Why did everyone refer to him as "Old Jackson"?  All the other boys on Yale flat were known as "Bill," "Jack," or "Sam," or "Pete."  Surnames were seldom used or needed.   Christian names abbreviated answered all purposes for identification, reference or receipt.  If there were half a dozen fellows in the camp with the some prefix, then some striking characteristic of manner, gait or speech was tacked on to designate which man was meant.  But this man Jackson was never called anything except "Old Jackson."  If he had a baptismal name I never knew it - at least, not until I saw him sign his full cognomen under peculiar and painful circumstances.  He was not old either - scarcely thirty - but he had a grave, quiet, absorbed way with him.  He had come through with his own train of fifty or sixty pack animals from California.  He had driven them across the then trackless  Bad Lands of Montana and the sage brush of Washington Territory, had watered then at the Columbia River side by side with the wild buffalo; had penetrated the savage Spokane region, where, a year before, an American general with his command had been ambushed and slain by the hostile tribes who roamed the alkali prairies on the boarders of Washington and which extend into our own province.  Jackson owned the train and, as the world went then was regarded as rich.  He brought with him a number of packers and armed men who were desirous of trying their luck at the Fraser River mines, then lately discovered.   On the way across the party had severe encounters with the natives.  They lost two men and two were wounded.  The dead men were buried in shallow graves after a rude burial service had been read over them.. The wounded Old Jackson insisted on bringing along.  He cast away the freight that two of the mules  bore on their backs, substituting for the packs stretchers on which the poor fellows reclined.  The average days journey of a pack train is fifteen miles.  To relieve the wounded Old Jackson reduced the days journey of his train to ten miles and pitched camp each day early in the afternoon.  Other pack trains from Oregon overtook and passed Jackson's.  His assistants grumbled.  They were anxious to test the new diggings and argued that unless greater speed was put on all the rich claims would be taken up and the whole country would be under ice and snow before they should reach the Fraser.  But Jackson was firm.  He would not make haste while the wounded men were incapable of helping themselves.  To abandon them would be to ensure their speedy death at the hands of the savages, who, thirsting for human gore and scalps, hung like wolves on the flanks of the train.  Some of his force deserted and joined other trains; but Old Jackson crawled along at the ten-mile gait, and it was not until late in September that he reached the Fraser and found that the packers ahead of him had disposed of their flour, beans, and bacon to the miners and traders and that the market was glutted with supplies of all kinds.  He did not complain, but stored his goods at Lytton and Yale and sent his animals out to grass on the Thompson.  A few of them died, but the humanity of Old Jackson saved most of his train, and the wounded men as well.  When the packers who had passed him on the plains reached their journeys end their animals were so run down that they were unable to withstand the rigors of an interior winter, and hundreds died from exposure.  Alvarez, a rich Mexican, brought to the country 125 loaded mules.  He stored the goods at Yale, and then proceeded towards Hope, sixteen miles lower down the Fraser River, where he proposed to winter the train.  He swam the animals through the ice-cold current and built huge fires on the bank, where the mules as they emerged from the water were rubbed down.  All but three of these valuable animals, chilled through and through, died in a few hours.  Jackson's animals passed through the winter in good shape, and the men who had condemned his slowness now applauded his judgment and humanity.  He placed the train on the trail between Yale and the Upper Fraser and made heaps of money during the following two years.  

Old Jackson was a very peculiar man.  He was better educated than most of the men of his vocation, and his was a silent, unobtrusive personality.  Often he would sit for hours in a group around a bar-room stove when his mind seemed far away, and he never uttered a word or joined in the conversation until he was appealed to, when having replied in monosyllables he quickly relapsed into silence.  He drank little, swore not even at a refractory mule, and gambled not at all, but he read a great deal.  I do not know where or how I got the impression into my head, but I always looked upon Old Jackson as a man who, like most silent character if once aroused.  This idea was confirmed on a dismal winter evening, when a number of persons, to escape the pitiless pelting of a storm, had congregated for warmth about a huge red-hot sheet-iron stove in Barry's saloon.  Among the company on that evening was an elderly American who was known to his companions as "Judge" Reynolds.  It was given out that at one time in his life he had been a man of some influence, that he had worn ermine and dispensed justice, and that, which was still better, in his earlier days he was an honest lawyer.

On this particular evening the "Judge," who was much the worse for liquor and was in a loquacious mood, was relating to the assembled miners an incident in his California career.  to illustrate his story the old man rose to his feet and swung his long arms about after the manner of a political demagogue, while the "boys" who sat around listened with wide-open faces to the stream of turgid eloquence that issued from his mouth.  The "Judge" had reached one of his flights of half-drunken oratory when the front door of the saloon was thrown violently open and a blast of piercing wind tore into and through the room.  The company turned towards the door and saw standing there the figure of a man of medium height, his garments covered with snow; a Mexican sombrero was drawn over his eyes and his whole appearance was that of one who had traveled a long distance through the pelting of that awful tempest.  

As he stamped on the floor to relieve his boots of the weight of snow that had gathered upon them he threw a keen glance around.  Then he removed the souch hat which half-concealed his features.  One look into that face was enough for me.  It was a face on every line of which was stamped the mark of sin and ruffianism.  The man who sat next to me shuddered as he whispered:  "Its Tom O’Neil!"  

The name was on that had inspired terror in many hearts in California and Texas, and the appearance at Yale of the man who answered to it was regarded as an evil omen.  I had never seen the man before, and I felt I would not die of grief if I should not see him again.  While this thought was running through my mind the desperado, still holding his hat in his hand, advanced towards the stove.  Room was made for him as he came forward, and he soon had a choice of half-a-dozen chairs.   Having selected one he threw back his overcoat, and after another glance around the group, remarked:  

"I walked up from Hope today.  Its sixteen mile, I hear, but seems to me as it was a hundred."  He paused for a moment as he held his open hands towards the stove to warm them, and then continued:  "What did I came for?  A picnic?  Not much.  I come for a man."

  A shudder ran through the group. O’Neil, who didn't seem to notice the agitation his words had caused, went on as if talking to himself:  

"Yes, I'm after a man-leastwise, he's what some people calls a man.  He threw dirt at me in Californy, and I've followed the varmint here to make him scrape it off.  His name is-let me see, what's his name?  Oh! yes, his name's one Reynolds-judge Reynolds he calls his self, I reckon-a tall, big man what has a red nose and is much given to chin music.  Perhaps none of you fellows don't know the man when you see him."  

I stole a glance at Reynolds.  He had ceased to talk and had fallen back in his seat when O’Neil appeared at the door.  A I looked I saw him cowering in his chair with his hands before his face, apparently trying to reduce his figure into as small a compass as possible.

  "Yes," said O’Neil, "he's my meat when I finds him.  Do you uns know what he did to me?  He sentenced me to the chain gang in Stockton for six months.  Wot had I done?  I only put a bullet into a man's leg as had refused to drink with me.  He couldn't a-treated me much wuss if I’d killed the man.  I hear he's here.  Does any one know a man hereabouts which his name's ‘Judge’ Reynolds?"

  No one answered. O’Neil keenly scanned the group again, and his eye swept along until it fell upon the quivering form of the old man.  

"Wot do you cal that objeck?  Give it a name!" he snarled, pointing to Reynolds.  "Seems like he's got the chilblains."

  Still no answer.

  "Then I’ll take a look for myself," and rising from his seat the ruffian drew the old man's hat from his head and cast it on the floor.

  I looked at Reynolds.  His face was the color of pine wood ashes, and he trembled like a leaf as he raised his hands imploringly.

  With a cry like that of a wild beast at the sight of its prey O’Neil sprang forward and clutched Reynolds by the throat with one hand while with the other he drew a Colt's six-shooter from its sheath, cocked it and pointed it full at the other's head.

 "My God!" cried Reynolds, pleadingly; "Tom-oh! Tom, you would not murder me.  Say you would not, Tom.  Oh! say it's all a joke, dear, good Tom.  Say you don't mean it -that's a good boy.  I'm an old man, Tom, Look at my gray hairs and spare me."

 "Curse ye," foamed O’Neil, "Yer had a lot of mercy on me, didn't yer.  Yer put me in prison and ruined my prospeks fer life.  I've follered yer fer a thousand mile, and now I've got yer."

 "Oh! oh!" wailed the old man, piteously; "let me go this time, Tommy, dear boy.  You don't mean to kill me, do you?  I always said you were a good boy at heart, only you were misled.  You would not harm a hair of my good old head, would you, Tom?  Just think what an awful thing it is to kill a human being - especially an old man."

  O’Neil raised his pistol again and pointed it full at his victims head, and Reynolds sank on his knees to the floor, grasped his assailant's feet, and, as he groveled there, continued to pray for mercy.

"No," cried O’Neil, "You've got just half a minute to say yer prayers."

"Tom! Tom! dear Tom," wailed Reynolds, "make it a minute - give me sixty seconds."  "Yer’d better hurry," vociferated the cold-blooded wretch.  "There's only a quarter of a minute left."  Reynolds burst into tears and fell over backwards.  As he lay there he feebly pleaded:  "Someone pray-pray as my poor old mother used to pray-for me."

 "Time's up!" roared O’Neil.  He raised his weapon and took deliberate aim at the prostrate form.  While this scene was being enacted I say speechless and rooted to my chair.  I had seen death in many forms, and imagined that I was proof against any horror, but the prospect of seeing a man's brains blown out in cold blood was too much for me, and, indeed, for the whole company, since no one moved, but just gazed helplessly on the scene.

"One two, th-," shouted the desperado.  And then a strange thing happened.  Like a flash the muzzle of the pistol was struck upward and the ball intended for Reynolds lodged in the ceiling.  The next instant I saw O’Neil in the grasp of a man.  He struggled to release himself, and a volley of oaths poured from his wicked mouth.  The two men fell to the floor as in a death grapple, the intruder beneath.  O’Neil, whose pistol had fallen to the floor, reached for his bowie knife, but before he could draw it from its sheath the under man turned him over and pinned him to the floor,  In another moment O’Neil was relieved of his bowie knife (his pistol having been taken possession of by one of the bystanders), and was allowed to rise.  Panting for breath he sank into a chair.

  Then I saw that the victor was Old Jackson!  He had interfered in time to save Reynold’s life and undo the desperado.

  Reynolds left the river the next day and Tom O’Neil apologized to Old Jackson and became one of his best friends.  But the taint of ruffianism was too deep in Tom's system to be entirely eradicated by one discomfiting circumstance, as the following incident will show:

  There was a little Negro barber at Yale who was known as "Ikey."  He was a saucy and presumptuous creature, with a mischief-making tongue in his head.  Into Ikey’s shop one day there entered Tom O’Neil.

  "Barber," quote he, "I want yer to shave me."

  "Yeth, sah," said Ikey, "take a seat."

  "And barber," continued Tom, drawing a revolver and placing it across his knees, "If yer draw so little as one drop of blood I’ll shoot yer."

  The barber, fortunately, did not cut the vagabond, and so escaped with his life.  In narrating the incident Ikey said:  "If  I’d a cut that man ever so little I made up my mind that I’d cut his throat from ear to ear.  It would ha’ been my life or his’n, and I was shore it wouldn't a been mine."

  One afternoon about two years subsequent to the occurrences I have narrated above, I strolled slowly along Yates Street in Victoria.  About the last person I expected to meet was Old Jackson, and yet as I neared the corner of Government Street I almost ran against him.

  "I was looking for you," he remarked, "all day yesterday.  I got down the day before from Yale and wanted to see you badly."

  "What's the matter?" I asked.

"I’ll tell you," he replied.  "I've sold my pack train and intend to go to California.  I was too late to catch the streamer and shall have to wait three weeks before another chance will come for getting away.  I am very ill today.  My left side feels as if there was a lump of ice inside of me.  I went to Dr. Helmcken this morning and he told me I must go to bed and stay there, that I am threatened with pneumonia."

  Together we walked to the Hotel de France and went to his room.  He breathed heavily and was very weak.

  "I feel that I shall never get over this trouble," he said.  "I don't think that I shall live long.  I have some property and I want you to get me a lawyer so that I may make my will."

I summoned George Pearkes, and after two or three interviews the terms of the will were arranged and the lawyer took the paper away and deposited it in a safe.

  From that day Old Jackson never left his bed, and the doctor said that his trouble was quick consumption.

  One day, about a month after the will was drawn, Jackson handed me a letter and asked me to post it.  I gazed at the superscription carelessly, and saw that it was addressed to "Thomas O’Neil, Esq., Yale, British Columbia."

  He must have detected a look of surprise in my face, for he remarked in an explanatory manner:

  "Tom's not such a bad fellow, after all.  After you left the river we became good friends and I got to like him.  This letter tells him to come right down, for I want to see him before I die."

  The letter was mailed about the 10th of  December, and two days before Christmas Tom O’Neil walked into the hotel.  He had changed but little.  If anything, he was more villainous-looking than before, and he had the same swaggering, devil-may-care air that I had observed when I first saw him in Barry's saloon at Yale.  He was shown to the sick room.  In the evening I saw him at dinner.  His manner was quieter and more subdued, and I thought-only thought, mind you-that his eyes were red as if from crying.  The next day we were told that Jackson was sinking and might go off at any moment.  O’Neil was constantly at the sick man's bedside, and in a rough but kindly way did all he could to relieve the distress of his friend.  But the end drew rapidly near, and just before daylight on Christmas morning I was summoned from my room by a message that Old Jackson was dying and wished to say good-bye to me.  I responded at once.

  O’Neil stood at the head of the bed looking down on the face of the sufferer  His eyes were suffused with tears and his whole frame shook with emotion, which he found it difficult to control.  I could not understand his agitation.  Was it assumed or real?  Could it be possible that this desperado-this social outcast, at the mention of whose name women shuddered and the cheeks of strong men blanched- was it possible that his wicked mind was open to generous impulses and emotions?  Mentally I responded, "No; he is humbugging the friend about whom he has woven a strange spell that death alone can break."  I was scarcely civil to O’Neil.  He looked out of place in a death chamber, at least in a death chamber that he had not himself by one of his murderous acts created.

  "He's goin’ fast," O’Neil whispered as I entered.

  The sick man opened his eyes and gazed long and fixedly at Tom.  Then he turned his head feebly to me and said in a low voice, "be kind to him when I am gone."

I was startled.  There was something so extraordinary in the request, coming as it did from a man whom I had learned to respect for his goodness of heart and bravery in staying the had of the ruffian for whom he now pleaded.

  "Yes," Jackson continued, "be good to him.  He never had a chance.  His mother died when he was a small boy and he ran away and came West to escape a cruel step-mother.  It was not his fault if he grew up bad.  He never meant to do half that he threatened to do.  If he has done wrong he has suffered for it.  I have forgiven him and if the rest will forgive him he'll do better."

  O’Neil in a paroxysm of sobs flung himself from the room.

  "Will you promise me?" urged the dying man.

  "Yes," I said, most reluctantly, "I will do what I can."

  A smile stole across his face.  He tried to extend his hand, but it fell back on the counterpane.

  "The will," he said, "the will will explain all."

At the time of which I write a narrow passage or alleyway extended from the northern side of the Hotel de France on Government Street to Broad Street.  The White House now stands where that alley ran, and the hotel and the Colonial Theater then occupied the Government Street front now covered by Spencer's store.  At the Broad Street end of the alley there stood a story-and-a-half frame building occupied by nuns who were attached to the Catholic diocese, then presided over by Bishop Demers, a courtly and godly man of gentle demeanor and blameless life.  Until a few days ago I was under the impression that the nuns’ building had disappeared before the march of improvement, but a visit to the rear of the old Masonic hall and a careful examination of a dilapidated frame structure that stands there revealed the fact that the building occupied by the nuns forty-three years ago is still standing.  It is old and rickety, and must soon succumb to the ravages of time, but its value as an historic momento is unquestioned.

  In a miniature tower on the roof of the nuns’ home there swung a tiny bell, which was rung at stated periods during the day and evening to remind communicants of their duties and to summon the faithful to prayer.  The first gleam of dawn on that Christmas morning was welcomed by the glad ringing of the little bell.  The sound fell on the ear of Old Jackson as he lay dying on his bed.  He half raised himself and then fell back on the pillow.

"George," he feebly moaned, "Do you hear?  It's time to go home."

  He paused for a moment and then went on:  "I'm choking for air.  Oh!  give me a chance.  Open-please open that window and let in the air."

  Someone raised the window and then there was borne in on the early breeze the sound of voices singing.  The Holy Sisterhood on that lovely Christmas morning were chanting the morning prayer beginning, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men."

  As the voices rose and fell in soft and gentle cadence the sick man raised himself on his elbow, the better to listen.  When the voices ceased the bell resumed its call.

  "Yes, George," said Old Jackson.  "Let's get our books and go home.  Dear mother will be waiting."  He turned on his side and faced the wall.  When the bell ceased to ring Old Jackson had indeed "gone home."  Let us hope that he found his dear mother waiting to guide his footsteps to the foot of the Throne.

  The next day Old Jackson was place in the Quadra Street Cemetery.  After leaving the cemetery we repaired to the hotel, where Mr. Pearkes read the will.  It ran something like this:

  "I give and bequeath to my brother, George Jackson, sometimes known as Thomas O’Neil, all my property, real and personal, that I die possessed of, the only stipulation being that he shall erect a suitable stone over my grave, recording thereon my name, age and birthplace, and try and reform."

"JAMES JACKSON."

  The property amounted to between $7,000 and $8,000 in gold, all of which the bank paid over to O’Neil the following day.  He returned to the Mainland and resumed his evil course.  Three years later, at the diggings on the Big Bend of Columbia River, he was voted a dangerous nuisance by the miners.  A mule was procured, a rope passed around the animal's body, to which the desperado's legs were tied, and he was sent out of the camp with instructions never to return on pain of death.  He was never heard of again, by me at least.  Perhaps he perished in an attempt to reach civilization.

The other day I visited Quadra Street Cemetery.  The desperado did not erect a stone to the memory of his brother, and the grave is unmarked and undistinguishable.  

THE END

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