Chapter 20

by Frank Norris

　　The day was very hot, and the silence of high noon lay closeand thick between the steep slopes of the canyons like aninvisible, muffling fluid. At intervals the drone of aninsect bored the air and trailed slowly to silence again.Everywhere were pungent, aromatic smells. The vast,moveless heat seemed to distil countless odors from thebrush--odors of warm sap, of pine needles, and of tar-weed,and above all the medicinal odor of witch hazel. As far asone could look, uncounted multitudes of trees and manzanitabushes were quietly and motionlessly growing, growing,growing. A tremendous, immeasurable Life pushed steadilyheavenward without a sound, without a motion. At turns ofthe road, on the higher points, canyons disclosed themselvesfar away, gigantic grooves in the landscape, deep blue inthe distance, opening one into another, ocean-deep, silent,huge, and suggestive of colossal primeval forces held inreserve. At their bottoms they were solid, massive; ontheir crests they broke delicately into fine serrated edgeswhere the pines and redwoods outlined their million of topsagainst the high white horizon. Here and there themountains lifted themselves out of the narrow riverbeds in groups like giant lions rearing their heads afterdrinking. The entire region was untamed. In some placeseast of the Mississippi nature is cosey, intimate, small,and homelike, like a good-natured housewife. In PlacerCounty, California, she is a vast, unconquered brute of thePliocene epoch, savage, sullen, and magnificentlyindifferent to man.But there were men in these mountains, like lice onmammoths' hides, fighting them stubbornly, now withhydraulic "monitors," now with drill and dynamite, boringinto the vitals of them, or tearing away great yellowgravelly scars in the flanks of them, sucking their blood,extracting gold.Here and there at long distances upon the canyon sides rosethe headgear of a mine, surrounded with its few unpaintedhouses, and topped by its never-failing feather of blacksmoke. On near approach one heard the prolonged thunder ofthe stamp-mill, the crusher, the insatiable monster,gnashing the rocks to powder with its long iron teeth,vomiting them out again in a thin stream of wet gray mud.Its enormous maw, fed night and day with the car-boys'loads, gorged itself with gravel, and spat out the gold,grinding the rocks between its jaws, glutted, as it were,with the very entrails of the earth, and growling over itsendless meal, like some savage animal, some legendarydragon, some fabulous beast, symbol of inordinate andmonstrous gluttony.McTeague had left the Overland train at Colfax, and the sameafternoon had ridden some eight miles across the mountainsin the stage that connects Colfax with Iowa Hill. Iowa Hillwas a small one-street town, the headquarters of the minesof the district. Originally it had been built upon thesummit of a mountain, but the sides of this mountain havelong since been "hydrau-licked" away, so that the town nowclings to a mere back bone, and the rear windows of thehouses on both sides of the street look down over sheerprecipices, into vast pits hundreds of feet deep.The dentist stayed over night at the Hill, and the nextmorning started off on foot farther into the mountains. Hestill wore his blue overalls and jumper; his woollencap was pulled down over his eye; on his feet were hob-nailed boots he had bought at the store in Colfax; hisblanket roll was over his back; in his left hand swung thebird cage wrapped in sacks.Just outside the town he paused, as if suddenly rememberingsomething."There ought to be a trail just off the road here," hemuttered. "There used to be a trail--a short cut."The next instant, without moving from his position, he sawwhere it opened just before him. His instinct had haltedhim at the exact spot. The trail zigzagged down the abruptdescent of the canyon, debouching into a gravelly river bed."Indian River," muttered the dentist. "I remember--Iremember. I ought to hear the Morning Star's stamps fromhere." He cocked his head. A low, sustained roar, like adistant cataract, came to his ears from across the river."That's right," he said, contentedly. He crossed the riverand regained the road beyond. The slope rose under hisfeet; a little farther on he passed the Morning Star mine,smoking and thundering. McTeague pushed steadily on. Theroad rose with the rise of the mountain, turned at a sharpangle where a great live-oak grew, and held level for nearlya quarter of a mile. Twice again the dentist left the roadand took to the trail that cut through deserted hydraulicpits. He knew exactly where to look for these trails; notonce did his instinct deceive him. He recognized familiarpoints at once. Here was Cold Canyon, where invariably,winter and summer, a chilly wind was blowing; here was wherethe road to Spencer's branched off; here was Bussy's oldplace, where at one time there were so many dogs; here wasDelmue's cabin, where unlicensed whiskey used to be sold;here was the plank bridge with its one rotten board; andhere the flat overgrown with manzanita, where he once hadshot three quail.At noon, after he had been tramping for some two hours, hehalted at a point where the road dipped suddenly. A littleto the right of him, and flanking the road, an enormousyellow gravel-pit like an emptied lake gaped to heaven.Farther on, in the distance, a canyon zigzagged towardthe horizon, rugged with pine-clad mountain crests. Nearerat hand, and directly in the line of the road, was anirregular cluster of unpainted cabins. A dull, prolongedroar vibrated in the air. McTeague nodded his head as ifsatisfied."That's the place," he muttered.He reshouldered his blanket roll and descended the road. Atlast he halted again. He stood before a low one-storybuilding, differing from the others in that it was painted.A verandah, shut in with mosquito netting, surrounded it.McTeague dropped his blanket roll on a lumber pile outside,and came up and knocked at the open door. Some one calledto him to come in.McTeague entered, rolling his eyes about him, noting thechanges that had been made since he had last seen thisplace. A partition had been knocked down, making one bigroom out of the two former small ones. A counter andrailing stood inside the door. There was a telephone on thewall. In one corner he also observed a stack of surveyor'sinstruments; a big drawing-board straddled on spindle legsacross one end of the room, a mechanical drawing of somekind, no doubt the plan of the mine, unrolled upon it; achromo representing a couple of peasants in a ploughed field(Millet's "Angelus") was nailed unframed upon the wall, andhanging from the same wire nail that secured one of itscorners in place was a bullion bag and a cartridge belt witha loaded revolver in the pouch.The dentist approached the counter and leaned his elbowsupon it. Three men were in the room--a tall, lean youngman, with a thick head of hair surprisingly gray, who wasplaying with a half-grown great Dane puppy; another fellowabout as young, but with a jaw almost as salient asMcTeague's, stood at the letter-press taking a copy of aletter; a third man, a little older than the other two, waspottering over a transit. This latter was massively built,and wore overalls and low boots streaked and stained andspotted in every direction with gray mud. The dentistlooked slowly from one to the other; then at length, "Is theforeman about?" he asked.The man in the muddy overalls came forward."What you want?"He spoke with a strong German accent.The old invariable formula came back to McTeague on theinstant."What's the show for a job?"At once the German foreman became preoccupied, lookingaimlessly out of the window. There was a silence."You hev been miner alretty?""Yes, yes.""Know how to hendle pick'n shov'le?""Yes, I know."The other seemed unsatisfied. "Are you a 'cousin Jack'?"The dentist grinned. This prejudice against Cornishmen heremembered too."No. American.""How long sence you mine?""Oh, year or two.""Show your hends." McTeague exhibited his hard, callusedpalms."When ken you go to work? I want a chuck-tender on dernight-shift.""I can tend a chuck. I'll go on to-night.""What's your name?"The dentist started. He had forgotten to be prepared forthis."Huh? What?""What's the name?"McTeague's eye was caught by a railroad calendar hangingover the desk. There was no time to think."Burlington," he said, loudly.The German took a card from a file and wrote it down."Give dis card to der boarding-boss, down at der boarding-haus, den gome find me bei der mill at sex o'clock, und Iset you to work."Straight as a homing pigeon, and following a blind andunreasoned instinct, McTeague had returned to the Big Dippermine. Within a week's time it seemed to him as thoughhe had never been away. He picked up his life again exactlywhere he had left it the day when his mother had sent himaway with the travelling dentist, the charlatan who had setup his tent by the bunk house. The house McTeague had oncelived in was still there, occupied by one of the shiftbosses and his family. The dentist passed it on his way toand from the mine.He himself slept in the bunk house with some thirty othersof his shift. At half-past five in the evening the cook atthe boarding-house sounded a prolonged alarm upon a crowbarbent in the form of a triangle, that hung upon the porch ofthe boarding-house. McTeague rose and dressed, and with hisshift had supper. Their lunch-pails were distributed tothem. Then he made his way to the tunnel mouth, climbedinto a car in the waiting ore train, and was hauled into themine.Once inside, the hot evening air turned to a cool dampness,and the forest odors gave place to the smell of staledynamite smoke, suggestive of burning rubber. A cloud ofsteam came from McTeague's mouth; underneath, the waterswashed and rippled around the car-wheels, while the lightfrom the miner's candlesticks threw wavering blurs of paleyellow over the gray rotting quartz of the roof and walls.Occasionally McTeague bent down his head to avoid thelagging of the roof or the projections of an overhangingshute. From car to car all along the line the miners calledto one another as the train trundled along, joshing andlaughing.A mile from the entrance the train reached the breast whereMcTeague's gang worked. The men clambered from the cars andtook up the labor where the day shift had left it, burrowingtheir way steadily through a primeval river bed.The candlesticks thrust into the crevices of the gravelstrata lit up faintly the half dozen moving figures befouledwith sweat and with wet gray mould. The picks struck intothe loose gravel with a yielding shock. The long-handledshovels clinked amidst the piles of bowlders and scrapeddully in the heaps of rotten quartz. The Burly drill boringfor blasts broke out from time to time in an irregularchug-chug, chug-chug, while the engine that pumped the waterfrom the mine coughed and strangled at short intervals.McTeague tended the chuck. In a way he was the assistant ofthe man who worked the Burly. It was his duty to replacethe drills in the Burly, putting in longer ones as the holegot deeper and deeper. From time to time he rapped thedrill with a pole-pick when it stuck fast or fitchered.Once it even occurred to him that there was a resemblancebetween his present work and the profession he had beenforced to abandon. In the Burly drill he saw a queercounterpart of his old-time dental engine; and what were thedrills and chucks but enormous hoe excavators, hard bits,and burrs? It was the same work he had so often performedin his "Parlors," only magnified, made monstrous, distorted,and grotesqued, the caricature of dentistry.He passed his nights thus in the midst of the play of crudeand simple forces--the powerful attacks of the Burly drills;the great exertions of bared, bent backs overlaid withmuscle; the brusque, resistless expansion of dynamite; andthe silent, vast, Titanic force, mysterious and slow, thatcracked the timbers supporting the roof of the tunnel, andthat gradually flattened the lagging till it was thin aspaper.The life pleased the dentist beyond words. The still,colossal mountains took him back again like a returningprodigal, and vaguely, without knowing why, he yielded totheir influence--their immensity, their enormous power,crude and blind, reflecting themselves in his own nature,huge, strong, brutal in its simplicity. And this, though heonly saw the mountains at night. They appeared far differentthen than in the daytime. At twelve o'clock he came out ofthe mine and lunched on the contents of his dinner-pail,sitting upon the embankment of the track, eating with bothhands, and looking around him with a steady ox-like gaze.The mountains rose sheer from every side, heaving theirgigantic crests far up into the night, the black peakscrowding together, and looking now less like beasts thanlike a company of cowled giants. In the daytime theywere silent; but at night they seemed to stir and rousethemselves. Occasionally the stamp-mill stopped, its thunderceasing abruptly. Then one could hear the noises that themountains made in their living. From the canyon, from thecrowding crests, from the whole immense landscape, thererose a steady and prolonged sound, coming from all sides atonce. It was that incessant and muffled roar whichdisengages itself from all vast bodies, from oceans, fromcities, from forests, from sleeping armies, and which islike the breathing of an infinitely great monster, alive,palpitating.McTeague returned to his work. At six in the morning hisshift was taken off, and he went out of the mine and back tothe bunk house. All day long he slept, flung at length uponthe strong-smelling blankets--slept the dreamless sleep ofexhaustion, crushed and overpowered with the work, flat andprone upon his belly, till again in the evening the cooksounded the alarm upon the crowbar bent into a triangle.Every alternate week the shifts were changed. The secondweek McTeague's shift worked in the daytime and slept atnight. Wednesday night of this second week the dentist wokesuddenly. He sat up in his bed in the bunk house, lookingabout him from side to side; an alarm clock hanging on thewall, over a lantern, marked half-past three."What was it?" muttered the dentist. "I wonder what itwas." The rest of the shift were sleeping soundly, fillingthe room with the rasping sound of snoring. Everything wasin its accustomed place; nothing stirred. But for all thatMcTeague got up and lit his miner's candlestick and wentcarefully about the room, throwing the light into the darkcorners, peering under all the beds, including his own.Then he went to the door and stepped outside. The night waswarm and still; the moon, very low, and canted on her sidelike a galleon foundering. The camp was very quiet; nobodywas in sight. "I wonder what it was," muttered the dentist."There was something--why did I wake up? Huh?" He made acircuit about the bunk house, unusually alert, his smalleyes twinkling rapidly, seeing everything. All wasquiet. An old dog who invariably slept on the steps of thebunk house had not even wakened. McTeague went back to bed,but did not sleep."There was something," he muttered, looking in a puzzledway at his canary in the cage that hung from the wall at hisbedside; "something. What was it? There is somethingnow. There it is again--the same thing." He sat up in bedwith eyes and ears strained. "What is it? I don' know whatit is. I don' hear anything, an' I don' see anything. Ifeel something--right now; feel it now. I wonder--I don'know--I don' know."Once more he got up, and this time dressed himself. He madea complete tour of the camp, looking and listening, for whathe did not know. He even went to the outskirts of the campand for nearly half an hour watched the road that led intothe camp from the direction of Iowa Hill. He saw nothing;not even a rabbit stirred. He went to bed.But from this time on there was a change. The dentist grewrestless, uneasy. Suspicion of something, he could not saywhat, annoyed him incessantly. He went wide around sharpcorners. At every moment he looked sharply over hisshoulder. He even went to bed with his clothes and cap on,and at every hour during the night would get up and prowlabout the bunk house, one ear turned down the wind, his eyesgimleting the darkness. From time to time he would murmur:"There's something. What is it? I wonder what it is."What strange sixth sense stirred in McTeague at this time?What animal cunning, what brute instinct clamored forrecognition and obedience? What lower faculty was it thatroused his suspicion, that drove him out into the night ascore of times between dark and dawn, his head in the air,his eyes and ears keenly alert?One night as he stood on the steps of the bunk house,peering into the shadows of the camp, he uttered anexclamation as of a man suddenly enlightened. He turnedback into the house, drew from under his bed the blanketroll in which he kept his money hid, and took thecanary down from the wall. He strode to the door anddisappeared into the night. When the sheriff of PlacerCounty and the two deputies from San Francisco reached theBig Dipper mine, McTeague had been gone two days.