The Magnetic North
by
Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
Part 11 out of 11
The Boy pulled his hat over his eyes.
"Guess you won't mind my stayin' now?" said Maudie at his elbow,
speaking low.
He looked up. "You goin' to take care of him? Good care?" he asked
harshly.
But Maudie seemed not to mind. The tears went down her cheeks, as, with
never a word, she nodded, and turned towards the tent.
"Say," he hobbled after her, "that doctor's all right--only wanted
fifty." He laid four hundred-dollar bills in her hand. She seemed about
to speak, when he interrupted hoarsely, "And look here: pull the
Colonel through, Maudie--pull him through!"
"I'll do my darnedest."
He held out his hand. He had never given it to her before, and he
forgot that few people would care now to take it. But she gave him hers
with no grudging. Then, on a sudden, impulse, "You ain't takin' him to
Dawson to-night?" she said to the constable.
He nodded.
"Why, he's done the trip twice already."
"I can do it again well enough."
"Then you got to wait a minute." She spoke to the constable as if she
had been Captain Constantine himself. "Better just go in and see the
Colonel," she said to the Boy. "He's been askin' for you."
"N-no, Maudie; I can go to Dawson all right, but I don't feel up to
goin' in there again."
"You'll be sorry if you don't." And then he knew what a temperature at a
hundred and four foreboded.
He went back into the tent, dreading to face the Colonel more than he
had ever dreaded anything in his life.
But the sick man lay, looking out drowsily, peacefully, through
half-shut eyes, not greatly concerned, one would say, about anything.
The Boy went over and stood under the gray blanket canopy, looking down
with a choking sensation that delayed his question: "How you feelin'
now, Kentucky?"
"All right."
"Why, that's good news. Then you--you won't mind my goin' off to--to do
a little prospectin'?"
The sick man frowned: "You stay right where you are. There's plenty in
that jampot."
"Yes, yes! jampot's fillin' up fine."
"Besides," the low voice wavered on, "didn't we agree we'd learned the
lesson o' the North?"
"The lesson o' the North?" repeated the other with filling eyes.
"Yes, sah. A man alone's a man lost. We got to stick together, Boy."
The eyelids fell heavily.
"Yes, yes, Colonel." He pressed the big hand. His mouth made the
motion, not the sound, "Good-bye, pardner."
CHAPTER XXII
THE GOING HOME
"Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not
With evil, casts the burden of its lot.
This Age climbs earth.
--To challenge heaven.
--Not less The lower deeps.
It laughs at Happiness."
--George Meredith
Everybody on Bonanza knew that the Colonel had left off struggling to
get out of his bed to go to work, had left off calling for his pardner.
Quite in his right senses again, he could take in Maudie's explanation
that the Boy was gone to Dawson, probably to get something for the
Colonel to eat. For the Doctor was a crank and wouldn't let the sick
man have his beans and bacon, forbade him even such a delicacy as fresh
pork, though the Buckeyes nobly offered to slaughter one of their
newly-acquired pigs, the first that ever rooted in Bonanza refuse, and
more a terror to the passing Indian than any bear or wolf.
"But the Boy's a long time," the Colonel would say wistfully.
Before this quieter phase set in, Maudie had sent into Dawson for
Potts, O'Flynn and Mac, that they might distract the Colonel's mind
from the pardner she knew could not return. But O'Flynn, having married
the girl at the Moosehorn Cafe, had excuse of ancient validity for not
coming; Potts was busy breaking the faro bank, and Mac was waiting till
an overdue Lower River steamer should arrive.
Nicholas of Pymeut had gone back as pilot of the Weare, but Princess
Muckluck was still about, now with Skookum Bill, son of the local
chief, now alone, trudging up and down Bonanza like one looking for
something lost. The Colonel heard her voice outside the tent and had
her in.
"You goin' to marry Skookum Bill, as they say?"
Muckluck only laughed, but the Indian hung about waiting the Princess's
pleasure.
"When your pardner come back?" she would indiscreetly ask the Colonel.
"Why he goes to Dawson?" And every few hours she would return: "Why he
stay so long?"
At last Maudie took her outside and told her.
Muckluck gaped, sat down a minute, and rocked her body back and forth
with hidden face, got up and called sharply: "Skookum!"
They took the trail for town. Potts said, when he passed them, they
were going as if the devil were at their heels--wouldn't even stop to
say how the Colonel was. So Potts had come to see for himself--and to
bring the Colonel some letters just arrived.
Mac was close behind ... but the Boy? No-no. They wouldn't let anybody
see him; and Potts shook his head.
"Well, you can come in," said Maudie, "if you keep your head shut about
the Boy."
The Colonel was lying flat, with that unfaltering ceiling-gaze of the
sick. Now his vision dropped to the level of faces at the door.
"Hello!" But as they advanced he looked behind them anxiously. Only
Mac--no, Kaviak at his heels! and the sick man's disappointment
lightened to a smile. He would have held out a hand, but Maudie stopped
him. She took the little fellow's fingers and laid them on the
Colonel's.
"Now sit down and be quiet," she said nervously.
Potts and Mac obeyed, but Kaviak had fastened his fine little hand on
the weak one, and anchored so, stared about taking his bearings.
"How did you get to the Klondyke, Kaviak?" said the Colonel in a thin,
breathy voice.
"Came up with Sister Winifred," Farva answered for him. "She was sent
for to help with the epidemic. Dyin' like flies in Dawson--h'm--ahem!"
(Apologetic glance at Maudie.) "Sister Winifred promised to keep Kaviak
with her. Woman of her word."
"Well, what you think o' Dawson?" the low voice asked.
Kaviak understood the look at least, and smiled back, grew suddenly
grave, intent, looked sharply round, loosed his hold of the Colonel,
bent down, and retired behind the bed. That was where Nig was. Their
foregathering added nothing to the tranquility of the occasion, and
both were driven forth by Maudie.
Potts read the Colonel his letters, and helped him to sign a couple of
cheques. The "Louisville instructions" had come through at last.
After that the Colonel slept, and when he woke it was only to wander
away into that world where Maudie was lost utterly, and where the
Colonel was at home. There was chastening in such hours for Maudie of
Minook. "Now he's found the Other One," she would say to herself--"the
One he was looking for."
That same evening, as they sat in the tent in an interval of relief
from the Colonel's muttering monotone, they heard Nig making some sort
of unusual manifestation outside; heard the grunting of those pioneer
pigs; heard sounds of a whispered "Sh! Kaviak. Shut up, Nig!" Then a
low, tuneless crooning:
"Wen yo' see a pig a-goin' along
Widder straw in de sider 'is mouf,
It'll be er tuhble wintuh,
En yo' bettah move down Souf."
"Why, the Boy's back!" said the Colonel suddenly in a clear, collected
voice.
Maudie had jumped up, but the Boy put his head in the tent, smiling,
and calling out:
"They told me he was getting on all right, but I just thought maybe he
was asleep." He came in and bent over his pardner. "Hello, everybody!
Why, you got it so fine and dark in here, I can hardly see how well
you're lookin', Colonel!" And he dropped into the nurse's place by the
bedside.
"Maudie's lined the tent with black drill," said the Colonel. "You
brought home anything to eat?"
"Well, no----" (Maudie telegraphed); "found it all I could do to bring
myself back."
"Oh, well, that's the main thing," said the Colonel, battling with
disappointment. Pricked by some quickened memory of the Boy's last
home-coming: "I've had pretty queer dreams about you: been givin'
Maudie the meanest kind of a time."
"Don't go gassin', Colonel," admonished the nurse.
"It's pretty tough, I can tell you," he said irritably, "to be as weak
as a day-old baby, and to have to let other people----"
"Mustn't talk!" ordered Mac. The Colonel raised his head with sudden
anger. It did not mend matters that Maudie was there to hold him down
before a lot of men.
"You go to Halifax," said the Boy to Mac, blustering a trifle. "The
Colonel may stand a little orderin' about from Maudie--don't blame him
m'self. But Kentucky ain't going to be bossed by any of us."
The Colonel lay quite still again, and when he spoke it was quietly
enough.
"Reckon I'm in the kind of a fix when a man's got to take orders."
"Foolishness! Don't let him jolly you, boys. The Colonel's always
sayin' he ain't a soldier, but I reckon you better look out how you
rile Kentucky!"
The sick man ignored the trifling. "The worst of it is bein' so
useless."
"Useless! You just wait till you see what a lot o' use we mean to make
of you. No crawlin' out of it like that."
"It's quite true," said Mac harshly; "we all kind of look to you
still."
"Course we do!" The Boy turned to the others. "The O'Flynns comin' all
the way out from Dawson to-morrow to get Kentucky's opinion on a big
scheme o' theirs. Did you ever hear what that long-headed Lincoln said
when the Civil War broke out? 'I would like to have God on my side, but
I must have Kentucky.'"
"I've been so out o' my head, I thought you were arrested."
"No 'out of your head' about it--was arrested. They thought I'd cleared
Scowl Austin off the earth."
"Do they know who did?" Potts and Maudie asked in a breath.
"That Klondyke Indian that's sweet on Princess Muckluck."
"What had Austin done to him?"
"Nothin'. Reckon Skookum Bill was about the only man on Bonanza who had
no objection to the owner of o. Said so in Court."
"What did he kill him for?"
"Well," said the Boy, "it's just one o' those topsy-turvy things that
happen up here. You saw that Indian that came in with Nicholas? Some
years ago he killed a drunken white man who was after him with a knife.
There was no means of tryin' the Indian where the thing happened, so he
was taken outside.
"The Court found he'd done the killin' in self-defence, and sent him
back. Well, sir, that native had the time of his life bein' tried for
murder. He'd travelled on a railroad, seen a white man's city, lived
like a lord, and came home to be the most famous man of his tribe. Got
a taste for travel, too. Comes to the Klondyke, and his fame fires
Skookum Bill. All you got to do is to kill one o' these white men, and
they take you and show you all the wonders o' the earth. So he puts a
bullet into Austin."
"Why didn't he own up, then, and get his reward?"
"Muckluck knew better--made him hold his tongue about it."
"And then made him own up when she saw----"
The boy nodded.
"What's goin' to happen?"
"Oh, he'll swing to-morrow instead o' me. By the way, Colonel, a fella
hunted me up this mornin' who'd been to Minook. Looked good to him.
I've sold out Idaho Bar."
"'Nough to buy back your Orange Grove?"
He shook his head. "'Nough to pay my debts and start over again."
When the Dawson doctor left that night Maudie, as usual, followed him
out. They waited a long time for her to come back.
"Perhaps she's gone to her own tent;" and the Boy went to see. He
found her where the Colonel used to go to smoke, sitting, staring out
to nowhere.
As the boy looked closer he saw she had been crying, for even in the
midst of honest service Maudie, like many a fine lady before her, could
not forego the use of cosmetic. Her cheeks were streaked and stained.
"Five dollars a box here, too," she said mechanically, as she wiped
some of the rouge off with a handkerchief. Her hand shook.
"What's the matter?"
"It's all up," she answered.
"Not with him?" He motioned towards the tent.
She nodded.
"Doctor says so?"
"----and I knew it before, only I wouldn't believe it."
She had spoken with little agitation, but now she flung her arms out
with a sudden anguish that oddly took the air of tossing into space
Bonanza and its treasure. It was the motion of one who renounces the
thing that means the most--a final fling in the face of the gods. The
Boy stood quite still, submitting his heart to that first quick rending
and tearing asunder which is only the initial agony of parting.
"How soon?" he said, without raising his eyes.
"Oh, he holds on--it may be a day or two."
The Boy walked slowly away towards the ridge of the low hill. Maudie
turned and watched him. On the top of the divide he stopped, looking
over. Whatever it was he saw off there, he could not meet it yet. He
flung himself down with his face in the fire-weed, and lay there all
night long.
Kaviak was sent after him in the morning, but only to say, "Breakfast,
Maudie's tent."
The Boy saw that Mac and Potts knew. For the first time the Big Chimney
men felt a barrier between them and that one who had been the common
bond, keeping the incongruous allied and friendly. Only Nig ran in and
out, unchilled by the imminence of the Colonel's withdrawal from his
kind.
Towards noon the O'Flynns came up the creek, and were stopped near the
tent by the others. They all stood talking low till a noise of
scuffling broke the silence within. They drew nearer, and heard the
Colonel telling Maudie not to turn out Nig and Kaviak.
"I like seein' my friends. Where's the Boy?"
So they went in.
Did he know? He must know, or he would have asked O'Flynn what the
devil made him look like that! All he said was: "Hello! How do you do,
madam?" and he made a weak motion of one hand towards Mrs. O'Flynn to
do duty for that splendid bow of his. Then, as no one spoke, "You're
too late, O'Flynn."
"Too late?"
"Had a job in your line...." Then suddenly: "Maudie's worth the whole
lot of you."
They knew it was his way of saying "She's told me." They all sat and
looked at the floor. Nothing happened for a long time. At last: "Well,
you all know what my next move is; what's yours?"
There was another silence, but not nearly so long.
"What prospects, pardners?" he repeated.
The Boy looked at Maudie. She made a little gesture of "I've done all
the fightin' I'm good for." The Colonel's eyes, clear again and
tranquil, travelled from face to face.
O'Flynn cleared his throat, but it was Mac who spoke.
"Yes--a--we would like to hold a last--hold a counsel o' war. We've
always kind o' followed your notions--at least"--veracity pared down
the compliment--"at least, you can't say but what we've always listened
to you."
"Yes, you might just--a--start us as well as you can," says Potts.
The Colonel smiled a little. Each man still "starting"--forever
starting for somewhere or something, until he should come to this place
where the Colonel was. Even he, why, he was "starting" too. For him
this was no end other than a chapter's ending. But these men he had
lived and suffered with, they all wanted to talk the next move
over--not his, theirs--all except the Boy, it seemed.
Mac was in the act of changing his place to be nearer the Colonel, when
Potts adroitly forestalled him. The others drew off a little and made
desultory talk, while Potts in an undertone told how he'd had a run of
bad luck. No doubt it would turn, but if ever he got enough again to
pay his passage home, he'd put it in the bank and never risk it.
"I swear I wouldn't! I've got to go out in the fall--goin' to get
myself married Christmas; and, if she's willing, we'll come up here on
the first boat in the spring--with backing this time."
He showed a picture. The Colonel studied it.
"I believe she'll come," he said.
And Potts was so far from clairvoyance that he laughed, awkwardly
flattered; then anxiously: "Wish I was sure o' my passage money."
When Potts, before he meant to, had yielded place to O'Flynn, the
Colonel was sworn to secrecy, and listened to excited whispers of gold
in the sand off yonder on the coast of the Behring Sea. The world in
general wouldn't know the authenticity of the new strike till next
season. He and Mrs. O'Flynn would take the first boat sailing out of
San Francisco in the spring.
"Oh, you're going outside too?"
"In the fahll--yes, yes. Ye see, I ain't like the rest. I've got Mrs.
O'Flynn to consider. Dawson's great, but it ain't the place to start a
famully."
"Where you goin', Mac?" said the Colonel to the irate one, who was
making for the door. "I want a little talk with you."
Mac turned back, and consented to express his opinion of the money
there was to be made out of tailings by means of a new hydraulic
process. He was going to lend Kaviak to Sister Winifred again on the
old terms. She'd take him along when she returned to Holy Cross, and
Mac would go outside, raise a little capital, return, and make a
fortune. For the moment he was broke--hadn't even passage money. Did
the Colonel think he could----
The Colonel seemed absorbed in that eternal interrogation of the
tent-top.
"Mine, you know"--Mac drew nearer still, and went on in the lowered
voice--"mine's a special case. A man's bound to do all he can for his
boys."
"I didn't know you had boys."
Mac jerked "Yes" with his square head. "Bobbie's goin' on six now."
"The others older?"
"Others?" Mac stared an instant. "Oh, there's only one more." He
grinned with embarrassment, and hitched his head towards Kaviak.
"I guess you've jawed enough," said Maudie, leaving the others and
coming to the foot of the bed.
"And Maudie's goin' back, too," said the sick man.
She nodded.
"And you're never goin' to leave her again?"
"No."
"Maudie's a little bit of All Right," said the patient. The Big Chimney
men assented, but with sudden misgiving.
"What was that job ye said ye were wantin' me forr?"
"Oh, Maudie's got a friend of hers to fix it up."
"Fix what up?" demanded Potts.
"Little postscript to my will."
Mac jerked his head at the nurse. With that clear sight of dying eyes
the Colonel understood. A meaner spirit would have been galled at the
part those "Louisville Instructions" had been playing, but cheap
cynicism was not in the Colonel's line. He knew the awful pinch of life
up here, and he thought no less of his comrades for asking that last
service of getting them home. But it was the day of the final
"clean-up" for the Colonel; he must not leave misapprehension behind.
"I wanted Maudie to have my Minook claim----"
"Got a Minook claim o' my own."
"So I've left it to be divided----"
They all looked up.
"One-half to go to a little girl in 'Frisco, and the other half--well,
I've left the other half to Kaviak. Strikes me he ought to have a
little piece o' the North."
"Y-yes!"
"Oh, yes!"
"Good idea!"
"Mac thought he'd go over to the other tent and cook some dinner. There
was a general movement. As they were going out:
"Boy!"
"Yes?" He came back, Nig followed, and the two stood by the camp-bed
waiting their Colonel's orders.
"Don't you go wastin' any more time huntin' gold-mines."
"I don't mean to."
"Go back to your own work; go back to your own people."
The Boy listened and looked away.
"It's good to go pioneering, but it's good to go home. Oh-h--!" the
face on the pillow was convulsed for that swift passing moment--"best
of all to go home. And if you leave your home too long, your home
leaves you."
"Home doesn't seem so important as it did when I came up here."
The Colonel fastened one hand feverishly on his pardner's arm.
"I've been afraid of that. It's magic; break away. Promise me you'll go
back and stay. Lord, Lord!" he laughed feebly, "to think a fella should
have to be urged to leave the North alone. Wonderful place, but there's
Black Magic in it. Or who'd ever come--who'd ever stay?"
He looked anxiously into the Boy's set face.
"I'm not saying the time was wasted," he went on; "I reckon it was a
good thing you came."
"Yes, it was a good thing I came."
"You've learned a thing or two."
"Several."
"Specially on the Long Trail."
"Most of all on the Long Trail."
The Colonel shut his eyes. Maudie came and held a cup to his lips.
"Thank you. I begin to feel a little foggy. What was it we learned on
the Trail, pardner?" But the Boy had turned away. "Wasn't it--didn't we
learn how near a tolerable decent man is to bein' a villain?"
"We learned that a man can't be quite a brute as long as he sticks to
another man."
"Oh, was that it?"
* * * * *
In the night Maudie went away to sleep. The Boy watched.
"Do you know what I'm thinking about?" the sick man said suddenly.
"About--that lady down at home?"
"Guess again."
"About--those fellas at Holy Cross?"
"No, I never was as taken up with the Jesuits as you were. No, Sah, I'm
thinkin' about the Czar." (Poor old Colonel! he was wandering again.)
"Did I ever tell you I saw him once?"
"No."
"Did--had a good look at him. Knew a fella in Petersburg, too, that--"
He rested a moment. "That Czar's all right. Only he sends the wrong
people to Siberia. Ought to go himself, and take his Ministers, for a
winter on the Trail." On his face suddenly the old half-smiling,
half-shrewd look. "But, Lord bless you! 'tisn't only the Czar. We all
have times o' thinkin' we're some punkins. Specially Kentuckians. I
reckon most men have their days when they're twelve feet high, and
wouldn't stoop to say 'Thank ye' to a King. Let 'em go on the Winter
Trail."
"Yes," agreed the Boy, "they'd find out--" And he stopped.
"Plenty o' use for Head Men, though." The faint voice rang with an echo
of the old authority. "No foolishness, but just plain: 'I'm the one
that's doin' the leadin'--like Nig here--and it's my business to lick
the hind dog if he shirks.'" He held out his hand and closed it over
his friend's. "I was Boss o' the Big Chimney, Boy, but you were Boss o'
the Trail."
* * * * *
The Colonel was buried in the old moose pasture, with people standing
by who knew that the world had worn a friendlier face because he had
been in it. That much was clear, even before it was found that he had
left to each of the Big Chimney men five hundred dollars, not to be
drawn except for the purpose of going home.
They thought it was the sense of that security that made them put off
the day. They would "play the game up to the last moment, and see--"
September's end brought no great change in fortune, but a change withal
of deep significance. The ice had begun to run in the Yukon. No man
needed telling it would "be a tuhble wintah, and dey'd better move down
Souf." All the late boats by both routes had been packed. Those men who
had failed, and yet, most tenacious, were hanging on for some last
lucky turn of the wheel, knew the risk they ran. And now to-day the
final boat of the year was going down the long way to the Behring Sea,
and by the Canadian route, open a little longer, the Big Chimney men,
by grace of that one left behind, would be on the last ship to shoot
the rapids in '98.
Not only to the thousands who were going, to those who stayed behind
there was something in the leaving of the last boat--something that
knocked upon the heart. They, too, could still go home. They gathered
at the docks and told one another they wouldn't leave Dawson for fifty
thousand dollars, then looked at the "failures" with home-sick eyes,
remembering those months before the luckiest Klondyker could hear from
the world outside. Between now and then, what would have come to pass
up here, and what down there below!
The Boy had got a place for Muckluck in the A. C. Store. She was handy
at repairing and working in fur, and said she was "all right" on this
bright autumn morning when the Boy went in to say good-bye. With a
white woman and an Indian boy, in a little room overlooking the
water-front, Muckluck was working in the intervals of watching the
crowds on the wharf. Eyes more experienced than hers might well stare.
Probably in no other place upon the globe was gathered as motley a
crew: English, Indian, Scandinavian, French, German, Negroes, Chinese,
Poles, Japs, Finns. All the fine gentlemen had escaped by earlier
boats. All the smart young women with their gold-nugget buttons as big
as your thumb, lucky miners from the creeks with heavy consignments of
dust to take home, had been too wary to run any risk of the
Never-Know-What closing inopportunely. The great majority here, on the
wharf, dazed or excited, lugging miscellaneous possessions--things they
had clung to in straits so desperate they knew no more how to relax
their hold than dead fingers do--these were men whose last chance had
been the Klondyke, and who here, as elsewhere, had failed. Many who
came in young were going out old; but the odd thing was that those
worst off went out game--no whining, none of the ostentatious pathos of
those broken on the wheel of a great city.
A man under Muckluck's window, dressed in a moose-skin shirt, straw
hat, broadcloth trousers, and carpet slippers, in one hand a tin pail,
in the other something tied in a handkerchief, called out lustily to a
ragged individual, cleaving a way through the throng, "Got your stuff
aboard?"
"Yes, goin' to get it off. I ain't goin' home till next year."
And the face above the moose-skin shirt was stricken with a sudden
envy. Without any telling, he knew just how his pardner's heart had
failed him, when it came to turning his tattered back on the
possibilities of the Klondyke.
"Oh, I'm comin' back soon's I get a grub-stake."
"I ain't," said another with a dazed expression--a Klondyker carrying
home his frying-pan, the one thing, apparently, saved out of the wreck.
"You think you ain't comin' back? Just wait! Once you've lived up here,
the Outside ain't good enough fur yer."
"Right!" said an old Forty-miler, "you can try it; but Lord! how you'll
miss this goll-darn Yukon."
Among the hundreds running about, talking, bustling, hauling
heterogeneous luggage, sending last letters, doing last deals, a score
of women either going by this boat or saying good-bye to those who
were; and Potts, the O'Flynns, and Mac waiting to hand over Kaviak to
Sister Winifred.
The Boy at the open window above, staring down on the tatterdemalion
throng, remembered his first meeting with the Big Chimney men as the
Washington City steamed out of San Francisco's Golden Gate a year and a
month before.
Of course, even in default of finding millions, something stirring
might have happened, something heroic, rewarding to the spirit, if no
other how; but (his own special revelation blurred, swamped for the
moment in the common wreck) he said to himself that nothing of the sort
had befallen the Big Chimney men any more than to the whipped and
bankrupt crew struggling down there on the wharf. They simply had
failed--all alike. And yet there was between them and the common
failures of the world one abiding difference: these had greatly dared.
As long as the meanest in that crowd drew breath and held to memory, so
long might he remember the brave and terrible days of the Klondyke
Rush, and that he had borne in it his heavy share. No share in any mine
save that--the knowledge that he was not among the vast majority who
sit dully to the end beside what things they were born to--the earnings
of other men, the savings of other women, afraid to go seeking after
better lest they lose the good they have. They had failed, but it could
never be said of a Klondyker that he had not tried. He might, in truth,
look down upon the smug majority that smiles at unusual endeavour,
unless success excuses, crowns it. No one there, after all, so poor but
he had one possession treasured among kings. And he had risked it. What
could a man do more?
"Good-bye, Muckluck."
"Goo'-bye? Boat Canada way no go till Thursday."
"Thursday, yes," he said absently, eyes still on the American ship.
"Then why you say goo'-bye to-day?"
"Lot to do. I just wanted to make sure you were all right."
Her creamy face was suddenly alight, but not with gratitude.
"Oh, yes, all right here," she said haughtily. "I not like much the
Boston men--King George men best." It was so her sore heart abjured her
country. For among the natives of the Klondyke white history stops
where it began when George the Third was King. "I think"--she shot
sideways a shrewd look--"I think I marry a King George man."
And at the prospect her head drooped heavily.
"Then you'll want to wear this at your wedding."
The Boy drew his hand out of his pocket, threw a walrus-string over her
bent head, and when she could see clear again, her Katharine medal was
swinging below her waist, and "the Boston man" was gone.
She stared with blinded eyes out of the window, till suddenly in the
mist one face was clear. The Boy! Standing still down there in the
hurly-burly, hands in pockets, staring at the ship.
Suddenly Sister Winifred, her black veil swirling in the wind. An
orderly from St. Mary's Hospital following with a little trunk. At the
gangway she is stopped by the purser, asked some questions, smiles at
first and shakes her head, and then in dismay clasps her hands, seeming
to plead, while the whistle shrieks.
Muckluck turned and flew down the dark little stair, threaded her way
in and out among the bystanders on the wharf till she reached the
Sister's side. The nun was saying that she not only had no money, but
that a Yukon purser must surely know the Sisters were forbidden to
carry it. He could not doubt but the passage money would be made good
when they got to Holy Cross. But the purser was a new man, and when Mac
and others who knew the Yukon custom expostulated, he hustled them
aside and told Sister Winifred to stand back, the gangway was going up.
It was then the Boy came and spoke to the man, finally drew out some
money and paid the fare. The nun, not recognising him, too bewildered
by this rough passage with the world even to thank the stranger, stood
motionless, grasping Kaviak's hand--two children, you would say--her
long veil blowing, hurrying on before her to that haven in the waste,
the mission at Holy Cross.
Again the Boy was delaying the upward swing of the gangway: the nun's
trunk must come on board. Two men rushed for it while he held down the
gang.
"Mustn't cry," he said to Muckluck. "You'll see Sister Winifred again."
"Not for that I cry. Ah, I never shall have happiness!"
"Yes, that trunk!" he called.
In the babel of voices shouting from ship and shore, the Boy heard
Princess Muckluck saying, with catches in her breath:
"I always knew I would get no luck!"
"Why?"
"Ah! I was a bad child. The baddest of all the Pymeut children."
"Yes, yes, they've got it now!" the Boy shouted up to the Captain. Then
low, and smiling absently: "What did you do that was so bad. Princess?"
"Me? I--I mocked at the geese. It was the summer they were so late; and
as they flew past Pymeut I--yes, I mocked at them."
A swaying and breaking of the crowd, the little trunk flung on board,
the men rushing back to the wharf, the gang lifted, and the last Lower
River boat swung out into the ice-flecked stream.
Keen to piercing a cry rang out--Muckluck's:
"Stop! They carry him off! It is meestake! Oh! Oh!"
The Boy was standing for'ard, Nig beside him.
O'Flynn rushed to the wharf's edge and screamed at the Captain to
"Stop, be the Siven!" Mac issued orders most peremptory. Muckluck wept
as excitedly as though there had never been question of the Boy's going
away. But while the noise rose and fell, Potts drawled a "Guess he
means to go that way!"
"No, he don't!"
"Stop, you--------, Captain!"
"Stop your----boat!"
"Well," said a bystander, "I never seen any feller as calm as that who
was bein' took the way he didn't want to go."
"D'ye mean there's a new strike?"
The suggestion flashed electric through the crowd. It was the only
possible explanation.
"He knows what he's about."
"Lord! I wish I'd 'a' froze to him!"
"Yep," said Buck One, "never seen that young feller when he looked more
like he wouldn't give a whoop in hell to change places with anybody."
As O'Flynn, back from his chase, hoarse and puffing, stopped suddenly:
"Be the Siven! Father Brachet said the little divil 'd be coming back
to Howly Cross!"
"Where's that?"
"Lower River camp."
"Gold there?"
"No."
"Then you're talking through your hat!"
"Say, Potts, where in hell is he goin'?"
"Damfino!"
THE END
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