Tales of the Klondyke
by
Jack London
Part 1 out of 3
This etext was prepared from the 1906 Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons
edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
TALES OF THE KLONDYKE
THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS
Contents:
The God of His Fathers
The Great Interrogation
Which Make Men Remember
Siwash
The Man with the Gash
Jan, the Unrepentant
Grit of Women
Where the Trail Forks
A Daughter of the Aurora
At the Rainbow's End
The Scorn of Women
THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS
On every hand stretched the forest primeval,--the home of noisy
comedy and silent tragedy. Here the struggle for survival
continued to wage with all its ancient brutality. Briton and
Russian were still to overlap in the Land of the Rainbow's End--
and this was the very heart of it--nor had Yankee gold yet
purchased its vast domain. The wolf-pack still clung to the flank
of the cariboo-herd, singling out the weak and the big with calf,
and pulling them down as remorselessly as were it a thousand,
thousand generations into the past. The sparse aborigines still
acknowledged the rule of their chiefs and medicine men, drove out
bad spirits, burned their witches, fought their neighbors, and ate
their enemies with a relish which spoke well of their bellies.
But it was at the moment when the stone age was drawing to a
close. Already, over unknown trails and chartless wildernesses,
were the harbingers of the steel arriving,--fair-faced, blue-eyed,
indomitable men, incarnations of the unrest of their race. By
accident or design, single-handed and in twos and threes, they
came from no one knew whither, and fought, or died, or passed on,
no one knew whence. The priests raged against them, the chiefs
called forth their fighting men, and stone clashed with steel; but
to little purpose. Like water seeping from some mighty reservoir,
they trickled through the dark forests and mountain passes,
threading the highways in bark canoes, or with their moccasined
feet breaking trail for the wolf-dogs. They came of a great
breed, and their mothers were many; but the fur-clad denizens of
the Northland had this yet to learn. So many an unsung wanderer
fought his last and died under the cold fire of the aurora, as did
his brothers in burning sands and reeking jungles, and as they
shall continue to do till in the fulness of time the destiny of
their race be achieved.
It was near twelve. Along the northern horizon a rosy glow,
fading to the west and deepening to the east, marked the unseen
dip of the midnight sun. The gloaming and the dawn were so
commingled that there was no night,--simply a wedding of day with
day, a scarcely perceptible blending of two circles of the sun. A
kildee timidly chirped good-night; the full, rich throat of a
robin proclaimed good-morrow. From an island on the breast of the
Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced its interminable wrongs, while
a loon laughed mockingly back across a still stretch of river.
In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark
canoes were lined two and three deep. Ivory-bladed spears, bone-
barbed arrows, buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven
traps bespoke the fact that in the muddy current of the river the
salmon-run was on. In the background, from the tangle of skin
tents and drying frames, rose the voices of the fisher folk.
Bucks skylarked with bucks or flirted with the maidens, while the
older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of having fulfilled the
end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as they braided
rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At their feet their
naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the muck with the
tawny wolf-dogs.
To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it,
stood a second camp of two tents. But it was a white man's camp.
If nothing else, the choice of position at least bore convincing
evidence of this. In case of offence, it commanded the Indian
quarters a hundred yards away; of defence, a rise to the ground
and the cleared intervening space; and last, of defeat, the swift
slope of a score of yards to the canoes below. From one of the
tents came the petulant cry of a sick child and the crooning song
of a mother. In the open, over the smouldering embers of a fire,
two men held talk.
"Eh? I love the church like a good son. Bien! So great a love
that my days have been spent in fleeing away from her, and my
nights in dreaming dreams of reckoning. Look you!" The half-
breed's voice rose to an angry snarl. "I am Red River born. My
father was white--as white as you. But you are Yankee, and he was
British bred, and a gentleman's son. And my mother was the
daughter of a chief, and I was a man. Ay, and one had to look the
second time to see what manner of blood ran in my veins; for I
lived with the whites, and was one of them, and my father's heart
beat in me. It happened there was a maiden--white--who looked on
me with kind eyes. Her father had much land and many horses; also
he was a big man among his people, and his blood was the blood of
the French. He said the girl knew not her own mind, and talked
overmuch with her, and became wroth that such things should be.
"But she knew her mind, for we came quick before the priest. And
quicker had come her father, with lying words, false promises, I
know not what; so that the priest stiffened his neck and would not
make us that we might live one with the other. As at the
beginning it was the church which would not bless my birth, so now
it was the church which refused me marriage and put the blood of
men upon my hands. Bien! Thus have I cause to love the church.
So I struck the priest on his woman's mouth, and we took swift
horses, the girl and I, to Fort Pierre, where was a minister of
good heart. But hot on our trail was her father, and brothers,
and other men he had gathered to him. And we fought, our horses
on the run, till I emptied three saddles and the rest drew off and
went on to Fort Pierre. Then we took east, the girl and I, to the
hills and forests, and we lived one with the other, and we were
not married,--the work of the good church which I love like a son.
"But mark you, for this is the strangeness of woman, the way of
which no man may understand. One of the saddles I emptied was
that of her father's, and the hoofs of those who came behind had
pounded him into the earth. This we saw, the girl and I, and this
I had forgot had she not remembered. And in the quiet of the
evening, after the day's hunt were done, it came between us, and
in the silence of the night when we lay beneath the stars and
should have been one. It was there always. She never spoke, but
it sat by our fire and held us ever apart. She tried to put it
aside, but at such times it would rise up till I could read it in
the look of her eyes, in the very in-take of her breath.
"So in the end she bore me a child, a woman-child, and died. Then
I went among my mother's people, that it might nurse at a warm
breast and live. But my hands were wet with the blood of men,
look you, because of the church, wet with the blood of men. And
the Riders of the North came for me, but my mother's brother, who
was then chief in his own right, hid me and gave me horses and
food. And we went away, my woman-child and I, even to the Hudson
Bay Country, where white men were few and the questions they asked
not many. And I worked for the company a hunter, as a guide, as a
driver of dogs, till my woman-child was become a woman, tall, and
slender, and fair to the eye.
"You know the winter, long and lonely, breeding evil thoughts and
bad deeds. The Chief Factor was a hard man, and bold. And he was
not such that a woman would delight in looking upon. But he cast
eyes upon my woman-child who was become a woman. Mother of God!
he sent me away on a long trip with the dogs, that he might--you
understand, he was a hard man and without heart. She was most
white, and her soul was white, and a good woman, and--well, she
died.
"It was bitter cold the night of my return, and I had been away
months, and the dogs were limping sore when I came to the fort.
The Indians and breeds looked on me in silence, and I felt the
fear of I knew not what, but I said nothing till the dogs were fed
and I had eaten as a man with work before him should. Then I
spoke up, demanding the word, and they shrank from me, afraid of
my anger and what I should do; but the story came out, the pitiful
story, word for word and act for act, and they marvelled that I
should be so quiet.
"When they had done I went to the Factor's house, calmer than now
in the telling of it. He had been afraid and called upon the
breeds to help him; but they were not pleased with the deed, and
had left him to lie on the bed he had made. So he had fled to the
house of the priest. Thither I followed. But when I was come to
that place, the priest stood in my way, and spoke soft words, and
said a man in anger should go neither to the right nor left, but
straight to God. I asked by the right of a father's wrath that he
give me past, but he said only over his body, and besought with me
to pray. Look you, it was the church, always the church; for I
passed over his body and sent the Factor to meet my woman-child
before his god, which is a bad god, and the god of the white men.
Then was there hue and cry, for word was sent to the station
below, and I came away. Through the Land of the Great Slave, down
the Valley of the Mackenzie to the never-opening ice, over the
White Rockies, past the Great Curve of the Yukon, even to this
place did I come. And from that day to this, yours is the first
face of my father's people I have looked upon. May it be the
last! These people, which are my people, are a simple folk, and I
have been raised to honor among them. My word is their law, and
their priests but do my bidding, else would I not suffer them.
When I speak for them I speak for myself. We ask to be let alone.
We do not want your kind. If we permit you to sit by our fires,
after you will come your church, your priests, and your gods. And
know this, for each white man who comes to my village, him will I
make deny his god. You are the first, and I give you grace. So
it were well you go, and go quickly."
"I am not responsible for my brothers," the second man spoke up,
filling his pipe in a meditative manner. Hay Stockard was at
times as thoughtful of speech as he was wanton of action; but only
at times.
"But I know your breed," responded the other. "Your brothers are
many, and it is you and yours who break the trail for them to
follow. In time they shall come to possess the land, but not in
my time. Already, have I heard, are they on the head-reaches of
the Great River, and far away below are the Russians."
Hay Stockard lifted his head with a quick start. This was
startling geographical information. The Hudson Bay post at Fort
Yukon had other notions concerning the course of the river,
believing it to flow into the Arctic.
"Then the Yukon empties into Bering Sea?" he asked.
"I do not know, but below there are Russians, many Russians.
Which is neither here nor there. You may go on and see for
yourself; you may go back to your brothers; but up the Koyukuk you
shall not go while the priests and fighting men do my bidding.
Thus do I command, I, Baptiste the Red, whose word is law and who
am head man over this people."
"And should I not go down to the Russians, or back to my
brothers?"
"Then shall you go swift-footed before your god, which is a bad
god, and the god of the white men."
The red sun shot up above the northern skyline, dripping and
bloody. Baptiste the Red came to his feet, nodded curtly, and
went back to his camp amid the crimson shadows and the singing of
the robins.
Hay Stockard finished his pipe by the fire, picturing in smoke and
coal the unknown upper reaches of the Koyukuk, the strange stream
which ended here its arctic travels and merged its waters with the
muddy Yukon flood. Somewhere up there, if the dying words of a
ship-wrecked sailorman who had made the fearful overland journey
were to be believed, and if the vial of golden grains in his pouch
attested anything,--somewhere up there, in that home of winter,
stood the Treasure House of the North. And as keeper of the gate,
Baptiste the Red, English half-breed and renegade, barred the way.
"Bah!" He kicked the embers apart and rose to his full height,
arms lazily outstretched, facing the flushing north with careless
soul.
II
Hay Stockard swore, harshly, in the rugged monosyllables of his
mother tongue. His wife lifted her gaze from the pots and pans,
and followed his in a keen scrutiny of the river. She was a woman
of the Teslin Country, wise in the ways of her husband's
vernacular when it grew intensive. From the slipping of a snow-
shoe thong to the forefront of sudden death, she could gauge
occasion by the pitch and volume of his blasphemy. So she knew
the present occasion merited attention. A long canoe, with
paddles flashing back the rays of the westering sun, was crossing
the current from above and urging in for the eddy. Hay Stockard
watched it intently. Three men rose and dipped, rose and dipped,
in rhythmical precision; but a red bandanna, wrapped about the
head of one, caught and held his eye.
"Bill!" he called. "Oh, Bill!"
A shambling, loose-jointed giant rolled out of one of the tents,
yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Then he sighted the
strange canoe and was wide awake on the instant.
"By the jumping Methuselah! That damned sky-pilot!"
Hay Stockard nodded his head bitterly, half-reached for his rifle,
then shrugged his shoulders.
"Pot-shot him," Bill suggested, "and settle the thing out of hand.
He'll spoil us sure if we don't." But the other declined this
drastic measure and turned away, at the same time bidding the
woman return to her work, and calling Bill back from the bank.
The two Indians in the canoe moored it on the edge of the eddy,
while its white occupant, conspicuous by his gorgeous head-gear,
came up the bank.
"Like Paul of Tarsus, I give you greeting. Peace be unto you and
grace before the Lord."
His advances were met sullenly, and without speech.
"To you, Hay Stockard, blasphemer and Philistine, greeting. In
your heart is the lust of Mammon, in your mind cunning devils, in
your tent this woman whom you live with in adultery; yet of these
divers sins, even here in the wilderness, I, Sturges Owen, apostle
to the Lord, bid you to repent and cast from you your iniquities."
"Save your cant! Save your cant!" Hay Stockard broke in testily.
"You'll need all you've got, and more, for Red Baptiste over
yonder."
He waved his hand toward the Indian camp, where the half-breed was
looking steadily across, striving to make out the newcomers.
Sturges Owen, disseminator of light and apostle to the Lord,
stepped to the edge of the steep and commanded his men to bring up
the camp outfit. Stockard followed him.
"Look here," he demanded, plucking the missionary by the shoulder
and twirling him about. "Do you value your hide?"
"My life is in the Lord's keeping, and I do but work in His
vineyard," he replied solemnly.
"Oh, stow that! Are you looking for a job of martyrship?"
"If He so wills."
"Well, you'll find it right here, but I'm going to give you some
advice first. Take it or leave it. If you stop here, you'll be
cut off in the midst of your labors. And not you alone, but your
men, Bill, my wife--"
"Who is a daughter of Belial and hearkeneth not to the true
Gospel."
"And myself. Not only do you bring trouble upon yourself, but
upon us. I was frozen in with you last winter, as you will well
recollect, and I know you for a good man and a fool. If you think
it your duty to strive with the heathen, well and good; but, do
exercise some wit in the way you go about it. This man, Red
Baptiste, is no Indian. He comes of our common stock, is as bull-
necked as I ever dared be, and as wild a fanatic the one way as
you are the other. When you two come together, hell'll be to pay,
and I don't care to be mixed up in it. Understand? So take my
advice and go away. If you go down-stream, you'll fall in with
the Russians. There's bound to be Greek priests among them, and
they'll see you safe through to Bering Sea,--that's where the
Yukon empties,--and from there it won't be hard to get back to
civilization. Take my word for it and get out of here as fast as
God'll let you."
"He who carries the Lord in his heart and the Gospel in his hand
hath no fear of the machinations of man or devil," the missionary
answered stoutly. "I will see this man and wrestle with him. One
backslider returned to the fold is a greater victory than a
thousand heathen. He who is strong for evil can be as mighty for
good, witness Saul when he journeyed up to Damascus to bring
Christian captives to Jerusalem. And the voice of the Saviour
came to him, crying, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' And
therewith Paul arrayed himself on the side of the Lord, and
thereafter was most mighty in the saving of souls. And even as
thou, Paul of Tarsus, even so do I work in the vineyard of the
Lord, bearing trials and tribulations, scoffs and sneers, stripes
and punishments, for His dear sake."
"Bring up the little bag with the tea and a kettle of water," he
called the next instant to his boatmen; "not forgetting the haunch
of cariboo and the mixing-pan."
When his men, converts by his own hand, had gained the bank, the
trio fell to their knees, hands and backs burdened with camp
equipage, and offered up thanks for their passage through the
wilderness and their safe arrival. Hay Stockard looked upon the
function with sneering disapproval, the romance and solemnity of
it lost to his matter-of-fact soul. Baptiste the Red, still
gazing across, recognized the familiar postures, and remembered
the girl who had shared his star-roofed couch in the hills and
forests, and the woman-child who lay somewhere by bleak Hudson's
Bay.
III
"Confound it, Baptiste, couldn't think of it. Not for a moment.
Grant that this man is a fool and of small use in the nature of
things, but still, you know, I can't give him up."
Hay Stockard paused, striving to put into speech the rude ethics
of his heart.
"He's worried me, Baptiste, in the past and now, and caused me all
manner of troubles; but can't you see, he's my own breed--white--
and--and--why, I couldn't buy my life with his, not if he was a
nigger."
"So be it," Baptiste the Red made answer. "I have given you grace
and choice. I shall come presently, with my priests and fighting
men, and either shall I kill you, or you deny your god. Give up
the priest to my pleasure, and you shall depart in peace.
Otherwise your trail ends here. My people are against you to the
babies. Even now have the children stolen away your canoes." He
pointed down to the river. Naked boys had slipped down the water
from the point above, cast loose the canoes, and by then had
worked them into the current. When they had drifted out of rifle-
shot they clambered over the sides and paddled ashore.
"Give me the priest, and you may have them back again. Come!
Speak your mind, but without haste."
Stockard shook his head. His glance dropped to the woman of the
Teslin Country with his boy at her breast, and he would have
wavered had he not lifted his eyes to the men before him.
"I am not afraid," Sturges Owen spoke up. "The Lord bears me in
his right hand, and alone am I ready to go into the camp of the
unbeliever. It is not too late. Faith may move mountains. Even
in the eleventh hour may I win his soul to the true
righteousness."
"Trip the beggar up and make him fast," Bill whispered hoarsely in
the ear of his leader, while the missionary kept the floor and
wrestled with the heathen. "Make him hostage, and bore him if
they get ugly."
"No," Stockard answered. "I gave him my word that he could speak
with us unmolested. Rules of warfare, Bill; rules of warfare.
He's been on the square, given us warning, and all that, and--why,
damn it, man, I can't break my word!"
"He'll keep his, never fear."
"Don't doubt it, but I won't let a half-breed outdo me in fair
dealing. Why not do what he wants,--give him the missionary and
be done with it?"
"N-no," Bill hesitated doubtfully.
"Shoe pinches, eh?"
Bill flushed a little and dropped the discussion. Baptiste the
Red was still waiting the final decision. Stockard went up to
him.
"It's this way, Baptiste. I came to your village minded to go up
the Koyukuk. I intended no wrong. My heart was clean of evil.
It is still clean. Along comes this priest, as you call him. I
didn't bring him here. He'd have come whether I was here or not.
But now that he is here, being of my people, I've got to stand by
him. And I'm going to. Further, it will be no child's play.
When you have done, your village will be silent and empty, your
people wasted as after a famine. True, we will he gone; likewise
the pick of your fighting men--"
"But those who remain shall be in peace, nor shall the word of
strange gods and the tongues of strange priests be buzzing in
their ears."
Both men shrugged their shoulder and turned away, the half-breed
going back to his own camp. The missionary called his two men to
him, and they fell into prayer. Stockard and Bill attacked the
few standing pines with their axes, felling them into convenient
breastworks. The child had fallen asleep, so the woman placed it
on a heap of furs and lent a hand in fortifying the camp. Three
sides were thus defended, the steep declivity at the rear
precluding attack from that direction. When these arrangements
had been completed, the two men stalked into the open, clearing
away, here and there, the scattered underbrush. From the opposing
camp came the booming of war-drums and the voices of the priests
stirring the people to anger.
"Worst of it is they'll come in rushes," Bill complained as they
walked back with shouldered axes.
"And wait till midnight, when the light gets dim for shooting."
"Can't start the ball a-rolling too early, then." Bill exchanged
the axe for a rifle, and took a careful rest. One of the
medicine-men, towering above his tribesmen, stood out distinctly.
Bill drew a bead on him.
"All ready?" he asked.
Stockard opened the ammunition box, placed the woman where she
could reload in safety, and gave the word. The medicine-man
dropped. For a moment there was silence, then a wild howl went up
and a flight of bone arrows fell short.
"I'd like to take a look at the beggar," Bill remarked, throwing a
fresh shell into place. "I'll swear I drilled him clean between
the eyes."
"Didn't work." Stockard shook his head gloomily. Baptiste had
evidently quelled the more warlike of his followers, and instead
of precipitating an attack in the bright light of day, the shot
had caused a hasty exodus, the Indians drawing out of the village
beyond the zone of fire.
In the full tide of his proselyting fervor, borne along by the
hand of God, Sturges Owen would have ventured alone into the camp
of the unbeliever, equally prepared for miracle or martyrdom; but
in the waiting which ensued, the fever of conviction died away
gradually, as the natural man asserted itself. Physical fear
replaced spiritual hope; the love of life, the love of God. It
was no new experience. He could feel his weakness coming on, and
knew it of old time. He had struggled against it and been
overcome by it before. He remembered when the other men had
driven their paddles like mad in the van of a roaring ice-flood,
how, at the critical moment, in a panic of worldly terror, he had
dropped his paddle and besought wildly with his God for pity. And
there were other times. The recollection was not pleasant. It
brought shame to him that his spirit should be so weak and his
flesh so strong. But the love of life! the love of life! He
could not strip it from him. Because of it had his dim ancestors
perpetuated their line; because of it was he destined to
perpetuate his. His courage, if courage it might be called, was
bred of fanaticism. The courage of Stockard and Bill was the
adherence to deep-rooted ideals. Not that the love of life was
less, but the love of race tradition more; not that they were
unafraid to die, but that they were brave enough not to live at
the price of shame.
The missionary rose, for the moment swayed by the mood of
sacrifice. He half crawled over the barricade to proceed to the
other camp, but sank back, a trembling mass, wailing: "As the
spirit moves! As the spirit moves! Who am I that I should set
aside the judgments of God? Before the foundations of the world
were all things written in the book of life. Worm that I am,
shall I erase the page or any portion thereof? As God wills, so
shall the spirit move!"
Bill reached over, plucked him to his feet, and shook him,
fiercely, silently. Then he dropped the bundle of quivering
nerves and turned his attention to the two converts. But they
showed little fright and a cheerful alacrity in preparing for the
coming passage at arms.
Stockard, who had been talking in undertones with the Teslin
woman, now turned to the missionary.
"Fetch him over here," he commanded of Bill.
"Now," he ordered, when Sturges Owen had been duly deposited
before him, "make us man and wife, and be lively about it." Then
he added apologetically to Bill: "No telling how it's to end, so
I just thought I'd get my affairs straightened up."
The woman obeyed the behest of her white lord. To her the
ceremony was meaningless. By her lights she was his wife, and had
been from the day they first foregathered. The converts served as
witnesses. Bill stood over the missionary, prompting him when he
stumbled. Stockard put the responses in the woman's mouth, and
when the time came, for want of better, ringed her finger with
thumb and forefinger of his own.
"Kiss the bride!" Bill thundered, and Sturges Owen was too weak to
disobey.
"Now baptize the child!"
"Neat and tidy," Bill commented.
"Gathering the proper outfit for a new trail," the father
explained, taking the boy from the mother's arms. "I was grub-
staked, once, into the Cascades, and had everything in the kit
except salt. Never shall forget it. And if the woman and the kid
cross the divide to-night they might as well be prepared for pot-
luck. A long shot, Bill, between ourselves, but nothing lost if
it misses."
A cup of water served the purpose, and the child was laid away in
a secure corner of the barricade. The men built the fire, and the
evening meal was cooked.
The sun hurried round to the north, sinking closer to the horizon.
The heavens in that quarter grew red and bloody. The shadows
lengthened, the light dimmed, and in the sombre recesses of the
forest life slowly died away. Even the wild fowl in the river
softened their raucous chatter and feigned the nightly farce of
going to bed. Only the tribesmen increased their clamor, war-
drums booming and voices raised in savage folk songs. But as the
sun dipped they ceased their tumult. The rounded hush of midnight
was complete. Stockard rose to his knees and peered over the
logs. Once the child wailed in pain and disconcerted him. The
mother bent over it, but it slept again. The silence was
interminable, profound. Then, of a sudden, the robins burst into
full-throated song. The night had passed.
A flood of dark figures boiled across the open. Arrows whistled
and bow-thongs sang. The shrill-tongued rifles answered back. A
spear, and a mighty cast, transfixed the Teslin woman as she
hovered above the child. A spent arrow, diving between the logs,
lodged in the missionary's arm.
There was no stopping the rush. The middle distance was cumbered
with bodies, but the rest surged on, breaking against and over the
barricade like an ocean wave. Sturges Owen fled to the tent,
while the men were swept from their feet, buried beneath the human
tide. Hay Stockard alone regained the surface, flinging the
tribesmen aside like yelping curs. He had managed to seize an
axe. A dark hand grasped the child by a naked foot, and drew it
from beneath its mother. At arm's length its puny body circled
through the air, dashing to death against the logs. Stockard
clove the man to the chin and fell to clearing space. The ring of
savage faces closed in, raining upon him spear-thrusts and bone-
barbed arrows. The sun shot up, and they swayed back and forth in
the crimson shadows. Twice, with his axe blocked by too deep a
blow, they rushed him; but each time he flung them clear. They
fell underfoot and he trampled dead and dying, the way slippery
with blood. And still the day brightened and the robins sang.
Then they drew back from him in awe, and he leaned breathless upon
his axe.
"Blood of my soul!" cried Baptiste the Red. "But thou art a man.
Deny thy god, and thou shalt yet live."
Stockard swore his refusal, feebly but with grace.
"Behold! A woman!" Sturges Owen had been brought before the
half-breed.
Beyond a scratch on the arm, he was uninjured, but his eyes roved
about him in an ecstasy of fear. The heroic figure of the
blasphemer, bristling with wounds and arrows, leaning defiantly
upon his axe, indifferent, indomitable, superb, caught his
wavering vision. And he felt a great envy of the man who could go
down serenely to the dark gates of death. Surely Christ, and not
he, Sturges Owen, had been moulded in such manner. And why not
he? He felt dimly the curse of ancestry, the feebleness of spirit
which had come down to him out of the past, and he felt an anger
at the creative force, symbolize it as he would, which had formed
him, its servant, so weakly. For even a stronger man, this anger
and the stress of circumstance were sufficient to breed apostasy,
and for Sturges Owen it was inevitable. In the fear of man's
anger he would dare the wrath of God. He had been raised up to
serve the Lord only that he might be cast down. He had been given
faith without the strength of faith; he had been given spirit
without the power of spirit. It was unjust.
"Where now is thy god?" the half-breed demanded.
"I do not know." He stood straight and rigid, like a child
repeating a catechism.
"Hast thou then a god at all?"
"I had."
"And now?"
"No."
Hay Stockard swept the blood from his eyes and laughed. The
missionary looked at him curiously, as in a dream. A feeling of
infinite distance came over him, as though of a great remove. In
that which had transpired, and which was to transpire, he had no
part. He was a spectator--at a distance, yes, at a distance. The
words of Baptiste came to him faintly:-
"Very good. See that this man go free, and that no harm befall
him. Let him depart in peace. Give him a canoe and food. Set
his face toward the Russians, that he may tell their priests of
Baptiste the Red, in whose country there is no god."
They led him to the edge of the steep, where they paused to
witness the final tragedy. The half-breed turned to Hay Stockard.
"There is no god," he prompted.
The man laughed in reply. One of the young men poised a war-spear
for the cast.
"Hast thou a god?"
"Ay, the God of my fathers."
He shifted the axe for a better grip. Baptiste the Red gave the
sign, and the spear hurtled full against his breast. Sturges Owen
saw the ivory head stand out beyond his back, saw the man sway,
laughing, and snap the shaft short as he fell upon it. Then he
went down to the river, that he might carry to the Russians the
message of Baptiste the Red, in whose country there was no god.
THE GREAT INTERROGATION
To say the least, Mrs. Sayther's career in Dawson was meteoric.
She arrived in the spring, with dog sleds and French-Canadian
voyageurs, blazed gloriously for a brief month, and departed up
the river as soon as it was free of ice. Now womanless Dawson
never quite understood this hurried departure, and the local Four
Hundred felt aggrieved and lonely till the Nome strike was made
and old sensations gave way to new. For it had delighted in Mrs.
Sayther, and received her wide-armed. She was pretty, charming,
and, moreover, a widow. And because of this she at once had at
heel any number of Eldorado Kings, officials, and adventuring
younger sons, whose ears were yearning for the frou-frou of a
woman's skirts.
The mining engineers revered the memory of her husband, the late
Colonel Sayther, while the syndicate and promoter representatives
spoke awesomely of his deals and manipulations; for he was known
down in the States as a great mining man, and as even a greater
one in London. Why his widow, of all women, should have come into
the country, was the great interrogation. But they were a
practical breed, the men of the Northland, with a wholesome
disregard for theories and a firm grip on facts. And to not a few
of them Karen Sayther was a most essential fact. That she did not
regard the matter in this light, is evidenced by the neatness and
celerity with which refusal and proposal tallied off during her
four weeks' stay. And with her vanished the fact, and only the
interrogation remained.
To the solution, Chance vouchsafed one clew. Her last victim,
Jack Coughran, having fruitlessly laid at her feet both his heart
and a five-hundred-foot creek claim on Bonanza, celebrated the
misfortune by walking all of a night with the gods. In the
midwatch of this night he happened to rub shoulders with Pierre
Fontaine, none other than head man of Karen Sayther's voyageurs.
This rubbing of shoulders led to recognition and drinks, and
ultimately involved both men in a common muddle of inebriety.
"Heh?" Pierre Fontaine later on gurgled thickly. "Vot for Madame
Sayther mak visitation to thees country? More better you spik wit
her. I know no t'ing 'tall, only all de tam her ask one man's
name. 'Pierre,' her spik wit me; 'Pierre, you moos' find thees
mans, and I gif you mooch--one thousand dollar you find thees
mans.' Thees mans? Ah, oui. Thees man's name--vot you call--
Daveed Payne. Oui, m'sieu, Daveed Payne. All de tam her spik das
name. And all de tam I look rount vaire mooch, work lak hell, but
no can find das dam mans, and no get one thousand dollar 'tall.
By dam!
"Heh? Ah, oui. One tam dose mens vot come from Circle City, dose
mens know thees mans. Him Birch Creek, dey spik. And madame?
Her say 'Bon!' and look happy lak anyt'ing. And her spik wit me.
'Pierre,' her spik, 'harness de dogs. We go queek. We find thees
mans I gif you one thousand dollar more.' And I say, 'Oui, queek!
Allons, madame!'
"For sure, I t'ink, das two thousand dollar mine. Bully boy! Den
more mens come from Circle City, and dey say no, das thees mans,
Daveed Payne, come Dawson leel tam back. So madame and I go not
'tall.
"Oui, m'sieu. Thees day madame spik. 'Pierre,' her spik, and gif
me five hundred dollar, 'go buy poling-boat. To-morrow we go up
de river.' Ah, oui, to-morrow, up de river, and das dam Sitka
Charley mak me pay for de poling-boat five hundred dollar. Dam!"
Thus it was, when Jack Coughran unburdened himself next day, that
Dawson fell to wondering who was this David Payne, and in what way
his existence bore upon Karen Sayther's. But that very day, as
Pierre Fontaine had said, Mrs. Sayther and her barbaric crew of
voyageurs towed up the east bank to Klondike City, shot across to
the west bank to escape the bluffs, and disappeared amid the maze
of islands to the south.
II
"Oui, madame, thees is de place. One, two, t'ree island below
Stuart River. Thees is t'ree island."
As he spoke, Pierre Fontaine drove his pole against the bank and
held the stern of the boat against the current. This thrust the
bow in, till a nimble breed climbed ashore with the painter and
made fast.
"One leel tam, madame, I go look see."
A chorus of dogs marked his disappearance over the edge of the
bank, but a minute later he was back again.
"Oui, madame, thees is de cabin. I mak investigation. No can
find mans at home. But him no go vaire far, vaire long, or him no
leave dogs. Him come queek, you bet!"
"Help me out, Pierre. I'm tired all over from the boat. You
might have made it softer, you know."
From a nest of furs amidships, Karen Sayther rose to her full
height of slender fairness. But if she looked lily-frail in her
elemental environment, she was belied by the grip she put upon
Pierre's hand, by the knotting of her woman's biceps as it took
the weight of her body, by the splendid effort of her limbs as
they held her out from the perpendicular bank while she made the
ascent. Though shapely flesh clothed delicate frame, her body was
a seat of strength.
Still, for all the careless ease with which she had made the
landing, there was a warmer color than usual to her face, and a
perceptibly extra beat to her heart. But then, also, it was with
a certain reverent curiousness that she approached the cabin,
while the Hush on her cheek showed a yet riper mellowness.
"Look, see!" Pierre pointed to the scattered chips by the
woodpile. "Him fresh--two, t'ree day, no more."
Mrs. Sayther nodded. She tried to peer through the small window,
but it was made of greased parchment which admitted light while it
blocked vision. Failing this, she went round to the door, half
lifted the rude latch to enter, but changed her mind and let it
fall back into place. Then she suddenly dropped on one knee and
kissed the rough-hewn threshold. If Pierre Fontaine saw, he gave
no sign, and the memory in the time to come was never shared. But
the next instant, one of the boatmen, placidly lighting his pipe,
was startled by an unwonted harshness in his captain's voice.
"Hey! You! Le Goire! You mak'm soft more better," Pierre
commanded. "Plenty bear-skin; plenty blanket. Dam!"
But the nest was soon after disrupted, and the major portion
tossed up to the crest of the shore, where Mrs. Sayther lay down
to wait in comfort.
Reclining on her side, she looked out and over the wide-stretching
Yukon. Above the mountains which lay beyond the further shore,
the sky was murky with the smoke of unseen forest fires, and
through this the afternoon sun broke feebly, throwing a vague
radiance to earth, and unreal shadows. To the sky-line of the
four quarters--spruce-shrouded islands, dark waters, and ice-
scarred rocky ridges--stretched the immaculate wilderness. No
sign of human existence broke the solitude; no sound the
stillness. The land seemed bound under the unreality of the
unknown, wrapped in the brooding mystery of great spaces.
Perhaps it was this which made Mrs. Sayther nervous; for she
changed her position constantly, now to look up the river, now
down, or to scan the gloomy shores for the half-hidden mouths of
back channels. After an hour or so the boatmen were sent ashore
to pitch camp for the night, but Pierre remained with his mistress
to watch.
"Ah! him come thees tam," he whispered, after a long silence, his
gaze bent up the river to the head of the island.
A canoe, with a paddle flashing on either side, was slipping down
the current. In the stern a man's form, and in the bow a woman's,
swung rhythmically to the work. Mrs. Sayther had no eyes for the
woman till the canoe drove in closer and her bizarre beauty
peremptorily demanded notice. A close-fitting blouse of moose-
skin, fantastically beaded, outlined faithfully the well-rounded
lines of her body, while a silken kerchief, gay of color and
picturesquely draped, partly covered great masses of blue-black
hair. But it was the face, cast belike in copper bronze, which
caught and held Mrs. Sayther's fleeting glance. Eyes, piercing
and black and large, with a traditionary hint of obliqueness,
looked forth from under clear-stencilled, clean-arching brows.
Without suggesting cadaverousness, though high-boned and
prominent, the cheeks fell away and met in a mouth, thin-lipped
and softly strong. It was a face which advertised the dimmest
trace of ancient Mongol blood, a reversion, after long centuries
of wandering, to the parent stem. This effect was heightened by
the delicately aquiline nose with its thin trembling nostrils, and
by the general air of eagle wildness which seemed to characterize
not only the face but the creature herself. She was, in fact, the
Tartar type modified to idealization, and the tribe of Red Indian
is lucky that breeds such a unique body once in a score of
generations.
Dipping long strokes and strong, the girl, in concert with the
man, suddenly whirled the tiny craft about against the current and
brought it gently to the shore. Another instant and she stood at
the top of the bank, heaving up by rope, hand under hand, a
quarter of fresh-killed moose. Then the man followed her, and
together, with a swift rush, they drew up the canoe. The dogs
were in a whining mass about them, and as the girl stooped among
them caressingly, the man's gaze fell upon Mrs. Sayther, who had
arisen. He looked, brushed his eyes unconsciously as though his
sight were deceiving him, and looked again.
"Karen," he said simply, coming forward and extending his hand, "I
thought for the moment I was dreaming. I went snow-blind for a
time, this spring, and since then my eyes have been playing tricks
with me."
Mrs. Sayther, whose flush had deepened and whose heart was urging
painfully, had been prepared for almost anything save this coolly
extended hand; but she tactfully curbed herself and grasped it
heartily with her own.
"You know, Dave, I threatened often to come, and I would have,
too, only--only--"
"Only I didn't give the word." David Payne laughed and watched
the Indian girl disappearing into the cabin.
"Oh, I understand, Dave, and had I been in your place I'd most
probably have done the same. But I have come--now."
"Then come a little bit farther, into the cabin and get something
to eat," he said genially, ignoring or missing the feminine
suggestion of appeal in her voice. "And you must be tired too.
Which way are you travelling? Up? Then you wintered in Dawson,
or came in on the last ice. Your camp?" He glanced at the
voyageurs circled about the fire in the open, and held back the
door for her to enter.
"I came up on the ice from Circle City last winter," he continued,
"and settled down here for a while. Am prospecting some on
Henderson Creek, and if that fails, have been thinking of trying
my hand this fall up the Stuart River."
"You aren't changed much, are you?" she asked irrelevantly,
striving to throw the conversation upon a more personal basis.
"A little less flesh, perhaps, and a little more muscle. How did
YOU mean?"
But she shrugged her shoulders and peered I through the dim light
at the Indian girl, who had lighted the fire and was frying great
chunks of moose meat, alternated with thin ribbons of bacon.
"Did you stop in Dawson long?" The man was whittling a stave of
birchwood into a rude axe-handle, and asked the question without
raising his head.
"Oh, a few days," she answered, following the girl with her eyes,
and hardly hearing. "What were you saying? In Dawson? A month,
in fact, and glad to get away. The arctic male is elemental, you
know, and somewhat strenuous in his feelings."
"Bound to be when he gets right down to the soil. He leaves
convention with the spring bed at borne. But you were wise in
your choice of time for leaving. You'll be out of the country
before mosquito season, which is a blessing your lack of
experience will not permit you to appreciate."
"I suppose not. But tell me about yourself, about your life.
What kind of neighbors have you? Or have you any?"
While she queried she watched the girl grinding coffee in the
corner of a flower sack upon the hearthstone. With a steadiness
and skill which predicated nerves as primitive as the method, she
crushed the imprisoned berries with a heavy fragment of quartz.
David Payne noted his visitor's gaze, and the shadow of a smile
drifted over his lips.
"I did have some," he replied. "Missourian chaps, and a couple of
Cornishmen, but they went down to Eldorado to work at wages for a
grubstake."
Mrs. Sayther cast a look of speculative regard upon the girl.
"But of course there are plenty of Indians about?"
"Every mother's son of them down to Dawson long ago. Not a native
in the whole country, barring Winapie here, and she's a Koyokuk
lass,--comes from a thousand miles or so down the river."
Mrs. Sayther felt suddenly faint; and though the smile of interest
in no wise waned, the face of the man seemed to draw away to a
telescopic distance, and the tiered logs of the cabin to whirl
drunkenly about. But she was bidden draw up to the table, and
during the meal discovered time and space in which to find
herself. She talked little, and that principally about the land
and weather, while the man wandered off into a long description of
the difference between the shallow summer diggings of the Lower
Country and the deep winter diggings of the Upper Country.
"You do not ask why I came north?" she asked. "Surely you know."
They had moved back from the table, and David Payne had returned
to his axe-handle. "Did you get my letter?"
"A last one? No, I don't think so. Most probably it's trailing
around the Birch Creek Country or lying in some trader's shack on
the Lower River. The way they run the mails in here is shameful.
No order, no system, no--"
"Don't be wooden, Dave! Help me!" She spoke sharply now, with an
assumption of authority which rested upon the past. "Why don't
you ask me about myself? About those we knew in the old times?
Have you no longer any interest in the world? Do you know that my
husband is dead?"
"Indeed, I am sorry. How long--"
"David!" She was ready to cry with vexation, but the reproach she
threw into her voice eased her.
"Did you get any of my letters? You must have got some of them,
though you never answered."
"Well, I didn't get the last one, announcing, evidently, the death
of your husband, and most likely others went astray; but I did get
some. I--er--read them aloud to Winapie as a warning--that is,
you know, to impress upon her the wickedness of her white sisters.
And I--er--think she profited by it. Don't you?"
She disregarded the sting, and went on. "In the last letter,
which you did not receive, I told, as you have guessed, of Colonel
Sayther's death. That was a year ago. I also said that if you
did not come out to me, I would go in to you. And as I had often
promised, I came."
"I know of no promise."
"In the earlier letters?"
"Yes, you promised, but as I neither asked nor answered, it was
unratified. So I do not know of any such promise. But I do know
of another, which you, too, may remember. It was very long ago."
He dropped the axe-handle to the floor and raised his head. "It
was so very long ago, yet I remember it distinctly, the day, the
time, every detail. We were in a rose garden, you and I,--your
mother's rose garden. All things were budding, blossoming, and
the sap of spring was in our blood. And I drew you over--it was
the first--and kissed you full on the lips. Don't you remember?"
"Don't go over it, Dave, don't! I know every shameful line of it.
How often have I wept! If you only knew how I have suffered--"
"You promised me then--ay, and a thousand times in the sweet days
that followed. Each look of your eyes, each touch of your hand,
each syllable that fell from your lips, was a promise. And then--
how shall I say?--there came a man. He was old--old enough to
have begotten you--and not nice to look upon, but as the world
goes, clean. He had done no wrong, followed the letter of the
law, was respectable. Further, and to the point, he possessed
some several paltry mines,--a score; it does not matter: and he
owned a few miles of lands, and engineered deals, and clipped
coupons. He--"
"But there were other things," she interrupted, "I told you.
Pressure--money matters--want--my people--trouble. You understood
the whole sordid situation. I could not help it. It was not my
will. I was sacrificed, or I sacrificed, have it as you wish.
But, my God! Dave, I gave you up! You never did ME justice.
Think what I have gone through!"
"It was not your will? Pressure? Under high heaven there was no
thing to will you to this man's bed or that."
"But I cared for you all the time," she pleaded.
"I was unused to your way of measuring love. I am still unused.
I do not understand."
"But now! now!"
"We were speaking of this man you saw fit to marry. What manner
of man was he? Wherein did he charm your soul? What potent
virtues were his? True, he had a golden grip,--an almighty golden
grip. He knew the odds. He was versed in cent per cent. He had
a narrow wit and excellent judgment of the viler parts, whereby he
transferred this man's money to his pockets, and that man's money,
and the next man's. And the law smiled. In that it did not
condemn, our Christian ethics approved. By social measure he was
not a bad man. But by your measure, Karen, by mine, by ours of
the rose garden, what was he?"
"Remember, he is dead."
"The fact is not altered thereby. What was he? A great, gross,
material creature, deaf to song, blind to beauty, dead to the
spirit. He was fat with laziness, and flabby-cheeked, and the
round of his belly witnessed his gluttony--"
"But he is dead. It is we who are now--now! now! Don't you hear?
As you say, I have been inconstant. I have sinned. Good. But
should not you, too, cry peccavi? If I have broken promises, have
not you? Your love of the rose garden was of all time, or so you
said. Where is it now?"
"It is here! now!" he cried, striking his breast passionately with
clenched hand. "It has always been."
"And your love was a great love; there was none greater," she
continued; "or so you said in the rose garden. Yet it is not fine
enough, large enough, to forgive me here, crying now at your
feet?"
The man hesitated. His mouth opened; words shaped vainly on his
lips. She had forced him to bare his heart and speak truths which
he had hidden from himself. And she was good to look upon,
standing there in a glory of passion, calling back old
associations and warmer life. He turned away his head that he
might not see, but she passed around and fronted him.
"Look at me, Dave! Look at me! I am the same, after all. And so
are you, if you would but see. We are not changed."
Her hand rested on his shoulder, and his had half-passed, roughly,
about her, when the sharp crackle of a match startled him to
himself. Winapie, alien to the scene, was lighting the slow wick
of the slush lamp. She appeared to start out against a background
of utter black, and the flame, flaring suddenly up, lighted her
bronze beauty to royal gold.
"You see, it is impossible," he groaned, thrusting the fair-haired
woman gently from him. "It is impossible," he repeated. "It is
impossible."
"I am not a girl, Dave, with a girl's illusions," she said softly,
though not daring to come back to him. "It is as a woman that I
understand. Men are men. A common custom of the country. I am
not shocked. I divined it from the first. But--ah!--it is only a
marriage of the country--not a real marriage?"
"We do not ask such questions in Alaska," he interposed feebly.
"I know, but--"
"Well, then, it is only a marriage of the country--nothing else."
"And there are no children?"
"No."
"Nor--"
"No, no; nothing--but it is impossible."
"But it is not." She was at his side again, her hand touching
lightly, caressingly, the sunburned back of his. "I know the
custom of the land too well. Men do it every day. They do not
care to remain here, shut out from the world, for all their days;
so they give an order on the P. C. C. Company for a year's
provisions, some money in hand, and the girl is content. By the
end of that time, a man--" She shrugged her shoulders. "And so
with the girl here. We will give her an order upon the company,
not for a year, but for life. What was she when you found her? A
raw, meat-eating savage; fish in summer, moose in winter, feasting
in plenty, starving in famine. But for you that is what she would
have remained. For your coming she was happier; for your going,
surely, with a life of comparative splendor assured, she will be
happier than if you had never been."
"No, no," he protested. "It is not right."
"Come, Dave, you must see. She is not your kind. There is no
race affinity. She is an aborigine, sprung from the soil, yet
close to the soil, and impossible to lift from the soil. Born
savage, savage she will die. But we--you and I--the dominant,
evolved race--the salt of the earth and the masters thereof! We
are made for each other. The supreme call is of kind, and we are
of kind. Reason and feeling dictate it. Your very instinct
demands it. That you cannot deny. You cannot escape the
generations behind you. Yours is an ancestry which has survived
for a thousand centuries, and for a hundred thousand centuries,
and your line must not stop here. It cannot. Your ancestry will
not permit it. Instinct is stronger than the will. The race is
mightier than you. Come, Dave, let us go. We are young yet, and
life is good. Come."
Winapie, passing out of the cabin to feed the dogs, caught his
attention and caused him to shake his head and weakly to
reiterate. But the woman's hand slipped about his neck, and her
cheek pressed to his. His bleak life rose up and smote him,--the
vain struggle with pitiless forces; the dreary years of frost and
famine; the harsh and jarring contact with elemental life; the
aching void which mere animal existence could not fill. And
there, seduction by his side, whispering of brighter, warmer
lands, of music, light, and joy, called the old times back again.
He visioned it unconsciously. Faces rushed in upon him; glimpses
of forgotten scenes, memories of merry hours; strains of song and
trills of laughter -
"Come, Dave, Come. I have for both. The way is soft." She
looked about her at the bare furnishings of the cabin. "I have
for both. The world is at our feet, and all joy is ours. Come!
come!"
She was in his arms, trembling, and he held her tightly. He rose
to his feet . . . But the snarling of hungry dogs, and the shrill
cries of Winapie bringing about peace between the combatants, came
muffled to his ear through the heavy logs. And another scene
flashed before him. A struggle in the forest,--a bald-face
grizzly, broken-legged, terrible; the snarling of the dogs and the
shrill cries of Winapie as she urged them to the attack; himself
in the midst of the crush, breathless, panting, striving to hold
off red death; broken-backed, entrail-ripped dogs howling in
impotent anguish and desecrating the snow; the virgin white
running scarlet with the blood of man and beast; the bear,
ferocious, irresistible, crunching, crunching down to the core of
his life; and Winapie, at the last, in the thick of the frightful
muddle, hair flying, eyes flashing, fury incarnate, passing the
long hunting knife again and again--Sweat started to his forehead.
He shook off the clinging woman and staggered back to the wall.
And she, knowing that the moment had come, but unable to divine
what was passing within him, felt all she had gained slipping
away.
"Dave! Dave!" she cried. "I will not give you up! I will not
give you up! If you do not wish to come, we will stay. I will
stay with you. The world is less to me than are you. I will be a
Northland wife to you. I will cook your food, feed your dogs,
break trail for you, lift a paddle with you. I can do it.
Believe me, I am strong."
Nor did he doubt it, looking upon her and holding her off from
him; but his face had grown stern and gray, and the warmth had
died out of his eyes.
"I will pay off Pierre and the boatmen, and let them go. And I
will stay with you, priest or no priest, minister or no minister;
go with you, now, anywhere! Dave! Dave! Listen to me! You say
I did you wrong in the past--and I did--let me make up for it, let
me atone. If I did not rightly measure love before, let me show
that I can now."
She sank to the floor and threw her arms about his knees, sobbing.
"And you DO care for me. You DO care for me. Think! The long
years I have waited, suffered! You can never know!" He stooped
and raised her to her feet.
"Listen," he commanded, opening the door and lifting her bodily
outside. "It cannot be. We are not alone to be considered. You
must go. I wish you a safe journey. You will find it tougher
work when you get up by the Sixty Mile, but you have the best
boatmen in the world, and will get through all right. Will you
say good-by?"
Though she already had herself in hand, she looked at him
hopelessly. "If--if--if Winapie should--" She quavered and
stopped.
But he grasped the unspoken thought, and answered, "Yes." Then
struck with the enormity of it, "It cannot be conceived. There is
no likelihood. It must not be entertained."
"Kiss me," she whispered, her face lighting. Then she turned and
went away.
"Break camp, Pierre," she said to the boatman, who alone had
remained awake against her return. "We must be going."
By the firelight his sharp eyes scanned the woe in her face, but
he received the extraordinary command as though it were the most
usual thing in the world. "Oui, madame," he assented. "Which
way? Dawson?"
"No," she answered, lightly enough; "up; out; Dyea."
Whereat he fell upon the sleeping voyageurs, kicking them,
grunting, from their blankets, and buckling them down to the work,
the while his voice, vibrant with action, shrilling through all
the camp. In a trice Mrs. Sayther's tiny tent had been struck,
pots and pans were being gathered up, blankets rolled, and the men
staggering under the loads to the boat. Here, on the banks, Mrs.
Sayther waited till the luggage was made ship-shape and her nest
prepared.
"We line up to de head of de island," Pierre explained to her
while running out the long tow rope. "Den we tak to das back
channel, where de water not queek, and I t'ink we mak good tam."
A scuffling and pattering of feet in the last year's dry grass
caught his quick ear, and he turned his head. The Indian girl,
circled by a bristling ring of wolf dogs, was coming toward them.
Mrs. Sayther noted that the girl's face, which had been apathetic
throughout the scene in the cabin, had now quickened into blazing
and wrathful life.
"What you do my man?" she demanded abruptly of Mrs. Sayther. "Him
lay on bunk, and him look bad all the time. I say, 'What the
matter, Dave? You sick?' But him no say nothing. After that him
say, 'Good girl Winapie, go way. I be all right bimeby.' What
you do my man, eh? I think you bad woman."
Mrs. Sayther looked curiously at the barbarian woman who shared
the life of this man, while she departed alone in the darkness of
night.
"I think you bad woman," Winapie repeated in the slow, methodical
way of one who gropes for strange words in an alien tongue. "I
think better you go way, no come no more. Eh? What you think? I
have one man. I Indian girl. You 'Merican woman. You good to
see. You find plenty men. Your eyes blue like the sky. Your
skin so white, so soft."
Coolly she thrust out a brown forefinger and pressed the soft
cheek of the other woman. And to the eternal credit of Karen
Sayther, she never flinched. Pierre hesitated and half stepped
forward; but she motioned him away, though her heart welled to him
with secret gratitude. "It's all right, Pierre," she said.
"Please go away."
He stepped back respectfully out of earshot, where he stood
grumbling to himself and measuring the distance in springs.
"Um white, um soft, like baby." Winapie touched the other cheek
and withdrew her hand. "Bimeby mosquito come. Skin get sore in
spot; um swell, oh, so big; um hurt, oh, so much. Plenty
mosquito; plenty spot. I think better you go now before mosquito
come. This way," pointing down the stream, "you go St. Michael's;
that way," pointing up, "you go Dyea. Better you go Dyea. Good-
by."
And that which Mrs. Sayther then did, caused Pierre to marvel
greatly. For she threw her arms around the Indian girl, kissed
her, and burst into tears.
"Be good to him," she cried. "Be good to him."
Then she slipped half down the face of the bank, called back
"Good-by," and dropped into the boat amidships. Pierre followed
her and cast off. He shoved the steering oar into place and gave
the signal. Le Goire lifted an old French chanson; the men, like
a row of ghosts in the dim starlight, bent their backs to the tow
line; the steering oar cut the black current sharply, and the boat
swept out into the night.
WHICH MAKE MEN REMEMBER
Fortune La Pearle crushed his way through the snow, sobbing,
straining, cursing his luck, Alaska, Nome, the cards, and the man
who had felt his knife. The hot blood was freezing on his hands,
and the scene yet bright in his eyes,--the man, clutching the
table and sinking slowly to the floor; the rolling counters and
the scattered deck; the swift shiver throughout the room, and the
pause; the game-keepers no longer calling, and the clatter of the
chips dying away; the startled faces; the infinite instant of
silence; and then the great blood-roar and the tide of vengeance
which lapped his heels and turned the town mad behind him.
"All hell's broke loose," he sneered, turning aside in the
darkness and heading for the beach. Lights were flashing from
open doors, and tent, cabin, and dance-hall let slip their
denizens upon the chase. The clamor of men and howling of dogs
smote his ears and quickened his feet. He ran on and on. The
sounds grew dim, and the pursuit dissipated itself in vain rage
and aimless groping. But a flitting shadow clung to him. Head
thrust over shoulder, he caught glimpses of it, now taking vague
shape on an open expanse of snow, how merging into the deeper
shadows of some darkened cabin or beach-listed craft.
Fortune La Pearle swore like a woman, weakly, with the hint of
tears that comes of exhaustion, and plunged deeper into the maze
of heaped ice, tents, and prospect holes. He stumbled over taut
hawsers and piles of dunnage, tripped on crazy guy-ropes and
insanely planted pegs, and fell again and again upon frozen dumps
and mounds of hoarded driftwood. At times, when he deemed he had
drawn clear, his head dizzy with the painful pounding of his heart
and the suffocating intake of his breath, he slackened down; and
ever the shadow leaped out of the gloom and forced him on in
heart-breaking flight. A swift intuition lashed upon him, leaving
in its trail the cold chill of superstition. The persistence of
the shadow he invested with his gambler's symbolism. Silent,
inexorable, not to be shaken off, he took it as the fate which
waited at the last turn when chips were cashed in and gains and
losses counted up. Fortune La Pearle believed in those rare,
illuminating moments, when the intelligence flung from it time and
space, to rise naked through eternity and read the facts of life
from the open book of chance. That this was such a moment he had
no doubt; and when he turned inland and sped across the snow-
covered tundra he was not startled because the shadow took upon it
greater definiteness and drew in closer. Oppressed with his own
impotence, he halted in the midst of the white waste and whirled
about. His right hand slipped from its mitten, and a revolver, at
level, glistened in the pale light of the stars.
"Don't shoot. I haven't a gun."
The shadow had assumed tangible shape, and at the sound of its
human voice a trepidation affected Fortune La Pearle's knees, and
his stomach was stricken with the qualms of sudden relief.
Perhaps things fell out differently because Uri Bram had no gun
that night when he sat on the hard benches of the El Dorado and
saw murder done. To that fact also might be attributed the trip
on the Long Trail which he took subsequently with a most unlikely
comrade. But be it as it may, he repeated a second time, "Don't
shoot. Can't you see I haven't a gun?"
"Then what the flaming hell did you take after me for?" demanded
the gambler, lowering his revolver.
Uri Bram shrugged his shoulders. "It don't matter much, anyhow.
I want you to come with me."
"Where?"
"To my shack, over on the edge of the camp."
But Fortune La Pearle drove the heel of his moccasin into the snow
and attested by his various deities to the madness of Uri Bram.
"Who are you," he perorated, "and what am I, that I should put my
neck into the rope at your bidding?"
"I am Uri Bram," the other said simply, "and my shack is over
there on the edge of camp. I don't know who you are, but you've
thrust the soul from a living man's body,--there's the blood red
on your sleeve,--and, like a second Cain, the hand of all mankind
is against you, and there is no place you may lay your head. Now,
I have a shack--"
"For the love of your mother, hold your say, man," interrupted
Fortune La Pearle, "or I'll make you a second Abel for the joy of
it. So help me, I will! With a thousand men to lay me by the
heels, looking high and low, what do I want with your shack? I
want to get out of here--away! away! away! Cursed swine! I've
half a mind to go back and run amuck, and settle for a few of
them, the pigs! One gorgeous, glorious fight, and end the whole
damn business! It's a skin game, that's what life is, and I'm
sick of it!"
He stopped, appalled, crushed by his great desolation, and Uri
Bram seized the moment. He was not given to speech, this man, and
that which followed was the longest in his life, save one long
afterward in another place.
"That's why I told you about my shack. I can stow you there so
they'll never find you, and I've got grub in plenty. Elsewise you
can't get away. No dogs, no nothing, the sea closed, St. Michael
the nearest post, runners to carry the news before you, the same
over the portage to Anvik--not a chance in the world for you! Now
wait with me till it blows over. They'll forget all about you in
a month or less, what of stampeding to York and what not, and you
can hit the trail under their noses and they won't bother. I've
got my own ideas of justice. When I ran after you, out of the El
Dorado and along the beach, it wasn't to catch you or give you up.
My ideas are my own, and that's not one of them."
He ceased as the murderer drew a prayer-book from his pocket.
With the aurora borealis glimmering yellow in the northeast, heads
bared to the frost and naked hands grasping the sacred book,
Fortune La Pearle swore him to the words he had spoken--an oath
which Uri Bram never intended breaking, and never broke.
At the door of the shack the gambler hesitated for an instant,
marvelling at the strangeness of this man who had befriended him,
and doubting. But by the candlelight he found the cabin
comfortable and without occupants, and he was quickly rolling a
cigarette while the other man made coffee. His muscles relaxed in
the warmth and he lay back with half-assumed indolence, intently
studying Uri's face through the curling wisps of smoke. It was a
powerful face, but its strength was of that peculiar sort which
stands girt in and unrelated. The seams were deep-graven, more
like scars, while the stern features were in no way softened by
hints of sympathy or humor. Under prominent bushy brows the eyes
shone cold and gray. The cheekbones, high and forbidding, were
undermined by deep hollows. The chin and jaw displayed a
steadiness of purpose which the narrow forehead advertised as
single, and, if needs be, pitiless. Everything was harsh, the
nose, the lips, the voice, the lines about the mouth. It was the
face of one who communed much with himself, unused to seeking
counsel from the world; the face of one who wrestled oft of nights
with angels, and rose to face the day with shut lips that no man
might know. He was narrow but deep; and Fortune, his own humanity
broad and shallow, could make nothing of him. Did Uri sing when
merry and sigh when sad, he could have understood; but as it was,
the cryptic features were undecipherable; he could not measure the
soul they concealed.
"Lend a hand, Mister Man," Uri ordered when the cups had been
emptied. "We've got to fix up for visitors."
Fortune purred his name for the other's benefit, and assisted
understandingly. The bunk was built against a side and end of the
cabin. It was a rude affair, the bottom being composed of drift-
wood logs overlaid with moss. At the foot the rough ends of these
timbers projected in an uneven row. From the side next the wall
Uri ripped back the moss and removed three of the logs. The
jagged ends he sawed off and replaced so that the projecting row
remained unbroken. Fortune carried in sacks of flour from the
cache and piled them on the floor beneath the aperture. On these
Uri laid a pair of long sea-bags, and over all spread several
thicknesses of moss and blankets. Upon this Fortune could lie,
with the sleeping furs stretching over him from one side of the
bunk to the other, and all men could look upon it and declare it
empty.
In the weeks which followed, several domiciliary visits were paid,
not a shack or tent in Nome escaping, but Fortune lay in his
cranny undisturbed. In fact, little attention was given to Uri
Bram's cabin; for it was the last place under the sun to expect to
find the murderer of John Randolph. Except during such
interruptions, Fortune lolled about the cabin, playing long games
of solitaire and smoking endless cigarettes. Though his volatile
nature loved geniality and play of words and laughter, he quickly
accommodated himself to Uri's taciturnity. Beyond the actions and
plans of his pursuers, the state of the trails, and the price of
dogs, they never talked; and these things were only discussed at
rare intervals and briefly. But Fortune fell to working out a
system, and hour after hour, and day after day, he shuffled and
dealt, shuffled and dealt, noted the combinations of the cards in
long columns, and shuffled and dealt again. Toward the end even
this absorption failed him, and, head bowed upon the table, he
visioned the lively all-night houses of Nome, where the
gamekeepers and lookouts worked in shifts and the clattering
roulette ball never slept. At such times his loneliness and
bankruptcy stunned him till he sat for hours in the same
unblinking, unchanging position. At other times, his long-pent
bitterness found voice in passionate outbursts; for he had rubbed
the world the wrong way and did not like the feel of it.
"Life's a skin-game," he was fond of repeating, and on this one
note he rang the changes. "I never had half a chance," he
complained. "I was faked in my birth and flim-flammed with my
mother's milk. The dice were loaded when she tossed the box, and
I was born to prove the loss. But that was no reason she should
blame me for it, and look on me as a cold deck; but she did--ay,
she did. Why didn't she give me a show? Why didn't the world?
Why did I go broke in Seattle? Why did I take the steerage, and
live like a hog to Nome? Why did I go to the El Dorado? I was
heading for Big Pete's and only went for matches. Why didn't I
have matches? Why did I want to smoke? Don't you see? All
worked out, every bit of it, all parts fitting snug. Before I was
born, like as not. I'll put the sack I never hope to get on it,
before I was born. That's why! That's why John Randolph passed
the word and his checks in at the same time. Damn him! It served
him well right! Why didn't he keep his tongue between his teeth
and give me a chance? He knew I was next to broke. Why didn't I
hold my hand? Oh, why? Why? Why?"
And Fortune La Pearle would roll upon the floor, vainly
interrogating the scheme of things. At such outbreaks Uri said no
word, gave no sign, save that his grey eyes seemed to turn dull
and muddy, as though from lack of interest. There was nothing in
common between these two men, and this fact Fortune grasped
sufficiently to wonder sometimes why Uri had stood by him.
But the time of waiting came to an end. Even a community's blood
lust cannot stand before its gold lust. The murder of John
Randolph had already passed into the annals of the camp, and there
it rested. Had the murderer appeared, the men of Nome would
certainly have stopped stampeding long enough to see justice done,
whereas the whereabouts of Fortune La Pearle was no longer an
insistent problem. There was gold in the creek beds and ruby
beaches, and when the sea opened, the men with healthy sacks would
sail away to where the good things of life were sold absurdly
cheap.
So, one night, Fortune helped Uri Bram harness the dogs and lash
the sled, and the twain took the winter trail south on the ice.
But it was not all south; for they left the sea east from St.
Michael's, crossed the divide, and struck the Yukon at Anvik, many
hundred miles from its mouth. Then on, into the northeast, past
Koyokuk, Tanana, and Minook, till they rounded the Great Curve at
Fort Yukon, crossed and recrossed the Arctic Circle, and headed
south through the Flats. It was a weary journey, and Fortune
would have wondered why the man went with him, had not Uri told
him that he owned claims and had men working at Eagle. Eagle lay
on the edge of the line; a few miles farther on, the British flag
waved over the barracks at Fort Cudahy. Then came Dawson, Pelly,
the Five Fingers, Windy Arm, Caribou Crossing, Linderman, the
Chilcoot and Dyea.
On the morning after passing Eagle, they rose early. This was
their last camp, and they were now to part. Fortune's heart was
light. There was a promise of spring in the land, and the days
were growing longer. The way was passing into Canadian territory.
Liberty was at hand, the sun was returning, and each day saw him
nearer to the Great Outside. The world was big, and he could once
again paint his future in royal red. He whistled about the
breakfast and hummed snatches of light song while Uri put the dogs
in harness and packed up. But when all was ready, Fortune's feet
itching to be off, Uri pulled an unused back-log to the fire and
sat down.
"Ever hear of the Dead Horse Trail?"
He glanced up meditatively and Fortune shook his head, inwardly
chafing at the delay.
"Sometimes there are meetings under circumstances which make men
remember," Uri continued, speaking in a low voice and very slowly,
"and I met a man under such circumstances on the Dead Horse Trail.
Freighting an outfit over the White Pass in '97 broke many a man's
heart, for there was a world of reason when they gave that trail
its name. The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost, and
from Skaguay to Bennett they rotted in heaps. They died at the
Rocks, they were poisoned at the Summit, and they starved at the
Lakes; they fell off the trail, what there was of it, or they went
through it; in the river they drowned under their loads, or were
smashed to pieces against the boulders; they snapped their legs in
the crevices and broke their backs falling backwards with their
packs; in the sloughs they sank from sight or smothered in the
slime, and they were disembowelled in the bogs where the corduroy
logs turned end up in the mud; men shot them, worked them to
death, and when they were gone, went back to the beach and bought
more. Some did not bother to shoot them,--stripping the saddles
off and the shoes and leaving them where they fell. Their hearts
turned to stone--those which did not break--and they became
beasts, the men on Dead Horse Trail.
"It was there I met a man with the heart of a Christ and the
patience. And he was honest. When he rested at midday he took
the packs from the horses so that they, too, might rest. He paid
$50 a hundred-weight for their fodder, and more. He used his own
bed to blanket their backs when they rubbed raw. Other men let
the saddles eat holes the size of water-buckets. Other men, when
the shoes gave out, let them wear their hoofs down to the bleeding
stumps. He spent his last dollar for horseshoe nails. I know
this because we slept in the one bed and ate from the one pot, and
became blood brothers where men lost their grip of things and died
blaspheming God. He was never too tired to ease a strap or
tighten a cinch, and often there were tears in his eyes when he
looked on all that waste of misery. At a passage in the rocks,
where the brutes upreared hindlegged and stretched their forelegs
upward like cats to clear the wall, the way was piled with
carcasses where they had toppled back. And here he stood, in the
stench of hell, with a cheery word and a hand on the rump at the
right time, till the string passed by. And when one bogged he
blocked the trail till it was clear again; nor did the man live
who crowded him at such time.
"At the end of the trail a man who had killed fifty horses wanted
to buy, but we looked at him and at our own,--mountain cayuses
from eastern Oregon. Five thousand he offered, and we were broke,
but we remembered the poison grass of the Summit and the passage
in the Rocks, and the man who was my brother spoke no word, but
divided the cayuses into two bunches,--his in the one and mine in
the other,--and he looked at me and we understood each other. So
he drove mine to the one side and I drove his to the other, and we
took with us our rifles and shot them to the last one, while the
man who had killed fifty horses cursed us till his throat cracked.
But that man, with whom I welded blood-brothership on the Dead
Horse Trail--"
"Why, that man was John Randolph," Fortune, sneering the while,
completed the climax for him.
Uri nodded, and said, "I am glad you understand."
"I am ready," Fortune answered, the old weary bitterness strong in
his face again. "Go ahead, but hurry."
Uri Bram rose to his feet.
"I have had faith in God all the days of my life. I believe He
loves justice. I believe He is looking down upon us now, choosing
between us. I believe He waits to work His will through my own
right arm. And such is my belief, that we will take equal chance
and let Him speak His own judgment."
Fortune's heart leaped at the words. He did not know much
concerning Uri's God, but he believed in Chance, and Chance had
been coming his way ever since the night he ran down the beach and
across the snow. "But there is only one gun," he objected.
"We will fire turn about," Uri replied, at the same time throwing
out the cylinder of the other man's Colt and examining it.
"And the cards to decide! One hand of seven up!"
Fortune's blood was warming to the game, and he drew the deck from
his pocket as Uri nodded. Surely Chance would not desert him now!
He thought of the returning sun as he cut for deal, and he
thrilled when he found the deal was his. He shuffled and dealt,
and Uri cut him the Jack of Spades. They laid down their hands.
Uri's was bare of trumps, while he held ace, deuce. The outside
seemed very near to him as they stepped off the fifty paces.
"If God withholds His hand and you drop me, the dogs and outfit
are yours. You'll find a bill of sale, already made out, in my
pocket," Uri explained, facing the path of the bullet, straight
and broad-breasted.
Fortune shook a vision of the sun shining on the ocean from his
eyes and took aim. He was very careful. Twice he lowered as the
spring breeze shook the pines. But the third time he dropped on
one knee, gripped the revolver steadily in both hands, and fired.
Uri whirled half about, threw up his arms, swayed wildly for a
moment, and sank into the snow. But Fortune knew he had fired too
far to one side, else the man would not have whirled.
When Uri, mastering the flesh and struggling to his feet, beckoned
for the weapon, Fortune was minded to fire again. But he thrust
the idea from him. Chance had been very good to him already, he
felt, and if he tricked now he would have to pay for it afterward.
No, he would play fair. Besides Uri was hard hit and could not
possibly hold the heavy Colt long enough to draw a bead.
"And where is your God now?" he taunted, as he gave the wounded
man the revolver.
And Uri answered: "God has not yet spoken. Prepare that He may
speak."
Fortune faced him, but twisted his chest sideways in order to
present less surface. Uri tottered about drunkenly, but waited,
too, for the moment's calm between the catspaws. The revolver was
very heavy, and he doubted, like Fortune, because of its weight.
But he held it, arm extended, above his head, and then let it
slowly drop forward and down. At the instant Fortune's left
breast and the sight flashed into line with his eye, he pulled the
trigger. Fortune did not whirl, but gay San Francisco dimmed and
faded, and as the sun-bright snow turned black and blacker, he
breathed his last malediction on the Chance he had misplayed.
SIWASH
"If I was a man--" Her words were in themselves indecisive, but
the withering contempt which flashed from her black eyes was not
lost upon the men-folk in the tent.
Tommy, the English sailor, squirmed, but chivalrous old Dick
Humphries, Cornish fisherman and erstwhile American salmon
capitalist, beamed upon her benevolently as ever. He bore women
too large a portion of his rough heart to mind them, as he said,
when they were in the doldrums, or when their limited vision would
not permit them to see all around a thing. So they said nothing,
these two men who had taken the half-frozen woman into their tent
three days back, and who had warmed her, and fed her, and rescued
her goods from the Indian packers. This latter had necessitated
the payment of numerous dollars, to say nothing of a demonstration
in force--Dick Humphries squinting along the sights of a
Winchester while Tommy apportioned their wages among them at his
own appraisement. It had been a little thing in itself, but it
meant much to a woman playing a desperate single-hand in the
equally desperate Klondike rush of '97. Men were occupied with
their own pressing needs, nor did they approve of women playing,
single-handed, the odds of the arctic winter. "If I was a man, I
know what I would do." Thus reiterated Molly, she of the flashing
eyes, and therein spoke the cumulative grit of five American-born
generations.
In the succeeding silence, Tommy thrust a pan of biscuits into the
Yukon stove and piled on fresh fuel. A reddish flood pounded
along under his sun-tanned skin, and as he stooped, the skin of
his neck was scarlet. Dick palmed a three-cornered sail needle
through a set of broken pack straps, his good nature in nowise
disturbed by the feminine cataclysm which was threatening to burst
in the storm-beaten tent.
"And if you was a man?" he asked, his voice vibrant with kindness.
The three-cornered needle jammed in the damp leather, and he
suspended work for the moment.
"I'd be a man. I'd put the straps on my back and light out. I
wouldn't lay in camp here, with the Yukon like to freeze most any
day, and the goods not half over the portage. And you--you are
men, and you sit here, holding your hands, afraid of a little wind
and wet. I tell you straight, Yankee-men are made of different
stuff. They'd be hitting the trail for Dawson if they had to wade
through hell-fire. And you, you--I wish I was a man."
"I'm very glad, my dear, that you're not." Dick Humphries threw
the bight of the sail twine over the point of the needle and drew
it clear with a couple of deft turns and a jerk.
A snort of the gale dealt the tent a broad-handed slap as it
hurtled past, and the sleet rat-tat-tatted with snappy spite
against the thin canvas. The smoke, smothered in its exit, drove
back through the fire-box door, carrying with it the pungent odor
of green spruce.
"Good Gawd! Why can't a woman listen to reason?" Tommy lifted
his head from the denser depths and turned upon her a pair of
smoke-outraged eyes.
"And why can't a man show his manhood?"
Tommy sprang to his feet with an oath which would have shocked a
woman of lesser heart, ripped loose the sturdy reef-knots and
flung back the flaps of the tent.
The trio peered out. It was not a heartening spectacle. A few
water-soaked tents formed the miserable foreground, from which the
streaming ground sloped to a foaming gorge. Down this ramped a
mountain torrent. Here and there, dwarf spruce, rooting and
grovelling in the shallow alluvium, marked the proximity of the
timber line. Beyond, on the opposing slope, the vague outlines of
a glacier loomed dead-white through the driving rain. Even as
they looked, its massive front crumbled into the valley, on the
breast of some subterranean vomit, and it lifted its hoarse
thunder above the screeching voice of the storm. Involuntarily,
Molly shrank back.
"Look, woman! Look with all your eyes! Three miles in the teeth
of the gale to Crater Lake, across two glaciers, along the
slippery rim-rock, knee-deep in a howling river! Look, I say, you
Yankee woman! Look! There's your Yankee-men!" Tommy pointed a
passionate hand in the direction of the struggling tents.
"Yankees, the last mother's son of them. Are they on trail? Is
there one of them with the straps to his back? And you would
teach us men our work? Look, I say!"
Another tremendous section of the glacier rumbled earthward. The
wind whipped in at the open doorway, bulging out the sides of the
tent till it swayed like a huge bladder at its guy ropes. The
smoke swirled about them, and the sleet drove sharply into their
flesh. Tommy pulled the flaps together hastily, and returned to
his tearful task at the fire-box. Dick Humphries threw the mended
pack straps into a corner and lighted his pipe. Even Molly was
for the moment persuaded.
"There's my clothes," she half-whimpered, the feminine for the
moment prevailing. "They're right at the top of the cache, and
they'll be ruined! I tell you, ruined!"
"There, there," Dick interposed, when the last quavering syllable
had wailed itself out. "Don't let that worry you, little woman.
I'm old enough to be your father's brother, and I've a daughter
older than you, and I'll tog you out in fripperies when we get to
Dawson if it takes my last dollar."
"When we get to Dawson!" The scorn had come back to her throat
with a sudden surge. "You'll rot on the way, first. You'll drown
in a mudhole. You--you--Britishers!"
The last word, explosive, intensive, had strained the limits of
her vituperation. If that would not stir these men, what could?
Tommy's neck ran red again, but he kept his tongue between his
teeth. Dick's eyes mellowed. He had the advantage over Tommy,
for he had once had a white woman for a wife.
The blood of five American-born generations is, under certain
circumstances, an uncomfortable heritage; and among these
circumstances might be enumerated that of being quartered with
next of kin. These men were Britons. On sea and land her
ancestry and the generations thereof had thrashed them and theirs.
On sea and land they would continue to do so. The traditions of
her race clamored for vindication. She was but a woman of the
present, but in her bubbled the whole mighty past. It was not
alone Molly Travis who pulled on gum boots, mackintosh, and
straps; for the phantom hands of ten thousand forbears drew tight
the buckles, just so as they squared her jaw and set her eyes with
determination. She, Molly Travis, intended to shame these
Britishers; they, the innumerable shades, were asserting the
dominance of the common race.
The men-folk did not interfere. Once Dick suggested that she take
his oilskins, as her mackintosh was worth no more than paper in
such a storm. But she sniffed her independence so sharply that he
communed with his pipe till she tied the flaps on the outside and
slushed away on the flooded trail.
"Think she'll make it?" Dick's face belied the indifference of
his voice.
"Make it? If she stands the pressure till she gets to the cache,
what of the cold and misery, she'll be stark, raving mad. Stand
it? She'll be dumb-crazed. You know it yourself, Dick. You've
wind-jammed round the Horn. You know what it is to lay out on a
topsail yard in the thick of it, bucking sleet and snow and frozen
canvas till you're ready to just let go and cry like a baby.
Clothes? She won't be able to tell a bundle of skirts from a gold
pan or a tea-kettle."
"Kind of think we were wrong in letting her go, then?"
"Not a bit of it. So help me, Dick, she'd 'a' made this tent a
hell for the rest of the trip if we hadn't. Trouble with her
she's got too much spirit. This'll tone it down a bit."
"Yes," Dick admitted, "she's too ambitious. But then Molly's all
right. A cussed little fool to tackle a trip like this, but a
plucky sight better than those pick-me-up-and-carry-me kind of
women. She's the stock that carried you and me, Tommy, and you've
got to make allowance for the spirit. Takes a woman to breed a
man. You can't suck manhood from the dugs of a creature whose
only claim to womanhood is her petticoats. Takes a she-cat, not a
cow, to mother a tiger."
"And when they're unreasonable we've got to put up with it, eh?"
"The proposition. A sharp sheath-knife cuts deeper on a slip than
a dull one; but that's no reason for to hack the edge off over a
capstan bar."
"All right, if you say so, but when it comes to woman, I guess
I'll take mine with a little less edge."
"What do you know about it?" Dick demanded.
"Some." Tommy reached over for a pair of Molly's wet stockings
and stretched them across his knees to dry.
Dick, eying him querulously, went fishing in her hand satchel,
then hitched up to the front of the stove with divers articles of
damp clothing spread likewise to the heat.
"Thought you said you never were married?" he asked.
"Did I? No more was I--that is--yes, by Gawd! I was. And as good
a woman as ever cooked grub for a man."
"Slipped her moorings?" Dick symbolized infinity with a wave of
his hand.
"Ay."
"Childbirth," he added, after a moment's pause.
The beans bubbled rowdily on the front lid, and he pushed the pot
back to a cooler surface. After that he investigated the
biscuits, tested them with a splinter of wood, and placed them
aside under cover of a damp cloth. Dick, after the manner of his
kind, stifled his interest and waited silently. "A different
woman to Molly. Siwash."
Dick nodded his understanding.
"Not so proud and wilful, but stick by a fellow through thick and
thin. Sling a paddle with the next and starve as contentedly as
Job. Go for'ard when the sloop's nose was more often under than
not, and take in sail like a man. Went prospecting once, up
Teslin way, past Surprise Lake and the Little Yellow-Head. Grub
gave out, and we ate the dogs. Dogs gave out, and we ate
harnesses, moccasins, and furs. Never a whimper; never a pick-me-
up-and-carry-me. Before we went she said look out for grub, but
when it happened, never a I-told-you-so. 'Never mind, Tommy,'
she'd say, day after day, that weak she could bare lift a snow-
shoe and her feet raw with the work. 'Never mind. I'd sooner be
flat-bellied of hunger and be your woman, Tommy, than have a
potlach every day and be Chief George's klooch.' George was chief
of the Chilcoots, you know, and wanted her bad.
"Great days, those. Was a likely chap myself when I struck the
coast. Jumped a whaler, the Pole Star, at Unalaska, and worked my
way down to Sitka on an otter hunter. Picked up with Happy Jack
there--know him?"
"Had charge of my traps for me," Dick answered, "down on the
Columbia. Pretty wild, wasn't he, with a warm place in his heart
for whiskey and women?"
"The very chap. Went trading with him for a couple of seasons--
hooch, and blankets, and such stuff. Then got a sloop of my own,
and not to cut him out, came down Juneau way. That's where I met
Killisnoo; I called her Tilly for short. Met her at a squaw dance
down on the beach. Chief George had finished the year's trade
with the Sticks over the Passes, and was down from Dyea with half
his tribe. No end of Siwashes at the dance, and I the only white.
No one knew me, barring a few of the bucks I'd met over Sitka way,
but I'd got most of their histories from Happy Jack.
"Everybody talking Chinook, not guessing that I could spit it
better than most; and principally two girls who'd run away from
Haine's Mission up the Lynn Canal. They were trim creatures, good
to the eye, and I kind of thought of casting that way; but they
were fresh as fresh-caught cod. Too much edge, you see. Being a
new-comer, they started to twist me, not knowing I gathered in
every word of Chinook they uttered.
"I never let on, but set to dancing with Tilly, and the more we
danced the more our hearts warmed to each other. 'Looking for a
woman,' one of the girls says, and the other tosses her head and
answers, 'Small chance he'll get one when the women are looking
for men.' And the bucks and squaws standing around began to grin
and giggle and repeat what had been said. 'Quite a pretty boy,'
says the first one. I'll not deny I was rather smooth-faced and
youngish, but I'd been a man amongst men many's the day, and it
rankled me. 'Dancing with Chief George's girl,' pipes the second.
'First thing George'll give him the flat of a paddle and send him
about his business.' Chief George had been looking pretty black
up to now, but at this he laughed and slapped his knees. He was a
husky beggar and would have used the paddle too.
"'Who's the girls?' I asked Tilly, as we went ripping down the
centre in a reel. And as soon as she told me their names I
remembered all about them from Happy Jack. Had their pedigree
down fine--several things he'd told me that not even their own
tribe knew. But I held my hush, and went on courting Tilly, they
a-casting sharp remarks and everybody roaring. 'Bide a wee,
Tommy,' I says to myself; 'bide a wee.'
"And bide I did, till the dance was ripe to break up, and Chief
George had brought a paddle all ready for me. Everybody was on
the lookout for mischief when we stopped; but I marched, easy as
you please, slap into the thick of them. The Mission girls cut me
up something clever, and for all I was angry I had to set my teeth
to keep from laughing. I turned upon them suddenly.
"'Are you done?' I asked.
"You should have seen them when they heard me spitting Chinook.
Then I broke loose. I told them all about themselves, and their
people before them; their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers--
everybody, everything. Each mean trick they'd played; every
scrape they'd got into; every shame that'd fallen them. And I
burned them without fear or favor. All hands crowded round.
Never had they heard a white man sling their lingo as I did.
Everybody was laughing save the Mission girls. Even Chief George
forgot the paddle, or at least he was swallowing too much respect
to dare to use it.
"But the girls. 'Oh, don't, Tommy,' they cried, the tears running
down their cheeks. 'Please don't. We'll be good. Sure, Tommy,
sure.' But I knew them well, and I scorched them on every tender
spot. Nor did I slack away till they came down on their knees,
begging and pleading with me to keep quiet. Then I shot a glance
at Chief George; but he did not know whether to have at me or not,
and passed it off by laughing hollowly.
"So be. When I passed the parting with Tilly that night I gave
her the word that I was going to be around for a week or so, and
that I wanted to see more of her. Not thick-skinned, her kind,
when it came to showing like and dislike, and she looked her
pleasure for the honest girl she was. Ay, a striking lass, and I
didn't wonder that Chief George was taken with her.
"Everything my way. Took the wind from his sails on the first
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