"Marley!" he called down the shaft.
"What is it?" came up from below in a surly tone.
"You have allowed the waste to run into the tunnel again, and my cabin is flooded."
"Well, clean it out then!"
"I think that is your business," answered the dry cutting tones from above. "Come up at once, and see to it."
"I'm not going to swab out your blasted, dirty old cabin," shouted Marley hoarsely from the bottom of the shaft. "Do it yourself."
A strange look came over Talbot's quiet face. It whitened and set in the darkness. He knew his men were gathered about Marley, listening to what passed, and this open defiance of his authority, this public insult before them, angered him excessively. He made his answer very quietly, however, only his voice was peculiarly hard, and the words seemed to drop like ice on the men standing listening below.
"I allow no one to speak to me like that here," he said. "This is the last day that you work on the claim."
"I'll work here as long as it suits me," retorted Marley, with an oath. "You can't turn me out."
"We will see about that," returned Talbot, in the same even, frigid tone, and he turned away from the pit and walked back to his flooded cabin.
He found Denbigh had arrived there. It was close to the luncheon hour by this time,and he was doing what he could to get rid of the water. He looked up, and saw at once from the other's face there had been some unusual incident.
"What's up?" he inquired, standing still, with his mop in his hand.
"That fellow Marley is making all the trouble he can," returned Talbot. "I have just told him he has got to get out, that's all."
Denbigh's face fell. "I think it's a bad job," he remarked after a minute. "You know what a desperate devil he is; he would kill you, I believe, if he had to give up his work."
"Well, he has been trying to boss this business for some time now," returned Talbot, "and I am tired of it. To-day he finished with a gross insult before a lot of the men, and it's time, I think, to show him and them who is boss here."
"Couldn't you overlook it?" replied Denbigh,tentatively, with a scared look on his thin face.
"I have no wish to," replied Talbot, coldly. "There is bound to be trouble some time. It may just as well come now as later."
Denbigh opened his mouth to make a further protest, but Talbot stopped him.
"Don't let us discuss it any further, please," he said curtly, and Denbigh closed his mouth and dropped back on his knees to his floor-mopping.
Talbot drew out his pistol, glanced over it, and buckled it round his waist.
When the room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with such absolute command over his passion, anger was with him, like a flame at white heat, rushing through his veins.
As they sat they heard the miners trampingby the cabin door, and saw their heads pass the window as they went out to get their mid-day food. Denbigh himself, as soon as he had finished, made an excuse and departed. He was eager to join his companions before they came back to work and hear some more delectable details of the row than he could get from Talbot. When all his men had filed out from the tunnel, Talbot went into the passage and walked up to the heavy wooden door and shut it, barring it with a steady hand. This was the main entrance to the shaft, and at the present time the only one. The door was never, under ordinary circumstances, closed, but stood open all day for the men to pass in and out to their work. When he had fastened it he walked back, turned into his own cabin, and took up his place at the window. From here he could see the men as they came back. They began to return earlier than was their wont, knowing that trouble was in the air, and each one wasanxious to be on the spot for the crisis. All through the lunch hour Talbot's words and the possibility of Dick Marley being obliged to "quit" was the sole topic of conversation.
Dick talked largely, and with a great many of the miners his oaths, and the imputations of cowardice he heaped on his employer, carried the day. Some of the others, quieter men with keener perceptions, merely listened in silence, and shook their heads when appealed to for an opinion.
"I dunno. He's got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and bacon, in response to a sanguinary burst of Dick's.
"He's a slip," answered Dick, contemptuously.
"But a dead sure shot."
"He'd funk it," said Dick, his face paling a little. "He'd never stand up to me. He's got no fight in him. Why, he's managed that claim there now for two years and he's never somuch as fired a shot over it. Now that fellow Robinson wot's got the claim a mile farther up the creek, he's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five corpses over it."
He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring assent.
The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.
"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as butter as long as you know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."
Dick took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.
As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprisedwhen they passed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut. Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up, shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment, and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened again.
"'E's waiting for Dick to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in Dick's shoes when he do come."
There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of the coming contest.
At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the window. Talbot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles. He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. Dick fell back a step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.
"You can't come in," and the sentence had an accent of inflexibility that made it seem like a drawn sword across the entrance.
"To hell I can't!" returned Dick, a dull red flush coming over his face.
"No, you can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of the other.
"Oh well, I guess I'm coming in any way," answered Marley, and he made a step forward. A slight motion of Talbot's right hand to his belt was his only answer.
Marley stopped, put his own hand, half involuntarily, to his hip, remembered he had norevolver with him, and turned pale and red in confusion.
By this time the loud voices and talking at the door had brought the remainder of the men upon the scene. Those who had already passed into the shaft left their work and came up behind Talbot in the tunnel; those in front pressed a little nearer. Talbot stood now completely surrounded by the crowd of rough working men. Marley's adherents were in full force. He was quite alone. He did not glance round them. He did not think of himself, nor of his own danger should two or three of them back up their fellow and commence to hustle him. He felt nothing but a cool though intensely savage determination to subdue this burly brute, to defend his position and title, though it cost him his life.
"There can be only one boss here," he said coldly, as Marley hesitated before him. "If you are not satisfied who it is, go to your cabinand get your six-shooter, and we will settle it here on the dump."
There was a movement and a murmur of satisfaction amongst the men. Now this was coming down to business and giving them something they could understand. Here was a man willing to defend his rights in a good, square stand-up fight on the spot, and they one and all agreed in their own minds that he was the right sort. They glanced at Dick expectantly, and some said to themselves he weakened. They were not going to take sides with either party. One of the men was their friend and fellow-worker, the other was their employer. The two had a difference, and they could settle it between themselves. They had no business to interfere. All they had to do was to stand round and see a square fight and "with'old their judgment," as they said afterwards, talking it over in the bar of the "Pistol Shot." They waited, and Dick hesitated. Hefelt his opponent's eyes upon him; he glanced round the men, they were watching him.
"Fetch your six-shooter," commanded Talbot again, with increasing sternness, and Dick, feeling he must do something, nodded sullenly and turned away towards his cabin. He strode up the incline in the direction of the miners' dwellings, and Talbot, whose brain seemed to himself half splitting with nervous, angry excitement, began to pace up and down a short length before the door, waiting for him to come back. He did not order his men away, and they stayed in their places.
The excitement was intense amongst them as they waited; not one of them shifted his place on the log or bank where he had sat down; they hardly seemed to draw their breath. All their eyes were fixed upon Talbot. He walked up and down in front of the door, his arms folded, his revolver still in its case on his hip. The men watched him curiously. His facewas very white and exceedingly determined.
The afternoon was placid and lovely. The temperature was not within many degrees of zero, but the gold of the sunshine was bright, and the air dazzlingly clear. It was absolutely still, not a leaf rustled, not a breath stirred. Nature was in her calmest, gentlest mood; nowhere could there have been a more tranquil arena to witness the passions of men. There was perfect silence, except for the crack of the ice sometimes as it split beneath the firm, resolute steps of the man pacing up and down. His face was set as a stone mask, as immovable and as calm, but the passion of anger increased within him as he waited; a mad impatience for his adversary to return grew at each step that he walked to and fro, with the insult of the morning echoing in his ears.
At last he stopped in his walk and fixed his gaze on the road which led to the miners' cabins. All the men's eyes followed his, andthey saw the figure of their fellow-worker coming slowly down towards them. A huge, hulking form, contrasting strongly with the slim one of the man waiting for him. Some of the miners glanced up at Talbot, wondering silently if he "funked it," but there was something in that attitude and that iron countenance that reassured them and stirred a dull admiration in their hearts. Talbot ceased to walk up and down. He planted himself directly in front of the wide open door and waited there. Passion and excitement had dilated his pupils until the usually calm light grey eyes looked black; his nostrils quivered slightly as he watched his enemy coming up. As Marley drew nearer, the miners noted with satisfaction his enormous six-shooter swinging in his belt; the sunlight caught the steel at every other step forward he made. Their hearts beat fast with keen anticipation. There would soon be some fine shooting, and one dead man perhaps, ortwo, for Marley meant business; and as for the other, he looked like the devil himself as he stood there. And he was a fine shot, there was no mistake about that. Denbigh stared hard at him with round fixed eyes. He was thinking of the nights when he had watched Talbot teaching Dick to shoot straight—teaching the very man he had sent off now to get his pistol to shoot himself with! He remembered how Talbot had stood with Marley at this very tunnel's mouth and showed him how to snuff a candle at thirty yards! And Denbigh stared and glowed with admiration. Marley drew nearer down the path, his heavy crunching steps echoing through the serene and frosty air. A few minutes more and he was close upon the eager, expectant, silent circle; the men watched him with their breath suspended. On he came, sullenly, filled with a sort of dogged, brutal animosity against the man he had wronged and insulted. He stepped betweenthe men, who made a short line, and then into the clear open space, facing Talbot.
For the first time he looked him full in the face, with a fugitive, fleeting glance, and his eyes shifted away. His pace slackened, but he did not stop; his feet dragged loosely over the rough snow and gravel, his huge form seemed to shrink together, to lessen; while to the fascinated eyes of the men watching the two, that slight figure at the doorway, motionless as a statue, seemed to dominate the scene. Marley felt a peculiar, sick paralysis stealing over him, a curious tugging back of his muscles when he tried to get his hand to his hip, a strangling feeling in his throat: that glance seemed petrifying him. The absolute fearlessness, the indomitable will that filled it, seemed to overcome him.
The very fact, perhaps, that Talbot had not even yet drawn his pistol, the extreme coolness that relied upon the swiftness of his wristto draw it at a second's notice, staggered and scared him. He remembered the skill that had long been his admiration, and that he had at last learned to imitate, the sureness of aim and eye, the dexterity and quickness of that hand, and his tongue fairly cleaved to the roof of his dry mouth. He struggled to draw his revolver, but his arm refused to obey his will. Yet it was not wholly cowardice that swept over him in a sickly tide. As he had met those scornful, indignant eyes, there had rushed back to his mind a thousand small benefits conferred upon him by this man, a thousand instances of friendliness, the memory of the first days they had worked together, how he had slept under his roof, fed at his table, how, more than all, he had been given by him and instructed in the use of this very weapon that now would be turned to the giver's own breast. A horror of killing this man, of wounding him, firing upon him, combined with his terror of being killed,swept over him, and between these he felt cowed and beaten, unable to stand up and face him, unable to do anything but drag one trembling foot behind the other and go by, keeping watch from the side of his eye that that deadly pistol was not drawn upon him. But Talbot never moved, simply stood and watched him too, with fixed eyes; and Marley, overwhelmed by some power he did not understand, as if dragged forward against his will, without another look at his opponent, passed by them all and went on slowly down the road leading to the town. Not a word was spoken, not a breath was drawn, no one moved. They watched his retreating figure, some half hoping, half expecting, some half fearing, he would turn and shoot from a distance,—all wondering greatly, and a little overawed. Then, as he neither turned nor looked back, but kept steadily ahead, his large figure well outlined against the stretchesof white snow, his six-shooter glistening in the sun, his head hanging down, till at last by a turn in the road he was lost to view, there was a long-drawn breath of surprise and wonder, a general turning of the eyes to Talbot. It was a victory, though a bloodless one, and they felt it. Each one felt that the conqueror was before them. Talbot said nothing. He simply stood aside from the door, to let the miners who were outside enter. The men took it as a signification that they were to recommence work, and hastened to obey. They did not dare to speak to him, not even to congratulate him. They were awed into submissive silence before him. Not a sound was uttered. The men filed silently into the tunnel like cowed sheep into their pen, leaving their master standing motionless in the sunshine.
Good Luck Row was a little row of small, insignificant cabins towards the back of the city, and at right angles to the direction of the main street. Dawson faces the Yukon, and its main thoroughfare lies parallel with the river. In the summer, when the Yukon and the Klondike, that joins it just above, are free, the waters of the two rivers united come rolling by in jubilant majesty, tossing loose blocks of ice, the remnants of their winter chains, on their swelling tide. They form a little eddy in front of the city, and their waters roll outward and swirl back again to their course, as if the great stream made a bow to the city front as it swept past. Here in the summer, with the steamboats ploughing through the rockinggreen water, and the sun streaming down upon the banks crowded with active human beings, glinting on the gay signs of the saloons and the white and green painted doors of the warehouses, with the brilliant azure sky stretched above, and far off the tall green larches piercing it with their slender tops,—in the summer this main street is a pleasant, cheerful sight; but now, with the river solid and silent, the banks black and frozen, and the bleak, bitter sky above, it looked more desolate than the inner streets of the town, more uninviting than Good Luck Row, which had little cabins on each side, and where the inhabitants overlooked their opposite neighbours' firelit interior instead of the frozen river. The side-walks of the row were like the other side-walks of the city, a wealth of soft mud and slush and dirt through the warm weather, and now frozen hard into uneven lumps, big depressions, and rough hummocks. The cabins were uniformin size, small, with one fair-sized window in the front, beside the door, which opened straight into the main room, where the front window was. At the back there was another smaller room with a tiny window, looking out over a black barren ice-field, for Good Luck Row was on the edge of the town.
Katrine lived at No. 13. This cabin had been the last to be occupied on account of its unlucky number, but Katrine only laughed at it, and painted it very large in white paint upon the door. Here Katrine lived alone, though her father, the little stunted Pole who kept the "Pistol Shot," was one of the richest men in the city.
And because she lived alone some of her neighbours declared she was not respectable. As a matter of fact, she was more respectable than many of the married women living in the row, and Katrine knew many a story with which she could have startled an unsuspectinghusband when he came into town after a week or two's absence prospecting or at work on the claims; but she did not trouble about other people's affairs; she gave her friendship to those who sought it, and heeded not at all those who condemned her.
On an afternoon about three weeks after her first meeting with Stephen, Katrine stood in front of her little glass in the corner of her cabin, smoothing her short glossy hair; when this was flattened with mathematical exactness to her well-shaped head—for Katrine was always trim and neat in her appearance—she turned to the table and wrote on a slip of paper, "I'm next door;" this she pinned to the outside of her door, and then locking it went into the next cabin in the row. She had grown quite accustomed to Stephen's visits now, and generally left a note on her door when she went out, in case he should come unexpectedly in her absence. The cabin she entered presented adifferent appearance from her own. There was the same large stove opposite the door, the same rough table in the centre and wooden chairs round, but the floor was dirty and gritty, quite unlike Katrine's, which always maintained a white and floury look from her constant attentions, and the stove looked rusty and uncleaned. The small square panes of the window, too, hardly let in any light, they were so obscured by dust inside and snow frozen on to them without. By the stove sat a young woman, in whose face ill-health and beauty struggled together for predominance. Her hair, twisted into a loose knot at the back of her head, was of the lightest gold colour, like a young child's, and her face brought to one's mind the idea of milk and violets, the skin was so white and smooth and the eyes so blue. This was the beauty which no disease could kill, but ill-health triumphed in the livid circles round the eyes, the drawn lines round thefaded lips. Katrine entered with her brightest smile.
"Well, Annie, are you better to-day?" she asked.
The woman rose with an unsteady movement from the chair, and before she could answer burst suddenly into a rain of tears. "Better? Oh, Katie, I shall never be any better! But I wish I could go home to die!"
Katrine advanced and put her arms round her, drawing the frail attenuated form close against her own warm vigorous frame.
"What nonsense!" she said gently. "You are not going to die at home or anywhere yet. Why, Will is going to make a big strike, and take you home to live in style all the rest of your life."
"No," sobbed the girl,—for she was no more than a girl in age,—falling back in her chair again. "No, it won't come in time for me."
"Where is Will?" asked Katrine, looking round.
"He's just got a job up at the west gulch on Mr. Stephen Wood's claim," returned the other. "Oh, I am that thankful he's found some one to employ him at last."
"Yes, it's delightful," returned Katrine, absently, as she sat down on the other side of the rusty stove and looked round the dirty, cheerless room. It was due to her urgent pleading with Stephen that Will had obtained the place on the claim, but his wife did not seem to know, and Katrine did not tell her.
"But then it don't lead to nothing," continued Annie, despairingly. "He can't look out for himself if he's working another man's ground."
"Well, he only does a few hours' work, I believe, and has the rest of the day to look round for himself," returned Katrine.
"It don't amount to much, anyway; thistime of the year there ain't no day to speak of," replied the other, gazing plaintively through the dim glass of the window. "And then if he do see a bit of land he fancies, why, he can't buy it, he's got no money."
"I think Mr. Wood will advance him enough to buy any ground he thinks well of," replied Katrine, gently.
"Mr. Wood!" repeated Annie, opening her sunken eyes wide with the first display of interest she had shown. "Why should he help my man along?"
"I don't know," returned Katrine, evasively, with heightened colour; "but he told me he would do so, and I know he will. How is Tim to-day?" she added suddenly, to divert the conversation.
The mother looked round.
"Tim!" she called; "where is that child? Katie, you go and look if you can see him in the wood-shed."
Katrine crossed the room to the lean-to attached to the cabin and looked in. On the floor of the wood-shed, with the happy indifference to the cold usually displayed by Klondike infants, little Tim sat on the floor with a pile of chips beside him. Great icicles hung from the rafters above him, and his tiny hands were blue with cold, but he was contentedly and silently piling up the wood on the frozen ground. Katrine picked him up and carried him into the next room, and put him by the fire at his mother's feet. He did not cry nor offer any resistance, but when put in his new location looked round for a few minutes, and then calmly leaned towards the stove and began to play with the cinders in place of his vanished wood chips.
"What a good little fellow he is!" said Katrine, leaning over him.
"Yes; he's his mother's darling, that's what he is!" returned the other, stooping to smooththe curly head that was only a shade lighter than her own.
"Will you have some coffee?" asked Annie presently, looking helplessly towards the dirty stove, where a feeble fire was burning sulkily amongst the old wood ash.
"No," returned Katrine, cheerfully; "you must be getting tired of coffee. I brought you some tea for a change," and she extracted a neat little packet from one of her pockets. "May I do up the fire and make some for you?"
"Why, it will make you so dirty; that stove is in an awful state," replied Annie, looking over the other's neat dress and figure dubiously.
"I don't mind that. Pick up the baby," Katrine answered, rolling up her sleeves and displaying two rounded muscular arms white as the snow outside. "You'd better move farther out of the dust," she added, going down on her knees before the stove. Annie picked upthe child and retreated to a chair by the window, from where she watched the other with a sort of helpless envy.
"Lord! I've grown that weak lately I can't do nothing," she said after a minute. "You know how nice I used to keep the place for Will when we first came."
Katrine nodded in silence, and two bright tears fell amongst the wood ash she was taking from the stove. She did remember the bright, active young wife, the united little family moving into the cabin next her only a year ago; she remembered the interior that had always been so neat and clean and cheerful to receive Will when he came home, the unceasing devotion of his wife, and the mutual love and hope that had buoyed them up and made them face all hardships smilingly. Then she had watched sorrowfully the gradual deterioration of the man under the constant disappointment; she had met him more and more frequently inthe saloons, less and less at his home. She had seen day by day the rapid decline of the bright, beautiful young creature he had brought with him into this poor faded wraith dragging herself about in the neglected, cheerless cabin.
"You'll get stronger again in the warm weather," she said after a minute, when her voice was steady.
"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen what I saw on the snow this morning when I'd been coughing there back of the wood-shed," returned Annie, drearily leaning her tired head against the dingy pane.
"What do you mean?" asked Katrine, looking up apprehensively. "Blood?"
The other nodded in silence, and there was quiet in the cabin except for the crooning of the child. Then Katrine rose from the hearth impulsively with a flushed, lovely face and the ash dust on her hair and dress. She went overto Annie and drew her head on to her strong, warm bosom.
"Oh, you poor, poor thing! What can we do?" she said desperately.
"Nothing," murmured Annie, closing her eyes in the girl's soothing embrace, "unless you could persuade Will to take me home, and nobody could do that now, he's so set upon the gold. That's the second bleeding from the chest that I've had this month; now the third'll do for me."
She shivered as if from cold, and Katrine kissed her and hastened back to her work at the fire. It is not a pleasant nor an easy thing to do to clean out a stove that has been left to itself for a week or more and fresh fires kindled on the old ashes every day, but in a few minutes Katrine had the work completed and the fresh wood crackling and filling the stove with red flame. Then she made the tea rapidly, and neither of them spoke again till Annie held agreat tin mug of it to her white lips. Katrine pulled her chair close to the stove again, and took Tim on her own lap, where he found a new toy in her cartridge belt. Annie sipped from her mug and gazed absently into the flames.
"Lord, we were so happy," she said musingly, a little colour coming into her face under the influence of the hot tea and the warmth from the re-invigorated fire. "We had the nicest little home down in Brixham. I daresay you don't know where that is?" Katrine shook her head. "It's just the prettiest, sweetest village in the world, down in Devonshire; and we had a cottage there, quite in the country, with pink roses all over the front,—I can smell those roses now. Oh, it was lovely; and Will had regular work all the time, and he was the best husband woman ever had. He used to bring his wages in Saturdays, and say to me, 'Annie, old girl, ain't there enough there to get you anew ribbon for Sunday or a fresh sash for the baby?' He never spent a penny for drink nor tobacco. And Sunday we'd go out on the downs and stand looking at the sea; it do come in so splendid there, and the wind from it seems to put new life in yer. We was as happy and as well as could be, all of us; and then them newspapers got to printing all those tales of the gold in the Klondike, and Will he just got mad like, and nothing would do but he must sell the house and come out here. He thought he'd come back so rich; well, so he may, but he won't have no wife to go back with."
She lay back in her chair, and Katrine, gazing at her white face and transparent hands, said nothing.
"I'm glad I stuck to Will, though," the woman went on softly after a minute, "and didn't let him come out here alone. A wife's place is by her husband wherever he goes, and I'd rather die with him than be separated.But there, I do hate the name of gold. It broke up our home, it's broke up our lives, and it's just killed me, that's what it's done. And what's the good of it? Why, as I said to Will before we came, 'We can't be no more than happy, and we're that now.'"
Katrine said nothing. She was one of those women who in society would have gained the name of a good conversationalist, for she always listened attentively and spoke hardly at all.
It grew rapidly darker outside and began to snow a little, the peculiar sharp, small snow of Alaska. The two women could hardly see each other's faces in the gloom, when Katrine rose and offered to light the lamp.
"There ain't no oil left," returned Annie, drearily. "I just sit in the dark most of the time; I don't mind as long as I have a bit of fire. It do seem more lonesome though when you've no light," she added with a sigh.
"Haven't you any money to buy it with?"
Annie shook her head. "Not till Will comes back."
"Well, here's enough to keep you in oil for the next three months," said Katrine, taking a little object from her belt which looked like a well-filled tobacco pouch and putting it on the shelf above her head.
"What's that? dust?" said Annie. "Where-ever do you get so much money?" she added, staring at her.
"I won that last night," returned Katrine, lightly. "I do have such luck. I wish you could come, Annie, and see the fun we have down town of a night, instead of moping up here; and I do have such luck," she repeated again with a half sigh. "I don't know what I'd do if it should change. I'd have to be bar-keep for a living, I suppose. Think I'd make a good bar-keep?" she said, getting up and stretching her arms above her head. All herfull lissom figure was revealed to advantage by the attitude, and the firelight fell softly on the gay, bewitching face, slanted over to one shoulder as she put the question.
"I do that," replied Annie, with emphasis. "Your bar would always be crammed by all the chaps in the place, my dear."
Katrine laughed. "I'm glad you think so. I'll bring you some of my oil to burn for to-night, and then I must be off earning my living."
She went into her own cabin and brought back a can of oil with her, trimmed and cleaned and lit Annie's lamp, and then with a kiss bade her good-bye till next day, and took her way down to the main street. She had only a little dust in her belt, just enough to start playing with, and if luck should go against her she would have to return empty handed; but then she always trusted to luck, and it had never forsaken her. Her mode of life, precarious anduncertain, dangerous and unsatisfactory as it might seem to an onlooker, never troubled her. She was in that state of glorious physical health and strength which lends an unlimited confidence to the mind, a sense of being able to cope with any difficulty which might suddenly present itself, when every present or possible trouble looks small, and when mere life itself, the mere sensation of the blood being warm in one's veins, is a joy. She loved the excitement, even the uncertainty of her life, and she had more friends in the town than she could count, who would be glad to lend her all she needed if her luck failed.
That night, when Katrine lay fast asleep in her small inner room, her curly head tucked down comfortably under the rugs, she dreamed she heard a knocking on her door. The sound seemed faint at first, but grew louder, and after a minute she woke up, lifted her head, and listened. Yes, there was a tapping on herdoor, she heard it quite distinctly. She got up immediately, slipped into her fur coat and boots, and taking one of her pistols in her hand, went to the door. That there was danger in answering such a summons at such an hour she knew quite well, but that did not hinder her. She was accustomed to live with her life in her hand, and she felt instinctively confident of being able so to hold it, and meant to keep a tight grip on it. When she opened the door it was to a vivid moonlight, clear and brighter than day; the whole white world was shining under it.
"Annie!" she exclaimed as her eyes fell on the slight, feeble figure muffled in a blanket that stood on her steps. "What is the matter? Come in," and she put the door wide open and stood back for her to pass.
"Oh, Katie," she said, seizing the other's hands when they stood inside the room, "forgive me for waking you, but I want Will. Ifeel I'm going to die to-night, and I can't without him—I can't," and she burst into a flood of tears broken by short sobbing coughs. She had slipped to her knees and was holding Katrine's hands in a feverish clutch. The blanket had fallen from her head and shoulders, and showed to Katrine that she was still in her day dress; it did not seem as if she had been to bed at all. There was a dark, half-dried stain upon the front of her bodice.
"I'm dying! Oh, Katie, it's so dreadful all alone there. Will you go and bring Will to me? Oh, do."
Katrine looked down upon her as she tried to raise her to her feet. The fire was still burning brightly and filled the room with light. Many people older than Katrine would have laughed at the woman's statement in face of her ability to come to them and make it, but Katrine's keen perceptions read much, too much, in the bright glazed eyes that looked upat her, in the hoarse grating tones that came from the sunken chest, and the feverish grasp of those burning fingers. She stooped down and put her arms round the kneeling figure and drew her up.
"Why, of course I will. I will bring him to you. But you are only ill, dear; you're not dying."
"Oh, I may not, I know; but if I should, and he not here! Katie, can you go now?—it's so late, and so cold, and so far. I don't see how you can."
"He's working up on Mr. Wood's claim at the west gulch. I suppose if I go to Mr. Wood's cabin he can tell me where to find Will."
"Oh, yes, yes," returned Annie, eagerly, a crimson flush now lighting up each cheek; "go straight to Mr. Wood and ask him for Will. One of Will's ponies is down here, back of our house; you can take him and ride up. Oh,it may kill you to go; I ought not to ask it. Oh, what shall I do?"
Katrine laughed. "Kill me!" she said. "It would take more to kill me than that, I think. I shall be up there and Will down here before you know where you are. Now you've just got to drink this brandy while I go and get some things on. You're just fretting for Will, that's what is the matter with you. I believe you will feel all right when you see him again."
She put the trembling woman into a chair, and went back to her room to put her clothes on. She noticed that her boots, which had been damp the night before, had frozen to the ground, and she had to break them from it by force.
"I shall be lucky if I get back with my feet unfrozen," she thought to herself, looking regretfully at the warm bed she had left; but it never once, even remotely, occurred to her to refuse the unwelcome mission. She put on allher thickest garments, buckled her pistols on her hip, and went back to Annie, who was crouching over the fire in the next room.
"I had better take the pony," she said; "he'll get me there and back quicker than I can walk, if you think the little animal is up to it."
Annie nodded. "He's well fed," she said, "and has had nothing to do since Will's been gone."
Katrine shut the stove up, and the two women went out together.
It was a still dead cold without, the sort of night on which your limbs might freeze beyond recovery, and without your knowing it, so insidious and so little aggressive was the cold.
"You go in and keep warm," said Katrine; "I'll find the pony and manage him," and she pushed Annie gently within her own door, and went round to the shed at the back of the cabin where the pony was. Her hands in that short time had grown so stiff with cold she couldhardly put the saddle on and fasten the girth and straps. The pony knew her, and pricked his ears and snorted while she was getting him ready; he had been idle in his stable two days, and by this time was willing to welcome any change in the monotony of life. When she had adjusted everything carefully by the light of the strong moon falling through the little window, she threw herself cross leg upon his back and rode him out of the shed. Annie had her face pressed eagerly against the back window of her cabin, watching for her to appear. Katrine smiled at her, lifted her fur cap above her head for an instant as a man would do, and then the next moment was cantering away over the snowy waste that stretched behind Good Luck Row. She went at a good pace, urged on by that last glimpse of the pale face, with the terrible look of haunted fear on it, pressed to the window.
The temperature was very low, but the absence of wind and dampness in the air made the cold bearable. Katrine, haunted by the fear of frostbite, kept pinching her nose and pulling her ears and banging her feet against the pony's side to keep the blood stirring in them. Inside the first half-hour she was away some distance from the lights of Dawson, and nothing but great snowy stretches lay around her.
That night up at the west gulch it happened that neither Stephen nor Talbot had gone to bed. There is little to choose between night and day there, since half of the day hours are dark as the blackest night, and a man can sleep in them as profitably or more so than in the moonlit hours of the night. Three o'clock in the morning had come, and the two men were still sitting talking on each side of the stove, with an opened whisky bottle on the table between them, in Stephen's cabin, when the dull sound of a horse's footfall broke the blanksilence of the gulch. Both sprang to their feet on the instant, and Talbot drew his pistol from his belt and stood listening with it in his hand.
"I always said we oughtn't to keep our gold up here," said Stephen, and his face whitened.
Talbot held up his hand to enjoin silence, and they waited while the sound of hoofs moving slowly over the treacherous and uneven soil came nearer. Then there was a pause, which seemed to the men inside endless. Then two distinct taps at the door. Talbot, who was nearer it, made a forward movement, but Stephen caught his arm.
"What are you going to do?" he whispered.
"Open it and fire," returned Talbot, laconically, and he pushed back the latch and raised his revolver as he opened the door.
Stephen was close behind him, and Talbot almost stepped upon him as he drew back with astonishment the next instant. Katrinejumped from the pony's back and stepped over the threshold without invitation.
"How lucky I am to find you up!" she exclaimed, and then seeing Talbot's hastily lowered revolver in his right hand she burst out laughing. "So you were going to shoot, were you?" she said, drawing out her own. "Well, I was quite ready; I have been all the ride. I am sorry I frightened you."
"Frightened us!" repeated the two men in a breath, with an indignant glance.
"Oh no, of course I didn't mean that," rejoined Katrine, laughing. "Disturbed you, I should say. Oh, Stephen, give me some of that whisky; I am almost dead with cold."
Her face did indeed look frozen white with cold under her fur cap, and her dark eyes shone in it with a liquid splendour that made Stephen's heart beat tumultuously against his side. He poured out some of the spirit for her and pushed her gently into a chair, commencing to pull off her thick gloves for her.
"I want Will Johnson," she said, with her customary directness. "Stephen, I've come up to fetch him. He's one of your men. Tell me where I can find him."
"What do you want with him at this time of night?" questioned Stephen, while Talbot silently extracted a plate of bread and bacon from the cupboard and put it on the table at her elbow.
"I don't want him for myself," she answered mischievously. "His wife has sent me up to find him; she thinks she is dying, and wants to see him to-night. Where can I find him?"
"His cabin is a little higher up the gulch, but you mustn't go there; I will go after him," said Stephen hastily.
"I don't know," replied Katrine; "I'd better ride up there and then take him on home with me, hadn't I?"
"Ride back again to-night!" exclaimed Stephen. "What madness! It was bad enough to make the ride once. She mustn't think of it, must she, Talbot?" and he turned to his friend for corroboration.
"Certainly not, I should say," returned Talbot, in his quiet but final way. "I will ride up to Johnson's place and send him down home, and you can make Katrine comfortable here."
The girl sprang to her feet.
"Why, what an idea!" she said, with a flush on her pale cheeks. "I only came to you to find Will. Of course I can't stay here all night."
"Your mission will be accomplished, won't it, if Will goes to his wife?" returned Talbot quietly. "There is no need to risk your life again. There is no good in it; besides, it will save time if you let Will have the pony at once to take him back. You can have one of ours in the morning."
She looked up at him. She admired Talbotexceedingly. His voice was so invariably gentle and quiet, so different from all the voices that she heard round her daily. Stephen's, though his resembled it, had not the same curious accent of refinement. His manner, too, had the same extreme gentleness; and yet beneath this apparent softness she knew there existed a courage that equalled any in the whole camp. He looked very handsome too, she thought, at this moment, as she met a soft smile in his eyes, and her tones were more hesitating as she repeated—
"I think I ought to return."
"Well, I'm going to despatch Will for you," replied Talbot, turning away. "I leave it to you, Stephen, to persuade her to stay," and he walked out. A second later they heard the pony's hoofs going up the narrow trail past the cabin.
"You can have my room; I'll sleep here on the floor," remarked Stephen.
The girl got up.
"No," she said in her most decided tone. "I'll stay if you let me sleep here on the floor, or I'll go home. Turn you out of your own comfortable bed I will not."
"Go home you can't," said Stephen in an equally decided tone, "so I'll make you up a bed here just in front of the stove."
He went into the next room, and Katrine, left alone, drank up her whisky and gazed round the cabin. It was not at all an interesting interior, and had not the faint suggestions of artistic taste that redeemed Talbot's. A few prints were on the walls, seemingly cut from illustrated papers and principally consisting of views of cathedrals and school buildings, which Katrine's eyes wandered over without interest. At the farthest end from her there were some stout shelves nailed against the wall, and on these rested a row of flat tin pans; between the pans were pushed one or twobooks, and she recognised amongst them his Greek testament. She rose and strolled over to the shelf, and standing on tiptoe looked into the pans. As she thought, they contained thin layers of gold dust. She was standing there looking into them when Stephen returned and came up behind her.
"They look fine, don't they?" he said. "That's a thirty dollar pan."
Katrine turned, and looking up was startled by the eager light in his face and the greed written in every line of it. For herself, reckless, happy-go-lucky gambler that she was by nature, gold had little value for her except to toss by the handful on the tables to buy half-an-hour's excitement. With a sudden movement she seized the fullest pan by the rim in one hand and the Greek testament beside it in the other, and danced away from him to the other side of the room. Stephen turned with an involuntary cry, and followed her with anxious eyes.
"Now which would you rather lose?" she said, laughing.
His eyes were fixed upon the pan, which was heavy and as much as she could support with one hand. He dreaded each minute to see it tip up and its golden treasure pour out on the floor.
"Oh, I don't know. Don't be foolish," he said in a vexed tone.
Katrine sidled up to the window.
"Answer, or I'll—"
Stephen turned white. He felt she was capable of doing any mad thing when he met those mocking, sparkling eyes.
"Oh—I—I—would rather lose the book," he stammered, in an agony to see the gold safely put back. "I could replace that, you know."
Katrine advanced to him, balancing the pan as if weighing it.
"Stephen, this is very heavy," she said, looking him straight in the eyes.
"Let me take it from you," he said, eagerly stretching out his hands.
"Do you know what makes it so?" she said, still balancing it and still looking at him. "Your soul is in it!" and she gave it back to him.
Stephen reddened angrily, and took both the book and the gold from her and replaced them sulkily on the shelf. Katrine had turned her back and walked over to the fire, humming.
"What a royal couch you've made me!" she remarked, breaking the awkward silence that followed, and looking down on the pile of red blankets he had spread in front of the stove.
He had, in fact, stripped his own bed and collected blankets from every corner to make a comfortable resting-place for her. Before Stephen could answer he was summoned to the door. Talbot looked in upon them, but would not come inside.
"I've sent Will off," he said; "he swore likeanything, but he is gone. No, thanks, Steve, I won't come in. I'm tired, and going to my own cabin now. See you at breakfast. Good-night," and before Katrine could thank him he was gone.
The two thus left entirely alone in the deep quiet of the gulch to pass the night together looked at each other for a moment with a shade of silent embarrassment. But the girl, accustomed as she was to take care of herself in all sorts of situations and surroundings, and endued with a certain fierce chastity of nature, recovered herself instantly and spoke quite naturally.
"I feel tired too, and would like to go to sleep now, if I may."
"Certainly," said Stephen. "You have this room to yourself. The stove will burn till daylight, and you have the whisky if you feel cold in the night. Good-night."
His tone was very formal, for he would somuch have liked it to be otherwise, and without looking at her he took a match from his pocket and went into the other room, shutting the door after him. The girl waited a moment, then she shut the door of the stove and threw herself down on the soft pile of blankets, and drawing one of them over her to her ears, drew a deep, contented sigh, and was peacefully asleep in a few seconds.
The next morning Stephen rose stiff and cramped from his denuded bed. When he was completely dressed he silently opened his door and crept noiselessly into the adjoining room. The girl was not yet awake, and he stole softly over to the bed on the hearth and looked down at her. She lay warm and sleeping comfortably amongst the blankets. She was fully dressed, just as she had been the previous evening, except that two or three buttons were unfastened at the collar of her dress, and allowed the solid white neck to show beneath therounded chin. The little head, with its mass of dark silky curls, lay inclined towards the stove, and the curled rosy lips had a softer smile than they generally wore in the daytime. Stephen leaned over her, entranced and breathless. As his eyes followed the dark arch of the eyebrows, the sweet delicate contour of the cheek, he forgot the horror he felt of her sometimes in her waking moments, forgot the hideous background of the saloons, forgot all the evil there might be in her, and bowed before that supreme power that human beauty has over us; he worshipped her as he had never worshipped his God. For a few seconds it was enough for him to gaze on her, then came an overwhelming impulse to stoop and kiss the soft youthful lips, to touch them even if ever so lightly. If he could without awakening her! But no, she was his guest, under his roof and protection. All that was best in his nature rose and held him motionless like a hand of iron.After a few seconds Katrine stirred, and Stephen, feeling she was about to awake, would have moved away, but his eyes seemed fixed and as impossible to remove from her face as one's hands are from an electric battery. The next minute her lids were lifted, and her eyes, two wells of living light, flashed up at him.
"Good-morning," she said, sitting up. "How dreadfully pale you look, Stephen! What is the matter?"
"Do I?" he answered, with a forced laugh, feeling the blood, which had seemed to rest suspended in his veins for those few seconds, rush to his heart again in great waves.
"You do indeed," she said, getting up. "I expect you want your breakfast. Tell me what I can do to make myself useful."
She shook her hair straight, fastened the collar of her bodice, and, was dressed. She needed no toilet apparently, but looked as clean and fresh as a rose waking up in its garden.
"Nothing," returned Stephen hastily. "Go over and tell Talbot to come in to breakfast, if you like; I'll have it ready when you come back."
Katrine looked round regretfully, as if she would have liked to stay and help him; then concluding she had better do as she was told, she took up her fur cap and went out.
The west gulch looks magnificent in the first early light, with all degrees of shadows, some black, some dusky, some the clearest grey, lingering in its snowy recesses, and the first glimpse of gold falling down it from the east. Katrine stopped and gazed up at the impressive beauty above and around her: trees in the gulch, now covered with a thick snowy mantle, stood assuming all sorts of grotesque forms, and extending their arms as if calling the spectator to their cold embrace. It was beautiful, but to Katrine it seemed so silent, so overawing, and so death-like, that she shiveredas she looked up and down from the flat plateau where she stood, and hurried on the few necessary yards to Talbot's cabin.
When they came back together they found Stephen had all in readiness, the fire blazing on the hearth and the breakfast waiting on the table. He made Katrine sit at the head and pour out the coffee for them, which she did with pleased, smiling eyes. Talbot said good-bye to her and went out to his claim immediately it was over, and Katrine and Stephen were left alone. He said he would go and get a pony for her and Katrine rose, but then Stephen hesitated and did not go after all. He turned to her instead, and came back from the door to where she was standing.
"Will you listen to something I want to say to you?" he said, his heart beating wildly.
"Why, certainly I will," the girl answered simply, and she sat down in the chair behind her and folded her hands. Then she lookedup inquiringly, waiting for him to begin, but Stephen's voice was dried up in his throat. He stood in front of her, one damp hand nervously clasping the back of a chair, unable to articulate a word. Confusion and excitement overwhelmed him, and he stood turning paler and paler, staring at the proud, handsome face framed in the living yellow sunshine before him. At last he felt he could not even stand, and he turned away with a groan and sank down on the nearest chair with his face in his hands. Katrine, who had been watching him anxiously for the last few seconds, sprang up and went over to him.
"What is the matter?" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Are you ill?"
"No, oh no," said Stephen, catching the little hand in both of his. "No, I want to tell you I love you. Do you care for me? Will you marry me right away, and come up and live here with me?"
His voice had come back to him all right now, and he turned and gazed eagerly up at her.
Katrine did not answer immediately, but she did not withdraw her hand that he was pressing hotly between his own, and a faint smile that came over her face showed she was not displeased; and here Stephen missed his cue—he should have taken the hesitating figure into his arms and kissed the undecided lips. In the sudden awakening of womanly feeling, in the momentary excitement, in the glimpse into passion, Katrine would have consented, welcoming as her nature did any new emotion; but Stephen was embarrassed and afraid. Fear and uncertainty held him back, the kiss burned ungiven on his own lips, and Katrine uninfluenced by passion could think clearly.
What! come up here and live in this deathly quiet, away from even such amusement as the camp offered? Submit to all his tiresome religious conversations, and, above all, give upthose feverish nights of excitement? the hazard and the stimulus of the long tables and the little heaps of gold dust? and her free life, her incomings and outgoings, with no one to question her? No, it was an impossibility.
The next thing Stephen knew was that she was smiling and looking down into his eyes, shaking her head.
"No, Stephen, I can't do that. I like you awfully, and should like you to come and see me; but I wouldn't do for your wife at all, and if you knew all about me you wouldn't want it either."
Stephen clung fast to her hand.
"What is it that I don't know?" he said desperately, putting, as people always do, the worst construction he could upon her words, and at the same time feeling he would forgive her everything, and in a sort of background in his brain contemplating the figure of the forgiven Magdalen at the feet of Christ.
Katrine dragged her hand away suddenly. She was not going to tell him she was a gambler and devoted to the excitement of the tables. She knew that if she did their pleasant talks in the evenings would be at an end. He could never come to see her without thinking it his duty to try to reform her; and as she knew she was not going to reform, what would be the good of it?
"What does it matter to you? I am not your wife, and am not going to be; I am an acquaintance. If you like me as I am, very good; if you don't, no one cares."
Stephen got up and faced her. He was as white as the snow outside.
"You make me think the worst by refusing to confide in me."
Katrine laughed contemptuously.
"I don't care a curse what you think! Haven't I just told you so? Great heavens," she added, with a burst of conviction, "it wouldnever do for us to marry! Never! Your one idea is to curtail a person's liberty."
"No," answered Stephen quietly, "not liberty in a general way; only the liberty to sin and do evil, the liberty to be ignorant and do things which have terrible consequences that you don't know."
He looked very well at this moment, his pale ascetic face and sympathetic eyes lighted up with enthusiasm. Katrine looked at him and then smiled with her quick, impulsive smile.
"Stephen, you are a good man, and perfectly charming at times; but I am not a good woman, and don't want to be, and we should never get on. So don't let's bother any more about this question at all."
An exceedingly pained expression came over Stephen's face, and Katrine was quick enough to feel that from her words he judged her errors to be other than they were. In a few words she might have cleared his mind fromthe idea of her actual immorality, but she was too proud to stand upon her own defence before him; besides, if her faults were not of that class, he would want to know what they were, and in his eyes a girl that gambled and drank and swore, and preferred the dance halls and variety shows to the mission church any day, was quite bad enough; so she concluded in her thoughts, "It doesn't matter if he is mixed."
Stephen at the moment was afraid to press her further, and did not know quite how to treat her; but he was not wholly discouraged, and he thought it best to retain the ground he already had.
"Well, I shall be in town in a few days," he said, "and I shall come to see you as usual, mayn't I?"
"Of course," returned Katrine, and they did not speak again till they were outside and she was mounted at the head of the trail.
What a morning it was! The crisp air waslike a bath of sparkling sunlight; the untrodden snow glittered everywhere. Far above the trail a ridge of dark green pine broke against the pale azure of the sky. Stephen leaned against the pony's side and gazed into the warm, lustrous eyes.
"Good-bye, my darling—my own darling perhaps some day."
"I don't think so," she answered, with a mischievous smile, and set the pony at a trot down the trail.
She had to pass Talbot's cabin on her way back, and as she approached she saw him a little way up the creek surrounded by his men. She reined in her horse to a walk as she passed, and contemplated him. His figure always pleased and arrested her eyes—it had a certain height and strength and grace that marked it out distinctly from others; and then what an advantage it was, she thought, he had no religion and believed in none of those things, and,in short, was quite as bad or worse than she herself was. She walked her horse on slowly, thinking. Somehow it seemed to her that life in his cabin would be far more piquant and amusing than in Stephen's. Yet he neither drank nor gambled, and as for the dance halls and theatre,—well, he had told her he liked dancing; and what a waltz that had been they had had together! But life with Stephen! He would be too good for her, and too stupid. She had a vague sense that what she lived for, excitement, he condemned in all its forms. Just what she cared for in drink, in play, in the dance, the electric pleasure of them, was just what he shrank from as a wile of the Evil One. Even the religious services of the High Church he condemned for the same reason. No, it would never do; life with him would be as cold as the snow around her. She was glad that her answer had been as it had. There was a level place in the trail here, andshe put the horse to a gallop, and so came into town with her cheeks stung into rich crimson by the keen air, and her spirits exhilarated and ready for any mischief going.
She went at once to No. 14 in the row, and found Will sitting by his wife's bedside like a model husband. The girl was lying down, her weak white hand clasped in and nearly hidden by the swollen, rough red hand of the miner. She gave a little cry as Katrine entered, and buried her head under the blanket.
"You are not angry with me for sending you up when it wasn't really necessary?" came a smothered voice.
Katrine flung herself on her knees beside the bed and put her arms impetuously round the thin form under the coverlet.
"Angry with you for not dying!" she said, between laughing and crying. "Why, I think you're the best girl in the world, and Will's apretty good doctor, too!" she added, glancing up at him.
Will coloured and looked a little uneasy, remembering his oaths of last night when he was roused to a ten-mile ride; but Katrine couldn't or wouldn't notice anything amiss. She said sweet things to both of them, and then, unwilling to rob Annie of any part of Will's company, she withdrew to her own cabin.
Two or three weeks passed, and dreary weeks they were. The temperature fell below the zero mark and stayed there, the sun hardly ever shone, the whole sky being blotted out as behind a thick grey curtain. The few hours of daylight that each twenty-four hours brought round was little more than a dismal twilight. Times were dreary, too, provisions ran scarce and very high, and the cheerless cold and darkness seemed to paralyse the energies of the strongest and lay a grip upon thewhole town. Many months of the winter had already gone by, and strength and spirits were beginning to flag; health and courage had worn thin, and men who had faced the bitterness of the cold with a joke when it had first set in felt it keenly now like the rest. In Good Luck Row matters were worse than anywhere else in the town; the occupants were mostly very poor, and the pressure of the high prices was sharpest upon them. In addition to all else they had to suffer, typhoid broke out amongst them, and another horrible fear was added to the terror of the cold. In the universal gloom that hung over the city, under the mantle of darkness, want and starvation and fear and disease wrangled together, while Death walked silently and continually about the darkened streets. During all this time Katrine was about the only one who kept up her spirits and courage. She was the light and comfort of the row, there was not a cabin in it that hadnot been brightened and cheered by her smiles and benefited by her gifts. She was absolutely without fear herself. The quality seemed to have been left out of her composition, or perhaps it was only that her great physical health and strength made her feel unconsciously that it was impossible for any harm to come to her. She went in and out of the fever-stricken cabins all day, doing what she could for each one of the inmates, and always with her brilliant smile, which was a tonic in itself, and half the night she would sit gambling in the saloons, winning the money to spend upon her sick patients the following day.
As soon as Stephen learned that typhoid had broken out in the row, he came down to her and urged her to marry him and come away to the west gulch, if only as an asylum. But Katrine simply laughed and joked, and would not listen to him. Then he begged her to look upon herself merely as his tenant; he and Talbot would share the same cabin, and she could occupy his in perfect peace and security, and be safely away from the depressing influences of the town and its disease-laden atmosphere. Then she grew very grave, and said simply in a sweet tone that echoed through all the chambers of his heart—
"Dear Stephen, you are very good to be so anxious for me, but I'm not a bit anxious for myself. I should feel like a coward if I went away from the row now. These people are so dependent upon me, and I can do so many little things for them. I feel it's a duty to stay here, and I'd rather do it;" and Stephen had kissed her hand passionately and gone back to the gulch, more in love with her than ever.
She saw very little of him, and was too busy to think about him or note whether he came or not, having so many anxieties on her mind just then, of which the heaviest was the girl-wife Annie in the next cabin. Since the semi-crisis in her illness, over which Katrine had helped her, there seemed to be little change in her condition from day to day. That is, the change did not show itself externally; within the delicate structure, the disease, aided by the cold, the foul damp air of the town, and hopeless spirits, crept steadily and quickly on, but gave little or no outward sign, and Katrine hoped against hope that she could possibly tide her over the time till Will perhaps made a strike and could take her away. She knew how the sick woman clung to this idea. For months now she had been shut off from all communication with the outer world, she never saw a paper or a book, she could not move from her cabin, her whole sphere was bounded now by its four rough walls, and so the one idea that was left to her starved brain and heart was that Will should make a strike. And as a weed runsover a bare and neglected garden, so will one single idea completely absorb and fill a neglected brain, and grow and grow to gigantic strength. This was Annie's one idea; she brooded over it, pondered over it, nursed it, slept with it, and talked to Katrine of it with burning eyes, till the latter felt if it could only be fulfilled the joy of it would almost cure her. And it might be fulfilled, she knew, any day. It was early days in the Klondike then, and plenty of good ground lay around waiting to be discovered. She heard from Stephen that Will was steady and energetic, had given up drink, and was set upon the idea of prospecting for land of his own. Katrine's heart beat hard with pure sympathy as she heard, and she begged Stephen as the one thing he could do for herself to facilitate Will's efforts in every way and aid him for her sake. Meanwhile, her own care was to keep the fragile creature who was living upon hope still on thisside of the Great Divide. And to this end she worked night and day. She kept her cabin clean and well lighted and well warmed. She bought and made soup, and gave fabulous prices for meat and wine, and sat with her long hours cheering her with stories heard in the saloons and picked up in the streets, and scraps of news from the gulch and farther points.