to by Joshua as a “mighty kind, comfortin' sort of man.” Always on these occasions he would slap the leg of his faded, patched, and baggy overalls by way of emphasis, and call his partner to witness with, “Ain't that so, Knute?” And Knute seemed to think so too. So, undismayed and undiscouraged, they worked throughout the winter, burrowing here and there beneath the heaviest fall of snow that was ever recorded in the great gulch.

THE hot spring sun burst upon the cañon and showered it with warmth. Under the banks the water began to trickle, until throughout the nights it could be heard singing that old, old snow-song of the young season. Our sluice boxes were piled where they could be quickly placed when the first floods passed, and, being idle, we went to visit the garrulous and the mute.

We came to the high hogback down which zigzagged the path to their claim. Joshua, intent on some plan of his own, was on the flat far below us, dragging poles, while twenty or thirty yards farther up the gulch, almost in front of their cabin, stood Knute, somber, and watching the opposite side of the cañon. We paused to exchange a laughing comment, when our eyes, mountain trained, caught a movement on the ridge towering behind the partners' hut. On the crest of a huge shoulder, stretching in swift descent to an immense white expanse, something was sliding. We recognized disaster. We cupped our hands and shouted as men shout who would save lives. Joshua, alarmed,turned toward us, shading his eyes with his hands. Wildly we waved our arms toward the snow above, which was forming into a roaring, overwhelming cataract.

High and shrill above the beginning tumult we heard him scream, and it was the scream of a man in an agony of apprehension.

“Knute! Run! For God's sake, run! You're in the path! You're in the path!”

But for once the mysterious voice of the mind failed to reach the soul of the giant. Joshua recognized failure, and, before the echo of his last shout died away, began running madly across the intervening space, recklessly, splendidly heedless of the oncoming avalanche in whose path he, a tiny pygmy of humanity, valiantly ventured to save his friend. We, helpless and distraught, watched.

At last, after ages of time, the viking, as if aroused by some tremble of the shuddering ground, or vague warning in the air, perhaps by the very telepathic call of his lifelong partner, turned. He gave one quick, comprehensive glance at the mountainside, where trees were beginning to sweep downward under the irresistible, crashing impact of thousands of tons of boulders and snow, lifted and shook his clenched fists as if giving it dying defiance, and then ran toward Joshua. In a few terrific leaps he had gained his side, seized him by the hand, and turned for a desperate plunge for life. He seemed racing, with bent head, through the air, dragging the little man after him.

The avalanche, yards beyond us, shot past. Clouds of snow cut off our vision of those below. Bellowing sounds rendered the world a turmoil. Swirling gusts of wind, cyclonic, threw us to our faces on the white bank where we clung, digging bleeding fingers into the icy crust of the hillside, and fearful, through wild stretches of time, that we too should be carried downward in that terrific sweep when mountains seemed upending. Then all was still. We got to our knees and peered through the dissipating clouds.

From the top of the mountains, straight down to the gulch bed, stretched a broad, black band, desolate and denuded. Where lofty trees had stood were gleaming, twisted stumps. Where the cabin had nestled against a little sheltering wall, was bare rock, moist and glistening. We were alone. Nowhere below us was sign of life. We plunged down the hillside, terrorized and impotent, to the mass of debris that had rendered the cañon's bed a plain.

“It must have caught them on the far side!” Tom yelled, running around the upper edge of the slide. “Maybe they almost got out! Hurry!”

In a fever of fear and sorrow I ran after him. until, exhausted, we stopped to scan the white shroud. We walked at the edge, shouting; but there was no answer. We felt our helplessness. We knew not where to seek. And then, as the last faint flame of hope was dying, not more than twenty feet from where we stood, the snow moved a little, a crumbling mass gave way, rolled sluggishly downward, and a hand appeared, thrusting upward and out as does a drowning swimmer coming back to the surface.

“Good!” we cried. “Good! We're coming!” and floundered toward it.

There was no response. We knew it must be the Norseman.

We burrowed in to his assistance. His face was bleeding from a long cut across his brow, and one huge arm was stripped bare, and was scratched its length. He saw us and his lips moved, inarticulate, then he again threw himself against the snow to widen the breach, and stooped over. He was groping for something at his feet, and we aided him to bring out the still, distorted shape of the little man of faith. If he had faith left, in that dim borderland whither he had gone, he had need of it now; for he was but a limp and twisted fragment of humanity, pitifully ground in Nature's maw. We straightened him out on the snowbank and tore the shredded strips of shirt from his breast. His heart was still beating; but his white, old face was the face of death. The straggling white mustache, drooping across the comers of his mouth, was streaked with sanguinary red from his nostrils and lips.

“Both legs smashed,” said Tom, looking up at me. “Maybe he won't live ten minutes. Maybe he might last awhile if we could get him to our cabin and bring a doctor in time.”

The giant, kneeling on the other side, bleeding, breathless, flashed a wild inquiry from his faithful eyes. I tried to tell him the verdict in signs. He reached down and clasped the little man in his arms and stood erect. May God spare me from hearing such sounds again,—the hoarse, unearthly sounds of agonized dumbness sent out from a stricken soul! The viking was calling to his partner, trying to rouse him, trying to bring back an answer from the white lips that appeared as if they might never answer again. As if that broken, limp wreck were a hurt child, the Norseman clutched him tenderly in his arms, and ran, rather than walked, toward the trail to the cutoff. Unhurt and unburdened, I found it difficult to keep his pace as he forced his great, pillar like legs into long strides up the mountainside.

Our return journey was a nightmare. We stopped but once, when Tom said to me, “You go on. I'll cut across here to that fellow in the other gulch. He's got a horse. I'll have a doctor from the camp in an hour, or kill that horse and myself trying!”

The giant ahead, still calling those fearful moaning sounds from between his panting lips, did not seem to miss him until we reached the cabin, when, as we straightened the mangled little man out on a bunk, he looked a question at me.

“Gone for a doctor,” I answered, and then, remembering, made signs.

We forced brandy between Joshua's lips and chafed his arms. He recovered consciousness after a time and opened his eyes and smiled.

“You're all right, are you, Knute? Sure you ain't broke nowhere, Pardner? Feel yourself over well and see. It'd hurt me mighty bad if anything happened to you.” The voice now had the plaintive sweetness of an ancient silver bell. Then, as if content, he wearily closed his eyes, patted the big hand that stretched out to his, and was quiet.

I looked at the viking's face. Great, slow tears were trickling down his cheeks, and his dumb lips moved and trembled as if in prayer. The blue eyes were filmed with a curtain of suffering and despair. I believe I have watched a breaking heart! And thus we sat until the doctor came, wondering why it was that the little man seemed without pain and smiled, and smiled, as if all were well.

MAY pull through.” was the terse diagnosis. “Probably not. Pretty old. Have to take off his legs, and he acts to me as if he was paralyzed from the hips down. Good thing. Kept him from suffering. One of you better take this Norwegian out and the other stay and help. It would kill that big fellow to see me use a knife, although if it was himself he'd probably refuse chloroform, shut his teeth, and watch it through. I know the kind!”

And so, for two hours, as the sunset faded and the spring moon crept over the dark borders of the watching pines. I walked up and down over the yielding snow with a man who sobbed noiselessly, and stopped now and then to twist his huge, hard fingers together as if every cut of a knife, somewhere back of us, was reaching his heart.

Of the living none may fathom the depths of Omnipotence; but there must have been some kindly hand reached down from above to pull back to life one whose years lay so heavily upon him. Some divine pity extended to the man of faith, some judgment that he was still to live to be voice and hearing for the splendid giant who was bereft.

TIME took my partner and me away from the high gulch up there on the Northern Sierra divide; but we went back purposely to pay them a visit. The placers were gone. The dumps were grass grown. The men who made them were scattered—all but two!

We came to a prosperous, though small stamp mill, around which men were busily working. Another cabin, with other flowers, stood in the scar we had seen inflicted in the gray mountain's breast. A huge, white bearded giant patiently shoved a homemade perambulator through the paths, and gave us dumb but feeling welcome.

“Yes, it might have been worse,” croaked Joshua's thin, tremulous voice, after he had exhausted his first greetings. “The Lord's been mighty good to me. I allus said as how He'd help us find the pay ledge. She was there, all right. That slide uncovered it. As Knute often says to me, 'Ef it hadn't a been for that we might never have found it.' Ain't that so, Knute?”

And a big, twisted hand, gentle as a woman's, reached over and patted the left shoulder, and I'll swear that from the blue eyes flashed words. At least I know that something said to me, clear and distinct, “After all, God is good.”