CONFESSIONS
Brent returned to the cabin with his brain in a whirl. "I'll make a strike before spring! I've got to! Then we'll hit for Dawson, and we'll stop at Fort Norman and be married. No—we'll go on through and be married at the Reeves'! Married! A Brent married to an Indian!" He halted in the trail and cursed himself for the thought.
"She's a damn sight too good for you! You're a hell of a Brent—nothing left but the name! Gambler—notorious gambler, Reeves said—and a barkeep in Malone's dive. You're a hooch hound, and you've got to keep away from hooch to stay sober! You don't dare go back to Dawson—nor anywhere else where there's a saloon! You're broke, and worse than broke. You're right now living on Reeves' money—and you think of marryingher!"
Furiously, next morning, he attacked the gravel at the bottom of the shaft. When the loose muck was thrown out he swore at the slow progress, and futilely attacked the floor of the shaft with his pick as though to win down to bed-rock through theiron-hard frost. Then he climbed out and, scooping up a pan from the dump, retired to the cabin, and washed it out.
"Same thing," he muttered disgustedly, as he stared at the yellow grains, "Just wages. I've got to make a strike! There's Reeves to pay—and Camillo Bill—and I've got to have dust—and plenty of it—forher. Damn this hole! I'm going to hit for the lower river. We'll cover this shaft to keep the snow out and hit north. Hearne, and Franklin, and Richardson all report native copper on the lower river—amygdaloid beds that crop out in sheer cliffs. Gold isn't the only metal—there's millions in copper! And, the river winding in and out among the trap and basalt dykes, there's bound to be gold, too." He collected the few grains of gold, threw out the gravel and water, and picking up his rifle, stepped out the door. At the shaft he paused and called to Joe Pete that he was going hunting and as the big Indian watched him disappear up the river, his lips stretched in a slow grin, and he tossed wood into the shaft.
A mile from the cabin Brent rounded a sharp bend and came face to face with Snowdrift. There was an awkward silence during which both strove to appear unconcerned. The girl was the first to speak, and Brent noticed that she was blushing furiously: "I—I am hunting," she announced, swinging her rifle prominently into view.
Brent laughed: "So am I hunting—for you."
"But really, I am hunting caribou. There are lots of mouths to feed, and the men are not much good. They will spend hours slipping up onto a caribou and then miss him."
"Come on, then, let's go," answered the man gaily. "Which way shall it be?"
"I saw lots of tracks the other day on a lake to the eastward. It is six or seven miles. I think we will find caribou there." Brent tried to take her hand, but she eluded him with a laugh, and struck out through the scraggling timber at a pace that he soon found hard to follow.
"Slow down! I'll be good!" he called, when they had covered a quarter of a mile, and Snowdrift laughingly slackened her pace.
"You're a wonder!" he panted, as he closed up the distance that separated them, "Don't you ever get tired?"
"Oh, yes, very often. But, not so early in the day. See, three caribou passed this way only a few hours ago—a bull and two cows." They struck into the trail, and two hours later Snowdrift succeeded in bring down one of the cows with a long shot as the three animals trotted across a frozen muskeg.
"And now we must kill one for you," announced the girl as Brent finished drawing the animal.
"We needn't be in any hurry about it," he grinned. "We still have most of the one we got the other day."
"Then, why are you hunting?"
"I told you. I found what I was hunting—back there on the river. How about lunch? I'm hungry as a wolf."
The girl pointed to a sheltered spot in the lee of a spruce thicket, and while Brent scraped back the snow, she produced food from her pack.
"You must have figured on getting pretty hungry," teased Brent, eying the generous luncheon to which he had added his own.
Snowdrift blushed: "You brought more than I did!" she smiled, "See—there is much more."
"Oh, I'll come right out with it—I put that up for two!"
"And mine is for two," she admitted, "But you are mean for making me say it."
During the meal the girl was unusually silent and several times Brent surprised a look of pain in the dark eyes, and then the look would fade and the eyes would gaze pensively into the distance. Once he was sure that her lip quivered.
"What's the matter, Snowdrift," he asked abruptly, "What is troubling you? Tell me all about it. You might as well begin now, you know—because——"
She hastened to interrupt him: "Nothing is the matter!" she cried, with an obviously forced gaiety. "But, tell me, where did you come from—before you came to the Yukon? All my life I have wanted to know more of the land that lies to the southward—the land of the white man. Father Ambrose and Sister Mercedes told me much—but it was mostly of the church. And Henri of the White Water told me of the great stores in Edmonton where one may buy fine clothes, of other stores where one may sell hooch without fear of the police, and also where one may win money with cards. But, surely, there are other things. The white men, and the women, they do not always go to church and buy clothes, and drink hooch, and gamble with cards. And are all the women beautiful like the pictures in the books, and in the magazines?"
Brent laughed: "No, all the women are not beautiful. It is only once in a great while that one sees a really beautiful woman, and you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen——"
"But I am not beautiful!" cried the girl, "Not like the pictures."
"The pictures are not pictures of real women, they are creations of an artist's brain. The pictures are the artist's conception of what the real women should be."
Snowdrift regarded him with a puzzled frown: "Is it all make-believe, in the land of the white man? The books—the novels that tell of knights in armor, and of the beautiful ladies with their clothes, and their rings of the diamonds that sparkle like ice—and other novels that tell of suffering, and of the plotting of men and women who are very bad—and of the doings of men and women who aregood—Sister Mercedes said they are all lies—that they are the work of the brain of the man who wrote it down. Is it all lies and make-believe? Do the white men use their brains only to tell of the doings of people who have never lived, and to make pictures of people and things that never were? Do you, too, live in the make-believe? You have told me you love me. And just now you told me that I was the most beautiful woman you have seen. Those are the words of the books—of the novels. Always the man must tell the woman she is the most beautiful woman in the world. And it is all make-believe, and in the words is no truth!"
"No, no, dear! You do not understand. I don't know whether I can explain it, but it is not all make-believe—by a long shot! Life down there is as real as it is here. There are millions of people there and for them all life is a struggle. Millions live in great cities, and other millions live in the country and raise grain with which to feed themselves, and the millions who live in the cities. And the people in the cities work in great factories, and make the clothing, and the tools, and guns, and everything that is used by themselves and by the people who live outside the cities, and they build the ships and the railroads which carry these goods to all parts of the world. But you have read of all that in the books—and the books are not all lies and make-believe, for they tell of life as it is—not as any one or a dozen characters live it—but asthousands and millions live it. The comings and goings of the characters are the composite comings and goings of a thousand or a million living breathing people. And because each person is too busy—too much occupied with his own particular life, he does not know of the lives of the other millions. But he wants to know—so he reads the books and the magazines, and the newspapers." The girl hung absorbed upon his words, and for an hour Brent talked, describing, explaining, detailing the little things and the great things, the common-places, and the wonders of the far-off land to the southward. But of all the things he described, the girl was most interested in the libraries with their thousands and thousands of books that one might read for the asking—the libraries, and the clothing of the women.
"All my life," she concluded, "I have wanted to go to the land of the white man, and see these things myself. But, I never shall see them, and I am glad you have told me more."
Brent laughed, happily, and before she could elude him his arms were about her and he had drawn her close. "Indeed you shall see them!" he cried. "You and I shall see them together. We'll be married at Dawson, and we'll make a strike——"
With a low cry the girl freed herself from his arms, and drew away to the other side of the fire: "No, no, no!" she cried, with a catch in her voice, "I can never marry you! Oh, why must we love!Why must we suffer, when the fault is not ours? They would hate me, and despise me, and point at me with the finger of scorn!"
Brent laughed: "Hold on girl!" he cried, "Some of the best families in the world have Indian blood in their veins—and they're proud of it! I know 'em! They'll come a long way from hating you. Why, they'll pile all over themselves to meet you—and a hundred years from now our great-grand-children will be bragging about you!" Suddenly, he grew serious, "But maybe you won't marry me, after all—when you've heard what I've got to say. Maybe you'll despise me—and it'll be all right if you do. It will be what I have earned. It isn't a pretty story, and it's going to hurt to tell it—to you. But, you've got to know—so here goes.
"In the first place, you think I'm good. But, I'm not good—by most of the ten commandments, and a lot of by-laws. I'm not going to do any white-washing—I'm going to begin at the beginning and tell you the truth, so you can see how far I've dropped. In the first place my family tree is decorated with presidents, and senators, and congress-men, and generals, and diplomats, and its branches are so crowded with colonels, and majors and captains and judges, and doctors, that they have to prop them up to keep them from breaking. Some were rich, but honest; and some were poor, but not so honest, and a lot of them were half way between in both wealth and honesty. But, anyway, you can'tturn twenty pages of United States history without running onto the trail of at least one man that I can claim kin to. As for myself, I'm a college man, and a mining engineer—that means I was fitted by family and education to be a big man, and maybe get a chance to slip into history myself—I've made some, over on the Yukon, but—it ain't fit to print.
"Hooch was at the bottom of the whole business. I couldn't handle hooch like some men can. One drink always called for another, and two drinks called for a dozen. I liked to get drunk, and I did get drunk, every chance I got—and that was right often. I lost job after job because I wouldn't stay sober—and later some others because I couldn't stay sober. I heard of the gold on the Yukon and I went there, and I found gold—lots of it. I was counted one of the richest men in the country. Then I started out to get rid of the gold. I couldn't spend it all so I gambled it away. Almost from the time I made my strike I never drew a sober breath, until I'd shoved my last marker across the table. Then I dealt faro—turned professional gambler for wages in the best place in Dawson, but the hooch had got me and I lost out. I got another job in a saloon that wasn't so good, but it was the same story, and in a little while I was tending bar—selling hooch—in the lowest dive in town—and that means the lowest one in the world, I reckon. That last place, The Klondike Palace; with its painted women, who sell themselves nightly to men, with the scum of theearth carousing in its dance-hall, and playing at its tables, was the hell-hole of the Yukon. And I was part of it. I stood behind its bar and sold hooch—I was the devil that kept the hell-fires stoked and roaring. And I kept full of hooch myself, or I couldn't have stood it. Then I lost out even there, on—what you might call a technicality—and after that I was just a plain bum. Everybody despised me—worst of all, I despised myself. I did odd jobs to get money to buy hooch, and when I had bought it I crawled into my shack and stayed there till it was gone. I was weak and flabby, and dirty. My hands shook so I couldn't raise a glass of hooch to my lips, until I'd had a stiff shot. I used to lap the first drink out of a saucer like a dog. I dodged the men who had once been my friends. Only Joe Pete, who had helped me over the Chilkoot, and who remembered that I was a good man on the trail, and a girl named Kitty, would even turn their heads to glance at the miserable drunkard that slunk along the street with his bottle concealed in his ragged pocket.
"There is one more I thought was my friend. His name is Camillo Bill, and he is square as a die, and he did me a good turn when he cleaned me out, by holding my claims for only what he had coming when he could have taken them all. But he came to see me one day toward the last. He came to tell me that the claims had petered out. I wanted him to grub-stake me, for a prospecting tripand he refused. That hurt me worse than all the rest—for I thought he was my friend. He cursed me, and refused to grub-stake me. Then I met a real friend—one I had never seen before, and he furnished the gold for my trip to the Coppermine, and—here I am."
Snowdrift had listened with breathless attention and when Brent concluded she was silent for a long time. "This girl named Kitty?" she asked at length, "Who is she, and why was she your friend? Did you love this woman? Is she beautiful?"
"No," answered Brent, gravely, "I did not love her. She was not the kind of a woman a man would love. She was beautiful after a fashion. She might have been very beautiful had her life fallen in a different groove. She was an adventuress, big hearted, keen of brain—but an adventuress. Hers was a life distorted and twisted far from its original intent. For it was plain to all that she had been cast in a finer mould, and even the roughest and most brutal of the men treated her with a certain respect that was not accorded to the others. She never spoke of her past. She accepted the present philosophically, never by word or look admitting that she had chosen the wrong road. Her ethics were the ethics of the muck and ruck of the women of the dance halls. She differed only in that she had imagination—and a certain pride that prevented her from holding herself cheaply. Where others were careless and slovenly, she was well groomed.And while they caroused and shamelessly debauched themselves, she held aloof from the rabble.
"You asked why she was my friend. I suppose it was because she was quick to see that I too, was different from the riff-raff of the dives. Not that I was one whit better than they—for I was not. It was no credit to me that I was inherently different. It was, I reckon, a certain innate pride that kept me out of the filth of the mire, as it kept her out. To me the painted slovens were physically loathsome, so I shunned them. She was keener of brain than I—or maybe it was because she had a perspective. But while I was still at the height of my success with the claims and with the cards, she foresaw the end, and she warned me. But, I disregarded the warning, and later, when I was rushing straight to the final crash, she warned me again and again, and she despised me for the fool I was.
"When, at the very bottom, I was taken suddenly sick, it was Kitty who nursed me through. And then, when I was on my feet again she left me to myself. I have not seen her since."
"And, if you make a strike again," asked the girl in a low voice, "Will you go back to Dawson—to the cards and the hooch?"
"I will go back to Dawson," he answered, "And pay my debts. I will not go back to the cards. I am through with gambling for good and all, for I have promised. And when a Brent gives his word, he would die rather than break it."
"But the hooch?" persisted Snowdrift. "Are you done with the hooch too?"
Brent was conscious that the eyes of the girl were fixed upon his in a gaze of curious intentness, as though their deliberate calm suppressed some mighty emotion. He groped for words: "I don't—that is, how can I tell? I drink no hooch now—but there is none to drink. I hate it for I know that what it did to me once it will do to me again. I hate it—and I love it!" exclaimed the man. "Tell me, is hate stronger than love?"
The girl was silent for a moment, and by the clenching of her fists, Brent knew that a struggle was raging within her. She ignored his question, and when she spoke her voice was low, and the words fell with a peculiar dullness of tone: "I, too, have a thing to tell. It is a horrible thing. And when you have heard you will not want to marry me." The girl paused, and Brent felt suddenly sick and weak. There was a dull ache in his breast that was an actual physical pain, and when the cold breeze fanned his forehead, it struck with a deadly chill. With a mighty effort he recovered, leaned swiftly toward her and was vaguely conscious that she winced at the grip of his fingers upon her arm.
"Tell me!" he cried hoarsely. For a single instant his eyes blazed into hers, and then, as though anticipating her words, his fingers relaxed their hold and he settled back with a half-articulate moan—"Oh, God!"
"What you have told me," she continued, in the same dull tone, "Is nothing. It is past and gone. It is dead, and its evil died with it. You are a white man. The white man's thoughts are your thoughts, and his standards are your standards. You work the harm, then unjustly you sit in judgment. And the harm does not die with the deed. The shame of it is a thing of the present, and of the future, and it is borne always by the innocent.
"The thing I must tell you is this. I am a half-breed. But my father was not the husband of Wananebish, who is my mother——"
Brent interrupted her with quick, glad cry: "Is that all?" The blood surged hot through his veins. The ache in his breast became a wild singing. And suddenly he realized the grip and the depth of the thing that is called love, with its power to tear and to rend the very foundations of his being. He felt an insane desire to leap and to shout—and the next instant the girl was in his arms and he was crushing her against his breast as he covered her face with hot kisses. And when a few moments later, he released her, he laughed aloud—a laugh that was clear and boyish, and altogether good to hear, while the girl gazed half-fearfully—half-wonderingly into his eyes:
"I—I do not understand," she faltered, "I have known this only for a short time. Henri of the White Water told me of it, and of the shame of it—and then Sister Mercedes—and it is true, becauseyears ago when I was very small, Wananebish told it to Father Ambrose——"
"Damn Henri of the White Water! And damn Sister Mercedes and Father Ambrose!" cried Brent, his eyes narrowing, "What did they tell you for? What difference does it make?"
"Henri of the White Water told me because he was angry. I would not marry him. I was going to a great convent school, and he said that in the land of the white man I would be an object of scorn—that people would shun me, and point me out with the finger of shame. I did not believe him, so I went to Sister Mercedes, and she told me, also. And so I would not go to the school, and that night I came away from the mission—came back to the Indians." She paused, and as she raised her eyes to his, Brent saw that in their depths a wondrous newborn hope struggled against fear. Her lips moved: "You do not scorn me? You love me—knowing that?"
Again she was in his arms, and his lips were upon hers: "Yes, I love you—love you—love you! You are mine, darling—mine for all time!" She did not resist his arms, and he felt her yielding body press close against his own, as her shoulders heaved in short, quick sobs.
Softly, almost timidly, her arms stole about his neck, and her tear-jeweled eyes raised to his: "And you would marry me, not knowing who I am?"
"Yes, darling," reassured Brent, "Neither knowing nor caring who you are. It is enough that you are the dearest, and most beautiful, and the most lovable woman in the whole world of women. Why, girl, the wonder is not that I love you—but that you could love me, after what I told you."
"It is the answer to your question," she smiled, "It means that love is the strongest thing in all the world—stronger than hate, stronger than race, or laws, or codes of ethics. Love is supreme!"
"And that means, then, that my love for hooch will conquer my hate for it?"
"No!" breathed the girl, and Brent could feel her arms tighten about his neck. "For your love for hooch has not only to overcome your hate for it, but it must also overcome your love for me, and my love for you. I am not afraid to fight it out with hooch for your love! If I cannot make myself more to you than hooch ever can, I would not be worthy of your love!"
"My darling," whispered Brent, his lips close to her ear, "You have won already. I will promise——"
He was interrupted by her fingers upon his lips, shutting off the words.
"No—dear," she hesitated a second at the unfamiliar word, "You must not promise—yet. It is easy to promise, out here in the barrens, where you have me in your arms, and the hooch is far away. I ask no odds of hooch. Wait till you have stood the test. I am not afraid. I have not much learning, but some things I know. I know that, holding a promise in as high regard as you hold one, if anything should happen—if you should drink hooch just once, the promise would be broken—and never again would a promise be just the same. We have a war with hooch—you and I. And we are going to win. But, in the histories I have read of few wars where every battle was won by the same army. Some of the battles we must expect to lose—but thewarwe will win."
"Not much learning," smiled Brent, looking into the depths of the dark eyes, "But the concentrated wisdom of the ages—the wisdom that is the heritage of woman, and which not one woman in a thousand learns to apply."
For a long time the two sat beside their little fire, add in the gloom of the early darkness, they made their way toward the river.
IN THE CABIN OF THEBELVA LOU
For two weeks Brent and Snowdrift were together each day from dawn until dark. Leaving Joe Pete to work the claim on the Coppermine, they burned into the gravel on a creek that gave promise, and while their fire slowly thawed out the muck, they hunted. When at a depth of four feet they had not struck a color, Brent gave it up.
"No use," he said, one day as he tossed the worthless pebbles from his pan. "If there was anything here, we'd have found at least a trace. I'm going to hit down the river and have a look at the Copper Mountains."
"Take me with you!" cried the girl, eagerly, "How long will you be gone?"
"I wish I could," smiled Brent, "But Joe Pete and I will be gone two weeks—a month—maybe longer. It depends on what we find. If we were only married, what a great trip it would be! But, never mind, sweetheart, we've got a good many trips coming—years and years of them."
"But that isn't now," objected the girl, "Whatwill I do all the while you are gone? Each morning I hurry here as fast as I can, and each evening I am sorry when the darkness comes and I must leave you."
The man drew her close, "Yes, darling," he whispered, "I understand. The hours I spend away from you are long hours, and I count them one by one. I do not want to go away from you, but it is for you that I must make a strike."
"I would rather have you with me than have all the strikes in the world!"
"I know—but we don't want to spend all our days in this God-forgotten wilderness, fighting famine, and the strong cold. We want to go far away from all this, where there is music, and books, and life! You've got it coming, little girl—but first we must make a strike."
"And, we will not be married until you make your strike?" The dark eyes looked wistfully into his, and Brent smiled:
"Strike or no strike, we will be married in the spring!" he cried, "and if the strike has not been made, we'll make it together."
"Will we be married at the mission?"
"No—at Dawson."
"Dawson!" cried the girl, "And I shall really see Dawson? But, isn't it very far?"
Brent laughed: "Yes, you will really see Dawson—and you won't see much when you see it, in comparison with what you will see when we quitthe North and go back to the States. In the spring you and Wananebish, and Joe Pete and I will take a month's vacation—and when we come back, darling, we will have each other always."
"But, if you do not make a strike?" questioned the girl, "What then? Would you be happy here in the North—with me?"
"Sweetheart," answered Brent, "If I knew to a certainty that I should never make a strike—that I should always live in these barrens, I would marry you anyway—and call the barrens blessed. But, I will make a strike! It is for you—and I cannot fail! Oh, if I hadn't been such a fool!"
The girl smiled into his eyes: "If you hadn't been such a—a fool, you would never have come to the barrens. And I—I would always have been just an Indian—hating the white man, hating the world, living my life here and there, upon the lakes and the rivers, in cabins and tepees, with just enough education to long for the better things, and with my heart bursting with pain and bitterness in the realization that those things were not for me."
"It is strange how everything works out for the best," mused Brent, "The whys and the wherefores of life are beyond my philosophy. Sordid, and twisted, and wrong as they were, my Dawson days, and the days of the years that preceded them were all but the workings of destiny—to bring you and me together up here on the rim of the Arctic.
"It was a great scheme, little girl," he smiled,suddenly breaking into a lighter mood, "And the beauty of it is—it worked. But what I was getting at is this: it don't seem reasonable that after going to all that trouble to bring us together, and taking such liberties with my reputation, Old Man Destiny is going to make us fill out the rest of the time punching holes in gravel, and snaring rabbits, and hunting caribou."
That evening they said good bye upon the edge of the clearing that surrounded the Indian encampment, and as Brent turned to go he drew a heavy bag from his pocket and handed it to the girl, "Keep this till I come back," he said, "It's gold."
"Oh, it is heavy!" cried the girl in surprise.
Brent smiled, "Weighs up pretty big now. But when we make our strike it won't be a shoestring. But come—one more good bye and I must be going. I've got to pack my outfit for an early start."
One day a week later Brent stood with Joe Pete on the northernmost ridge of the Copper Mountains and gazed toward the coast of the Arctic Ocean. Almost at their feet, buried beneath snow and ice were the Bloody Falls of the Coppermine and to the northward, only snow. Brent was surprised, for he knew that the ridge upon which he was standing could not be more than ten or twelve miles from the coast, but he also knew that he could see for twenty miles or more, and that the only thing that met the eye was a gently undulating plain of snow, unbroken by even so much as a twig or a bush, or ahillock worthy the name. Never, he thought, as his glance swept the barren, treeless waste, had eyes of mortal man beheld its equal for absolute bleak desolation.
A cry from Joe Pete cause him to concentrate his gaze upon a spot toward which the Indian pointed, where, dimly discernible, a dark object appeared against the unbroken surface of the snow. The steel blue haze—the "cold fog" of the North, obfuscated its outlines, as it destroyed perspective so that the object may have been five miles away, or twenty. It may have been the size of a dog, or the size of a skyscraper. In vain the two strained their eyes in an endeavor to make it out. In the first gloom of the early darkness it disappeared altogether, and the two made their way to the frozen surface of the river where, in the shelter of a perpendicular wall of rock, they made their camp and kindled a tiny fire of twigs they had collected the day before from the last timber on the Coppermine, at a creek that runs in from the eastward.
For two days, holding to the surface of the river, the two had threaded the transverse ridges that form the Copper Mountains. It was Brent's idea to mush straight to the northernmost ridge and work back slowly, stopping wherever practicable to prospect among the outcropping ledges. He had planned, also, to burn into the gravel at intervals, but he had not foreseen the fact that the mountainslay north of the timber line, so the burning had to be abandoned.
At daylight they again climbed the ridge. The cold fog had disappeared and as Joe Pete, who was in the lead, reached the summit, he gave voice to a loud cry of surprise. For in place of the indiscernible object of the day before, apparently only ten or twelve miles distant, and right in the centre of the vast plain of snow was a ship—each mast and spar standing out clean-cut as a cameo against its dazzling background. Brent even fancied he could see men walking about her deck, and other men walking to and fro among a group of snow mounds that clustered close about the hulk.
"A whaler!" he exclaimed, "One of those that Johnnie Claw said wintered up here."
For a long time Brent watched the ship, and covertly Joe Pete watched Brent. At length the white man spoke. "Reckon we'll just mush over there and call on 'em. Neighbors aren't so damned common up here that we can afford to pass them by when we're in sight of 'em."
"Dat better, mebbe-so, we don' go w'ere we ain' got no business. Mebbe-so dat Godam Johnnie Claw, she giv' you som' mor' hooch, eh? Dat breed gal she dam' fine 'oman—she ain' lak dat."
Brent laughed, a trifle nervously: "I don't reckon there's any danger of that," he answered, shortly. "Come on, we'll harness the dogs and pull out there. I'd like to see what kind of an outfitthey've got, and as long as we're this near it would be too bad not to go to the very top of the continent."
Joe Pete shrugged and followed Brent down to the river where they broke camp, harnessed the dogs, and struck out over the plain. The wind-packed snow afforded good footing and the outfit pushed rapidly northward.
Brent was surprised at the absence of a pressure ridge at the shore line, but so flat was the snow-buried beach that it was with difficulty that he determined where the land left off and the sea-ice began. The whaler he judged to be frozen in at a distance of three or four miles from shore.
The figures of men could be plainly seen, now, and soon it became evident that their own presence had been noted, for three or four figures were seen to range themselves along the rail, evidently studying them through a glass.
While still a mile or two distant, the figures at the rail disappeared below deck, but others moved about among the snow mounds in the shelter of the vessel's hull.
Upon arriving at the mounds, which proved to be snow igloos such as are used by the Eskimos, Brent halted the dogs, and advanced to where two men, apparently oblivious to his presence, were cutting up blubber.
"Hello," he greeted, "Where's the captain?"
One of the men did not even look up. The other,presenting a villainous hairy face, nodded surlily toward an ice-coated ladder.
"Wait here," said Brent, turning to Joe Pete, "Till I find out whether this whole crew is as cordial to strangers as these two specimens."
At the words, the man who had directed Brent to the ladder, raised his head and opened his lips as if to speak, but evidently thinking better of it, he uttered a sneering laugh, and went on with his cutting of blubber.
Brent climbed the ladder, and made his way across the snow-buried deck, guided by a well packed path that led to a door upon which he knocked loudly. While waiting for a response he noticed the nameBelva Loupainted upon the stern of a small boat that lay bottomside up upon the deck. Knocking again, he called loudly, and receiving no reply, opened the door and found himself upon a steep flight of stairs. Stepping from the dazzling whiteness of the outside, the interior of the whaler was black as a pocket, and he paused upon the stairs to accustom his eyes to the change. As the foul air from below filled his lungs it seemed to Brent that he could not go on. The stench nauseated him—the vile atmosphere reeked of rancid blubber, drying furs, and the fumes of dead cookery. A tiny lamp that flared in a wall pocket at the foot of the stairs gave forth a stink of its own. Gradually, as his eyes accorded to the gloom, Brent took cognizance of the dim interior. The steep short flightof steps terminated in a narrow passage that led toward the stern whence came the muffled sound of voices. Descending, he glanced along the passage toward a point where, a few feet distant, another lamp flared dimly. Just beyond this lamp was a door, and from beyond the door came the sound of voices.
He groped his way to the door and knocked. There was a sudden hush, a few gruffly mumbled words, and then a deep voice snarled: "Who's there?"
"Just a visitor," announced Brent, stifling a desire to turn and rush from that fetid hole out into the clean air—but it was too late.
The voice beyond the door commanded thickly: "Come in, an' we'll look ye over!"
For just an instant Brent hesitated, then his hand fumbled for the knob, turned it, and the narrow door swung inward. He stepped into the box-like apartment, and for a moment stood speechless as his eyes strove to take in the details of the horrid scene.
The stinking air of the dank passage was purest ozone in comparison with the poisonous fog of the overheated, unventilated room. He felt suddenly sick and dizzy as he sucked the evil effluvia into his lungs—the thick, heavy smoke of cheap tobacco, the stench of unbathed humans, the overpowering reek of spilled liquor, the spent breath from rum-soaked bodies, the gaseous fumes of a soft coal stove, andthe odor from an oil lamp that had smoked one side of its chimney black.
"Shut the door! Coal costs money. What the hell ye tryin' to do, heat the hull Ar'tic? Who be ye, anyhow? An' wot d'ye want?"
Mechanically Brent closed the door behind him, as he glanced into the leering eyes of the speaker, who sat, with two other men, and a partially clad Eskimo woman, at a table upon which were set out a bottle and several glasses.
Before Brent could reply, the man across the table from the speaker leaped to his feet and thrust out his hand. Through the grey haze of smoke, Brent recognized Johnnie Claw.
"Well, if it ain't my ol' friend Ace-In-The-Hole!" cried the hooch runner. "'S all right Cap! Best sport on the Yukon!" Ignoring the fact that Brent had refused the proffered hand, Claw leered into his face: "Ace-In-The-Hole let me make you 'quainted with Cap Jinkins, Cap'n of theBelva Lou—damn good sport, too—an' Asa Scroggs, mate. Both damn good sports,Belva Loufetches out more oil an' bone 'n any of 'em—an' Cap ain't 'fraid to spend his money. Glad you come long. Welcome to stay long as you like—ain't he Cap?"
The Captain lowered a glass from his lips, and cleansed his overhanging mustache upon the back of a hairy hand: "Sure," he growled, surlily, "Didn't know he was friend o' yourn. S'down." The room contained only four chairs, and as he spoke, theman, with a sweep of his hand, struck the klooch from her chair, and kicked it toward Brent, who sank into it heavily, and stared dully at the klooch who crawled to a corner and returned the stare with a drunken, loose-lipped grin upon her fat face. Brent shifted his glance, and upon a bunk beyond the table he saw another klooch, lying in a drunken stupor, her only garment, a grimy wrapper of faded calico, was crumpled about her, exposing one brown leg to the hip.
Schooled as he had been to sights of debauchery by his service with Cuter Malone, Brent was appalled—sickened by the sottish degeneracy of his surroundings.
With unsteady hand the mate slopped some liquor into a glass and shoved it toward him: "Swaller that," he advised, with a grin, "Yer gittin' white 'round the gills. Comin' right in out of the air, it might seem a leetle close in here, at first."
The fumes arising from the freshly spilled liquor smelledclean—the only hint of cleanliness in the whole poisoned atmosphere of the cabin. He breathed them deeply into his lungs, and for an instant the dizziness and sickness at his stomach seemed less acute. Maybe one drink—one little sip would revive him—counteract the poison of the noisome air, and stimulate him against the dull apathy that was creeping upon him. Slowly, his hand stole toward the glass, his fingers closed about it, and he raised it to his lips. Another deepinhalation of its fragrance and he drained it at a gulp.
"Didn't know we had no neighbors," ventured the Captain, filling his own glass. "What ye doin' up here?"
"Prospecting," answered Brent, "The Copper Mountains. I saw your vessel from the ridge, and thought I would come over and see what a whaler looks like." The strong liquor was taking hold. A warm glow gripped his belly and diffused itself slowly through his veins. The nausea left him, and the olid atmosphere seemed suddenly purged of its reek.
"Well," grinned the captain, "TheBelva Louhain't what ye'd call no floatin' palace, but she's ahead o' most whalers. An' after Johnnie gits through hornin' round 'mongst the Husky villages an' fixes us up with a wife apiece, we manage to winter through right comfortable. Me an' Asa stays on board, an' the rest of the crew, builds 'em igloos. But, here's me runnin' off at the head—an' you might spill it all to the Mounted."
"Not him," laughed Claw. "Him an' I ain't always pulled, what you might say, together—but he's square—kill you in a minute, if he took a notion—but he'd go to hell before he'd snitch. Have another drink, Ace-In-The-Hole, 'twon't hurt you none—only rum—an' water-weak."
Before he knew it the glass was in his hand, and again Brent drank.
After that he took them as they came. The bottle was emptied and tossed into the corner where the drunken klooch recovered it and holding it to her lips, greedily sucked the few drops that remained in the bottom. Another bottle was produced, and Brent, his brain fired by the raw liquor, measured glasses, drink for drink, never noticing that the same liquor served, in the glasses of the other three, for round after round of libations.
"Wher's yer camp?" asked Claw, as he refilled the glasses.
"Bloody Falls," answered Brent, waxing loquacious. "Bloody Falls of the Coppermine, where old Samuel Hearne's Indians butchered the Eskimos."
"Butchered the Eskimos!" exclaimed Claw, "What d'you mean—butchered? I ain't heard 'bout no Huskies bein' killed, an' who in hell's Sam Hearne? I be'n round here, off an' on, fer long while, an' I ain't never run acrost no Sam Hearne. What be you handin' us? You ort to start a noospaper."
Brent laughed uproariously: "No, Claw, I reckon you never ran across him. This happened over a hundred years ago—1771—July 13th, to be exact."
Asa Scroggs grinned knowingly: "Man kin lap up a hell of a lot of idees out of a bottle of hooch," he opined, "Mostly it runs to ph'los'fy, er fightin', er po'try, er singin', er religion, er women, er sad mem'ries—but this here stale news idee is a new one.But, g'wan, Ace-In-The-Hole, did the Mounted git Sam fer his murdersome massacres?"
"That was a hundred years before the Mounted was thought of," answered Brent, eying Scroggs truculently, as his inflamed brain sought hidden insult in the words.
"I always know'd I was born too late," laughed Claw, who, noting the signs of approaching trouble, sought peace. "This here'd be a hell of a fine country, if it wasn't fer the Mounted. But, say, Ace-In-The-Hole, you doin' any good? Struck any color?"
Brent forgot Scroggs and turned to Claw: "No, not to speak of. Just about made wages."
"Well," continued the hooch runner, "You had a pretty fair sack of dust when you come in. What d'you say we start a little game of stud—jest the four of us?"
"Nothing doing," answered Brent, shortly. "I'm off of stud."
"Off of stud!" exclaimed the other, "How in hell d'you ever expect to git even? Stud owes you more dust than you kin pile on a sled!"
Brent drank a glass of rum: "The game can keep what it owes me. And besides I left my dust in camp—except a couple of ounces, or so."
"Yer finger bet goes with me," assured Claw, "Everybody's wouldn't, by a damn sight—but yourn does. What d'you say?"
"My word is good in a game, is it?" asked Brent.
"Good as the dust—in one, or out of one," promptly assured Claw.
"Well, then listen to this: I gave my word in the presence of the man who staked me for this trip, that I would never gamble again. So I reckon you know how much stud I'll play from now on."
"Gawd A'mighty!" breathed Claw, incredulously, "An' the game owin' you millions. Well, have a drink on it, anyway."
Claw refilled Brent's glass, and thrust it into his hand, with a wink at the captain, for he had been quick to note that the liquor and the hot fetid air of the room was making Brent drowsy. His eyes had become dull and heavy lidded, and his chin rested heavily upon the throat of his parka. "Ain't happened to run onto a little bunch of Injuns, up the river, have you?" asked the man, as Brent gagged at the liquor.
"No," answered Brent, drowsily, "No Injuns in Copper Mountains—nothing in the mountains—nothing but snow." Gradually his eyes closed, and his head rolled heavily to one side. The drunken klooch rose to her knees, and with a maudlin giggle, seized Brent's half empty glass and drained it.
With a curse, the captain kicked her into her corner, and turned to Claw with a suggestive motion: "Slit his gullet, an' we'll slip him down a seal hole with some scrap iron on his legs. He's prob'bly lyin' 'bout leavin' the dust in camp."
Claw shook his head: "Not him," he opined, "Search him first."
The Captain and the mate subjected the unconscious man to a thorough search, at the conclusion of which Scroggs tossed a small lean gold sack upon the table. "Prob'ly all he's got left, anyhow," he growled in disgust. "Le's jest weight him an' slip him through the ice the way he is. 'Tain't so messy."
"Not by a damn sight!" objected Claw. "It's jest like I told you, when we was watchin' him through the glass. He's got anyways clost to a hundred ounces. I seen it, when he paid me fer the hooch, like I was tellin' you."
"Well, we kin back-track him to his camp, an' if we can't find it we kin put the hot irons to the Injun's feet till he squeals."
"The Injun don't know where it's at," argued Claw contemptuously, "He's too damn smart to trust a Siwash. An' you bet he's got itcachedwhere we couldn't find it. He wouldn't leave it round where the first bunch of Huskies that come along could lift it, would he?"
"Well," growled the Captain, "Yer so damn smart, what's yer big idee?"
"We got to let him go. Put back his little two ounces, so he won't suspicion nothin'. Then, when he wakes up, I'll slip him a bottle of hooch fer a present, an' he'll hit fer camp and start in on it. It won't last long, an' then you an' me an' Scroggswill happen along with more hooch to sell him. When he digs up the dust to pay fer it, I'll tend to him. You two git the Injun—buthe'smine. I've got a long score to settle with him—an' I know'd if I waited long enough, my time would come."