V
Toward morning the storm wore itself out, and before the belated winter dawn had tinted the east MacFarlane set out for the Indian village. The cold was intense so that his snowshoes crunched on the surface of the flinty, wind-driven snow. Mile after mile he swung across the barrens that lay trackless, and white, and dead, skirting towering rock ledges and patches of scraggly timber. The sun came out and the barrens glared dazzling white. MacFarlane had left his snow-goggles back in the cabin, so he squinted his eyes and pushed on. Three times that day he stopped and built a fire at the edge of a thicket and heated thick caribou gruel which he fed by spoonfuls to the tiny robe-wrapped little girl that snuggled warm in his pack sack. Darkness had fallen before he reached the high hill from which he had seen the village. He scanned the sweep of waste that lay spread before him, its shapes and distances distorted and unreal in the feeble light of the glittering stars. He hardly expected a light to show from a village of windowless tepees in the dead of winter, and he strove to remember which of those vague splotchy outlines was the black spruce swamp against which he had seen the tepees. Suddenly the silence of the night was broken by thesharp jerky yelp of a stricken dog. The sound issued from one of the dark blotches of timber, and was followed by a rabble of growls and snarls. MacFarlane judged the distance that separated him from the vague outline of the swamp to be three or four miles, but the shrill sounds cut the frozen air so distinctly that they seemed to issue from the foot of the hill upon which he stood. A dull spot of light showed for a moment, rocketed through the air, and disappeared amid a chorus of yelps and howls. An Indian, disturbed by the fighting dogs, had thrown back the flap of his tepee and hurled a lighted brand among them.
Swiftly MacFarlane descended the slope and struck out for the black spruce swamp. An hour later he stood upon the snow-covered ice of the river while barking, snarling and growling, the Indian dog pack crowded about him. It seemed a long time that he stood there holding the dogs at bay with a stout spruce club. At length dark forms appeared in front of the tepees and several Indians advanced toward him, dispersing the dogs with blows and kicks and commands in hoarse gutterals. MacFarlane spoke to them in Cree, and getting no response, he tried several of the dialects from about the Bay. He had advanced until he stood among them peering from one to another of the flat expressionless faces for some sign of comprehension. But they returned his glances with owlish blinking of their smoke reddened eyes.MacFarlane's heart sank. These were the people in whose care he had intended to leave his little daughter! Suddenly, as a ray of starlight struck aslant one of the flat bestial faces, a flash of recognition lighted MacFarlane's eyes. The man was one of the four who had come to trade a year before at Lashing Water.
"Where is the squaw?" he cried in English, grasping the man by the shoulder and shaking him roughly, "Where is Wananebish?"
At the name, the Indian turned and pointed toward a tepee that stood slightly apart from the rest, and a moment later MacFarlane stood before its door. "Wananebish!" he called. And again, "Wananebish!"
"Yes," came the answer, "What does the white man want?"
"It is MacFarlane, the trader at Lashing Water. Do you remember a year ago you sold me a black fox skin?"
"I remember. Did I not say that Wananebish would not forget? Wait, and I will let you in, for it is cold." The walls of the tepee glowed faintly as the squaw struck a light. He could hear her moving about inside and a few minutes later she threw open the flap and motioned him to enter. MacFarlane blinked in surprise as she fastened the flap behind him. Instead of the filthy smoke-reeking interior he had expected, the tepee was warm and comfortable, its floor covered thickly withrobes, and instead of the open fire in the center with its smoke vent at the apex of the tepee, he saw a little Yukon stove in which a fire burned brightly.
Without a word he removed his pack sack and tenderly lifting the sleeping baby from it laid her on the robes. Then, seating himself beside her he told her, simply and in few words what had befallen him. The squaw listened in silence and for a long time after he finished she sat staring at the flame of the candle.
"What would you have me do?" she asked at length.
"Keep the little one and care for her until I return," answered the man, "I will pay you well."
The Indian woman made a motion of dissent. "Where are you going?"
"To find gold."
Was it fancy, or did the shadow of a peculiar smile tremble for an instant upon the woman's lips? "And, if you do not return—what then?"
"If I do not return by the time of the breaking up of the rivers," answered the man, "You will take the baby to Lashing Water post to Molaire, the factor, who is the father of her mother." As he spoke MacFarlane drew from his pocket the leather notebook, and a packet wrapped in parchment deer skin and tied with buckskin thongs. He handed them to the squaw: "Take these," he said, "and deliver them to Molaire with the baby. In the book I have instructed him to pay you for her keep."
"But this Molaire is an old man. Suppose by the time of the breaking up of the rivers he is not to be found at Lashing Water? He may be dead, or he may have gone to the settlements."
"If he has gone to the settlements, you are to find him. If he is dead—" MacFarlane hesitated: "If Molaire is dead," he repeated, "You are to take care of the baby until she is old enough to enter the school at some mission. I'm Scotch, an' no Catholic—but, her mother was Catholic, an' if the priests an' the sisters make as good woman of her as they did of her mother, I could ask no more. Give them the notebook in which I have set down the story as I have told it to you. The packet you shall open and take out whatever is due you for her keep. It contains money. Keep some for yourself and give some to the priests to pay for her education."
The squaw nodded slowly: "It shall be as you say. And, if for any reason, we move from here before the breaking up of the rivers, I will write our direction and place it inside the caribou skull that hangs upon the great split stump beside the river."
MacFarlane rose; "May God use you as you use the little one," he said, "I'll be going now, before she wakes up. It will be better so." He stooped and gazed for a long time at the face of the sleeping baby. A hot tear splashed upon the back of his hand, and he brushed it away and faced the squawin the door of the tepee: "Goodbye," he said, gruffly, "Until the rivers break up in the spring."
The Indian woman shook her head: "Do not say it like that," she answered, "For those were the words of my man when he, too, left to find gold. And when the river broke up in the spring he did not come back to me—for the grinding ice-cakes caught his canoe, and he was crushed to death in a rapids."
VI
For four long nights and four short days MacFarlane worked at the digging of a grave. It was a beautiful spot he chose to be the last resting place of his young wife—a high, spruce-covered promontory that jutted out into a lake. The cabin and its surroundings had grown intolerable to him, so that he worked furiously, attacking the iron-hard ground with fire, and ice-chisel, and spade. At last it was done and placing the body of his wife in the rough pole coffin, he placed it upon his sled and locking the dogs in the cabin, hauled it himself to the promontory and lowered it into the grave. Then he shoveled back the frozen earth, and erected a wooden cross upon which was burned deep her name, and returning to the cabin, slept the clock around.
If MacFarlane had been himself he would have heeded the signs of approaching storm. But hehad become obsessed with desire to leave that place with its haunting memories, where every mute object seemed to whisper to him of his loved ones. He was talking and mumbling to himself as he harnessed his dogs and headed into the North at the breaking of a day.
Three hours after MacFarlane hit the trail he left the sparsely timbered country behind and struck into a vast treeless plain whose glaring white surface was cut here and there by rugged ridges of basalt which terminated abruptly in ledges of bare rock.
At noon he made a fireless camp, ate some pilot bread, and caribou meat. The air was still—ominously dead and motionless to one who knew the North. But MacFarlane gave no heed, nor did he even notice that though there were no clouds in the sky, the low-hung sun showed dull and coppery through a steel-blue fog. He bolted his food and pressed on. Before him was no guiding landmark. He laid his course by the compass and held straight North across the treeless rock-ribbed plain. The man's lean face looked pinched and drawn. For a week he had taken his sleep in short fitful snatches, in his chair beside the cabin stove, or with his back against a tree while he waited for the fire to bite a few inches deeper into the frozen ground as he toiled at the lonely grave. On and on he mushed at the head of his dogs, his eyes, glowing feverbright, stared fixedly from between red-rimmed lidsstraight into the steel blue fog bank that formed his northern horizon. And as he walked, he talked incessantly—now arguing with old Molaire, who predicted dire things, and refused to believe that there was gold in the North—now telling Margot of his hopes and planning his future—and again, telling stories to little Margot of Goldilocks and the three little bears, and of where the caribou got their horns.
The blue fog thickened. From somewhere far ahead sounded a low whispering roar—the roar of mightly wind, muffled by its burden of snow. When the first blast struck, MacFarlane tottered in his tracks, then lowering his head, leaned against it and pushed on. Following the gust was a moment of calm. Behind him the dogs whimpered uneasily. MacFarlane did not hear them, nor did he hear the roar of the onrushing wind.
Around a corner of a rock ledge a scant two hundred yards ahead of him, appeared a great grey shape, running low. The shape halted abruptly and circled wide. It was followed by other shapes—gaunt, and grey, and ugly, between whose back-curled lips white fangs gleamed. The wolf pack, forty strong, was running before the storm, heading southward for the timber. Whining with terror, MacFarlane's dogs crowded about his legs in a sudden rush. The man went down and struggled to his feet, cursing, and laying about him with clubbed rifle. Then the storm struck in all its fury. MacFarlane gasped for air, and sucked in great gulps of powdery snow that bit into his lungs and seared his throat with their stinging cold. He choked and coughed and jerking off his mitten, clawed with bare fingers at his throat and eyes. While behind him, down wind, the great grey caribou wolves, stopped in their wild flight by the scent of meat, crowded closer, and closer.
In a panic, MacFarlane's dogs whirled, and dragging the sled behind them bolted. MacFarlane staggered a few steps forward and fell, then, on hands and knees he crawled back, groping and pawing the snow for his mitten and rifle. The sharp frenzied yelps as the dog team plunged into the wolf-pack sounded faint and far. The man threw up his head. He pulled off his cap to listen and the wind whipped it from his numbed fingers—but MacFarlane did not know. Moments of silence followed during which the man strained his ears to catch a sound that eluded him.
When the last shred of flesh had been ripped from the bones of the dogs the gaunt grey leader of the pack raised his muzzle and sniffed the wind. He advanced a cautious step or two and sniffed again, then seating himself on his haunches he raised his long pointed muzzle to the sky and gave voice to the long drawn cry of the kill—and the shapes left the fang-scarred bits of bone and sniffed up-wind at the man-scent.
As the sound of the great wolf cry reached hisears above the roar of the wind, MacFarlane's face lighted with a smile of infinite gladness: "The bells," he muttered, "I heard them—d'you hear them, Margot—girl? It's for us—the booming of the bells of Ste. Anne's!" And with the words on his lips MacFarlane pillowed his head on the snow—and slept.
VII
Years afterward, after old Molaire had been gathered to his fathers and laid in the little cemetery within the sound of the bells of Ste. Anne's, Corporal Downey one day came upon a long deserted cabin far into the barren grounds upon the shore of a nameless lake. He closed the rotting door behind him, and methodically searching the ground, came at length upon the solitary grave upon the high promontory that jutted into the lake. Unconsciously he removed his hat as he read the simple inscription burned deep into the little wooden cross. His lips moved: "Margot—girl," he whispered, "if—if—" the whisper thickened and choked him. He squared his shoulders and cleared his throat roughly. "Aw hell!" he breathed, and turning, walked slowly back to his canoe and shoved out onto the water.
And during the interval of the years the little band of non-treaty Indians—the homeless and the restless ones—moved on—and on—and on——
COARSE GOLD
As Carter Brent pushed through the swinging doors of "The Ore Dump" saloon, the eyes of the head bartender swept with approval from the soles of the high laced boots to the crown of the jauntily tilted Stetson. "What'll it be this morning, Mr. Brent?" he greeted. "Little eye-opener?"
The young man grinned as he crossed to the bar: "How did you guess it?"
The bartender set out decanter and glasses. "Well, after last night, thought maybe you'd have a kind of fuzzy taste in your mouth."
"Fuzzy is right! My tongue is coated with fur—dark brown fur—thick and soft. What time was it when we left here?"
"Must have been around two o'clock. But, how does it come you ain't on the works this mornin'? Never knew you to lose a day on account of a hang-over. Heard a couple of the S. & R.'s tunnels got flooded last night."
Brent poured a liberal drink and downed it at a swallow: "Yes," he answered, dryly, "And that'swhy I'm not on the works. I'm hunting a job, and the S. & R. is hunting a new mining engineer."
"Jepson fired you, did he! Well, you should worry. I've heard 'em talkin' in here, now an' then—some of the big guns—an' they all claim you're one of the best engineers in Montana. They say if you'd buckle down to business you'd have 'em all skinned."
"Buckle down to business, eh! The trouble with them is that when they hire a man they think they buy him. It's none of their damn business what I do evenings. If I'm sober when I'm on the job—and on the job six days a week, and sometimes seven—they're getting all they're paying for."
"They sure are," agreed the other with emphasis, "Have another shot," he shoved the decanter toward the younger man and leaned closer: "Say Mr. Brent, you ain't—er, you don't need a little change, do you? If you do just say so, you're welcome to it." The man drew forth a roll of bills, but Brent shook his head:
"No thanks. You can cash this check for me though. Jepson was square enough about it—paid me in full to date and threw in a month's salary in advance. I don't blame him any. We quit the best of friends. When he hired me he knew I liked a little drink now and then, so I took the job with the understanding that if the outfit ever lost a dollar because of my boozing, I was through right then."
"What was it flooded the tunnels?"
"Water," grinned Brent.
"Oh," laughed the bartender, "I thought maybe it was booze."
"You'd have thought so all the more if you'd been there this morning to hear the temperance lecture that old Jepson threw in gratis along with that extra month's pay. About the tunnels—we get our power from Anaconda, and something happened to the high tension wire, and the pumps stopped, and there wasn't any light, and Number Four and Number Six are wet tunnels anyway so they filled up and drowned two batteries of drills. Then, instead of rigging a steam pump and pumping them out through Number Four, one of the shift bosses rigged a fifteen inch rotary in Number Six and started her going full tilt with the result that he ran the water down against that new piece of railroad grade and washed about fifty feet of it into the river and left the track hanging in the air by the rails."
"The damn fool!"
"Oh, I don't know. He did the best he could. A shift boss isn't hired to think."
"What did old Jepson fireyoufor? He didn't think you clim up an' cut the high tension wire did he? Or, did he expect you to set around nights an' keep the juice flowin'?"
Brent laughed: "Not exactly. But they tried to find me and couldn't. So when I showed upthis morning old Jepson sent for me and asked me where I was last night. I could have lied out of it easy enough. He would have accepted any one of a half a dozen excuses—but lying's poor business—so I told him I was out having a hell of a good time and wound up about three in the morning with a pretty fair snootful."
"Bet he thinks a damn sight more of you than if you'd of lied, at that. But they's plenty of jobs fer you. You've got it in your noodle—what they need—an' what they've got to pay to get. You might drop around an' talk to Gunnison, of the Little Ella. He was growlin' in here the other night because he couldn't get holt of an engineer. Goin' to do a lot of cross tunnel work or somethin'. Said he was afraid he'd have to send back East an' get some pilgrim or some kid just out of college. Hold on a minute there's a bird down there, among them hard rock men, that looks like he was figgerin' on startin' somethin'. I'll just step down an' put a flea in his ear."
Brent's eyes followed the other as he made his way toward the rear of the long bar where three or four bartenders were busy serving drinks to a crowd of miners. He noticed casually that the men were divided into small groups and that they seemed to be talking excitedly among themselves, and that the talk was mostly in whispers.
"The Ore Dump" was essentially a mining man's saloon. Its proprietor, Patsy Kelliher, was an oldtime miner who, having struck it lucky with pick and shovel, had started a modest little saloon, and later had opened "The Ore Dump," in the fitting up of which he had gone the limit in expensive furnishings. It was his boast that no miner had ever gone out of his door hungry or thirsty, nor had any man ever lost a cent by unfair means within his four walls. Rumor had it that Patsy had given away thousands. Be that as it may, "The Ore Dump" had for years been the mecca of the mining fraternity. Millionaire mine owners, managers, engineers, and on down through the list to the humblest "hunk," were served at its long bar, which had, by common usage become divided by invisible lines of demarkation. The mine owners, the managers, the engineers, and the independent contractors foregathered at the front end of the bar; the hunks, and the wops, and the guineas at the rear end; while the long space between was a sort of no-man's-land where drank the shift bosses and the artisans of the mines—the hard-rock men, the electricians, and the steam-fitters. Combinations of capital running into millions had been formed at the front end, and combinations of labor at the rear, while in no-man's-land great mines had been tied up at the crooking of a finger.
On this particular morning Carter Brent was the only customer at the front end of the bar. He poured another drink and watched it glow like a thing of life with soft amber lights that playedthrough the crystal clear glass as a thin streak of sunlight struck aslant the bar. The liquor in his stomach was taking hold. He felt warm, with a glowing, tingling warmth that permeated to his finger tips. In his mind was a vast sense of well being. The world was a great old place to live in. He drank the whisky in his glass and refilled it from the cut glass decanter. Poor old Jepson—fired the best engineer in Montana—that's what his friend, the bartender, had just told him, and he got it from the big guns. Well, it was Jepson's funeral—he and the S. & R. would have to stagger along as best they could. He would go and see Gunnison—no, to hell with Gunnison! Brent's fingers closed about the roll of bills in his trousers pocket. He had plenty of money, he would wait and pick out a job. He needn't worry. He always was sure of a good job. Hadn't he had five in the two years since he graduated from college? There were plenty of mines and they all needed good engineers. Brent smiled as his thoughts drifted lazily back to his four years in college. He wished some of the fellows would drop in. "They were a bunch of damned good sports," he muttered to himself, "And we sure did roll 'em high! Speedy Bennet was always the first to go under—about two drinks and we'd lay him on the shelf to call for when needed. Then came McGivern, then Sullivan, and about that time little Morse would begin flapping his arms around and proclaiming he could fly. Then, after a whilethere wouldn't be anyone left but Morey and me—good old Morey—they canned him in his senior year—and they've been canning me ever since."
Brent paused in his soliloquy and regarded the men who had been whispering among themselves toward the rear of the room. There were no small groups now, and no whispering. With tense faces they were crowding about a man who stood with hands palm down upon the bar. He wondered what it was all about. From his position at the head of the bar he could see the man's face plainly. Also he could see the faces of the others—the lined, rugged faces of the hard rock and the vapid, loose-lipped faces of the wops—and of all the faces only the face of the man who stood with his hands on the bar betrayed nothing of tense expectancy. Why were these others crowding about him, and why was he the only man of them all who was not holding in check by visible effort some pent up emotion? Brent glanced again into the weather-lined face with its drooping sun-burned mustache, and its skin tanned to the color of old leather—a strong face, one would say—the face of a man who had battled long against odds, and won. Won what? He wondered. For an instant the man's eyes met his own, and it seemed to Brent as though he had read the question for surely, behind the long drooping mustache, the lips twisted into just the shadow of a cynical grin.
The head bartender stepped to the back bar and, from beside a huge gilded cash register, he lifted a set of tiny scales which he carried to the bar and set down directly before the man with the sun-burned mustache.
In front of the bar men crowded closer, craning their necks, and elbowing one another, as their feet made soft shuffling sounds upon the hardwood floor. One of the man's hands slipped into a side pocket of his coat and when it came out something thudded heavily upon the bar. Brent saw the object plainly as the bartender reached for it, a small buckskin pouch, its surface glazed with the grease and soot of many campfires. He had seen men carry their tobacco in just such pouches, but this pouch held no tobacco, it had thumped the bar heavily and lay like a sack of sand.
The bartender untied the strings and stood with the pouch poised above the scales while his eyes roved over the eager, expectant faces of the crowd. Then he placed a small weight upon the pan of the scales and poured something slowly from the pouch into the small scoop upon the opposite side. From his position Brent could see the delicate scales oscillate and finally strike a balance. The bartender closed the pouch and handed it back to the owner. Then he picked up the scales and returned them to their place beside the cash register, while in front of the bar men surged about the pouch owner clawing and shoving to get next to him, and all talkingat once, nobody paying the slightest attention to the bartenders who were vainly trying to serve a round of drinks.
The head bartender returned to his position opposite Brent, and reaching for the decanter, poured himself a drink. "Drink up and have one on the stranger—he just set 'em up to the house."
Brent swallowed the liquor in his glass and refilled it: "What's the excitement?" he asked, "A man don't ordinarily get as popular as he seems to be just because he buys a round of drinks, does he?"
"Didn't you see it? It ain't the round of drinks, it's—wait—" He stepped to the back bar and lifting the scoop from the scales set it down in front of Brent, "That's what it is—gold! Yes sir, pure gold just as she comes from the sand—nuggets and dust. It's be'n many a year since any of that stuff has been passed over this bar for the drinks. I've be'n here seven years and it's the firstI'vetook in, except now and then a few colors that somehombre'swashed out of some dry coulee or creek bed—fine dust that's cost him the shovelin' an' pannin' of tons of gravel. Patsy keeps the scales settin' around for a curiosity—that, an' because the old-timers likes to see 'em handy. Kind of reminds 'em of the early days an' starts 'em gassin'. But this here's the real stuff. Look at that boy." He poked with his finger at an irregular nugget the size of a navy bean, "Looks like achunk of slag—an' that ain't all! He's got a bag full of 'em. I held it in my hand, an' it weighedpounds!"
As Brent stood looking down at the grains of yellow metal in the little scoop a strange uneasiness stirred deep within him. He picked up the nugget and held it in the palm of his hand. One side of it was flat, as though polished by a thousand years of water-wear, and the other side was rough and fire-eaten as though fused by a mighty heat. Brent had seen plenty of gold—coined gold, gold fashioned by the goldsmith's art, and gold in bricks and ingots, in the production of which he himself had been a factor. Yet never before had the sight of gold moved him. It had been merely a valuable metal which it was his business to help extract from certain rocks by certain processes of chemistry and expensive machinery. Yet here in his hand was a new kind of gold—gold that seemed to reach into the very heart of him with a personal appeal. Raw gold—gold that had known the touch of neither chemicals nor machinery, but that had been wrested by the bare hands of a man from some far place where the fires of a glowing world and the glacial ice-drift had fashioned it. The vague uneasiness that had stirred him at sight of the yellow grains, flamed into a mighty urge at its touch. He, too, would go and get gold—and he would get it not by process of brain, but by process of brawn. Not by means of chemicals and machinery, but by slashing into the sides of mountains, and ripping the guts out of creeks! Carefully he returned the nugget to the scoop, and as he raised his eyes to the bartender's, he moistened his lips with his tongue.
"Where did he get it?" he asked, huskily.
"God, man! If I know'd that I wouldn't be standin' here, would I?" He jerked his thumb toward the rear of the room where men were frenziedly crowding the stranger. "That's what they all want to know. Lord, if he'd let the word slip what a stampede there'd be! Every man for himself an' the devil take the hindmost. Out of every hundred that's in on a stampede, about one makes a stake, an' ten gets their ante back, an' the rest goes broke. They all know what they're going up against—but the damned fools! Every one of 'em would stake all they've got, an' their life throw'd in, to be in on it."
"It's the lure of gold," muttered Brent, "I've heard of it, but I never felt it before. Are they damned fools? Wouldn't you?"
"Wouldn't I—what?"
"Wouldn't you go—along with the rest?"
"Hell—yes!An' so would anyone else that had any red guts in 'em!"
Brent poured himself a drink, and shoved the decanter toward the other, "Let's liquor," he said, "and then maybe if we can get that fellow away from the crowd where we can talk——"
The bartender interrupted the thought before it was expressed; "No chance. Take a look at him. Believe me, there's onehombrethat ain't goin' to spill nothin' he don't want to. An' when a man makes a strike like that he don't hang around bars runnin' off at the chin about it—not what you could notice, he don't. Far as I can see we got just one chance. It's a damn slim one, but you can't always tell what's runnin' in these birds' heads. He asked me if Patsy Kelliher was runnin' this dump, an' when I told him he was, he had me send for him. Said he wanted to see himpronto. An' then he kind of throw'd his eyes around over the faces of the boys an' he says: 'You're all friends of Patsy's?' He seen in a minute how Patsy stood acehigh with them all, an' then he says; 'Well, just kind of stick around 'till Patsy gets down here an' it might be I'll explode somethin' amongst his friends that'll clean this dump out.' Now, you might take that two ways, but he don't look like one of these, what you might call, anarchists, does he? An' when he said that he laughed, an' he says: 'Belly up to the bar an' I'll buy a little drink—an' I'll pay for it with coarse gold!' Well, you seen how much drinkin' they done, an'—Here's Patsy, now!"
Brent turned and nodded greeting as the proprietor of "The Ore Dump" entered the door.
"Is it yersilf that sint fer me, Mister Brint, ye spalpeen?" he grinned, "Bein' a gintleman yersilf, ye'll be knowin' Oi'd still be at me newspaper an'seegar. Whut's on yer mind thot ye'll be dhraggin' a mon from the bossom of his family befoor lunch?"
"It ain't him," explained the bartender, "It's the stranger, I told him you didn't never show up till after dinner, but——"
"Lunch! Damn it! Lunch!" Kelliher's fist smote the bar, and as he scowled into the face of his head bartender, Brent detected a twinkle in the deep-set blue eyes. "Didn't the owld woman beat that same into me own head a wake afther we'd moved into the big house? An' she done ut wid a tree-calf concoordance to Shakspere wid gold edges thot sets on the par—livin' room table? 'Tis a handy an' useful weapon—a worthy substitute, as the feller says, to the pleebeen rollin' pin an' fryin' pan. Thim tree calves has got a hide on 'em loike the bottom av a sluice-box. Oi bet they could make anvils out av the hide av a full-grow'd tree-bull. G'wan now an' trot out this ill-fared magpie that must be at his chatterin' befoor the break av day!"
At a motion from the bartender the crowd parted to allow the stranger to make his way to the front, surged together behind him, and followed, ranging itself in a semicircle at a respectful distance. Thus with the two principals, Brent found himself included within this semicircle of excited faces.
The two eyed each other for a moment in silence, the stranger with a smile half-veiled by his sun-burned mustache, and Kelliher with a frankly puzzled expression upon his face as his thick fingers toyed with the heavy gold chain that hung cable-like from pocket to pocket of his gaily colored vest.
"I figured you wouldn't know me." The stranger's grin widened as he noted the look of perplexity.
"An' no more I don't," retorted the other, unconsciously tilting his high silk hat at an aggressive angle over his right eye. "Let's git the cards on the table. Who are ye? An' what ye got in ye're head that ye couldn't kape there till afther lunch?"
"I'm McBride."
Brent saw that the name conveyed nothing to the other, whose puzzled frown deepened. "Ye're McBride!" The tone was good-naturedly sarcastic, "Well, ye'd av still be'n McBride this afthernoon, av ye'd be'n let live that long. But who the divil's McBride that Oi shud come tearin' down to look into the ugly mug av um?"
The stranger laughed: "Nine years ago McBride was the night telegraph operator over in the yards. That was before you moved up here. You was still in the little dump over on Fagin street an' you done most of the work yerself—used to open up mornings. There wasn't no big diamon's shinin' in the middle of yer bald-face shirt them days—I doubt an' you owned a bald-face shirt, except, maybe, for Sundays. Anyhow, you'd beopenin' up in the mornin' when I'd be goin off trick, an' I most generally stopped in for a couple of drinks or so. An' one mornin' when I'd downed three or four, I noticed you kind of givin' me the once-over. There wasn't no one else in the place, an' you come over an' leaned yer elbows on the bar, an' you says: 'Yer goin' kind of heavy on that stuff, son,' you says.
"'What the hell's the difference?' I says, 'I ain't got only six months to live an' I might's well enjoy what I can of it.'
"'Are they goin' to hang ye in six months?' you asks, 'Have ye got yer sentence?'
"'I've got my sentence,' I says, 'But it ain't hangin'. The doctors sentenced me. It's the con.'
"'To hell with the doctors,' you says, 'They don't know it all. We'll fool 'em. All you need is to git out in the mountains—an' lay off the hooch.'
"I laughed at you. 'Me go to the mountains!' I says, 'Why man I ain't hardly got strength to get to my room an' back to the job again—an' couldn't even make that if it wasn't for the hooch.'
"'That's right,' you says, 'From the job to the room, an' the room to the job, ye'll last maybe six months—but I'm doubtin' it. But the mountains is different.' An' then you goes on an talks mountains an' gold till you got me interested, an' you offers to grub-stake me for a trip into the Kootenay country. You claimed it was a straight business proposition—fifty-fifty if I made a strike, an' you putup the money against my time." The stranger paused and smiled as a subdued ripple of whisperings went from man to man as he mentioned the Kootenay. Then he looked Kelliher squarely in the face: "There wasn't no gold in the Kootenay," he said simply, "Or leastwise I couldn't find none. I figured someone had be'n stringin' you."
Patsy Kelliher shifted the hat to the back of his head and laughed out loud as his little eyes twinkled with merriment. "I git ye now, son," he said, "I moind the white face av ye, an' the chist bowed in like the bottom av a wash bowl, an' yer shoulders stuck out befront ye loike the horns av a cow." He paused as his eyes ran the lines of sinewy leanness and came to rest upon the sun bronzed face: "So ye made a failure av the trip, eh? A plumb clane failure—an' Oi'm out the couple av hundred it cost me fer the grub stake——"
"It cost you more than five hundred," interrupted the other. "I was in bad shape and there was things I needed that other men wouldn't of—that I don't need—now."
"Well—foive hundred, thin. An' how long has ut be'n ago?"
"Nine years."
Kelliher laughed: "Who was roight—me or the damn doctors? Ye've lived eighteen toimes as long as they was going to let ye live a'ready—an' av me eyes deceive me roight, ye ain't ordered no coffin yet."
"No—I ain't ordered no coffin. I come here to hunt you up an' pay you back."
Kelliher laughed: "There ain't nothin' to pay son. You don't owe me a cent. A grub-stake's a grub-stake, an' no one iver yit said Patsy Kelliher welched on a bargain. Besoides, Oi guess ye got all Oi sint ye afther. I know'd damn well they wasn't no gold in the Kootenay—none that a tenderfoot lunger cud foind."
McBride laughed: "Sure—I knew after I'd been there six months what you done it for. I doped it all out. But, as you say, a grub-stake's a grub-stake, an' no time limit on it, an' no one ever said Jim McBride ever welched on a bargain, neither. I ain't never be'n just ready to come back an' settle with you, till now. I drifted north, and farther north, till I wound up in the Yukon country. I prospected around there an' had pretty good luck. I'd got back my strength an' my health till right now there ain't but damn few men in the big country that can hit the trail with Jim McBride. But I wasn't never satisfied with what I was takin' out. I know'd there was somethin' big somewheres up there. I couldfeelit, an' I played for the big stake. Others stuck by stuff that was pannin' 'em out wages. I didn't. They called me a fool—an' I let 'em. I struck up river at last an' they laughed—but they ain't laughin' now. Me an' a squaw-man named Carmack hunted moose together over on Bonanza. One day Carmack was scratchin' aroundthe roots of a big birch tree an' just fer fun he gets to monkeyin' with my pan." The man paused and Brent could hear the suppressed breathing of the miners who had crowded close. His eyes swept their faces and he saw that every eye in the house was staring into the face of McBride as they hung upon his every word. He realized suddenly that he himself was waiting in a fever of impatience for the man to go on. "Then I come into camp, an' we both fooled with the pan—but we didn't fool long. God, man! We was shakin' it out of the grass roots!Coarse gold!I stayed at it a month—an' I've filed on every creek within ten miles of that lone birch tree. Then I come outside to find you an' settle." He paused and his eyes swept the room: "These men friends of yourn?" he asked. Kelliher nodded. "Well then I'm lettin' 'em in. Right here starts the biggest stampede the world ever seen. Some of the old timers that was already up there are into the stuff now—but in the spring the whole world will be gettin' in on it!"
Kelliher was the only self-possessed man in the room: "What'll she run to the pan?" he asked.
"Run to the pan!God knows! We thought she wasbigwhen she hit an ounce——"
"An ounce to the pan!" cried Kelliher, "Man ye're crazy!"
The other continued: "An' we thought she waslittlewhen she run a hundred dollars—two hundred!I've washed out six-hundred dollars to the pan! An' I ain't to bed rock!"
And then he began to empty his pockets. One after another the little buckskin sacks thudded upon the bar—ten—fifteen—twenty of them. McBride spoke to Kelliher, who stared with incredulous, bulging eyes: "That's your share of what I've took out. You're filed along with me as full pardner in all the claims I've got. They's millions in them claims—an' more millions fer the men that gets there first." He paused and turned to the men of the crowd who stood silent, with tense white faces, and staring eyes glued on the pile of buckskin sacks: "Beat it, you gravel hogs!" he cried, "It's the biggest strike that ever was! Hit fer Seattle, go by Dyea Beach an' over the Chilkoot, an' take a thousand pounds of outfit—or you'll die. A hell of a lot of you'll die anyhow—but some of you will win—an' win big. Over the Chilkoot, down through the lakes, an' down the Yukon to Dawson—" A high pitched, unnatural yell, animal-like in its nervous excitement broke from a throat in the crowd, and the next instant pandemonium broke loose in Kelliher's, and Carter Brent fought his way to the door through a howling mass of mad men, and struck out for his boarding house at a run.
ON DYEA BEACH
In a drizzle of cold rain forty men stood on Dyea beach and viewed with disfavor the forty thousand pounds of sodden, mud-smeared outfit that had been hurriedly landed from the little steamer that was already plowing her way southward. Of the sixty-odd men who, two weeks before had stood in Patsy Kelliher's "Ore Dump Saloon" and had seen Jim McBride toss one after another upon the bar twenty buckskin pouches filled to bursting with coarse gold in his reckoning with Kelliher, these forty had accomplished the first leg of the long North trail. The next year and the next, thousands, and tens of thousands of men would follow in their footsteps, for these forty were the forerunners of the great stampede from the "outside"—a stampede that exacted merciless toll in the lives of fools and weaklings, even as it heaped riches with lavish prodigality into the laps of the strong.
Jim McBride had said that each man must carry in a thousand pounds of outfit. Well and good, they had complied. Each had purchased his thousand pounds, had it delivered on board the steamer, and in due course, had watched it dumped upon the beach from the small boats. Despite the cold drizzle, throughout the unloading the forty had laughed and joked each other and had liberally tendered flasks. But now, with the steamer a vanishing speck in the distance and the rock-studded Dyea Flats stretching away toward the mountains, the laughter and joking ceased. Men eyed the trail, moved aimlessly about, and returned to their luggage. The thousand pound outfits had suddenly assumed proportions. Every ounce of it must be man-handled across a twenty-eight mile portage and over the Chilkoot Pass. Now and then a man bent down and gave a tentative lift at a bale or a sack. Muttered curses had taken the place of laughter, and if a man drew a flask from his pocket, he drank, and returned it to his pocket without tendering it to his neighbor.
When Carter Brent had reached the seclusion of his room after leaving Kelliher's saloon, he slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrawing his roll of bills, counted them. He found exactly three hundred and seventy-eight dollars which he rightly decided was not enough to finance an expedition to the gold country. He must get more—and get it quickly. Returning the bills in his pocket he packed his belongings, left the room, and a few minutes later was admitted upon signal to the gambling rooms of Nick the Greek where selecting afaro layout, he bought a stack of chips. At the end of a half-hour he bought another stack, and thereafter he began to win. When his innings totaled one thousand dollars he cashed in, and that evening at seven o'clock he stepped onto a train bound for Seattle. He was mildly surprised that none of the others from Kelliher's were in evidence. But when he arrived at his destination he grinned as he saw them swarming from the day coaches ahead.
And now on Dyea beach he stood and scowled as he watched the rain water collect in drops and roll down the sides of his packages.
"He said they was Injuns would pack this here junk," complained a man beside him, "Where'n hell be they?"
"Search me," grinned Brent, "How much can you carry?"
"Don't know—not a hell of a lot over them rocks—an' he said this here Chilkoot was so steep you had to climb it instead of walk."
"Suppose we make a try," suggested Brent. "A man ought to handle a hundred pounds——"
"A hundred pounds!You're crazy as hell! I ain't no damn burro—me. Not no hundred pounds no twenty-eight mile, an' part of it cat-climbin'. 'Bout twenty-five's more my size."
"You like to walk better than I do," shrugged Brent, "Have you stopped to figure that a twenty-five-pound pack means four trips to the hundred—forty trips for the thousand? And forty round trips of twenty-eight miles means something over twenty-two hundred miles of hiking."
"Gawd!" exclaimed the other, in dismay, "It must be hell to be eggicated! IfI'dfiggered that out,I'dof stayed on the boat! We're in a hell of a fix now, an' no ways to git back. That grub'll all be et gittin' it over the pass, an' when we git there, we ain't nowheres—we got them lakes an' river to make after that. Looks like by the time we hit this here Bonanza place all the claims will be took up, or the gold'll be rotted with old age."
"You're sure a son of gloom," opined Brent as he stooped and affixed his straps to a hundred-pound sack of flour. "But I'm going to hit the trail. So long."
As Brent essayed to swing the pack to his shoulders he learned for the first time in his life that one hundred pounds is a matter not lightly to be juggled. The pack did not swing to his shoulders, and it was only after repeated efforts, and the use of other bales of luggage as a platform that he was at length able to stand erect under his burden. The other man had watched without offer of assistance, and Brent's wrath flared as he noted his grin. Without a word he struck across the rock-strewn flat.
"Hurry back," taunted the other, "You ort to make about four trips by supper time."
Before he had covered fifty yards Brent knew that he could never stand the strain of a hundred-pound pack. While not a large man, he was well built and rugged, but he had never before carried a pack, and every muscle of his body registered its aching protest at the unaccustomed strain. Time and again it seemed as though the next step must be his last, then a friendly rock would show up ahead and he would stagger forward and sink against its side allowing the rock to ease the weight from his shoulders. As the distance between resting places became shorter, the periods of rest lengthened, and during these periods, while he panted for breath and listened to the pounding of his heart's blood as it surged past his ear drums, his brain was very active. "McBride said a good packer could walk off with a hundred, or a hundred and fifty pounds, and he'd seen 'em pack two hundred," he muttered. "And I've been an hour moving one hundred pounds one mile! And I'm so near all in that I couldn't move it another mile in a week. I wonder where those Indian packers are that he said we could get?" His eyes travelled back across the flats, every inch of which had caused him bodily anguish, and came to rest upon the men who still moved aimlessly among the rain-sodden bales, or stood about in groups. "Anyway I'm the only one that has made a stab at it."
A sound behind him caused him to turn his head abruptly to see five Indians striding toward him along the rock-strewn trail. Brent wriggled painfully from his pack straps as the leader, a bigframed giant of a man, halted at his side and stared stolidly down at him. Brent gained his feet and thrust out his hand: "Hello, there, old Nick o' Time! Want a job? I've got a thousand pounds of junk back there on the beach, counting this piece, and all you gentlemen have got to do is to flip it up onto your backs and skip over the Chilkoot with it—it's a snap, and I'll pay you good wages. Do you speak English?"
The big Indian nodded gravely, "Me spik Eengliss. Me no nem Nickytam. Nem Kamish—W'ite man call Joe Pete."
Brent nodded: "All right, Joe Pete. Now how much are you and your gang going to charge me to pack this stuff up over the pass?"
The Indian regarded the sack of flour: "Youchechako," he announced.
"Just as you say," grinned Brent, "I wouldn't take that from everybody, whatever it means, but if you'll get that stuff over the pass you can call me anything you want to."
"You Boston man."
"No—I'm from Tennessee. But we'll overlook even that. How much you pack it over the pass." Brent pointed to the flour and held up ten fingers.
The Indian turned to his followers and spoke to them in guttural jargon. They nodded assent, and he turned to Brent: "Top Chilkoot fi' cent poun'—hondre poun', fi' dolla. Lak Lindermann, three cent poun' mor'—hondre poun' all way, eight dolla."
"You're on!" agreed Brent, "Thousand pounds, eighty dollars—all the way."
The Indian nodded, and Brent produced a ten dollar gold piece which he handed to the man, indicated that he would get the rest when they reached Lake Lindermann.
The Indian motioned to the smallest of his followers and pointing to the sack of flour, mumbled some words of jargon, whereupon the man stepped to the pack, removed Brent's straps and producing straps of his own swung the burden to his back and started off at a brisk walk.
As Brent led the way back to the beach at the head of his Indians he turned more than once to glance back at the solitary packer, but as far as he could see him, the man continued to swing along at the same brisk pace at which he had started, whereat he conceived a sudden profound respect for his hirelings. "The littlest runt of the bunch has got me skinned a thousand miles," he muttered, "But I'll learn the trick. A year from now I'll hit the trail with any of 'em."
Back at the beach the Indians were surrounded by thirty-nine clamoring, howling men who pushed and jostled one another in a frenzied attempt to hire the packers.
"No, you don't!" cried Brent, "These men are working for me. When I'm through with them you can have them, and not before."
Ugly mutterings greeted the announcement."Who the hell do you think you are?" "Divide 'em up!" "Give someone else a chanct." Others advanced upon the Indians and shook sheaves of bills under their noses, offering double and treble Brent's price. But the Indians paid no heed to the paper money, and inwardly Brent thanked the lucky star that guided him into exchanging all his money into gold before leaving Seattle.
Despite the fact that he was next to useless as a packer Brent was no weakling. Ignoring the mutterings he led the Indians to his outfit and while they affixed their straps, he faced the crowding men.
"Just stay where you are, boys," he said. "This stuff here is my stuff, and for the time being the ground it's on is my ground."
The man who had sneered at his attempt to pack the flour crowded close and quick as a flash, Brent's left fist caught him square on the point of the chin and he crashed backward among the legs of the others. Brent's voice never changed tone, nor by so much as the flutter of an eye lash did he betray any excitement. "Any man that crosses that line is going to find trouble—and find it damned quick."
"He's bluffin'," cried a thick voice from the rear of the crowd, "Let me up there. I'll show the damn dude!" A huge hard-rock man elbowed his way through the parting crowd, his whiskey-reddened eyes narrowed to slits. Three paces in front of Brent he halted abruptly and stared into the muzzleof the blue steel gun that had flashed into the engineer's hand.
"Come on," invited Brent, "If I'm bluffing I won't shoot. You're twice as big as I am. I wouldn't stand a show in the world in a rough-and-tumble. But, I'm not bluffing—and there won't be any rough-and-tumble."
For a full half minute the man stared into the unwavering muzzle of the gun.
"You would shoot a man, damn you!" he muttered as he backed slowly away. And every man in the crowd knew that he spoke the truth.
Three of the Indians had put their straps to a hundred pounds apiece and were already strung out on the trail. Brent turned to see Joe Pete regarding him with approval, and as he affixed his straps to a fifty pound pack, the big Indian stooped and swung an extra fifty pounds on top of the hundred already on his back and struck out after the others. At the end of a half-mile Brent was laboring heavily under his load, while Joe Pete had never for an instant slackened his pace. "What's he made of? Don't he ever rest?" thought Brent, as he struggled on. The blood was pounding in his ears, and his laboring lungs were sucking in the air in great gulps. At length his muscles refused to go another step, and he sagged to the ground and lay there sick and dizzy without energy enough left at his command to roll the pack from his shoulders. After what seemed an hour the pack was raised and theIndian who had gone ahead with his first pack swung the fifty pounds to his own shoulders and started off. Brent scrambled to his feet and followed.
A mile farther on they came to the others lying on the ground smoking and resting. The packs lay to one side, and Brent made mental note of the fact that these packers carried much of the weight upon a strap that looped over their foreheads, and that instead of making short hauls and then resting with their packs on they made long hauls and took long rests with their packs thrown off. They were at least three miles from the beach, and it was nearly an hour before they again took the trail. In the meantime Joe Pete had rigged a tump-line for Brent, and when he again took the trail he was surprised at the difference the shifting of part of the load to his head made in the ease with which he carried it.
Two miles farther on they came upon the sack of flour where the Indian had left it and Joe Pete indicated that this would be their first day's haul. Six hundred pounds of Brent's thousand had been moved five miles, and leaving the small Indian to make camp, the others, together with Brent returned for the remaining four hundred.
This time they were not molested by the men on the beach, many of whom they passed on the trail laboring along under packs which for the most part did not exceed fifty pounds weight.
On the return Brent insisted on packing his fifty pounds and much to his delight found that he was able to make the whole distance of three miles to the resting place. Joe Pete nodded grave approval of this feat and Brent, in whose veins flowed the bluest blood of the South, felt his heart swell with pride because he had won the approbation of this dark skinned packer of the North.
Into this rest camp came the erstwhile head barkeeper at Kelliher's, and to him Brent imparted the trail-lore he had picked up. Also he exchanged with him one hundred dollars in gold for a like amount in bills, and advised Joe Pete that when his present contract was finished this other would be a good man to work for.
Day after day they packed, and upon the last day of trail Brent made four miles under one hundred pounds with only one rest—much of the way through soft muskeg. And he repeated the performance in the afternoon. At Lindermann Joe Pete found an Indian who agreed to run Brent and his outfit down through the lakes and the river to Dawson in a huge freight canoe.
The first stampeders from the outside bought all available canoes and boats so that by the time of the big rush boats had to be built on the shore of the lake from timber cut green and whip-sawed into lumber on the spot. Also, the price of packing over the Chilkoot jumped from five cents a pound to ten,to twenty, to fifty, to seventy, and even a dollar, as men fought to get in before the freeze up—but that was a year and a half after Brent floated down the Yukon in his big birch canoe.