Boys' Life/Volume 1/Number 1/Hard Luck Pete
PETE SWANSON was a surly man. He never had a pleasant word for anybody. Morning after morning he left his little cabin and stumbled along the trail to his bit of a claim, with shovel and pick on his shoulder. His hat was drawn low to shade his eyes, and he neither gave nor returned a greeting.
When the surly demon that possessed him relaxed its hold and allowed him to talk, his talk was all of hard luck. Hard luck had pursued him from childhood to the present hour.
He usually grew excited when he began his story of misfortune, and ended by cursing his lot, and all who offered him sympathy. So, when his claim failed suddenly, the miners just merely shrugged their shoulders.
They had long ago named him Hard-Luck Pete. His attitude seemed to invite misfortune. Men came to accept, with regard to him, his own gloomy creed.
One afternoon, Hard-Luck Pete passed through a group of men in front of the provision store. He answered their greetings with a short nod, and some faint stirrings of comradeship among them died out at the rebuff.
"He's an ugly-tempered brute," said one.
"He looks as if he didn't get enough to eat," remarked another.
The storekeeper sauntered out, thumbs in pockets.
"Talking about Hard-Luck Pete?" he questioned. "He hasn't been inside the store, for a week. Wonder what he lives on!"
"My woman took him over some supper the other night," went on the first speaker. "Do you think he'd eat it? Not much. He told her to take her victuals to them as wanted 'em."
"That's Pete all over! Never would take what he couldn't pay for."
They watched him out of sight, and then forgot him in some other topic.
Meanwhile Pete strode along the main street of the little mining town, and so out into the open country.
In truth, he was hungry and close to despair. In his black mood he felt that every man's hand was against him. He had brought his pick only from force of habit. No thought of locating a new claim was in his mind. His one wish was to get quite away from the scene of his recent disappointment.
So he struck off in the direction of the mountains, and turned toward one of the canyons that cut their front so deeply.
No unhappier man than Pete ever walked uncheered through the glory of a spring afternoon. Yet his heart craved both sunshine and sympathy.
No wife or child awaited him anywhere. He had shut love out of his life, and he was very lonely. As he strode along he wondered why he cared so much, after all, for the elusive gold. What should he do with it?
The blackness of despair fell upon him, and his soul cried out to him in the world-old question "What's the use?"
No suffering is keener. Its only antidote is to find something to do for somebody. Pete did not know this; he would not have believed it; but the lesson was close at hand.
As he strode on into the shadow of the canyon, which seemed so in harmony with his mood, he heard a cry of distress. It startled him from his thoughts, and he looked about to learn the cause.
The canyon walls towered above him to the height of a hundred feet, almost perpendicular. Great boulders pushed their way out through sand and shale, but only a few trees had obtained a foothold.
At first he could see no one who could have uttered that distressful cry. Yet, suddenly, it came again with more urgency from a point directly overhead.
Pete looked up. There, clinging to a sharp rock fifteen or twenty feet below the canyon's rim, was a tawny collie dog. He had, perhaps, chased a rabbit too eagerly, and so lost his footing. He clung to the narrow ledge of rock, unable to get up or down.
Pete saw the dog's eyes looking into his with an appeal so intense that he felt the stirring of unwonted pity at the bottom of his sluggish heart.
The collie was agonizingly aware of his peril. Life was very sweet to him. Now he believed that he saw help approaching, and he gave his cause into the hands of his most powerful friend, man, with a mighty prayer for deliverance.
Pete surveyed the canyon wall carefully. No trees grew at this point, only bushes. No trail led to the top.
"I'm sorry, pup," said Pete slowly," but I don't see's I can help you."
The dog's appeal had touched him. Unwilling to see the final struggle, he turned to leave the canyon. Instantly the collie renewed his cry, and this time it had the sharpness of despair.
Man, his friend, was failing him, and he knew no higher help. He must go clutching, struggling down into the black gulf of death that yawned for him! Then Pete stopped, and turned back once more.
"You're in hard luck, too, poor brute," he muttered.
He stood uncertain, shifting his feet. No instinct warned him that he was at the turning of the ways, that the desire to help was an angel hand to lift him out of his apathy. But he was conscious of a quickening pulse, a dearness of purpose that had been foreign to him for some time.
He threw off his hat and coat.
"I'm agoin' to save you, if it's to be done!" he exclaimed. "Jes' because you're so all-fired onlucky."
He took up his pick and began a slow, cautious ascent of the canyon wall, examining the ground thoroughly. For a few feet he found it possible to climb with the aid of bushes. Then, bracing his feet, he selected a dark spot in the surrounding shale and hollowed out a foothold in it with the pick.
As he had hoped, the darker earth held firm. He drew himself up. Resting there, he looked for another darker outcropping above him.
The collie had not made a sound since the man began his ascent. He clung motionless to the rock and waited. Even in the waning light, Pete could see his eyes gleaming like green jewels in his tawny head.
Slowly Pete advanced, hewing out each foothold with painstaking care, until he reached a point about ten feet below the rock. Then, when success was just within reach, he came face to face with what seemed an insurmountable difficulty.
For, as he stood there and looked above him for one more firm resting-place within reach of the spot where the dog was imprisoned, he found none. The wall at this point rose sheer and forbidding. It seemed that nothing less than a creature with wings could have found a resting-place.
Directly over his head he could see the anxious eyes and quivering nose of the collie, as hopelessly out of reach as from the canyon bottom.
Pete stood still, baffled. He could climb no higher. His disappointment was so keen as to surprise him.
His first impulse to help had been a mere stirring of unwonted friendliness. But during his slow, painful climb it had grown into a fixed purpose. So he stood in earnest study of the situation, while the flame in the collie's eyes above him burned with a light ever more intense.
At last Pete moved.
"It may mean my fool life," he said aloud, "but it's the only way I see."
He turned slowly and lowered himself into the second foothold. Then, bracing himself as firmly as possible, he drove the pick into the firm earth of the foothold above him. He then bore his weight on the pick. It held. He pulled at it sharply, swinging his feet from the ground. Still it held.
Then Pete drew a deep breath and raised his head.
"Jump!" he commanded the collie, poised above him.
The dog's eyes grew wild with anxiety. That he understood the command was evident. But he crouched on the rock, motionless.
"Jump!" commanded Pete sharply.
A shiver ran through the dog’s body. He uttered a mournful howl.
Pete threw back his head until his eyes looked squarely into the dog's.
"Jump!" he shouted again.
The dog jumped.
Pete felt an avalanche of dirt and stones about him. Then came the shock!
For a moment he lost his footing entirely, and man and dog hung, swaying dizzily, over the chasm. The sweat stood out on Pete's forehead, his sight wavered; but at last his feet touched the earth once more, his arm got a firm grasp of the collie's body! They were safe!
When they reached the canyon bottom the man leaned, exhausted, against a rock. But not so the dog. He ran about like a mad thing, leaping over rocks and tree-trunks.
Shrill barks burst from him; he trembled and frothed at the mouth. His joy was an agony; it demanded physical expression. Never had Pete seen stich convulsive emotion.
At last he called the dog to him. The collie obeyed at once, and sank exhausted at his feet with adoring eyes.
As darkness fell, Pete rose to go. The dog jumped to his feet at once, prepared to follow. Henceforth he knew only this man who had saved him,
Pete felt no surprise at this, only a queer sense of comfort at the touch of the dog's tongue on his hand. So they walked, side by side, along their homeward way.
When they reached the cabin, Pete lighted his lamp and gave the dog what scraps of food he could find. For himself there was nothing. But, strangely enough, the bitterness of his mood was gone. He even whistled softly to himself as he took off his coat and cap and threw them over a chair.
From the pockets and creases of his coat dirt fell in a shower. He stooped to brush it aside—then he stopped, amazed, not believing his eyes. Scattered here and there through the lumps of dirt were tiny particles of gold!
*****
A gray-haired man goes in and out of a house on one of San Francisco's hills. A woman waves greeting to him from the window. In the yard children play with a collie dog grown fat with years.
It is Peter Swanson, owner of "The Lucky Dog," a small mine, but exceedingly rich in its output. His neighbors know him as a kindly man, and generous to those who are down on their luck.