144CHAPTER XANGELA MEETS A FRIEND
“Hands up!” snapped Jim.
Connie and the silent man obeyed. Tom, clasping his prize, looked thunderstruck.
“Did you git that, you human gorilla? Put ’em up.”
Tom let Angela slip to the floor.
“What’s all this?” he growled.
Jim gripped the deal table with one huge hand and flung it across the room. He advanced on Connie and slapped the latter’s pockets.
“No guns? Good!”
Connie went flying from a violent shove, likewise the silent man.
“Come here—you!” bawled Jim.
Tom came forward, his ugly face curved in a look of intense hate. He felt Jim snatch the revolver from his belt and pocket it.145
“What’s your lay?” he growled.
Jim put his own revolver away and Tom’s hands dropped to his side.
“So you took a fancy to my property, eh?”
Tom recoiled before the blazing eyes of his adversary. He was big and hefty enough, but no match for the well-proportioned, muscular giant before him. He was good at assessing physical values, and he felt scared.
“She’s mine,” he said. “I won her.”
Angela, crouching at the end of the room, saw the storm brewing. She suddenly remembered the knife, and retrieved it lest one of the trio should lay hands on it. She saw Connie and his silent friend edging behind Jim, and one quick glance from Tom’s vile face told her that the three were filled with a common purpose. Connie suddenly snatched up a log of wood.
“Jim!” she cried, as the three men suddenly sprang forward.
The big figure moved like a streak of lightning. Tom was caught by two powerful arms and lifted clean off his feet. He hung for one brief second, six inches from the ground, and then executed an arc in thin air to come down with a crash146against the match-boarded wall. The other two were close upon him. He dealt with the log-swinging man first. Connie’s arm was already raised and the thick piece of wood was on the point of coming down. Had it descended, the Honorable Angela might have been a widow there and then, but a fifty-inch leg prevented that untimely catastrophe. It came out from Jim’s thigh, true in the horizontal plane, and smote Connie in the tenderest part of his anatomy. He made no sound whatever, but dropped in a crumpled heap and lay still. The silent man was caught in mid-air. He had never expected the amazingly quick movement of the arms that held him. He was a miserable specimen, physically, and turned green when he saw the big fist drawn back to strike.
“No, you ain’t big enough to hit,” said Jim. “You seem to like me; come closer honey, come close!”
He gathered the man close in and, exerting all his strength, crushed every atom of breath from the man’s body. Angela, sick with the sight of this animal manifestation, protested.
“You’ll kill him! He never did me any harm.”147
Jim dropped his victim with a grunt. A queer reaction set in. He was sorry. He could have rescued her without this horse-play, but the sight of her in the arms of a human chimpanzee, who knew no morality but that of the cave-man, had aroused all the innate fury within him. After all, he loved her! Even though she despised him, and preferred the company of licentious beachcombers, he worshiped her. The very thought seemed to mock at him from within.
“Do I have to yank you back, or will you come freely?” he said in a low voice.
“I’ll come,” she replied.
They walked back to the tent in silence. She noticed that the note had gone from the flap. How he had tracked her down was a mystery. He refrained from mentioning the adventure, but she saw that it had had a great effect upon him. He ate no supper, but sat smoking through the mosquito-netting, gazing pensively at the starry heavens. When they retired he uttered his customary “Good-night, Angela.”
“Good-night,” she replied.
The next morning found him busy caulking a big flat-bottomed boat, which was already half148laden with stores. She looked at him inquiringly.
“Going down the river,” he informed her. “I’ve staked two claims along a creek called ‘Red Ruin.’”
“Is it far?”
“Matter of five miles.”
“A-ah!”
The remaining gear was placed in the boat. Angela took a seat in the bows whilst Jim threw his weight on the pole, the sole means of propulsion. There was a loud crack, and the punter was almost thrown over the side as the rotten pole broke in the middle. The strong current sent the craft whirling down-stream. Jim grabbed a coil of rope, made it fast to a ring-bolt, and went over the side. He reached the bank and pulled the craft inshore.
“Throw out the ax. I’ll go cut a new pole.”
She handed him the weapon, keen as a razor, and watched him tramp up the steep bank. A slight breeze shifted the mist from the sprawling, muddy river and the sun clove through. An isolated mass of ice swirled along, melting as it went. A small island in the center of the stream was gashed and scoured by the recent ice-flow.149Trees along the bank had been shorn clear by the enormous pressure of the bergs as they fought their way to freedom. She was sitting thinking of the inscrutable future when a canoe hove into sight. The occupants—two Indians and a white man—were driving it up-stream at amazing speed, considering the fact that the down current was running at a speed of at least five knots. They were passing her, scarcely a dozen yards distant, when she gave a cry of astonishment.
“D’Arcy!”
The white man ceased paddling and looked up sharply. He turned to the Indians and rapped out an order. The canoe drifted in towards Angela’s craft and D’Arcy held out his hand, with absolute wonder written in his eyes.
“Angela Featherstone, by all that’s holy! What are you doing here?”
“I’m with my husband,” she replied bitterly.
“But I thought—I read that you were giving house parties, attending race-meetings, and all that sort of thing. I came to Canada the week before you were married. I read about it and wondered who the happy man was.”
Angela’s hand played with the running water.150D’Arcy was scarcely more than an acquaintance, but at least he was one of her own set. Like a lot of other men, D’Arcy had made love to her and been repulsed.
“Look here, I don’t understand this,” rejoined D’Arcy. “You—you aren’t prospecting?”
She nodded.
“Great Scott! It’s bad enough for men, but for a woman——!” He looked round. “Is your husband about?”
“He’s up the bank cutting a new pole.”
“I see.”
He gave her another searching look, the meaning of which was clear to her. In the same mute but eloquent language she gave him to understand the chief fact—she was unhappy.
“To bring you here—to bring a cultured woman into a country like this——!”
Words failed him. He touched her hand softly.
“Where are you making for?”
“A creek down the river called ’Red Ruin.’ He has staked two claims there.”
He nodded reflectively.151
“I’m making for Dawson for some gear. I’ll drop in and see you some day if I may?”
“Do. I should enjoy a talk with you.”
“Your—your husband won’t object?”
“Does it matter?”
He laughed and, shaking her hand, paddled his frail craft out into the stream. Looking up, she saw Jim coming down the bank, with the ax swinging in one hand and a new pole over his shoulder. He unfastened the rope and entered the boat.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“An old friend,” she replied coldly.
She saw his eyes flash as he threw his weight on the pole and sent the boat hurtling down the river. But for the bitterness rankling within her, she might have found time to admire her pilot. Big as he was, there was nothing ungainly about him. Every movement was beautiful in its perfect exhibition of muscular energy. The hard knotted muscles in his bare arms swelled and relaxed as they performed the work allotted them. Little beads of perspiration sparkled on the bare neck, and the wind played among the streaming mass of his black hair. But she had no152eyes for this. From the moment when he had unceremoniously forced her on this journey of horror and desolation her wounded pride had smothered every other emotion. Her soul hungered for one thing—escape. Thwarted though her other attempts had been, she meant to try again. To try, and try, until he grew sick of holding a woman against her will. The unexpected genesis of D’Arcy raised her hopes to high pitch.
They ultimately entered the narrow, sluggish creek, and Jim beached the boat on the northern side. She saw several stakes driven in the earth, and realized that these marked the boundaries of the two claims.
They pitched the tent some distance from the claims—high up on the bank, to guard against the trickling water that ran down the bluff and into the creek.
On the morrow Jim started digging. She condescended to take a little interest in this, for the experience was novel. A lucky strike might mean freedom from this life of hardship and misery. Once back in England—— The thought was tantalizing. She watched Jim commence to153drive a hole through the matted undergrowth, exhibiting surprise when the pick rang hard on the frozen earth beneath.
“Rock?” she queried.
“Nope—earth. It’s froze right down for a hundred feet. Bed-rock ought to be three or four feet down. That’s where the gold is—or ought to be.”
“And if it isn’t there?”
“Sink another hole, an’ keep on doin’ it till I git it.”
Later in the day he reached bed-rock, at a depth of six feet from the surface. The washing-pan came into operation, and he sought eagerly for the golden dust—in vain.
“Muck!” he ejaculated.
The next pan, and the next, produced similar results. He commenced another hole about six feet from the first, driving through fallen trees and vegetable matter that had lain there for tens of centuries. When the evening came no sign of gold had appeared. He went to the tent and partook of the meal that Angela had prepared.
“Any luck?” she asked.
“Nope, but it’ll come. If not here, then somewhere154else. But there’s five hundred feet of frontage to be bored yet.”
Angela shrugged her shoulders. He talked as though time was of no importance. She knew he would go on and on until he had achieved what he set out to do. The summer was short—a brief four months. In October down would come the winter, freezing everything solid for eight long months. Between October 21 and November 8 the Yukon would close until the middle of May. She realized that she had, as yet, tasted but the latter end of winter. To live through the whole length of the Arctic night, away in the vast wilderness of the North, was a prospect that appalled her.
She wandered up the bank, and through the dense growth of hemlock that led to a precipitous hill. High up on its slope she stopped and surveyed the landscape. Despite the bitterness of her soul, she could not repress an exclamation of wonderment.
Stretching away in all directions was tier upon tier of snow-clad peaks, aglow with the soft radiance of the low-lying sun as it swept the horizon towards the North in its uninterrupted155circuit of the heavens. The southern end of the Alaskan range seemed like an opalescent serrated bow, changing to violet through all the darker hues of the spectrum by some strange freak of the atmosphere, only to leap into glorious amber as the fringe of a cloud passed across the origin of illumination.
Everything seemed so vast, so forbidding, it reduced her to a state of ignominy. If one desired a sense of Eternity, here it was. Time and space merged into one inscrutable entity—the Spirit of the North. She had felt that Spirit when crossing the passes that led to the Klondyke. Here it was limned in clearer form. The everlasting peaks; the aquamarine glaciers, roaring and plunging into the sea; the vast forests sprawling across the valleys and up the bases of the mountains to some two thousand feet, virgin as they were ten thousand years ago; the noisy fiords cumbered with the ice of crystal rivers, breaking the deathlike silence with ear-splitting concussions—all combined in one awe-inspiring picture of nature’s incomparable handiwork.
And here under her feet were fragrant flowers,156lured from the shallow covering of earth and matted creeper to last but a brief season, and then to sleep the whole long winter under the snow.
She sighed and made her way down the hill towards the tent. Beside the fire was Jim, gazing into the past. She thought her husband was like this strange immense land—cruel but magnificent, primal and alluring, yet hateful. As she approached, a similar comparison entered Jim’s mind, with her as the object.
“Cold and proud as a mountain peak,” he muttered. “There’s no sun that can melt her, no storm that can move her. God, but she’s beautiful!”
157CHAPTER XIFRUITLESS TOIL
The two claims on Red Ruin became as honeycombed as a wasp’s nest. Day after day Angela watched the bare-armed, red-shirted figure at work, witnessing his failure with a set face. It became patent that the claims were bad ones, and that Red Ruin was living up to its name. All the labor of driving through matted undergrowth and frozen gravel was vain. “Hope long deferred maketh the heart sick,” and it made Angela’s sick. She knew that sooner or later Jim must accept the inevitable and abandon the quest—there. She hoped it would be soon. After all, failure meant the same as success—to her.
If Red Ruin failed, what else could he do but pack up and go home, as thousands of others were doing? The patched-up steamers that were now plying up the river were packed with a queer158gathering of “failures” and “successes.” Men who had staked all on this promising gamble were going back to the harness of civilization, sadder and wiser beings. The relatively few successful ones were making programmes for the future—a future in which an unaccustomed luxury figured prominently. Disease and famine were taking their toll of the participants in the great adventure. From all along the Yukon watershed came news of pestilence and panic. Scurvy raged in Circle City, and a hungry mob at Forty Mile was only quelled by troopers with loaded rifles. A boat coming up-river laden with 200 belated gold-mad men and women was stopped by the Commissioner, and all but those who had foresight enough to bring a twelve-months’ food supply were refused a landing, for the famine was acute.
These pitiful facts came to Angela’s ears. Even money could no longer purchase food. The knowledge put a terrible weapon into her hands. If she destroyed their food supply freedom was assured. For one hour she even contemplated this means of escape. Was it not for his good too? Could he hope to win where thousands had159failed? She tried to convince herself that it would be no act of treachery but one of kindness. The lie rankled in her brain. A revulsion of feeling came as she reflected upon the immediate past, for despite all her antagonism she could not but admire the indomitable will of him. Failure was written all over the two honeycombed claims, but it never daunted him. She heard the spade and ax ringing on the hard earth from early morning till late evening, and saw him swinging up the hill, a little grim, but otherwise unchanged.
She was impatiently waiting for him to confess his failure, but he never did. There was still some hundred feet of river front to be “tried out,” and Jim calmly went on boring his monotonous holes. It was maddening to watch him.
One morning two men came poling down the creek in a flat-bottomed boat packed with gear and food. They pulled up at sight of Jim. He recognized them as the owners of two claims farther up the creek.
“Still diggin’, pard?” queried one.
“Yep.”
“Wal, it’s sure a waste of time. There ain’t160no pay dirt on this yere creek. We got five hundred feet up yonder plum full of holes, and we ain’t shoveled out naught but muck.”
Jim stretched himself.
“’Tain’t panning out up to schedule,” he grunted, “but I’m going through with this bit afore I hit the trail again.”
“Better cut it, Cap,” said the second man. “I gotta hunch they didn’t call this Red Ruin for nothin’. See here, I found six abandoned claims half a mile up. I reckon the guys who pitched that lot over were the same as did the christening of this bit of water.”
Jim laughed carelessly. He had little doubt that the location was bad, but it went against his nature to quit before he had carried out his task. The first man stuck a wad of tobacco between his back teeth.
“That pardner o’ yourn don’t seem to take kindly to diggin’,” he ejaculated.
Jim stared at him, and then tightened his lips.
“No need to fly off the handle, Cap. I had a pard like him once, strong on paper but liked the other fellow to do the diggin’.”
“What the blazes are you talkin’ about?”161demanded Jim. “I ain’t inviting you to give opinions. What’s more, she ain’t ahim. You go to hell—and quick about it!”
The man looked at his comrade and they both grinned. Jim put down the spade in a way that caused them to stare blankly.
“Wal, you’re some joker. Pete, am I blind? It’s no odds, anyway, and no offense meant, but by ginger! it’s the first time I’ve seen a woman smoke a two-dollar cigar.”
“What’s that?”
Jim suddenly felt dazed as a new explanation entered his mind. He stepped down towards the boat.
“What’s all this?” he inquired. “I’m kinder interested.”
The first man explained.
“I bin campin’ way back there. The other guys who abandoned them claims played hell with the timber—gormandized the whole lot—must have gone in for the timber business. So I bin cuttin’ spruce up there on the hill. Wal, I often seen you drilling holes in this muck, but damn me if I ever seen your pard put a hand to the spade. He seems to live in that darned tent.162I seen him twice hiking out—to Dawson, for a jag, I guess. Didn’t seem on the level to me——”
Jim’s mouth twitched. He had no doubt about the veracity of this statement. Someone had been visiting Angela, and she had said nothing of it.
“Didn’t know he went to Dawson,” he replied evasively. “Thanks for the information. I’ll sure talk to him about it.”
They nodded and began to pole down the creek and out into the river. Jim sat down on a pile of muck and mopped his brow. The tent was approachable from the river on the other side of the bluff. The spruce-trees that surrounded it hid it from the view of one working by the creek, though any occupant would have the advantage of seeing without being seen. He remembered reaching the tent a few days before, to find Angela singularly embarrassed. Was that the day on which the stranger had called? Despite his heartache he could think no wrong of her. She was lonely, pining for the life she had left. Between him and her loomed an apparently unbridgeable gulf. If she had found a friend in that163mixed crowd back in Dawson, hadn’t she a right to see him and speak with him? His heart answered in the affirmative, but it hurt just the same.
He said nothing to Angela on the subject, but carried on with his thankless task, with a strange mixture of pride and jealousy eating into his heart. When more wood was needed he innocently(?) hewed down two spruce-trees in close proximity to the tent, whose removal afforded him a view of the tent entrance from the scene of his daily “grind.”
For a whole week he kept his eyes intermittently on the brown bell-tent, but the stranger came not. He wondered if Angela had become aware of the increased vision afforded him by the felled trees, and was careful to keep her strange friend away. He noticed some slight change in her disposition—a queer light in her eye and a mocking ring in the monosyllabic replies which she gave to any questions he found it necessary to put to her.
Their conversation had not improved with time. If he addressed her at all it was with reference to the domestic arrangements. She, on164her part, never interrogated him on any subject. Every movement of her lips, and of her body, made it clear that she regarded him as a complete stranger under whose jailership certain circumstances had placed her. Her determination was scarcely less than his own. She meant to break his stubborn spirit—to arouse in him, if possible, a violent aversion to her presence. Already the summer was vanishing. The few birds—swallows, swifts, and yellow warblers—that had immigrated at the coming of spring were preparing for a long journey South. Cold winds were turning the leaves brown, and the whole landscape deepened into autumn glory. Angela noted the change with an impatience that was evident to any observer.
Jim, testing the last few yards of claim, pondered over the problem of her change of front. She even sang at times, in a way that only succeeded in deepening his suspicions. Was she singing on account of some happiness newly found?—some interest in life which lay beyond himself and the immediate surroundings?
It seemed to be the case, and the consciousness of this disturbing truth caused him acute mental165agony. Some other man could bring her happiness. Some other man had succeeded in breaking into that icy reserve against which all attempts on his part had been vain. Was it worth while continuing the drama? If he let her escape, forgetfulness might come. Time had its reward no less than its revenges. Why suffer, as he was suffering, all the agonies of burning, unrequited love. At nights, with that hateful curtain between them, he had writhed in anguish to hear the soft breathing within a foot or so of his head. More than once a mad desire to rise up and claim her as mate came to him, only to be cast aside as the better part of him prevailed over these primal instincts.
“She’s mine,” he argued, “mine by purchase, an’ if I was anything of a man I’d go and take her now.”
But just because he was a man he didn’t. She owed her sanctity to the fact that this rough son of Nature loved her with a love that seemed to rend his heart in twain. The thin canvas between them was as safe a partition as walls of granite. She might have found time to admire the quality of his love, considering the circumstances166prevailing, but her pride left scant room for any sentiment of that sort. She merely took these things for granted.
Jim, with the last hole bored in the iron earth, and the precious glint of gold still as absent as ever, gazed back at the tent with knitted brows. Red Ruin was a failure, as he had long known it to be. The future loomed dark and uncertain. There were no more creeks near Dawson worth the staking, but gold lay farther afield—over the vast repelling mountains. It would mean suffering, misery, for her. A winter in the Great Alone, harassed by blizzards, bitten by the intense cold, tracked by wolves and all the ferocious starved things of the foodless wilderness, was all he had to offer—that, and a burning love of which she seemed totally unconscious, or coldly indifferent. Why not let her go now? To see her suffer were but to multiply his own suffering a thousandfold, and yet she was his in the sight of God! He emitted a hard, guttural laugh as the mockery of the phrase was made clear to him.
He collected the gear and, slinging it across his shoulders, mounted the hill. Overhead a167long stream of birds was beating toward the South. He bade them a mute farewell, knowing that he would miss their silvern voices, and their morning wrangling among the spruce and hemlocks.
“I guess life might be beautiful enough,” he ruminated, “if one only had the things one wants, but the gittin’ of ’em is sure hell!”
He flung the pick and ax and washing-pan to the ground, and looked inside the tent. It was empty, and the cooking utensils were lying about as they were left at breakfast-time. Then he noticed that some of Angela’s clothes were missing. The latter fact removed any lingering doubts from his mind. If any further evidence were required, it existed in the shape of a pile of cigar ash on the duckboarding.
“So!” he muttered.
He walked outside and stood gazing over the autumn-tinted country. A stray bird twitted among the trees, but the great silence was settling down every hour as the feathered immigrants mounted from copse and dell into the blue vault of heaven.
“So!” he repeated, as though he were powerless168to find any fuller expression of his emotions. He went back into the tent and slipped a revolver into his holster, then with huge strides went over the hill towards Dawson.
He covered the five miles in less than fifty minutes, and entered the congested main street. The saloons were busy as usual, and there seemed to be more people than ever. A trading store was selling mackinaws, parkhas, and snow-shoes, as fast as they could be handled. “Old-timers” lounged in the doorway and grinned at the huge prices paid for these winter necessaries. Jim evaded the throng and made for the river bank. He guessed that Angela and her “friend” would not risk staying long in Dawson, and had doubtless timed their escape to catch the last boat down-river.
At that moment theSilas P. Younggave announcement of its departure by two long blasts from its steam-whistle. Jim came out on the river bank and saw the boat well out in the stream, its paddle churning up the muddy water. Near him was an old man waving a red handkerchief. He recognized Jim and stopped his signaling.169
“So you’ve sent her home, pard? Wal, it’s a darn good——”
“What’s that?”
“Yore wife. I sent mine too. It’s going to be merry hell in this yere town afore the summer comes round——”
Jim stood petrified. He had half expected this, but now that he was face to face with it the blow came harder than he expected it to be. She was going—going out of his life for ever.... Perhaps it was as well that way. He turned to Hanky, the old man.
“Did you see her go?”
“Yep. I saw her go aboard.”
“Was—was there any other guy with her?”
“No—leastways, that fellow D’Arcy saw her off. Friend of yours, I take it?”
Jim nodded, scarcely trusting himself to speak. The name was unknown to him, but he remembered the man in the canoe who had spoken to Angela a few months before. It must be the same man—the man who had visited her at the camp, and who had dropped the cigar ash on the floor that morning. D’Arcy had triumphed, then! He concluded that the latter must be170aboard, though Hanky had not seen him go on the boat. He thought of Lord Featherstone and all those fine relations and friends of Angela’s. How they would chuckle when they heard that she had escaped from her “impossible husband”! His gorge rose as he visualized the scene. They had sold him something only to get it back again for nothing. It wasn’t straight dealing—it wasn’t on the level. They had bargained on this eventuality when they made the deal. They concluded it would be easy to hoodwink a “cowpuncher.”
“No, by God!” he muttered. “I ain’t lettin’ go.”
He turned to Hanky.
“You gotta hoss, Hank?”
“Sure!”
“Will you loan him to me for an hour or two? I’ll take care of him. I’m strong on hosses.”
“She’s yourn,” replied Hanky. “Come right along and I’ll fix you up. She’s stabled at Dan’s place.”
Ten minutes later Jim was mounted on the big black mare. He waved his hand to Hanky and went up the street like a streak of lightning.
171CHAPTER XIIINTO THE WILDERNESS
Hanky’s mare, after being cooped up in a stable for a week without exercise, stretched its neck to the fresh air, and under the urging heels of Jim killed space at a remarkable rate. Mounting an almost perpendicular hill, Jim saw theSilas P. Youngbeating down-stream, a mile or two ahead, at a steady ten knots.
He made queer noises with his lips and his mount responded instantly, leaping with distended nostrils over stone and hummocks, like a piece of live steel. To be on a horse again was glorious. Instantly his form had merged with the animal’s—they moved as one creature, raising dust and moss as they thundered down the river.
The boat turned a corner and was lost to view for a few minutes, but a mile lower down he saw172it again, with a creamy wake streaming behind it. He was nearer now and going strong. He pressed his hand over the glossy neck of the horse and crooned to it.
“Gee, yore some hoss—you beaut! The man that lays whip on your flanks oughter be shot. We’re gaining, honey. Another league and we’ll be putting it over that ’honking’ bunch of machinery. Stead-dee!”
The thundering pace was maintained. Uphill, downhill, on the flat, it was all the same. Heels were no longer necessary. The horse understood that the big “horse-man” wanted to get somewhere in quick time, and meant to see him through.
Twenty minutes later they were abreast of theSilas P. Young. Then they shot into a deep gully and were lost among a thick forest of spruce-trees. For two miles horse and man evaded low-hanging branches and treacherous footfalls, until the timber thinned and the straggling Yukon came again to view. Away up-stream was the steamboat, crawling down by the near bank. There was no time to be lost if Angela’s escape was to be frustrated. He173tethered his foam-flecked mount to a tree and crept down the steep bank. The muddied water swirled along at a ramping five knots—a vile-looking cocoa-colored mass that was scarcely inviting to any swimmer. He raised his hands and dived down.
With a powerful over-arm stroke he made for the line which the steamboat was following. In that wide welter of water the bobbing head would in all probability be lost to view, or any kind of shout would be drowned by the clanking noise of the paddle-wheels. The extreme danger of the exploit was not lost upon him, but the resolve, once rooted, stuck fast.
He looked up and saw theSilas P. Youngbearing down on him, her squat nose setting her course in dead line with his eyes. Treading water, he waited for the psychological moment. The chief danger lay in the vicinity of the paddle-wheel. To be caught up in that meant certain death. He resolved to fetch the boat as near the bows as possible and on the port side.
He heard a bell ring twice, and then to his horror the boat changed her course. It was barely two hundred yards away, and bore174straight down on him. He dived and swam for his life to avoid direct impact.... At that moment a man saw him and yelled out something to the Captain. The latter peered over the side, but saw nothing.
“You’re drunk!” he retorted.
“Tell you I seen a man right under her nose. Better stop the boat.”
The Captain shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess I’ll keep straight on,” he replied. “What’s it got to do with me, anyway? He ain’t a passenger——”
He stopped and gasped as an enormous, saturated spectre climbed over the side. A crowd of men playing cards nearby stopped their game and stared.
“Who in hell are you?” asked the Captain.
Jim shook the wet from his hair and pushed forward without a word. His keen eyes ranged all over the packed decks. Then he grunted as he caught sight of a familiar figure in the stern of the boat. It was Angela, white of face, and amazed at the appearance of this totally unexpected apparition. The crowd, struck dumb with wonderment, made way for him. He strode up175to Angela and stopped within a foot of her, gazing fixedly into her eyes.
“You!”
“Yep—it’s me all right. Are you ready?”
“Ready——!”
“Can’t wait too long. It’s a tidy swim, and the river gits wider every mile.”
She recoiled from him in horror. For the past hour she had been dreaming of the comforts and joys of civilization. Once in the river, escape had seemed certain—and here was her pugnacious jailer with determination written all over his set features.
“I’m waiting,” he said calmly.
“Are you mad?” she retorted. “I’m finished with that terrible life. This time you have come too late. Unless you go ashore now there will not be another chance.”
“Then we’ll go right now.”
“We!”
“Yep—you and me.”
He moved towards her and caught her firmly by the arm. A group of men, interested spectators of the drama, thought it was time to176interfere. One of them, a grizzled man of fifty, touched Jim on the arm.
“What’s all this, stranger?”
“Don’t butt in,” growled Jim.
His interrogator disregarded him, and turned to Angela.
“Who is this broiler, missie?”
“He is—he is——. He wants to take me back there, to a place I hate! Oh, please bring the Captain!”
The captain was already pushing his way through the crowd, annoyed at this unconventional method of boarding his ship. He put both hands in his pockets, stuck out his little bearded chin, and glared at Jim.
“What the blazes do you mean by boarding my ship? Where’s your ticket, eh? And leave that lady alone—she’s a passenger of mine.”
Some of his indignation vanished when the fierce gray eyes of Jim fixed him in an unflinching stare. He saw trouble looming in the offing. Jim turned his eyes to Angela.
“We’ll be mushing,” he said briefly.
Linking her arm in his, he began to push through the crowd. The grizzled man said something177to his comrade, and they spread out and formed a human barrier to his further progress.
“Don’t butt in, boys—’tain’t healthy,” warned Jim.
“Git him!” whispered the grizzled man, “and yank him back in the river!”
Jim’s hand flew to his belt and the big revolver was jerked out in a trice. He pushed it into the stomach of the foremost man, and caused that worthy to shiver with terror. The latter backed away, whilst his friends hunted for firearms.
“Stand aside!” roared Jim.
The lane widened, but at the end of it were two men handling revolvers, with a dangerous glint in their eyes.
“So yore after stoppin’ a man eloping with his own wife, eh?”
“Wife——?”
“Thet’s so.”
The crowd stared. This put a new complexion on matters. The Captain looked at Angela.
“Say, is that husky your ’old man’?”
Angela flushed with embarrassment.178
“I hate him, and I won’t go with him!” she cried hotly.
The Captain spread out his hands.
“Why in hell didn’t you say so afore?” he asked Jim.
“Is it any of your darned business?”
“I guess it’s your funeral, all right,” chuckled the grizzled man.
“Better come on as far as Eagle. I’ll put you off there,” said the Captain. “Can’t stop just here.”
Jim shook his head and moved towards the rail.
“I’m sure in a hurry,” he said. “We ain’t scared of a drop of water, are we Angy?”
Angela bestowed upon him a look of mingled contempt and terror. The high wooded bank seemed miles away, and the river ran like a millrace.
“I won’t come—I won’t!” she hissed.
But he had already reached the rail. Her heart seemed to freeze with horror as he lifted her on to the seat and clasped her firmly round the waist, imprisoning her arms so that resistance became impossible.179
“Stop!” yelled the Captain. “You can’t go that way——”
A gasp came from the crowd as they saw him take a deep breath and leap down with his burden. They disappeared beneath the filthy water, to come to the surface a few seconds later in exactly the same position as they had entered it—Angela with her arms held from behind, and the amazing husband swimming on his broad back, with head towards the nearest bank. The current carried him down-stream, but his inshore progress was swift and certain. A huge yell came from the admiring spectators as theSilas P. Youngpursued her course and rounded another bend.
Angela, stunned and terrified by this unexpected precipitation into ice-cold water, lay like a log with eyes closed. She lost all account of time in the mental paralysis that gripped her.... Only when they touched bottom and Jim commenced to carry her to the bank did her full sense come into operation. She stood in her sodden clothing, her pale, beautiful face quivering as she regarded this monster of a man.180
“You brute! You heartless ruffian! Oh, if I could only make you feel what I think of you!”
“If I could only make you feel just what I think of you!” he said slowly. “But we’re both trying to do just what can’t be done. Let’s drop it and find the hoss. Better foller behind, and not try running away. Maybe you think it amuses me to yank you back like this every time—but it don’t.”
He began to tramp along a beaten path that wound up over the hill. Angela followed, with swift steps, for a cold wind blew down the valley and set her teeth chattering. Overhead thick gray clouds obliterated the sun. A mile farther on Jim stopped and, slipping off his coat, went to her.
“You’re cold. Put it on.”
“No—thanks.”
“Put it on!”
“Why this sudden regard for my welfare?”
It was like a stab to him. She saw it and was pleased. But later on she was a little ashamed of that throb of transient joy. She would have liked to express her regrets, but her pride prevented such a descent.181
They found the horse, pawing impatiently at the ground. He whinnied plaintively as he heard Jim’s footfall and the call that the latter’s lips gave utterance to. Without a word Jim lifted Angela into the saddle and mounted behind her. A “cluck” from his lips, and the mare went galloping across the uneven country towards Red Ruin. They arrived there just as the first flakes of snow began to fall.
For a whole week no single word passed between them. The first snow had come, and every day found the thermometer registering a lower temperature. In a week or two the whole land would be in the grip of the pitiless winter. What were Jim’s intentions? She saw him pondering over a map and marking routes. After a trip into Dawson he came back with a team of dogs and a new sled, plus dog-feed, snow-shoes, and sundry other gear. One evening he broke the silence.
“Angela!”
She lifted her head from the book that she was reading.
“We’re hitting the trail to-morrow.”182
“To where?”
“North—the Chandalar River district. There’s nothing left worth staking down here. But there’s gold up there, and we can’t afford to waste time.”
“Very well,” she said icily, and turned to the book again.
He put his arm across and closed the book.
“Better git this thing clear.”
“Isn’t it clear?”
“Nope. Listen here—we got enough grub to carry us over the winter, that and no more. My last wad of dollars went to buy them dawgs. I guess you think I’m trash, and perhaps I am, but up here in the North men stick by their pardners till they strike gold or leave their bones on the trail. You’re my pard now—won’t you act on that and make the best of it?”
Her eyes shone defiantly in the glare of the paraffin lamp. Appealing to her sense of justice was useless in the face of circumstances.
“You call it partnership when the one is forced against her will, and the other uses every kind of diabolical means to assist his mastery? I am coming with you because there is no way out183of it. You understand. Nothing but force can save me—I see that. Your code of life is based on brute strength devoid of any kind of moral sense.”
His lips moved in a way that evidenced his resentment.
“What you call ’moral sense’ is a pretty queer thing, I allow. It lets a man sell his daughter for hard cash, and it lets that daughter play with a man’s feelings. If that’s moral sense I ain’t takin’ none.”
“Will you never forget that? Do you think I would have gone on with that had I believed you misinterpreted the whole thing?”
“Misinterpreted! Say, do your kisses allow of misinterpretation?”
She was amazed at this quick and telling thrust. She had yet much to learn about Colorado Jim. Education is a matter of mind, independent of environment. She made the mistake of believing it to be the special monopoly of high-schools and gentle breeding. She was unable to recognize the diamond in its crude unpolished state.184
“When I kissed you, did you think that was a kind o’ habit with me?” he queried.
She shrugged her shoulders, not wishing to remember the incident.
“It was the first time anything like that had happened to me,” he resumed, “and it was like touching heaven while it lasted. But I see now there was nothing in it—no more than kissing one of them saloon women—— Ugh!”
She felt like striking him, in her anger, at the insulting comparison, but she was not unconscious of the truth of it.... She opened the book again, and strove to forget his presence and the approaching horror of Arctic wanderings. She saw him pull the fur cap down over his ears, and disappear through the tent opening to feed the howling malemutes.
On the morrow they packed their tent, loaded the sled with everything they possessed, and set their head for the North. She sat on the sled, clad in thick mackinaw coat, fur cap, and mittens, whilst Jim stood behind with a twenty-foot whip clasped in his hand. The mixed team185of twelve dogs snarled and snapped at each other as they waited for the word of command.
“Mush—you malemutes!” cried Jim.
The long curling whip came down with a whistling crack, and the team went trotting across the dazzling white plain.