The Sky Pilot: A Tale of the Foothills

by Ralph Connor

  Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger

  THE SKY PILOT

  A TALE OF THE FOOTHILLS

  By Ralph Connor

  PREFACE

  The measure of a man's power to help his brother is the measure of thelove in the heart of him and of the faith he has that at last the goodwill win. With this love that seeks not its own and this faith thatgrips the heart of things, he goes out to meet many fortunes, but notthat of defeat.

  This story is of the people of the Foothill Country; of those men ofadventurous spirit, who left homes of comfort, often of luxury, becauseof the stirring in them to be and to do some worthy thing; and of thoseothers who, outcast from their kind, sought to find in these valleys,remote and lonely, a spot where they could forget and be forgotten.

  The waving skyline of the Foothills was the boundary of their lookoutupon life. Here they dwelt safe from the scanning of the world, freedfrom all restraints of social law, denied the gentler influences of homeand the sweet uplift of a good woman's face. What wonder if, with thenew freedom beating in their hearts and ears, some rode fierce and hardthe wild trail to the cut-bank of destruction!

  The story is, too, of how a man with vision beyond the waving skylinecame to them with firm purpose to play the brother's part, and by sheerlove of them and by faith in them, win them to believe that life ispriceless, and that it is good to be a man.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. The Foothills Country

  II. The Company of the Noble Seven

  III. The Coming of the Pilot

  IV. The Pilot's Measure

  V. First Blood

  VI. His Second Wind

  VII. The Last of the Permit Sundays

  VIII. The Pilot's Grip

  IX. Gwen

  X. Gwen's First Prayers

  XI. Gwen's Challenge

  XII. Gwen's Canyon

  XIII. The Canyon Flowers

  XIV. Bill's Bluff

  XV. Bill's Partner

  XVI. Bill's Financing

  XVII. How the Pinto Sold

  XVIII. The Lady Charlotte

  XIX. Through Gwen's Window

  XX. How Bill Favored "Home-Grown Industries"

  XXI. How Bill Hit the Trail

  XXII. How the Swan Creek Church was Opened

  XXIII. The Pilot's Last Port

  THE SKY PILOT

  CHAPTER I

  THE FOOTHILLS COUNTRY

  Beyond the great prairies and in the shadow of the Rockies lie theFoothills. For nine hundred miles the prairies spread themselves out invast level reaches, and then begin to climb over softly rounded moundsthat ever grow higher and sharper till, here and there, they breakinto jagged points and at last rest upon the great bases of the mightymountains. These rounded hills that join the prairies to the mountainsform the Foothill Country. They extend for about a hundred miles only,but no other hundred miles of the great West are so full of interestand romance. The natural features of the country combine the beautiesof prairie and of mountain scenery. There are valleys so wide that thefarther side melts into the horizon, and uplands so vast as to suggestthe unbroken prairie. Nearer the mountains the valleys dip deep and everdeeper till they narrow into canyons through which mountain torrentspour their blue-gray waters from glaciers that lie glistening betweenthe white peaks far away. Here are the great ranges on which feed herdsof cattle and horses. Here are the homes of the ranchmen, in whose wild,free, lonely existence there mingles much of the tragedy and comedy, thehumor and pathos, that go to make up the romance of life. Among them areto be found the most enterprising, the most daring, of the peoples ofthe old lands. The broken, the outcast, the disappointed, these toohave found their way to the ranches among the Foothills. A country it iswhose sunlit hills and shaded valleys reflect themselves in the livesof its people; for nowhere are the contrasts of light and shade morevividly seen than in the homes of the ranchmen of the Albertas.

  The experiences of my life have confirmed in me the orthodox convictionthat Providence sends his rain upon the evil as upon the good; else Ishould never have set my eyes upon the Foothill country, nor touched itsstrangely fascinating life, nor come to know and love the most strikingman of all that group of striking men of the Foothill country--the dearold Pilot, as we came to call him long afterwards. My first year incollege closed in gloom. My guardian was in despair. From this distanceof years I pity him. Then I considered him unnecessarily concerned aboutme--"a fussy old hen," as one of the boys suggested. The invitation fromJack Dale, a distant cousin, to spend a summer with him on his ranch inSouth Alberta came in the nick of time. I was wild to go. My guardianhesitated long; but no other solution of the problem of my disposaloffering, he finally agreed that I could not well get into more troubleby going than by staying. Hence it was that, in the early summer ofone of the eighties, I found myself attached to a Hudson's Bay Companyfreight train, making our way from a little railway town in Montanatowards the Canadian boundary. Our train consisted of six wagonsand fourteen yoke of oxen, with three cayuses, in charge of a Frenchhalf-breed and his son, a lad of about sixteen. We made slow enoughprogress, but every hour of the long day, from the dim, gray, mistylight of dawn to the soft glow of shadowy evening, was full of newdelights to me. On the evening of the third day we reached the LineStopping Place, where Jack Dale met us. I remember well how my heartbeat with admiration of the easy grace with which he sailed down uponus in the loose-jointed cowboy style, swinging his own bronco and thelittle cayuse he was leading for me into the circle of the wagons,careless of ropes and freight and other impedimenta. He flung himselfoff before his bronco had come to a stop, and gave me a grip that mademe sure of my welcome. It was years since he had seen a man from home,and the eager joy in his eyes told of long days and nights of lonelyyearning for the old days and the old faces. I came to understand thisbetter after my two years' stay among these hills that have a strangepower on some days to waken in a man longings that make his heart growsick. When supper was over we gathered about the little fire, while Jackand the half-breed smoked and talked. I lay on my back looking up at thepale, steady stars in the deep blue of the cloudless sky, and listenedin fullness of contented delight to the chat between Jack and thedriver. Now and then I asked a question, but not too often. It isa listening silence that draws tales from a western man, not vexingquestions. This much I had learned already from my three days' travel.So I lay and listened, and the tales of that night are mingled with thewarm evening lights and the pale stars and the thoughts of home thatJack's coming seemed to bring.

  Next morning before sun-up we had broken camp and were ready for ourfifty-mile ride. There was a slight drizzle of rain and, though rain andshine were alike to him, Jack insisted that I should wear my mackintosh.This garment was quite new and had a loose cape which rustled as I movedtoward my cayuse. He was an ugly-looking little animal, with more whitein his eye than I cared to see. Altogether, I did not draw toward him.Nor did he to me, apparently. For as I took him by the bridle he snortedand sidled about with great swiftness, and stood facing me with his feetplanted firmly in front of him as if prepared to reject overtures ofany kind soever. I tried to approach him with soothing words, but hepersistently backed away until we stood looking at each other at theutmost distance of his outstretched neck and my outstretched arm. Atthis point Jack came to my assistance, got the pony by the other side ofthe bridle, and held him fast till I got into position to mount. Takinga firm grip of the horn of the Mexican saddle, I threw my leg over hisback. The next instant I was flying over his head. My only emotion wasone of surprise, the thing was so unexpected. I had fancied myself afair rider, h
aving had experience of farmers' colts of divers kinds, butthis was something quite new. The half-breed stood looking on, mildlyinterested; Jack was smiling, but the boy was grinning with delight.

  "I'll take the little beast," said Jack. But the grinning boy braced meup and I replied as carelessly as my shaking voice would allow:

  "Oh, I guess I'll manage him," and once more got into position. But nosooner had I got into the saddle than the pony sprang straight up intothe air and lit with his back curved into a bow, his four legs gatheredtogether and so absolutely rigid that the shock made my teeth rattle.It was my first experience of "bucking." Then the little brute wentseriously to work to get rid of the rustling, flapping thing on hisback. He would back steadily for some seconds, then, with two or threeforward plunges, he would stop as if shot and spring straight into theupper air, lighting with back curved and legs rigid as iron. Then hewould walk on his hind legs for a few steps, then throw himself withamazing rapidity to one side and again proceed to buck with viciousdiligence.

  "Stick to him!" yelled Jack, through his shouts of laughter. "You'llmake him sick before long."

  I remember thinking that unless his insides were somewhat moredelicately organized than his external appearance would lead one tosuppose the chances were that the little brute would be the last tosuccumb to sickness. To make matters worse, a wilder jump than ordinarythrew my cape up over my head, so that I was in complete darkness. Andnow he had me at his mercy, and he knew no pity. He kicked and plungedand reared and bucked, now on his front legs, now on his hind legs,often on his knees, while I, in the darkness, could only cling tothe horn of the saddle. At last, in one of the gleams of light thatpenetrated the folds of my enveloping cape, I found that the horn hadslipped to his side, so the next time he came to his knees I threwmyself off. I am anxious to make this point clear, for, from theexpression of triumph on the face of the grinning boy, and his encomiumsof the pony, I gathered that he scored a win for the cayuse. Withoutpause that little brute continued for some seconds to buck and plungeeven after my dismounting, as if he were some piece of mechanism thatmust run down before it could stop.

  By this time I was sick enough and badly shaken in my nerve, but thetriumphant shouts and laughter of the boy and the complacent smiles onthe faces of Jack and the half-breed stirred my wrath. I tore off thecape and, having got the saddle put right, seized Jack's riding whipand, disregarding his remonstrances, sprang on my steed once more, andbefore he could make up his mind as to his line of action plied him sovigorously with the rawhide that he set off over the prairie at fullgallop, and in a few minutes came round to the camp quite subdued, tothe boy's great disappointment and to my own great surprise. Jackwas highly pleased, and even the stolid face of the half-breed showedsatisfaction.

  "Don't think I put this up on you," Jack said. "It was that cape. Heain't used to such frills. But it was a circus," he added, going offinto a fit of laughter, "worth five dollars any day."

  "You bet!" said the half-breed. "Dat's make pretty beeg fun, eh?"

  It seemed to me that it depended somewhat upon the point of view, but Imerely agreed with him, only too glad to be so well out of the fight.

  All day we followed the trail that wound along the shoulders of theround-topped hills or down their long slopes into the wide, grassyvalleys. Here and there the valleys were cut through by coulees throughwhich ran swift, blue-gray rivers, clear and icy cold, while from thehilltops we caught glimpses of little lakes covered with wild-fowl thatshrieked and squawked and splashed, careless of danger. Now and then wesaw what made a black spot against the green of the prairie, and Jacktold me it was a rancher's shack. How remote from the great world, andhow lonely it seemed!--this little black shack among these multitudinoushills.

  I shall never forget the summer evening when Jack and I rode intoSwan Creek. I say into--but the village was almost entirely one ofimagination, in that it consisted of the Stopping Place, a long logbuilding, a story and a half high, with stables behind, and the store inwhich the post-office was kept and over which the owner dwelt. But thesituation was one of great beauty. On one side the prairie rambled downfrom the hills and then stretched away in tawny levels into the mistypurple at the horizon; on the other it clambered over the round, sunnytops to the dim blue of the mountains beyond.

  In this world, where it is impossible to reach absolute values, we areforced to hold things relatively, and in contrast with the long,lonely miles of our ride during the day these two houses, with theiroutbuildings, seemed a center of life. Some horses were tied to the railthat ran along in front of the Stopping Place.

  "Hello!" said Jack, "I guess the Noble Seven are in town."

  "And who are they?" I asked.

  "Oh," he replied, with a shrug, "they are the elite Of Swan Creek; andby Jove," he added, "this must be a Permit Night."

  "What does that mean?" I asked, as we rode up towards the tie rail.

  "Well," said Jack, in a low tone, for some men were standing about thedoor, "you see, this is a prohibition country, but when one of the boysfeels as if he were going to have a spell of sickness he gets a permitto bring in a few gallons for medicinal purposes; and of course, theother boys being similarly exposed, he invites them to assist him intaking preventive measures. And," added Jack, with a solemn wink, "it isremarkable, in a healthy country like this, how many epidemics come nearketching us."

  And with this mystifying explanation we joined the mysterious company ofthe Noble Seven.