186CHAPTER XIIITHE TERROR OF THE NORTH
There is no stillness like the stillness of the Arctic. In the frozen wastes of the North the human voice is a blessed and desirable thing. Imagine an ice-locked land, stretching on either hand for thousands of miles, with never a bird’s song to break the silence, where nothing lives but a few starved wolves, and consumptive Indians existing for the most part in fœtid igloos, venturing out but rarely in search of edible roots or an occasional indigenous animal. Ninety per cent. of the human life of Alaska was settled along the Yukon valley, in close proximity to the vast artery that connected with the outer world.
North of that the boundless wilderness stretches away over plain and mountain to the very pole. Traveling is slow and tortuous, for187beaten trails are few, and the wanderer must “pack” his own trail where the snow is deep—walking in front of the sled and treading a negotiable sled-track by means of snow-shoes.
The body craves for warmth, and warmth can only be obtained by excessive consumption of food. The normal ration of a healthy being is trebled to counteract the enormous evaporation of bodily heat. Fat is the staff of life. The Esquimo, settled along the coast by the Bering Sea, takes his meal of ten pounds of blubber and feels a better man. By imitative methods the white man survives the awful cold and the pitiless conditions.
To Angela it seemed that every single discomfort to which human life was subject was epitomized in these appalling wastes. The ice was yet new and river trails were unsafe. Day after day they plowed through the deep snow, ever Northward, with the wind in their teeth, and the sun but a mere spectre mounting the horizon, with an effort, to sink again but a few hours later. The dogs frightened her. They were fierce, untamed brutes who snarled at each other and fought on occasion, until the stinging lash188descended on their thick coats to remind them of the terrible master behind the sled. She came to see how necessary was the whip. They responded to that and that alone. Some of them were half wolf—creatures that were the result of inter-breeding on the part of Athabaskan Indians. Like their wolf parent their energy was immense. They ate but twice daily—enormous meals of pulped fish and nondescript material which filled two of the sacks on the sled.
They camped on bleak mountains and along frozen creeks. In the latter case Jim made double use of the camp-fire. Before retiring into the snow-banked tent for the night the fire was heaped high with branches. In the morning the thawed ground beneath it was excavated and washed with snow-water, lest it harbor the much desired red mineral.
Muck! Always muck! It seemed to her amazing that he should continue this heartbreaking quest. Much as she had prized the things that money could buy, she began to hate it now. As they penetrated farther North, so the conditions grew more appalling. No longer the sun mounted the horizon. Night and day189were much the same thing—a mysterious luminiferousness, merging into the fantastic lights of the great Aurora Borealis, that occasionally leapt across the Northern sky in spectrumatic beauty, to flicker and die, and rise again.
Day after day the journey went on. The ice being now strong, they skimmed across rivers and creeks, raising the snow in clouds and “switchbacking” over hummocks in a fashion that under other conditions might have been exhilarating. Then came the monotonous digging and washing, with its inevitable unsuccessful issue.
Striking the Yukon River at the “flats”—where it is reputed to be thirty miles wide—they followed its course for three weary days, until Fort Yukon was passed and the junction of the Chandalar River was made. It was while negotiating the rough surface of Chandalar that the “terror of the North” came down.
Jim heard it coming before Angela was aware of any unusual sound. For two days there had been no wind, saving a light zephyr that laid its bitter finger on the exposed flesh. Now a legion of devils were preparing for attack. A sound190like unto a human sigh broke the silence. It died away and came again, a little stronger. Immediately Jim pulled the “leader” dog to the lift and cracked the long whip over the team.
“Mush, darn you, mush!”
“What’s that?” inquired Angela, as an uncanny groaning met her ears.
“The wind. Gee, but she’s going to raise the dead!”
The high bank loomed up and the sled turned a half-circle and came close under a protecting bluff. Jim tied the team to a tree and ran forward to Angela. She was standing terror-stricken at the sound of the approaching monster. Behind her was a huge snow-drift. He pointed to the white mass, and shouted that his voice might be heard above the Niagara of sound.
“We’ll sure freeze stiff unless we git inside that—hurry!”
They bored their way into the crisp snow, like dogs in a rabbit-hole. There was scarcely need to urge Angela to use her strength. The noise of the approaching blizzard was like to fifty thousand shrieking devils. The little light that remained was suddenly blotted out. At nearly191a hundred miles an hour the solid mass of wind and snow came roaring down from the mountains. The whole earth seemed to reel under the impact. Inside the sheltering snow mass it was cold enough, but outside nothing human could live. The dogs, familiar with this phenomenon of the higher latitudes, had crawled into the snow and would lie there until the noise subsided.
The two humans huddled up inside the snow heard nothing and saw nothing. It was as if the whole world had suddenly crashed into a sister planet and was hurtling into space, a broken mass. Hours passed and no change came. Occasionally the snow-drift seemed to shift a little, and Jim dreaded that some clutching finger of the wind would tear the frozen morsel of shelter from the cliff and drive it into thin air. That were indeed the end, for at fifty degrees below zero the Arctic hurricane is like a knife, from whose murderous edge no escape is possible.
They crawled lower in the snow until they reached the ice itself. It was suffocating, for the wind had blown in the entrance and fresh air was excluded.... Jim felt the body close to him—it was still as death. A great fear swept192through him. She was not strong enough for this trial—she was——! He thrust his hand inside the thick coat and felt the heart. It was beating but slowly, and her hands were cold. He clasped her to him and rubbed the face with snow, growling like an animal in pain as the hideous uproar continued.
She had nearly fainted; but another hour of this poisonous incarceration and she would never recover. He dare not attempt to get to the fresher air. Outside it was certain death, and any moment might assist the wind in carrying out the task it seemed so determined to perform.... A piercing wind suddenly entered, and the whole mass quivered. He realized that the worst was about to happen—the snow was moving. Before he could fix on his mittens the snow and its two inmates were flung like a rifle-shot across the ice. There was a thundering roar, and the whole pile broke into a myriad parts. Still clasping the unconscious Angela, he went helter-skelter before the blast, pitching and sliding on the ice. The power to think was leaving him. Brain and body seemed numbed and out of action. He was only conscious that he held193in his arms the thing from which not even this murderous wind could sever him. He calmly waited for the end—the dreamy, painless end that freezing death would bring....
Then he suddenly gave vent to a choking cry of joy. The wind had suddenly, marvelously vanished. He heard it howling its way across the land to the South. He dragged himself from the ice and looked back. The Aurora was flashing again and the sky was clear. The strange Arctic light was settling down on the scene, turning the snow-clad waste into mysterious colors. He rubbed his frost-bitten hands vigorously with snow and hurried up the river with Angela clasped in his arms.
He found the sled overturned, some distance from where he had left it, and hurriedly rigged up the tent on a suitable place on the bank. In a few minutes he had Angela inside, on a pile of blankets, and was forcing brandy between her lips. Seeing that she was reviving, he lit the oil stove and went to round up the dog-team.
When he returned Angela was boiling the kettle on top of the stove. She handed him a cup of cocoa in silence. He took it without attempting194to drink it. Her extraordinary recovery amazed him.
“Is it all over?” she queried ultimately.
“Yep,” he gasped. “But it sure did blow some.”
“Yes—it’s a good job we were inside the snow-drift,” she replied indifferently.
He put down the mug of cocoa that he had taken up. Of all bewildering things this was the most bewildering. She was acting again—acting in her own subtle fashion. He came to the conclusion that women were beyond his comprehension—and Angela most of all.
On the next morning the temperature was moderately high. They left the river and found a good trail along the bank. Angela asked no questions regarding his destination. She had got beyond caring very much now. She determined to adopt an attitude of cold indifference.
The sled was negotiating a bad piece of trail when it suddenly stopped, and she heard an ejaculation from behind her. She saw Jim step down and examine something black in the snow. She gave a little cry as he caught the black object195and pulled it up—it was a dead man, frozen as stiff as a board.
“Poor devil!” muttered Jim. “I guess he got caught in that wind.”
He searched through the pockets of the mackinaw coat, but found nothing that would act as a means to identification. He let the body fall and covered it with snow.
“Aren’t you going to bury him?”
He nodded and looked round him in expectant fashion.
“Must have a shack or a tent round about. He’s got no pack of any kind. If it was a tent, likely enough it’s a hundred miles away by now. If it was a shack it’ll be very useful—to us.”
She prayed it might be the latter. Anything was better than this mad wandering.
They found the shack ten minutes later, nestling in a hollow, with its chimney still smoking. They pulled up outside and went to investigate the home of the unfortunate stranger. It was a comfortable affair, containing two rooms and a small outhouse, plus a certain amount of rough furniture. In the corner of the196outer room was the ubiquitous Yukon stove, with a fryingpan on the top containing a much overdone “flapjack.” A pair of snow-shoes lay in a corner, and sundry articles of clothing were hanging on nails. In the next room was a camp-bed and more clothes, two bags of flour, one of beans, a few tins of canned meat, a rifle and a hundred cartridges—but no letters or information of any kind respecting its late owner.
“It’ll do,” said Jim. “It’ll be better than a tent, anyway.”
Angela agreed reluctantly. Somehow it seemed heartless to coolly take possession of this place, with its late owner lying dead but a bare mile away. It gave her an uncanny sensation as she glanced at all the little things that belonged to him, that his cold hands had touched but a few hours ago. She reflected that a year ago such an incident as this would have chilled her with horror. But apart from arousing a small amount of sentimentality it affected her now very little. It came as a shock to her to realize that fact—she was becoming as wild as this “cowpuncher” husband of hers, who even now was sallying forth with spade and ax to excavate a shallow grave in the frozen197earth, to save a man’s body from prowling wolves. And all without an atom of sentiment!
So little did she know of him! She did not see him remove his cap as he gently placed the luckless man in his last resting-place, or hear the short whispered prayer that he uttered.
The dogs were unharnessed and driven into the outhouse which was to serve as their future domicile. Jim collected the dead man’s belongings together and made a neat pile of them in one corner of the outer room. Angela’s personal things were taken into the more comfortable inner room, which boasted of a match-boarded wall—not to mention half a dozen rather indelicate prints tacked on to the same.
When he had occasion to go into the room again, after Angela had been there, he noticed that the prints had been torn from the walls. Angela was certainly very proper—for a married woman!
198CHAPTER XIVTHE BREAKING-POINT
The weeks that followed were a testing-time for Angela. Her resolutions wavered and died, confronted as she was by the terrible isolation and loneliness. Stoicism was easy enough in theory but most difficult in practice. The unchanging icy vista and the eternal silence drove her to desperation. She tried work as an antidote, and found it dulled the edge of her despair.
They were fortunate enough to find a fish-trap in the outhouse. Jim regarded this discovery with great satisfaction. He chopped a hole in the river ice and, baiting the trap with a canned herring, managed to entice a “two-pounder” into the wicker basket. Angela’s attempt to cook it was not entirely a failure, and the repast was a pleasant change from the eternal beans and pork.
Thereafter Angela took over the piscatorial199department. It meant going to the river each morning and breaking the newly formed ice over the fish-hole—a task that called forth all her physical energy. At times the fish were scarce and the journeys without result, but they were not entirely wasted. She found that her body glowed with the exercise and her soft arms began to develop muscle.
Each day Jim took the sled and the dogs, and explored the creek in the neighborhood. Farther and farther afield he went, staying away at nights and leaving Angela to the melancholia of her soul. The shack seemed full of a strange presence, a ghostly kind of ego that made itself felt. Then along the valley came the bloodcurdling howl of a wolf, to add to her terror and misery.
The icehole froze up on one bitter night, and all the efforts of Jim could not reach water again. He eventually gave up the task as hopeless.
“Frozen right down to the river bed,” he explained.
The great loneliness took deeper hold of her. The eternal gloom began to affect her mentally. She became the victim of prolonged fits of depression;200Jim, tired and heavy-hearted with his arduous wanderings, noticed the change in her. It caused him acute mental agony, and not a little self-reproach. At nights he pondered the problem. Was he subjecting her to unjustifiable misery? Had he a right to do this? He knew he had not, but he was hoping—hoping vainly that she might abandon that spirit of antagonism, manifest in her every movement, and speak and act as one human being to another. He grew sick to realize that her will was no less strong than his own. What was there left to do but take her back and acknowledge defeat?
Defeat! The word aroused all his innate stubbornness. Never had he acknowledged defeat before. He had won through by sticking to the task at hand. Was he to give in now—to let this frozen-hearted woman beat him all round? How Featherstone would purr with pleasure when he knew! How all those high-browed aristocrats would congratulate this ill-treated wife on disposing of her unfortunate husband!
The old grievance still rankled, and his refusal to forget it reacted upon himself. This wilderness of great cold and hardship could not break201his endeavor, but a woman was slowly and surely doing so. All his dreams evolved around her—maddening dreams in which he was grasping and missing her....
The climax was to come, and it came in a way that was totally unexpected. It came with such crushing relentless weight that it left him a mere wreck of a man.
For three days Angela had spoken no word. When he arrived back at the shack after the usual vain hunt for gold, she gave him but a quick glance, sufficient enough to convey to her that he had failed for the hundredth time. On the third night, instead of handing him his meal from the stove she sat down and burst into passionate sobs.
Instinctively he put out his hand to clasp her trembling fingers. She pushed it away fiercely and stood up, shaking with emotion.
“You’ve got to let me go!” she cried.
“When the spring comes.”
“No, now. I can’t wait until the spring. This is killing me—killing me. Can’t you see that it will be too late then?”
“Angela, we came for a set purpose. If I fail202when the spring comes, we’ll go back to the life you want.”
“I’m going now,” she said grimly. “To-night!”
His mouth tightened.
“Be reasonable!”
“Reasonable! You talk of reason—you who brought me here to live like a dog, to treat as a dog——”
He sighed as he remembered her aversion to any attempted acts of kindness on his part. In every instance she had made it clear that she wanted nothing from him—that she refused kindnesses, sacrifices, on her behalf.
“I ain’t treated you in any way different to that in which a husband would treat his wife.”
“Wife—you call me that?”
“What do you call it, then?”
“Prisoner—slave!”
His face hardened.
“And if I did, ain’t there some justification? If our deal had been a love deal I guess the arrangement would have been canceled long ago. But it wasn’t. It was commercial transaction to which you gave your approval. It may203be morally wrong to keep you, but the whole darned frame-up was morally wrong. So morals don’t come into it—savvy? Legally I got a claim to my—goods, and you’re asking me to forgo that claim. But you don’t show much regret at taking a hand in that dirty business——”
“I told you I was sorry.”
“Yep—sorry, because it’s hurtingyou.”
She knew this was true, and the fact that he knew it too stung her. She sunk her head in her hands and remained for some time in silence. When she raised it again her face was full of a new determination.
“You are only bringing pain upon yourself,” she said tensely.
“I can bear it.”
“Can you?—I wanted to spare you—but you are forcing me to this—forcing me to tell you something that is going to hurt you.”
The tragic tone of her voice caused him to stand as though petrified.
“I said I should go now—to-night; and I am going.”
“So!” he stammered, feeling an awful pang of fear at his heart.204
“You have hitherto considered no one but yourself. How far will you carry your desire for vengeance?”
“I don’t get you——”
“Wait! I told you it was killing me up here. That didn’t seem to influence you much—but suppose there is someone else to be considered——”
“What are you saying?”
“Are you blind? Can’t you guess? The other person is as yet unborn.”
His eyes were blind with pain. He gripped a chair and swayed dizzily. His mouth moved, but uttered no sound. When at last he spoke the words came as though forced from a clutched throat.
“Not that!—God, you don’t mean that? Tell me you don’t mean that—Angela——”
She sank her head on her bosom and a sob escaped her. The next moment her head was jerked up and she was gazing into his steely fixed eyes.
“Was it—that man—D’Arcy?”
Another sob convinced him. He flung her arm aside and walked to the door. He had encountered205hardships, disappointments, physical and mental pain, but nothing like this devastating destroyer that was gripping him. He stumbled out of the shack like a terribly sick man.
“Oh God!” he groaned. “And I loved her!”
She had won—won by means so foul that he would have died rather than that truth should have become known to him. All life was rotten, rotten to the core! Heaven was uprooted and legions of devils usurped the throne of the Almighty. He unlatched the outhouse and feverishly harnessed six of the dogs to the sled.
Trembling and ill, he crept into the shack to find her vanished to the inner room. He divided up the food in two equal portions, placed half his small financial funds inside a flour-sack, where he knew she would find it, and piled the things onto the sled. Then he called her in a low, almost inaudible, voice. She came from the inner room, closely swathed in furs and with her head sunk.
“The sled’s outside.... You can mush the dogs.... They’re the tamest six.... Fort Yukon is down the river, and the weather’s good....”206
She nodded and walked through the door. The Arctic moon, shedding a queer blue radiance over the snow hung high in the black vault. Directly overhead the Great Bear gleamed like hanging lamps, with magnificent Vega blazing like a rich jewel. She turned to him once.
“Jim!”
“Go! Go! Follow the river.... Good—good-bye!”
A choking response came back. The whip cracked and the dogs moved forward. In a few minutes she was a black blur against the scintillating snow. With a groan he turned about and went inside.
For him it was a night of unparalleled agony. Hour after hour saw him there, at the small window, gazing fixedly up the valley, until a slight increase in the light brought him to full consciousness, to realize that a new day was born.
He prepared a meal and, despite his lack of appetite, managed to consume it. Then he took the ax and the rip-saw and made for a bunch of trees higher up the hill. All day the noise of chopping and sawing broke the silence. By the207evening, after a day of feverish and unremitting toil, he had fashioned a satisfactory sled.
Sleep came to him then—the deep dreamless sleep of exhaustion. But he awakened early, and began to pack the sled with sufficient food for the long journey. The six fierce brutes that remained were fed and harnessed, and he again ran over the details of his load to assure himself that nothing was missing. At the last moment he remembered the washing-pan and shovel, and placed them with the other miscellaneous articles.
He had no dog-whip, but calculated he could mush the dogs without that. He gave one glance at the shack, emitted a fierce torrent of oaths, and pushed the sled into action.
They went down the incline at a terrific rate and bumped on to the river. Yonder lay Dawson and D’Arcy. Whatever happened, he meant to get D’Arcy, if it meant taking the Poleen route. Out of this anticipation he derived some grain of pleasure—and he needed it to leaven the misery in his soul. His hand moved to the revolver in the pocket of the big bearskin coat, only to be withdrawn before he touched it.
“Nope—not that way,” he muttered grimly, “but with my two hands.”
208CHAPTER XVTHE QUEST
It was a weary and travel-stained man that drove a dog-sled into Dawson a fortnight later. The team was like the “musher,” lean and wild-eyed, after their four hundred miles of merciless driving. Through wind and snow this man had kept the trail. Sleep became a thing unknown during the latter stages of the journey. He expected to find D’Arcy in Dawson—and the desire to meet D’Arcy had grown into a craving. He had half killed the dogs and himself in this mad journey, but the incentive was tremendous.
How he missed her! Despite her soul-withering confession, he found himself building up visions of her in his brain. Life had become suddenly hopelessly blank, brightened by one thing—the desire for retribution upon the head of the man who had smashed his idol.209
Man, sled, and dogs went hurtling down the street—a black mass in the falling snow. He handed them over to a man at the Yukon Hotel and mixed with the crowd in the gaming saloon. No one seemed to know anything about D’Arcy, so he inquired for Hanky Brown. Hanky was at length run to earth in a dance-hall.
“Gosh, it’s Colorado Jim!”
The latter hurled at him the question that obsessed him.
“Where’s D’Arcy?”
“D’Arcy? Who in hell is D’—— Gee, I got you. You won’t find D’Arcy in Dawson. He’s up in Endicott somewhere.”
Jim’s face fell. Endicott was north of the Chandalar River. It meant another journey of five hundred miles back beyond the place where he had come.
“You’re certain, Hanky?”
“Sure. Ask Tony.” He turned round and beckoned a man from the back of the hall.
“’Member that swell guy they called D’Arcy—didn’t he go with Lonagon and Shanks on that Northern trip?”210
“Yep. Struck a rich streak up there—so I heered. Why, what’s wrong?”
“Nothin’,” said Jim. “I was just kinder anxious to see him. I guess I’ll get along.”
Hanky was gazing at him curiously. He felt that something was wrong, but couldn’t lay his finger on the trouble.
“You ain’t going up to Endicott?”
“Maybe I am.”
“It’s sure a hell of a journey just now, and you ain’t likely to find that man among them hills.”
“I’ll find him all right, Hanky. Are you clearing out next spring?”
“Yes. Gotta quarter share in ’26 below’ on Black Creek. We sold out yesterday to the Syndicate. The missus’ll be crazed when she hears. And how about you?”
“No luck. I don’t think I was born lucky, Hank. I used to think so——”
Hanky shook his head and pointed to the untasted spirit in Jim’s mug.
“Drink up!”
Jim quaffed the vile spirit and fastened the chin-strap of his cap.211
“Jim, don’t go to Endicott.”
“Eh?”
“Don’t. You’re looking ugly, boy, and things are done sudden-like when you’re that way.”
Jim gave a harsh laugh and his eyes flashed madly. Then he stopped, biting off the laugh with a snap of his teeth.
“There are some crimes for which there ain’t no punishment but one, Hanky. There’s no power on this earth, bar death, that’ll stop me from gitting D’Arcy. If I don’t come back before the break-up you can take it that he saw me coming before I got him.”
He thrust his hands into the big mittens strung to his shoulders, and nodding grimly went through the door. Ten minutes later he was cracking the new dog-whip over the backs of his yelping team, and mounting the high bank heading for the North once more.
There is nothing more exciting than a manhunt when the pursuer is convinced that his cause is just, and the punishment he intends to inflict well-merited. Jim, peering through the blinding snow, saw in imagination the man he sought, all unconscious of the swift justice that212was coming to him from out of the wilderness. This was man’s law, whatever the written law might be. Not for one instant did his determination waver or his conviction falter. D’Arcy had partaken of forbidden fruit—partaken of it consciously, without regard for any suffering it might cause to others—and D’Arcy must pay the penalty!
It was a primitive argument and one that appealed to passions, but he was in many respects still a primitive man, with primitive ideas of right and justice. That law was good enough. It had served through all his experience of Western life, and would serve now!
The storm developed in fury, but still he drove the howling, unwilling dogs into the teeth of it. Icicles were hanging from his two weeks’ growth of beard, and thick snow covered him from head to foot. Extraordinary luck favored him, for the snags and pitfalls were innumerable, and any deviation from the old obliterated trail might launch the whole outfit down into an abyss. Fortunately he struck the river again without such a catastrophe happening.
The snow ceased to fall and the sky cleared.213The red rim of the sun peeped over the horizon, flooding the landscape with translucent light. Before him lay the snow-clad Yukon, broad and gigantic, running between its high wooded banks, contrary to all precedents, Northwards.
Amid the maze of peaks and valleys, high up on the Endicott Mountains, a strange affray was taking place. In a small hut, sandwiched between two perpendicular ice-walls, three men crouched at holes newly bored through the log sides. They were D’Arcy and his two companions, Lonagon and Shanks.
It was Lonagon who had first struck gold in this desolate region, late in the summer, whilst engaged in hunting caribou. Shanks had gone in with him on a fifty-fifty basis, but both lacked the wherewithal to finance a trip so far North. Against their desire they were obliged to take in a third person. D’Arcy, having assured himself that Lonagon was no liar, put up the money to buy food and gear and joined in. The idea was to thaw out the frozen pay dirt all through the winter, and to wash it when the creek ran again. Unlike the claims nearer Dawson, it made small214appeal to the big Capitalized Syndicate. Lonagon was of opinion that more gold could be washed out in one season than the Syndicate would be willing to pay as purchase price.
Lonagon’s optimism had been vindicated. The pay streak seemed to run along the whole length of creek.
“It sure goes to the North Pole!” ejaculated Shanks gleefully.
D’Arcy realized that he had struck a good proposition. They built the rough hut and commenced their awful task. Day by day the dump of excavated pay dirt grew larger. They tested it at times to find the yield of gold ever-increasing. At nights they sat and talked of the future. Shanks and Lonagon were for running a big hotel in San Francisco. That seemed to be their highest ideal, and nothing could shift them from it.
The fact that each of them would in all probability possess little short of a million dollars made no difference whatever. They were set on a drinking-place—where one could get drink any hour of the night without having to knock folks up, or even to get out of bed for it!215
D’Arcy was planning for a life of absolute luxury. He had been poor from birth—the worst poverty of all, coupled as it was with social prominence. He glowed with pleasure as he looked forward to a time when moneylenders and dunning creditors would be conspicuously absent.
It was Shanks who brought the trouble upon them. Shanks had hit upon a Thlinklet encampment a mile or two down the creek. There were about a dozen mop-headed, beady-eyed men, and some two dozen women—two apiece—and children. Shanks in his wanderings after adventure had met a more than usually attractive Thlinklet girl. She had not been averse to his approaches and it ended in a pretty little love-scene, upon which the husband was indiscreet enough to intrude. Having some hard things to say to Shanks, who unfortunately for the devoted husband, knew a lot of the Thlinklet dialect, and who resented aspersions upon his character from an “Injun Polygamist,” the latter promptly shot him.
The girl screamed with terror, and the Thlinklet community ran as one man to the scene of216the tragedy. Shanks, reading swift annihilation in their eyes, promptly “beat it” for the hut.
They were now in the midst of their trouble. All the Indians had turned out armed to the teeth. Not unskilled in the art of war, they had garbed themselves in white furs, presenting an almost impossible target for the men inside the hut. A spokesman had come forward demanding the body of Shanks, and was told to go to blazes. They now crept along the deep ravine spread out over the snowy whiteness.
“I wish you’d kep’ your courtin’ till we got to ’Frisco,” growled Lonagon.
“I didn’t even kiss the gal!” retorted Shanks. “I was jest telling her——”
There was a report from outside, and a rifle-bullet whizzed within a few inches of his head.
“Gee, they’ve got guns!” exclaimed Lonagon. “That’s darn unfortunate!”
D’Arcy crept forward and, squinting through the small loop-hole, fired twice. He gave a grunt of great satisfaction.
“That’s one less.”
A fusillade of shots came from the ravine. They ripped through the thick logs and out the217other side. D’Arcy drew in his breath with a hiss.
“They’ll get us when the light goes,” he said.
“Hell they will!”
“Looky here,” said Shanks, “let’s hike out and get at ’em. Can’t shoot through these little slits.”
“They’re about four to one—and there are at least six rifles there,” said D’Arcy.
Shanks sneered.
“They couldn’t hit an iceberg.”
“Reckon they could, with an arrow,” growled Lonagon. “We’d be crazed to go out there.”
D’Arcy was for following Shanks’ advice. They debated the point for a few minutes and then decided to attempt an attack. But the decision was made too late. There came a diabolical yell down the ravine. Shanks ran to a loop-hole.
“Gosh!—they’re coming—the whole lot of them!” he cried.
The three men ran to their posts and commenced firing at the leaping figures of the Thlinklets. Three or four of them bit the snow, but the remainder reached the hut. Shots came218through and the sound of hatchets sounded on the thick logs.
D’Arcy fired and a scream of anguish followed. Then he threw up his arms and fell back with a groan, his rifle sticking in the slit through which it had fired. Shanks ran to him, and saw a round hole through his coat, near the heart, around which the blood was freezing as it issued. There was obviously nothing to be done with D’Arcy. Shanks dragged the rifle from the hole and reloaded it, cursing and swearing like a madman. Still came the steady thud, thud of the hatchets, but they rang much more hollow, and the two defenders expected to see part of the wall go down at any moment. Suddenly the sound of hatchets ceased and some of the noise subsided. Lonagon peeped through a crack, and saw half a dozen Indians coming up with a battering-ram in the shape of a felled tree. They approached at a wide angle, out of the line of fire.
“Shanks, it’s all up. Get your six shooter—we’ll have the black devils inside in a minute.”
Shanks flung down the rifle and snatched the revolver from his belt. He bent low and took a glimpse at what was happening outside. The219Indians were but twenty yards away, and preparing to charge the half dissected portion of the wall with their heavy ram. He tried to get a shot at them, but could not get enough angle on to the revolver.
He saw them ambling towards him, and then, to his surprise, one of them gasped and pitched headlong. The remainder stood, transfixed, at this inexplicable occurrence. Before they recovered from their amazement another man howled with pain and placed one hand over a perforated shoulder. From afar came the sharp crack of a firearm. Shanks suddenly saw the shooter, high up on the ice wall above them.
“Gee whiz! Lonagon—it’s a big feller up on the cliff! Whoever he is, he’s got Buffalo Bill beaten to a frazzle. Did you see that? A bull’s-eye at three hundred feet, and with a six-shooter. It clean wallops the band!”
He unbarred the door, as the remaining Thlinklets went helter-skelter down the ravine, and waved his hands to the figure above him. Lonagon turned to the still form of D’Arcy. He lifted the latter on the camp-bed, poured some220whisky between his teeth, and saw the eyes open and shine glassily.
“How’s it going?” he queried.
D’Arcy gave a weak smile.
“I’m finished with gold-digging, Pat. It’s a rotten shame to have to let go just when luck has changed ... but that’s life all over.... I’m cold—cold.”
Lonagon, who recognized Death when he saw it coming, pulled some blankets over D’Arcy and turned moodily away. His was not a sentimental nature. Forty years in the North had killed sentiment, but he liked D’Arcy—and it hurt. He went out to get a sight of their unknown ally.
He found him and his hungry, grizzled team coming down the ravine with Shanks. It was Jim—but scarcely the Jim of old. For a month he had traveled up from Dawson and among the merciless peaks, eating but half rations and fighting storm and snow with all the power of his indomitable will. He looked like a great gaunt spectre, with hollow cheeks and eyes that shone in unearthly fashion. Shanks could not make head or tail of him. His proffered hand had been neglected and his few questions went221unanswered. He was pleased when Lonagon turned up, for he had a deadly fear of madmen.
“What cheer, stranger!” cried Lonagon. “You turned up in the nick of time.”
Jim stopped the sled and regarded him fixedly.
“Are you—Lonagon?” he asked in a husky voice.
“Sure!”
“Then where’s D’Arcy? I want D’Arcy. D’ye git that? It’s D’Arcy I’m after.”
Lonagon looked at Shanks. Shanks tapped his forehead significantly to indicate that in his opinion the stranger had left the major portion of his senses out on the trail, and wasn’t safe company.
“So—you want D’Arcy?” quavered Lonagon.
“I said so.”
“Wal, you’re only jest in time. Come right in and see for yourself.”
Jim reeled across to the cabin and hesitated on the threshold.
“It’s kinder private,” he growled.
“Oh, like that, is it?”
Lonagon began to smell a rat. He pursed his222lips and met Jim’s flaming eyes. Undaunted, he placed his back to the door.
“See here, we’re mighty obliged to you for plugging them Injuns, but you ain’t going in there till we know what your game is. You ain’t safe—there’s a skeery look in your eyes and—” he lowered his voice—“D’Arcy is hitting the long trail.”
Jim started back in amazement. The news brought him the bitterest disappointment he had yet suffered. After all this terrible time on the trail fate was to rob him of his reward! For a moment he became suspicious.
“So he put you up to that, eh? Better stand away. I ain’t in a humor for hossplay. We got a score to settle.”
Shanks stepped up to him.
“That score will be settled in less’n an hour. The Injuns got D’Arcy over the heart. Go in and see. I reckon you’ll find there’s no need to settle scores.”
Lonagon, realizing that nothing could worsen D’Arcy’s condition, turned away and watched Jim enter the cabin.
Once inside the door, Jim saw that the two223men had spoken the truth. D’Arcy’s deathly white face was turned towards him and the hands were clenched on the brown blanket. Providence was robbing him of his vengeance, and despite his crushing sense of failure, somewhere in his heart leapt a great gladness. He approached the bed, and the sound of his heavy tread awoke the dying man to consciousness. He turned his glassy eyes on his visitor, and for a moment failed to recognize him. Then memory came.
“You—you are the man—I saw—on the bank at Dawson.... Angela’s husband!”
Jim nodded grimly.
“I’ve come,” he said. “Didn’t you know I’d come?”
224CHAPTER XVITHE GREAT LIE
D’Arcy regarded him fixedly. It astonished him that a man should travel hundreds of miles in the Arctic winter to vent his wrath on another.
“Why should you come?” he murmured.
“You—you ask me that! You——”
He stopped as a spasm of pain crossed D’Arcy’s face. In the presence of impending Death he found a strange difficulty in giving full vent to his hate.
“I see,” gasped D’Arcy. “It’s because I helped her to escape. Perhaps I was wrong, but believe me, it was better that way. I knew her years ago.... It gave you pain, but it may have saved her from hating you—eventually....”
This seeming hypocrisy staggered Jim. That any man facing the shadow of Death could act225in such manner was amazing. He quivered with violent repulsion.
“I wasn’t referring to that,” he snapped. “She didn’t escape—I brought her back.”
“You—you brought her back! Then why did you come here?”
“I came to kill you—with my hands. Did you think I would rest until that score was settled?”
D’Arcy attempted to drag himself into a sitting position, but the pain it caused him rendered the attempt vain. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then slowly opened them. He became conscious of the fact that they were at cross-purposes.
“I don’t understand.... In any case you are too late.... But why do you want to kill me? What I did, I did for the sake of friendship. I don’t doubt you would—do the same for a woman in trouble—if—if you loved her.”
Jim passed his hand across his brow. It was bewildering, baffling!
“God, ain’t you got a soul?” he gasped. “Can you lie there within a few minutes of death and take a pride in what you did? Damn the fate that got you plugged before I could get my226hands on you. I suffered hell out there, these two months, hunting you all over the mountains, and now ...”
D’Arcy surveyed the distraught speaker in bewilderment. He had said that Angela had been brought back from theSilas P. Young. Then it wasn’t that escape that had sent him up here in bitter, revengeful mood. He began to touch the outer edge of the truth.
“I’m cold,” he muttered. “And it grows dark.... Where are you?... I must know more, ... tell me what troubles you.... Do you think there was anything more in that business but friendship? Speak!”
“I know!”
“Ah—I see.... So that’s it.... See here, friend.... I’m going out ... right out, where perhaps there’s a tribunal.... I’ve done bad things, but not that.... I’m glad you came ... in time. And you thought that of me—O God!”
Jim recoiled with blanched cheeks before these words, ringing as they did with truth. He tried to get a clear grip of the position, but his brain reeled under the force of this astounding dénouement.227D’Arcy was speaking again—so faint he could scarcely hear.
“And to think that of—her! Man—man—and you look as though you love her.... She’s all that’s good and pure, though her pride is—great, too great,... and she’s willful and unrelenting.... Go back and put this right. Don’t let this terrible unjust suspicion remain....”
“But—she told me that,” gasped Jim.
Despite the pain occasioned by the movement, D’Arcy dragged himself higher on the pillow and gazed at Jim in horror.
“She—she told you—that!”
Jim wished he had bitten his tongue off before those words had been uttered. Was ever physical blow more cruel than this—to inflict insult and guilt of so despicable a nature upon a perfectly innocent man! He snatched at the nerveless hand on the bed and held it.
“I’m sorry,” he groaned. “I didn’t know—I didn’t think she would frame up a dirty lie like that.”
D’Arcy suddenly smiled wistfully.
“And where is she now?”228
“I sent her away.”
“You sent her—well, perhaps it was best,” he said. “You’ve got to forget that story. Circumstances excuse many things.”
“They don’t excuse that.”
“I think they do.... All the blame is not with her. That she should give utterance to such a lie proves to what extremes she was forced. She tried by every other means to escape—and failed. You held her, not by love, but by brute strength.”
“You don’t understand,” retorted Jim. “I bought her. She knows that. I didn’t know I was buying her, but she knew all the time——”
“You—can’t buy a woman’s soul.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Everything. It was her soul that writhed under that jailership——”
“Yep—and her soul that told that damned lie.”
D’Arcy shook his head.
“You tried to win by the superiority of your physical strength. Is that moral? Is it justifiable? She had no other way to fight but by subtlety and falsehood. Both ways are equally229detestable. Therefore it is not for you to condemn.... Tell Lonagon ... I’m going—going....”
Jim ran outside and brought in Lonagon and Shanks. Before they could reach the bed the soul of D’Arcy had flown from his pain-ridden body. Lonagon put the blanket over the dead man’s face, and Shanks made strange noises in his throat.
“He was a white man, though he was a gentleman,” muttered Lonagon.
Jim staggered to the door, dazed by the outcome of this meeting. But his mind had cooled down and the crazy desire for vengeance, now vanished, left him a more normal creature. But he felt sick and weary. The future seemed so hopeless and blank. Had he the desire to search for Angela and bring her back, his storm-wrecked body would have refused. Lonagon approached him.
“So you didn’t kill him?”
Jim glared.
“Wal, it’s jest as well, for I’d hev sure killed you.”230
“And I’d have been darned glad,” growled Jim.
A great nausea overtook him, and he clutched the door-post for support. Shanks looked at him, and shook his head.
“Better not hit the trail to-day. You got fever.”
Jim shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m all right. I’ll be mushing back to my shack. ’Tain’t far—two days’ run. So long!”
He went to the sled, untethered the dogs, and sent them scuttling up the ravine. But the sickness remained. His head seemed nigh to bursting and all his limbs set up a chronic aching. He vaguely realized that he was in the grip of mountain fever, which had fastened on to his abused body and was breaking him up.
He had estimated his journey back to occupy two days, but he meant to do it in one. Illness on the trail meant death, and little as Life meant to him now, the natural desire to fight for it mastered the inclination to lay down and succumb to the fever and the elements.
Hour after hour the sled whirled along. Once he stopped and mechanically gave the dogs231a meal. He became transformed into an automaton, acting by some subliminal power that set his direction correctly and assisted to maintain his body in an upright position.
Only one part of his brain functioned, and that part was memory. All the outstanding incidents of his adventurous career passed before him in perspective. He saw himself fighting and winning from the time when first he had set out with a gripsack to seek a fortune in the wide plains of the West. At the end of this remarkable chain of successes was the dismal picture of his present failure. A woman, rather than suffer subjugation at his hands, had perjured her soul in a dreadful lie.
D’Arcy was right. Souls were not to be bought or “broken-in.” He had won in the old days because the primitive law prevailed in all things. No longer did that work. Civilization assessed man on a different basis. The Law of the Wild had been superseded by other qualities—qualities which, presumably, he did not possess. It was a bitter enough awakening for him to feel himself a failure. Wandering, half deliriously, in a vicious mental circle he came232again and again to that point. He had failed in the great test—he had failed to win the heart of the woman he truly loved. So much for all those physical attributes! They conquered women in the stone age. They might conquer women now, of a kind, but they were futile weapons to employ against a modern woman, benefiting by centuries of progress and culture, with fine mentality and inflexible will.
What then were the qualities that counted? Was it love? No, not love, for his bosom was bursting with it. Not sacrifice, for he would have died for her—and she must know it. Was it Culture? Was it Education? Chivalry?
His tortured brain could find no answer. The woman herself had faced that same inward tribunal. To her, too, the obstacle was not quite clear. But it was pride of birth. It saturated her; it subjugated all passions, all emotions. It rendered her incapable of exercising her real feelings. She had placed the man low down in the scale, and had kept him there by the mere consciousness of this accident of birth.
The man behind the sled ceased to ponder the enigma. His mind became a complete blank as233the shack hove into sight along the valley. He lurched from side to side as the dogs, scenting their kennel, increased their speed.
The sled hit a tree, and flung him to the ground, but the dogs went on. He raised himself to his knees, his teeth chattering in ghastly fashion. His half-blind eyes could just make out the hut in the distance, a black smudge against the pure white snow. With a great effort he began to crawl towards his refuge.... His legs felt like lead and soon refused to respond to the weakened will that moved them.
He uttered a deep groan and collapsed in the snow, his head buried in his great arms.