CHAPTER XI.A great commotion stirred Ainslie's camp on the following afternoon. The narrow passages, called streets, between ugly log and canvas buildings were thronged with heterogeneous concourses of miners and others. They moved back and forth along the pounded trail from restaurants and stores to the bunk-houses, from bunk-houses to dance-halls or riotous saloons, and an air of expectancy pervaded the movements of everyone within the camp's confines.Outside Anderson's cabin the crowd began to concentrate, talking in incessant murmurs, while all eyes were fixed upon the closed door. A trial was going on inside. The news had spread through Ainslie's that the cache-thief had been taken and was now up before a miners' meeting. Word passed from man to man, and the throng continually grew in volume.Presently Anderson's door swung open. Those who had sat in tribunal poured out with the prisoner in their midst.Jim Laurance inhaled a deep breath and drew the fur cap down over his damp brow as he slouched along beside Rex Britton."That was a close thing," he growled. "Don't ast me no more to stick in me chin for a slim-finger! I don't much fancy these free-for-all fights."It was evident that the discussion inside had waxed hot and that only a slender margin saved the neck of Chris Morris.The latter walked, with bent head, inside the solid phalanx of grim miners, among whom burly Charlie Anderson was chief. The face of Morris showed ashy gray in fear, and his eyes rolled back like a negro's as he shambled along, gazing at the ground, because the thought of looking for an avenue of escape was worse than futile.The waiting mass of people gave vent to long-suppressed expectancy when Morris appeared. A loud shout rose up, and everybody rushed after the cordon which surrounded the cache-thief. It moved to the centre of the camp, where a large hitching-post, bearing a red cloth sign advertising Laggan's dance-hall, stood up at the side of the winding trail that served for Main Street.The impatient spectators ranged themselves in lines that broke and shifted as they strove for better vantage-ground. Some, to obtain a clearer view, ran and climbed upon the low roofs of the log cabins, upon the verandah of the dance-hall, and the porch of a store just opposite. Women were mixed in with the male gathering, some with knee-length skirts and fringed leggings, and others dressed outright in men's garments.On every hand was unpitying condemnation for the thief. He was scowled at and spat upon, for pillaging is considered the most contemptible thing in the North.When the cordon halted at the hitching-post, Morris received a rude jostling from the crowd till Charlie Anderson forced the encroachers aside."Lynch him! Lynch him!" was the cry, vociferated in a deep, guttural roar which made Morris tremble.Anderson shook his head and bellowed at the bystanders."No, boys," he shouted, "we're going to do as Laurance says and give him a chance. Make room, there!"The sullen onlookers obeyed, leaving an open spot at the post which held Morris and another man, a thick-set fellow with a walrus-hide whip in his hand. Tense silence oppressed the spectators, contrasting strikingly with their former growls of impatience."Strip!" commanded the hard voice of Anderson.Morris removed his outer coat, or parka, and a woolen vest."Go on," was the curt order.The buckskin shirt came off, and the thick Arctic undergarment. He stood, bare to the middle against the cutting breeze, shaking from both cold and fright."Now," said Anderson, nodding to the stout man with the whip, before he stepped back among the gaping people.The man tied Morris to the post by his wrists, took up a position four feet from the prisoner, and applied the whining lash.Half a dozen times it descended, flaying the flesh, while not a sound arose from the crowd. At the seventh stroke, Morris groaned, pitched forward, and hung limply in his fetters."That's enough," cried Britton, vehemently. "Can't you see he has fainted?"A team of horses pulled up with a jangle of bells in the trail. Some woman's gauntlet, flying through the frosty air, struck Rex a stinging blow upon the cheek."Ho! ho!" laughed a coarse fellow at his elbow, "so the Rose of the Yukon's down on you, eh? Or maybe it's a love-tap."Rex looked between the disordered ranks of roughly-clad miners straight into the flaming eyes of Maud Morris, where she sat behind Simpson's spanking grays, in Simpson's luxuriously robed sleigh, beside the fur-coated, well-groomed Simpson himself.Her furious glance transfixed Britton and then darted off, tangent-like, to the clamorous group on his left, where three miners had revived Morris with a stimulant and assisted him to an erect posture.The bare back of Chris Morris was a raw, red patch, and he quivered convulsively as the sifting hill-wind bit into the bleeding stripes, while his custodians replaced shirts, vest, and parka upon his body.Maud Morris's second glove followed the first, striking Britton rudely in the mouth."You beast!" she screamed impotently. "This is your doing, I hear!"Rex ground the gauntlets into the beaten, tobacco-stained snow under his feet."Be thankful that Morris lives," was his heated answer. "They swore he must swing and fought against the commuting of his sentence. It was a tight pinch, but Laurance and I managed to pull it off at last."The miners led Morris past and bade him take the trail."Hit it fur the high places," they said, "an' don't never show yer mug in this camp agin, or, s'help us, we'll shoot ye like a dawg!"It was justice, the stern, unsmoothed judgment of the North, and Morris, the derelict who had reached the lowest limit of his downward tendencies, stumbled along the trail in the direction of Dawson, a marked man in the eyes of all.His wife by law looked to Britton as he had last seen her in her boudoir at the big English hotel on the Mustapha Supérieure in Algiers. Her face was the same bright, hard mask of hatred, and her soulless eyes burned. He noted that she was looking older, her stamp becoming more brazen, her beauty lessening, because the dust of fascination no longer blinded his vision. The presence of the girl he had met by Indian River dwelt in Britton's mind, a presence moulded in a confusingly exact counterpart of Maud Morris. He remembered her fresh, childish innocence and pretty modesty, and he knew that in outward perfections alone the counterpart equalled the original. While he surveyed the woman before him, he was certain that the straightforward character of his unknown was as different from Maud Morris's deceptive disposition as chastity is different from shame.The knowledge was very consoling to a heart still void, and Britton wondered, with an involuntary throb, if he would ever find the nameless girl who had saved his life on the Indian River ice-bridge."You look as if I were someone else with whom you are genuinely pleased," Maud Morris said savagely, shrewdly reading his expression.Britton's whole countenance lighted as he smiled."Do I?" he asked pleasantly. "That is because I have found your superior!"She bit her lip to check an unwomanly expletive, and the mantling red in her cheeks gave Britton full satisfaction. He strode to Grant Simpson's side of the sleigh and tapped the sleeve of his rich, fur-lined overcoat."By the way, Simpson," he warned, "don't try that game on Samson Creek. It was quite a frame-up you planned for those who have already staked in, but Morris gave it all away."Grant Simpson squirmed among the bear robes in a startled fashion, and his thin, effeminate face lost color."What do you mean?" he demanded, scanning Britton narrowly."Only this–if you dare show your nose on the Creek for any reason whatever, I'll tell the miners things that will make them swing you higher than Moosehide Mountain. Of course, Morris can't go in on any strike now. They wouldn't countenance it for a moment!"Simpson's awe gave way to blind anger. He struck at Britton with his silver-mounted whip, to find it promptly torn from his grasp. Rex touched the grays on the flanks with it, and the team dashed down the Dawson trail with Simpson sawing on their heads. Britton laughed harshly as they went, and slowly broke the whip to bits."Simpson and Miss Vanderhart have given the chump a lift," said a miner, watching in the roadway.Rex saw that the occupants of the sleigh had taken up Morris and concealed him among the fur robes."Who did you say?" he asked the miner."Simpson and Miss Vanderhart," the man repeated. "They're big guns at Dawson. Know them?"Britton laughed again at the alias, as he scattered the whip fragments with his toe."Yes," he said meditatively, "I know something of them."Just then Laurance swung out with his dog-train, starting back to Indian River."I'm off, son," he cried to Britton. "Are you goin' to bolt for Dawson? It's five hours from here!"Rex nodded at the sleigh, gliding leisurely along the trail in the distance, and observed:"I'll wait! I'm not anxious for their company on the route, and morning will suit me as well. So she's the Rose of the Yukon!""Sure!" said Laurance, putting his dog-whip in his armpit in order to light the inevitable pipe. "Kind of romantic fiction, ain't it, to find she's your angelic ideal? Haw, haw!""She's not, for there's no bandage over my eyes now," Britton declared, with conviction. "But, by heaven, there is an ideal," he continued in strange triumph evoked without volition, "and I feel in my bones as if I'll meet that ideal some time again.""Um!" puffed Jim Laurance. "Again? Yes, I may say again! But take an old-timer's advice, son, and see that you stick to one search at a time. You understand?""I couldn't forget that if I wished to," Britton replied, smiling rather bitterly. "I'm going up Samson Creek at once. If that search doesn't prove worth while, there won't be any necessity for the other."Laurance gripped Britton's palm tightly, saying: "You know where to come if stranded, son."The negative motion of Britton's head showed the pride that prompted his refusal; and Laurance shook out his leader."Best luck!" he cried cheerily."For what?" Britton whimsically asked."For the gold and for–the–the other," Jim Laurance called over his shoulder. "Why, d–n me, you deserve 'em both."CHAPTER XII.Loping out of Ainslie's through the cold Arctic dawn, Britton made Dawson under five hours. Thanks to the recommendation of Charlie Anderson, he was able to secure from an outfitter a portion of the provisions that were being so scrupulously reserved because famine threatened in the distance with empty claws closing over the golden city.He did not run across Morris, his wife, or Simpson, but he had the pleasure of eating dinner in a restaurant run by Pierre Giraud's wife, Aline. The place was a neat, clean eating-house, called the Half Moon, situated near the North American Transportation & Trading Company's store, and Pierre's wife proved to be a bright-eyed, buxom woman, young and attractive after the type of the French-Canadian maids. Rex thought it was the best meal he had had in a long time, with the additional virtue of having a dainty server, and he told Aline Giraud so."Vraiment," she cried, laughing gaily at his praise, "M'sieu' ees reech in w'at you call–compleement!""Yes, but that is about the extent of my riches," Rex chuckled, as he took his departure.News of the Samson Creek find was freely circulating in Dawson City. Some claims had been staked in the fall, and hazy descriptions of the valley's wealth were in the air. The Arctic temperature of the Yukon winter kept many from going out to locate, but a mysterious rumor arose that there was a claim-jumping scheme afoot, and Britton found that it had already travelled ahead of him. The rumor, quite indefinite in itself, startled the people of Dawson from their apathetic state. Miners who had, at the approach of frost, forsaken the valuable auriferous workings for the city's beer-saloons drew on their meagre stores of supplies and stampeded to their holdings, ready to prove, even in gun-fights as a last resort, that possession was not nine points but the whole of the law.Learning that so many prospectors had rushed out the night before, Britton loaded his camp stove, sleeping-bag, and tent upon his sled, securely lashed on the provisions, consisting mainly of bacon, beans, flour, and dried apples, and made all haste away.Samson Creek was a tributary of the famous Eldorado, and on account of its proximity to fully exploited fields offered great promise of pay dirt.Britton took the ice-trail up the frozen Klondike, veered off to the right, and rounded the great, cone-shaped, snow-laden mountain in whose chasms the most noted gold streams, including the Bonanza, have their origin. He travelled fast, unimpeded by snow-crust on the white, glistening surface of the river, and on nearing the south branch of the Samson, overtook many who had started out before him."Got anything staked?" panted a miner, as Britton went by."Not yet," Rex answered."Then you can't get in," the man said."Why?" Britton cried impatiently."Why?" echoed his informant. "Ge-mima!–why? Look there!"They had topped the glacial slope of the watershed and paused for breath upon the crest, overlooking the creek's bed. Britton beheld the valley, freshly staked as far as his eye could reach, with endless processions of men moving upstream."Get in?" said the miner. "Not much! I must hike down and see nobody squats on the claims I took last fall."The man moved off, and Britton, angry disappointment raging within him, stood and watched the burden-bearing lines below.Over on the west where the mountains bulked up so huge and taciturn, the ruby sunset was coloring the summits. Dull, spotless snow-cornices and shining ice-fields gleamed with rosy hues that gradually deepened to rich crimson, as if some Titan hand had poured over them a flood of ancient wine. The glacier tips scintillated like the steel sabre-wall of a cavalry column, and the scraggy hemlocks on the peaks quickened with sapphire glints against their sober green.Britton watched the magnificent panorama hold its glory for some moments; then all turned shaded and blue in a trice as a sheer rock precipice capped the lens of the sun.He turned away, dejectedly, toward the north branch, remembering the hint of Franco Lessari, the courier. He crossed South Samson, intercepting scores of men who mushed dog-teams, dragged Yukon sleighs, or bore great loads on their wet backs. They strained in single file up the beaten river-path–low-browed, cruel-looking fellows who might have been thugs and who cursed those that delayed them; eager-faced, unbroken fools who had come in by steamer in the heat of summer, housed themselves warmly in Dawson when the frost fell, and had yet to learn the smiting wrath of a Klondike blizzard; luckless gamesters whom a winning turn never blessed; and shrewd old pioneers, suspicious of everyone, noting everything with keen, wilderness-trained eyes, and pushing on indefatigably to conserve their fall stakings. Along the sinuous river course heaps of boxes and sacks and caches of food marked the journey; overweighting baggage, thrown down to await more convenient handling, blotched the ice with unsightly disorder; discarded trifles, pack rubbish, and the snarl of sleigh and tent ropes littered all the route.By dark Britton camped on North Samson, four miles away. There, for three days, he burned holes in doubtful-looking gravel, enduring uncomplainingly the manifold discomforts of tent life with the mercury fifty below.Meanwhile, the influx to the south continued, and, all the explored stream being taken, the overflow reached the northerly branch. Rex watched them come, more motley and dishevelled than ever, unwilling to back-trail to Dawson and yet with a secret dread gnawing at their hearts, the fear of winter's lash whose torment the ache of hunger might assist. He saw them arrive, as bitter and despairing as himself, and with them staggered Franco Lessari, dragging the most meagre of meagre outfits.Lessari had no sleeping-bag, only blankets. and thin ones at that; he did not carry a tent, depending upon the snow hut dug in the river drifts, and his food was a bag of coarse beans and dried salmon."Ah," he cried delightedly, on seeing Britton, sitting between his tent flaps, "you listened at me? But come to-morrow after me. Where I say, you dig!"He was moving farther up-stream, but Rex called him back."Look here," he began, full of commiseration for the pathetic figure plainly in worse circumstances than himself, "you might as well bunk in beside me. There's plenty of room in the tent, and we'll prospect together wherever you say. If you're going to share a good thing with me, I must make some return. Come along! Throw in your packs."Gratitude showed in the Corsican's brown, harrowed face as he wrestled with his limited English vocabulary in the attempt to thank Britton for the generous offer, of which he reluctantly took advantage."You are so much kindness," he sighed repeatedly.In the morning they shifted their camp another mile up North Samson to a certain bend near an icy ravine, called Grizzly Gulch, where, Lessari said, a trapper had declared he had found good gold-signs. For three days more they burned out the beach and excavated the frozen gravel without success. The trapper must have been mistaken, or they had struck the wrong spot. They branched out with their operations and covered the dip of the ravine in all directions, but their ill success proved unvarying.The bed of the gulley lay pock-marked with burned holes, and the dump outside the tent grew large. It was after weeks of this trying toil that Rex Britton discovered Lessari's one vice.Rex came in one night from a late probing in Grizzly Gulch to find an Indian of the Thron-Diucks keeping company with the Corsican by his camp stove. Both men were joyously drunk, and they hailed Britton as a welcome returned prodigal.The Thron-Diuck held up an empty bottle which had, no doubt, been dearly bought from some trafficking miner, and lamented the absence of whiskey in woeful Indian jargon. Lessari jumped to his unsteady feet, attempting to embrace Britton and dinning in his ears a hopelessly mixed tale of gold."Gold, gold, gold!" he would cry, dancing aside to pat the Indian on the back. "Him tell where gold for give him whiskey.""Yes, Mis'r," the Thron-Diuck volunteered, ingratiatingly. "Give whiskey! Me tell where big gold come from–heap much gold."Britton laughed mockingly."That tale's too old," he said. "I've heard of the combination of the drunken Indian, the bottle of whiskey, and the golden valley ever since I started on these cursed northern trails. Now, if you want to sleep by our fire, you'll have to stop shouting. I wouldn't turn a dog out upon a night like this, but you must be quiet. Understand?"He made Lessari sit down, and kicked the Indian's emptied bottle out of the tent."You'd sell your big gold pretty cheap," he commented drily."Think me lie?" the vagrant cried aggressively.Rex could see that he was at that stage peculiar to red men's intoxication when they will sell their bodies or souls to satisfy the abnormal craving of their unbridled natures. The whiskey's flame licked through his veins, and there was no checking the thirst for fire-water which only drunken insensibility could satiate."I think you are imagining things," Rex replied, "and I have no whiskey to spare in barter. A mouthful of what you two wasted might have been useful some time in saving a life in this deadly cold.""Me no lie," the muddled Indian persisted."You do," said Britton, with pointed sternness.The Thron-Diuck's fingers fumbled in his rags for an instant and came forth closed."Think me lie!" he shouted dramatically. "Heap big gold–like that!"From the Indian's extended palm, the yellow flash of native gold filled Britton's startled eyes.[image]"From the Indian's extended palm the yellow flash of native gold filled Britton's startled eyes."CHAPTER XIII."Gold! Gold! Gold!" screamed the excitable and drunken Corsican, as he danced about the tent.At the bright gleam of the yellow metal, Rex had sprung forward and grasped the precious specimen from the Thron-Diuck's hand."Where did you get this?" he demanded, breathlessly.A look of cunning overspread the Indian's coppery features, and discolored teeth were displayed in his gaping grin."Give fire-water," he said, fawningly, "then me tell."Britton examined the piece of ore from every angle in the candle-light and recognized a wonderful sample of alluvial gold. It weighed probably eight ounces, and Rex trembled in excitement not to be repressed. There was no doubt of its origin, and he knew that the carousing rascal must be speaking the truth. The glacier-worn edges of the specimen told that it had come from a heavy deposit, a place of "big gold.""Where did you get this?" Rex hoarsely repeated, his hands shaking as if weighted down with golden pounds instead of ounces."Bring whiskey, then me tell where heap much gold come from," was the Indian's laconic response."No, you won't," said Britton. "You'll tell first, and then you may have the fire-water."He dived into a small kitty-bag wherein he kept some few medicinal mixtures, whipped out the solitary flask, which he was accustomed to carry against a possible dire emergency of the rigorous trails, and held it enticingly before the candle flame.The liquor sparkled in the light, and the poor red wretch smacked his lips and clawed at it. Rex held him off."Afterwards–afterwards," he said with decision."Ha!" exclaimed the tantalized Indian, "go heap long way up the White River–""The Klondike?" interrupted Rex."Yes, as you call, Mis'r," answered the Thron-Diuck, gesticulating frantically with lean, bony fingers like talons. "Go heap way up Klondike; find ice-hills with much frozen springs; there big gold where him be!" His claws pointed at the sample in Britton's fist."You mean the headwaters of the Klondike–its source?" questioned Rex, earnestly. "You're sure of that? For heaven's sake don't make any mistake!"The Indian shook his whole body and stamped in anger."Me no mistake," he declared. "Me no lie. Go heap way up where you say, Mis'r, to–to–""To the headwaters," prompted Britton."Yes, to big chief waters! There five hills like heap big beaver houses all by one dam. White River run through. There place of heap big gold!"Rex wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead."This is the way I understand you," he said. "Listen and tell me if I'm right! The place lies straight up the Klondike at its headwaters, right in the middle of five beaver-house hills which the stream cuts through. Is that correct?""Right, heap right," replied the Thron-Diuck, overjoyed at being properly understood. He reached for the whiskey again, but Britton was not yet done."Wait till I draw a sketch," he said quickly, "and you shall mark these hills in the exact spot."Rex found his map of the Klondike River in his breast pocket and drew the stream on a larger scale upon a sheet from a notebook. At the river's mouth was a deserted Indian village, lately occupied by Thron-Diucks who had moved back into the fastnesses of the snowy mountains, and no other trace of habitation marked the frozen waterway, which lost itself in bleak heights away to the north, unexplored except by Indians and a few venturesome white trappers."Now," said Britton, when he had outlined the sketch, "show me exactly where these hills stand from the source or headwaters of the river."The Indian touched his talons to the drawing just below a group of low mountains, named on the map the Klondike Hills."How far below?" Rex questioned very earnestly."Half day, as you call, Mis'r," the Thron-Diuck answered. "Half day with heap good dogs!""So?" cried Britton, warming to the scent of the treasure. "How many hills on this side of the stream?"The Indian located three with as many dabs of his skinny forefinger and showed where the other two hills lay across the river. Rex marked them with small circles, mentally calculating by the scale their distance from the source and thus knowing their position at least approximately.The Thron-Diuck regarded his handiwork with satisfaction."Heap right," he said triumphantly, "Mis'r heap smart man! Give fire-water, Mis'r; you got much big gold!"Rex passed over the flask without further parley."Yes, it's yours," was his final word, "but heaven help you if you have deceived me as to the position of this stuff!"Lessari lurched forward to share the Indian's draught, but Britton pushed him rudely back upon his bed."You go right to sleep," he ordered, "and get fit for the trail in the morning."Rex sat beside him to enforce the obeyance of the order till the Corsican dropped into slumber, while over beside the camp stove the Thron-Diuck lay in stupefaction.The thermometer registered forty-eight below when Britton and Lessari mushed out of the North Samson valley at sunrise. The Indian, now partly sobered and conscious that he had sold a well-guarded secret of his tribe, promptly proceeded to efface himself despite the inducements Britton offered him to act in the capacity of guide, so that the two travelled alone.As they advanced upon the lonely trail which snaked northward to where the Klondike's source was somewhere hidden in unknown hills, the atmosphere grew keener with intense cold. A merciless, cutting frost fell in fine showers till the two men were covered with a hoary coating which scintillated like glaring tinsel. The icy powder stopped their ears and choked their nostrils, chilling every breath they took.Lessari unfitted by his natural temperament for such a climate as the Yukon, had always found his respiration labored in winter, and, since he had contracted a severe cold from his soaking in Lake Bennett, his plight was now worse than ever.Owing to the pressure on his chest he was forced to breathe through the open mouth. Britton pleaded with him not to do this, but the finer fibred Corsican could not endure the strain on his nasal passages and relapsed into breathing between parted lips. As a result, he soon chilled his lungs and began to cough with a dry, hacking sound which Rex heard with foreboding dread.The mercury dropped lower with every mile they mushed. Icicles formed on their eyebrows, noses and chins, while thin films of ice encased their cheeks, prohibiting any speech.A thickness of hoar-frost decorated the loaded sled, and the hairy backs of the five dogs were white with it. At intervals they shook themselves roughly in the harness, sending ice particles flying in all directions.Mingled with this rattle and the grinding song of the sleigh was the leader's "gruff! gruff!" as he blew the congealed snow from his nose.Camp was made at noon outside an immense ravine which Rex knew by hearsay to be the great cañon of the Klondike. After an hour's rest and a good meal they entered it, finding a precipitous-sided gorge of stupendous size and beauty.The gigantic gray walls, seamed and full of wide cracks, sloped upward, forming an almost complete arch overhead that admitted a dull glow of light to mingle with the white sheen of the ice below. Great icicles hung by thousands from the rock-crevices, while eternal drippings through the cavern-like roof had formed immense ice columns resembling unsmoothed marble pillars.The scene before Britton and Lessari looked like a weird, uncanny ice forest full of frozen trunks and clammy, oozy nooks where underworld spirits and grotesque goblins might be expected to reside. The hollow booming of the mighty river, straining in its imprisonment, filled the whole place with a resounding roar, and the force of the fettered torrent shook the coated cave walls till the icicles fell and scattered their rainbow hues upon the floor.Rex thought this cañon was the most potent symbol of a potent land that could be imagined. It impressed him vividly with the awesome magnitude, the salient ruggedness, the terrible power of the country of which it was an emblem.His dog-train swayed with shrieking runners among the massed ice-pillars and emerged from the gorge into a wider valley where the hills rose naturally bright in the sunshine with the welcome blue sky resting upon their peaks.Britton could see that the Klondike River was the main recipient of the long trains of ice which slid with snail-like motion from the crests of the glaciers. Frozen gullies full of these moving, mile-long torrents broke in upon the larger river and piled the junction points full of massive, chaotic ice-bridges which were painfully difficult to cross.Lessari stumbled upon one huge jam and went down among the sharp, crystal fragments. He gasped when he regained his feet, and the dry, hacking cough became more convulsive. Seeing that he was nearly spent, Rex beckoned for a few minutes' halt, though having hopes of reaching mountainous shelter before nightfall, he did not wish to delay very long.While they rested on a high ice-bridge quite a distance above the Klondike Cañon, they heard a thin, hissing wail far back in its depths."Sled!" exclaimed the listening Corsican, breaking into speech without thinking of the consequence.At his effort the icy casing which covered his cheeks snapped in showering splinters, gashing the skin in a dozen places. He groaned in pain while the blood trickled down his face.Britton thawed his mouth free by the warm pressure of his fur gauntlets."You're right, Lessari," he said. "It sounds like a dog-train coming through the cañon. Surely that cursed Indian hasn't been spreading the news! Or perhaps someone has trailed us from Samson because they think we know of a find up this way."Britton's tone was angry as well as disappointed. He had not undertaken the dangerous and arduous trip up the Klondike for the purpose of showing the way to some trailers who might contest the ground with him. If any rough characters were following because they suspected he had knowledge of a gold deposit, Rex knew he would have to fight for what he found, and fight, no doubt, with the odds against him."We'll wait and see who is tracking us," he grimly observed to Lessari.The whining sound of a dog-train continued, borne through the cold void with clear persistence. Rex strained his eyes on the distant mouth of the cañon to mark who came out, but he watched in vain. The noise ceased as suddenly as it arose, and though they dallied another fifteen minutes, nothing could be seen."That's odd," commented Britton. "Wasn't it a dog-sled, Lessari?""Sound like him much!" answered the Corsican, in an awed voice. He was somewhat superstitious, and he nursed his cut face apprehensively, as if it were responsible for the strange incident."I could have sworn to that as the shriek of runners," Rex declared, "but it may have been ice. In any event we can't stop longer. Ho! there–mush, mush!"They forged on, climbing to a still higher altitude and meeting with a frigid air that reached to the very marrow of their bones. Lessari weakened, and Britton made him take to the sled for the rest of the afternoon while he himself continued his heart-breaking tramp beside the dogs, surmounting all obstacles, no matter how formidable, with that intrepid grit and unbroken muscle-strength which was his heritage.The short, sub-Arctic day closed in swiftly, shrouding everything with a heavy fog, and night caught the two travellers among the black river boulders.It was a desolate place of incomparable bleakness in which they were forced to camp, but when the stove was set going inside the pitched tent and they had infused some heat into their frost-tried bodies, the outlook seemed more cheerful.The next day saw a repetition of their hardships and trials. Lessari declared himself strong enough to keep his feet, but Britton forced him to ride behind the dogs. The Corsican lay wrapped in robes, and the spasms of coughing that wrenched his frame told about how fit he was to travel the trail afoot. There were places so rough and so hard to scale that he could not stay upon the loaded sled while the dogs dragged it over. At such points he was compelled to walk, and Rex had to assist him.They had penetrated into the timbered regions which flanked the Klondike, and the way grew wilder although there was some solace of shelter. According to Britton's estimate of the Thron-Diuck's directions the place of the five mountains could not be many miles distant, and, even in that soul-chilling waste, his blood warmed every inch of his body when he thought success might soon reward his strenuous stampedes.With the reaching of the forested stretches, grizzly tracks were seen in profusion, indicating that these hungry prowlers were finding the severe weather very hard, for they had covered vast distances in search of food.As they traversed mile after mile, making rapid progress without hindrance of blistered ice, Britton began to think that his hopes of camping that night among the five beaver-house hills would be realized. Every time they rested for a moment to give the dogs a breathing spell, he eagerly scanned the sketch which he had made. From the contour of the river and the position of the mountains he tried to judge exactly how far he had advanced. Each scrutiny, thus indulged in, gave fresh hope and assurance, and he would dash on with greater speed than was generally attained on the Fields.The steep granite headlands gave place to more sloping bluffs, and when Britton's dog-train swept round the river's curve past the first long belt of pine forest, there loomed at a probable distance of six miles the tops of five hills set in a circle."It's the place," he shouted joyfully. "By heaven, it's the place–Lessari!"But Lessari, his endurance worn out by the continual jolting, had rolled from the sled in a dead faint. He could not be revived easily, so Britton had to pitch the tent, light a fire, and attend to him.The Corsican came to, weak and trembling, and when Rex had given some nourishment, Lessari looked at him with dazed, troubled eyes."I am much sorrow," he said confusedly. "Your journey I spoil! Put me on the sled, and it somehow we can reach."Britton felt a twinge of conscience for a selfish wish as he heard these words from a man who was courageous to the core though obviously unable to continue."No," he gravely replied, "you haven't spoiled the journey. We can well rest here and go on to-morrow. Make your mind easy, Lessari!"The Corsican, still lamenting the check to their advance, fell into an exhausted sleep, while Britton, the selfish desire recurring involuntarily within him, chafed silently as he watched from a distance the peaks of his far-sought gold Mecca.CHAPTER XIV.Five dead dogs, their stark bodies clearly outlined on the snow by a sparkling aurora, met Britton's startled gaze when he stumbled sleepily out of the cramped quarters of the tent. A cry of something like despair escaped him as he ran to examine them, turning the gaunt carcasses over and over.Lessari heard the shout of perturbation and shuffled forth from under the flaps."What wrong have you?" he asked anxiously.Rex stood aside and showed the corpses of their faithful animals."They're killed," he said briefly, "and you know what that means for us!"White horror grew in the Corsican's brown face till it was blanched to a sickly hue. He fully realized that the loss of the dog-team had buried them alive in a frozen wilderness whose relentless cruelty would slowly crush their lives. In a dazed way, he fingered the bodies."Not any marks–not any marks," was his vacant observation."No," agreed Britton, who controlled himself with difficulty, "they have been neither knifed nor shot, yet some man's hand has done it. Gaucho and the rest of the huskies appeared as well last night as they ever did. No, Lessari, it wasn't an epidemic or even the bitter frost.""How they are killed, then?" the Corsican inquired petulantly."That's the mystery," Rex woefully ruminated, aloud. "I wonder if that snake of a Thron-Diuck followed us and perpetrated this deed! You remember we heard what we thought was a dog-train coming behind us through the Klondike Cañon?""Ah! yes," responded his companion, "that I recall–curse him!" Lessari's eyes were vindictive and full of a strange wildness as he stared at Britton."Of course that is only a supposition," said Rex, judicially, "but I know how jealous the Indian tribes are of gold-laden creeks. The Thron-Diucks know a good many secrets, but they will not divulge them, and fearing the wrath of his fellows if we located on this deposit, the red wretch may have repented his bargain and taken steps to prevent our profiting by it.""Look for tracks!" exclaimed the Corsican, on sudden inspiration, but Britton shook his head."No use," he lamented, pointing to the pine-banked curve of the river, shining like glass, "the ice is too clean!""Curse him! Curse him!" exploded Lessari, again, growing more violent of speech."There's no use in cursing, either," Britton said seriously. "We're facing death, Lessari, but we must keep alive as long as possible. We have a tent and some food, and we'll make a strong fight."The Corsican studied his dubious expression. "Go back?" he asked."It can't be done," said Rex. "Our provisions will not last half the time required to make the journey on foot, and there is nothing to shoot over those barren stretches.""Go on where gold is, then?" Lessari inquired dismally."Yes," Britton answered, "our path lies over those five hills. We have only two chances, Lessari, and they are mighty slim! There is the chance of stumbling on the encampment of these Thron-Diuck Indians–they have retired somewhere in these mountains–and the possibility of finding game in the pine forests. The way lies yonder, and, if we find gold there, we'll stake it in case a miracle should bring us out of this trap."Rex stirred the nose of his dead leader with the toe of his shoepack as he finished speaking, and Lessari saw him bend quickly."See that!" Britton exclaimed in quivering anger. He held out something between his fingers, and the Corsican recognized a piece of frozen whitefish covered with reddish powder."Poisoned!" he ejaculated with renewed horror."Yes, someone has fed them poisoned whitefish," said Rex, vehemently. "Gaucho had this in his teeth!"Lessari broke out in a flood of denunciation. Britton quelled his own indignation and began untying the tent-ropes.They thawed their canvas shelter from the banked ice and snow by means of several brush fires and loaded the sled. Any articles which could be dispensed with and which unnecessarily impeded them were cast away. The outfit was reduced to a minimum, and Rex packed all the remaining provisions carefully in one large sack. He preserved, too, the food intended for the dogs, for he thought they might easily find themselves in such straits as to be glad of it.When all was securely lashed on the heavy Yukon sleigh, the two men harnessed themselves in the traces and started laboriously toward the circle of hills six miles away. For Lessari, they were six long and excruciating miles. He was weak and unfit, and though Britton took the heavier portion of the toil, the tramp told rapidly on his companion.The river curved with such a sweep that they struck overland to shorten the distance. They bridged wide gullies full of blistered ice and swerved erratically with the loaded sled among rugged rocks and slippery hummocks that barred their path. Lessari continued to mutter and complain during the whole six miles, his mumblings toward the end becoming somewhat incoherent.When they slipped down a long ravine which opened on the river right in the middle of the circling hills, the Corsican was staggering along with protruding tongue."You're fagged!" Rex exclaimed, noticing his plight. "Better rest here a minute!"Lessari's answer was a vicious pull on the sleigh rope that nearly took Britton off his feet. They moved on because the Corsican would accept no delay, and Rex saw that the other's motive power was a sort of delirium which instilled unlimited feverish energy.The pair of toilers emerged at last from the black rift and climbed an ice-capped ridge which fell like a sloping watershed in a southward direction. Around them the five beaver-house mountains rose strangely dome-like, the great river apparently losing itself in the bowels of the thousand ice chasms which furrowed the base of the valley-beds."This is the Klondike's source," Rex murmured as he contemplated the scene, "and it looks cold enough to kill you.""Yes," sighed Lessari, "you have it right. But the gold–the gold is warm. Here I feel it!" He put his hand to his breast, and smiled contentedly."It's all that's keeping you warm," Rex gruffly commented. The observation quickly altered Lessari's expression, and he glared with a wild impenetrable look as they proceeded to skirt the fringing line of gravelled granite which was the shore of the now glacier-like stream.Here the detached ice lay scattered about in huge blocks, an impediment to their feet, where it had glided with the shining rubble from the farther plateaus. In the shallow cup that the five hills formed, they met with a long, treacherous crevasse whose yawning depth of three hundred feet effectually cut off any further progress in a direct line. The great abyss seemed to possess a fascination for Lessari, and he trod dangerously near the edge to peer over."Don't do that!" Britton sharply cautioned, pulling him back. "A slip of your moccasin would put you at the bottom. We'll have to leave the sled here and see if there is any way round!"The immense crevasse dipped from an overhanging glacier on one of the five mountains and slanted across the granite ridge they had been skirting. The two men left the Yukon sleigh standing, blocked, above the deep split and followed along the edge, searching for a place to cross. The slant of the ravine became more, acute, and, where the sides were jagged and shelved, they clambered down lower and lower till the whole formation suddenly broke upon a vast cavern that nosed into the river-bed and opened on the other side where the way was passable though extremely hard."It's rough going, but we must get across," Rex said, turning round to Lessari.The latter was handling some rusty-looking pebbles which he had kicked out of the black cavern floorway."Ironstone!" he grunted scornfully, gazing at the cave side where similar fragments with glacier-worn edges stuck out."Let me see," cried Britton, hastily jumping forward. Lessari dropped the stones in his hand, and Britton's heart leaped at the weight of them."Ironstone!" he exclaimed, his voice all trembling. "My God, Lessari, it's gold!""Santa Virgin!" the Corsican screamed–"Gold!" He snatched frantically at the precious pebbles, chattering madly."I'm positive it is," Rex said excitedly, "but the flame-test will soon tell."He produced a bit of candle from his coat and lit it with unsteady fingers. While Lessari held the specimens, he applied the flame to them. The heat singed the Corsican's hands, but he did not seem to feel any pain. Presently the rusty red covering of the pebbles disappeared as fine dust in the blaze, and Lessari gripped pure alluvial gold."Santa Virgin!" he screamed again. "We're rich! We're rich!"Rex was off immediately, running about the cavern walls, making a hasty survey with his candle end. The walls, like the floor, were studded here and there with peeping corners of the precious ore for which he had endured two thousand miles of pitiless Yukon trails. Unbounded wealth lay within his grasp, and, with the triumph of the moment, he forgot that he was a millionaire in a death-trap."Go up for a spade, Lessari," he cried. "It is a mighty deposit–'big gold,' as the Thron-Diuck said."The Corsican started up as a faint, rushing noise sounded above, like ice sliding upon ice."What's that?" asked Britton anxiously.They listened, but heard no further echo. Rex appeared ill at ease."We're among glaciers, Lessari," he said, "and we must be careful. An avalanche might easily bury us in a hole like this. Get that shovel quickly!"Lessari climbed up the lip of the ravine and disappeared, while Britton pottered about, speculating, as well as exulting, over the magnificent find. It was a showing that gave promise of surpassing such far-famed creeks as the Eldorado and Bonanza, and Rex gloated over his prospects. Standing in that deep cavern under the Klondike's bed, his thoughts went back to the green Sussex lands, Hyde Park in the London season, and the foaming Channel swells under theMottisfont'sbows. He thought of the estates this buried gold would buy, the power it would bring, the restoration to public favor it would effect, and he laughed mirthlessly at the idea of purchasing his way into quarters of society and diplomacy which had closed their doors to him after his Algerian escapade.A shrill cry from Lessari above interrupted his cogitations. He scrambled out of the cavern and clawed his way up the slippery side of the rift.The Corsican was staring down into the abyss where they had left the sled. On his face there rested a look of terrified bewilderment, and he pointed into the gloomy depths."Gone!" he wailed–"gone down!"Britton looked around for the sleigh, but it had vanished. A sharp fear assailed him as he dashed to Lessari's side and saw the mark of the runners on the powdered edge of the ravine where the laden sled had taken the leap."That's what we heard slide," Rex groaned, "and it has all our food!"He went mechanically to the exact spot where the Yukon sleigh had stood. There lay the piece of granite which had blocked the runners, with the print of a husky's foot-pad in a minute snow-pocket at its side. Rex showed it to the Corsican, a swift, ominous wrath mantling his countenance."By heaven, Lessari, this is too much!" he cried. "It has been done purposely like–like the poison! There's a hand in the dark somewhere, and it means murder!"The Corsican's harrowed senses appeared incapable of comprehending the statement."Starving–and rich!" he muttered wildly. "Rich–and starving!" He walked without fear to the brink of the chasm and began to lower himself over the rock with his hands."Here!" Rex roared in terror, rushing up. "What do you mean?""Stay back!" snarled the Corsican. "I go down to eat.""The gold has turned your head!" Britton exclaimed. "You couldn't get down there for all the food on earth. Why, man, it's three hundred feet!" He sprang with a lithe movement and dragged the Corsican from his perilous position.Lessari gave an inhuman cry and closed with Britton. Rex saw his eyes as they struggled and knew, with a feeling of chill horror, that they were the eyes of a madman."Ha!" gasped the demented fellow. "This time you go!"He strove to throw Britton into the gulf, for resistance had resulted in giving his mania a different trend. The delirium gave him the strength of six men, and Rex found himself being gradually pushed into the crevasse. He strained and tugged with all the mighty power of his shoulders and corded arms, but it was of no avail against the frenzied Lessari. He tried another tack!"Cool yourself, Lessari," he said soothingly, "and we'll get this sled." They could never get it, but he hoped the artifice might serve! Even that attempt at reason proved useless, for the Corsican redoubled his efforts. The eternal cold, his illness, the death of the dogs, the fever of the gold-finding, and the loss of their provisions had all combined to drive him mad."Devil!" he screamed, "you threw the food down!" And Rex knew he was indeed demented.Fighting every inch of the way, Britton was forced toward the abyss. Three feet from it, he felt the necessity for desperate action. Watching his opportunity, he tripped Lessari on the iced rock, and they both fell heavily. Rex wound his arms about the Corsican, putting forth the last ounce of strength; that grip of steel would have held a giant, but it could not hold a madman. Lessari tore himself free and gained the uppermost position, with hands on Britton's throat.Rex gazed into the rolling eyes, the wild, distorted visage of the Corsican, and felt himself shoved to the very brink of the crevasse. He wrenched violently at Lessari's wrists and arms, but they were as iron rods, and the movement brought his head out over the rim of the rock.In one fleeting vision he saw the white, rising ice-fields cutting into the blue sky, with glacier-capped peaks banking up behind; he saw three of the five circling hills, their frozen gorges shining emerald in the sun; then, as Lessari's wolfish face came closer to his own and his arms were pressed down, the fingers felt the revolver butt in his belt.In sheer despair he grasped it as a drowning man snatches at an oar. Its report cracked out and rattled in a hundred blatant echoes down the gorge. Lessari uttered a gasping groan and lurched to one side, his fingers lax and weak.Britton wormed his shoulders back from the edge of the abyss, shifting the Corsican's weight with his legs, and arose in safety. His lungs were heaving with the tremendous strain like those of a spent Channel-swimmer, and the cords of his throat were taut.When he turned over the limp form at his feet, he looked into Lessari's dead face.
CHAPTER XI.
A great commotion stirred Ainslie's camp on the following afternoon. The narrow passages, called streets, between ugly log and canvas buildings were thronged with heterogeneous concourses of miners and others. They moved back and forth along the pounded trail from restaurants and stores to the bunk-houses, from bunk-houses to dance-halls or riotous saloons, and an air of expectancy pervaded the movements of everyone within the camp's confines.
Outside Anderson's cabin the crowd began to concentrate, talking in incessant murmurs, while all eyes were fixed upon the closed door. A trial was going on inside. The news had spread through Ainslie's that the cache-thief had been taken and was now up before a miners' meeting. Word passed from man to man, and the throng continually grew in volume.
Presently Anderson's door swung open. Those who had sat in tribunal poured out with the prisoner in their midst.
Jim Laurance inhaled a deep breath and drew the fur cap down over his damp brow as he slouched along beside Rex Britton.
"That was a close thing," he growled. "Don't ast me no more to stick in me chin for a slim-finger! I don't much fancy these free-for-all fights."
It was evident that the discussion inside had waxed hot and that only a slender margin saved the neck of Chris Morris.
The latter walked, with bent head, inside the solid phalanx of grim miners, among whom burly Charlie Anderson was chief. The face of Morris showed ashy gray in fear, and his eyes rolled back like a negro's as he shambled along, gazing at the ground, because the thought of looking for an avenue of escape was worse than futile.
The waiting mass of people gave vent to long-suppressed expectancy when Morris appeared. A loud shout rose up, and everybody rushed after the cordon which surrounded the cache-thief. It moved to the centre of the camp, where a large hitching-post, bearing a red cloth sign advertising Laggan's dance-hall, stood up at the side of the winding trail that served for Main Street.
The impatient spectators ranged themselves in lines that broke and shifted as they strove for better vantage-ground. Some, to obtain a clearer view, ran and climbed upon the low roofs of the log cabins, upon the verandah of the dance-hall, and the porch of a store just opposite. Women were mixed in with the male gathering, some with knee-length skirts and fringed leggings, and others dressed outright in men's garments.
On every hand was unpitying condemnation for the thief. He was scowled at and spat upon, for pillaging is considered the most contemptible thing in the North.
When the cordon halted at the hitching-post, Morris received a rude jostling from the crowd till Charlie Anderson forced the encroachers aside.
"Lynch him! Lynch him!" was the cry, vociferated in a deep, guttural roar which made Morris tremble.
Anderson shook his head and bellowed at the bystanders.
"No, boys," he shouted, "we're going to do as Laurance says and give him a chance. Make room, there!"
The sullen onlookers obeyed, leaving an open spot at the post which held Morris and another man, a thick-set fellow with a walrus-hide whip in his hand. Tense silence oppressed the spectators, contrasting strikingly with their former growls of impatience.
"Strip!" commanded the hard voice of Anderson.
Morris removed his outer coat, or parka, and a woolen vest.
"Go on," was the curt order.
The buckskin shirt came off, and the thick Arctic undergarment. He stood, bare to the middle against the cutting breeze, shaking from both cold and fright.
"Now," said Anderson, nodding to the stout man with the whip, before he stepped back among the gaping people.
The man tied Morris to the post by his wrists, took up a position four feet from the prisoner, and applied the whining lash.
Half a dozen times it descended, flaying the flesh, while not a sound arose from the crowd. At the seventh stroke, Morris groaned, pitched forward, and hung limply in his fetters.
"That's enough," cried Britton, vehemently. "Can't you see he has fainted?"
A team of horses pulled up with a jangle of bells in the trail. Some woman's gauntlet, flying through the frosty air, struck Rex a stinging blow upon the cheek.
"Ho! ho!" laughed a coarse fellow at his elbow, "so the Rose of the Yukon's down on you, eh? Or maybe it's a love-tap."
Rex looked between the disordered ranks of roughly-clad miners straight into the flaming eyes of Maud Morris, where she sat behind Simpson's spanking grays, in Simpson's luxuriously robed sleigh, beside the fur-coated, well-groomed Simpson himself.
Her furious glance transfixed Britton and then darted off, tangent-like, to the clamorous group on his left, where three miners had revived Morris with a stimulant and assisted him to an erect posture.
The bare back of Chris Morris was a raw, red patch, and he quivered convulsively as the sifting hill-wind bit into the bleeding stripes, while his custodians replaced shirts, vest, and parka upon his body.
Maud Morris's second glove followed the first, striking Britton rudely in the mouth.
"You beast!" she screamed impotently. "This is your doing, I hear!"
Rex ground the gauntlets into the beaten, tobacco-stained snow under his feet.
"Be thankful that Morris lives," was his heated answer. "They swore he must swing and fought against the commuting of his sentence. It was a tight pinch, but Laurance and I managed to pull it off at last."
The miners led Morris past and bade him take the trail.
"Hit it fur the high places," they said, "an' don't never show yer mug in this camp agin, or, s'help us, we'll shoot ye like a dawg!"
It was justice, the stern, unsmoothed judgment of the North, and Morris, the derelict who had reached the lowest limit of his downward tendencies, stumbled along the trail in the direction of Dawson, a marked man in the eyes of all.
His wife by law looked to Britton as he had last seen her in her boudoir at the big English hotel on the Mustapha Supérieure in Algiers. Her face was the same bright, hard mask of hatred, and her soulless eyes burned. He noted that she was looking older, her stamp becoming more brazen, her beauty lessening, because the dust of fascination no longer blinded his vision. The presence of the girl he had met by Indian River dwelt in Britton's mind, a presence moulded in a confusingly exact counterpart of Maud Morris. He remembered her fresh, childish innocence and pretty modesty, and he knew that in outward perfections alone the counterpart equalled the original. While he surveyed the woman before him, he was certain that the straightforward character of his unknown was as different from Maud Morris's deceptive disposition as chastity is different from shame.
The knowledge was very consoling to a heart still void, and Britton wondered, with an involuntary throb, if he would ever find the nameless girl who had saved his life on the Indian River ice-bridge.
"You look as if I were someone else with whom you are genuinely pleased," Maud Morris said savagely, shrewdly reading his expression.
Britton's whole countenance lighted as he smiled.
"Do I?" he asked pleasantly. "That is because I have found your superior!"
She bit her lip to check an unwomanly expletive, and the mantling red in her cheeks gave Britton full satisfaction. He strode to Grant Simpson's side of the sleigh and tapped the sleeve of his rich, fur-lined overcoat.
"By the way, Simpson," he warned, "don't try that game on Samson Creek. It was quite a frame-up you planned for those who have already staked in, but Morris gave it all away."
Grant Simpson squirmed among the bear robes in a startled fashion, and his thin, effeminate face lost color.
"What do you mean?" he demanded, scanning Britton narrowly.
"Only this–if you dare show your nose on the Creek for any reason whatever, I'll tell the miners things that will make them swing you higher than Moosehide Mountain. Of course, Morris can't go in on any strike now. They wouldn't countenance it for a moment!"
Simpson's awe gave way to blind anger. He struck at Britton with his silver-mounted whip, to find it promptly torn from his grasp. Rex touched the grays on the flanks with it, and the team dashed down the Dawson trail with Simpson sawing on their heads. Britton laughed harshly as they went, and slowly broke the whip to bits.
"Simpson and Miss Vanderhart have given the chump a lift," said a miner, watching in the roadway.
Rex saw that the occupants of the sleigh had taken up Morris and concealed him among the fur robes.
"Who did you say?" he asked the miner.
"Simpson and Miss Vanderhart," the man repeated. "They're big guns at Dawson. Know them?"
Britton laughed again at the alias, as he scattered the whip fragments with his toe.
"Yes," he said meditatively, "I know something of them."
Just then Laurance swung out with his dog-train, starting back to Indian River.
"I'm off, son," he cried to Britton. "Are you goin' to bolt for Dawson? It's five hours from here!"
Rex nodded at the sleigh, gliding leisurely along the trail in the distance, and observed:
"I'll wait! I'm not anxious for their company on the route, and morning will suit me as well. So she's the Rose of the Yukon!"
"Sure!" said Laurance, putting his dog-whip in his armpit in order to light the inevitable pipe. "Kind of romantic fiction, ain't it, to find she's your angelic ideal? Haw, haw!"
"She's not, for there's no bandage over my eyes now," Britton declared, with conviction. "But, by heaven, there is an ideal," he continued in strange triumph evoked without volition, "and I feel in my bones as if I'll meet that ideal some time again."
"Um!" puffed Jim Laurance. "Again? Yes, I may say again! But take an old-timer's advice, son, and see that you stick to one search at a time. You understand?"
"I couldn't forget that if I wished to," Britton replied, smiling rather bitterly. "I'm going up Samson Creek at once. If that search doesn't prove worth while, there won't be any necessity for the other."
Laurance gripped Britton's palm tightly, saying: "You know where to come if stranded, son."
The negative motion of Britton's head showed the pride that prompted his refusal; and Laurance shook out his leader.
"Best luck!" he cried cheerily.
"For what?" Britton whimsically asked.
"For the gold and for–the–the other," Jim Laurance called over his shoulder. "Why, d–n me, you deserve 'em both."
CHAPTER XII.
Loping out of Ainslie's through the cold Arctic dawn, Britton made Dawson under five hours. Thanks to the recommendation of Charlie Anderson, he was able to secure from an outfitter a portion of the provisions that were being so scrupulously reserved because famine threatened in the distance with empty claws closing over the golden city.
He did not run across Morris, his wife, or Simpson, but he had the pleasure of eating dinner in a restaurant run by Pierre Giraud's wife, Aline. The place was a neat, clean eating-house, called the Half Moon, situated near the North American Transportation & Trading Company's store, and Pierre's wife proved to be a bright-eyed, buxom woman, young and attractive after the type of the French-Canadian maids. Rex thought it was the best meal he had had in a long time, with the additional virtue of having a dainty server, and he told Aline Giraud so.
"Vraiment," she cried, laughing gaily at his praise, "M'sieu' ees reech in w'at you call–compleement!"
"Yes, but that is about the extent of my riches," Rex chuckled, as he took his departure.
News of the Samson Creek find was freely circulating in Dawson City. Some claims had been staked in the fall, and hazy descriptions of the valley's wealth were in the air. The Arctic temperature of the Yukon winter kept many from going out to locate, but a mysterious rumor arose that there was a claim-jumping scheme afoot, and Britton found that it had already travelled ahead of him. The rumor, quite indefinite in itself, startled the people of Dawson from their apathetic state. Miners who had, at the approach of frost, forsaken the valuable auriferous workings for the city's beer-saloons drew on their meagre stores of supplies and stampeded to their holdings, ready to prove, even in gun-fights as a last resort, that possession was not nine points but the whole of the law.
Learning that so many prospectors had rushed out the night before, Britton loaded his camp stove, sleeping-bag, and tent upon his sled, securely lashed on the provisions, consisting mainly of bacon, beans, flour, and dried apples, and made all haste away.
Samson Creek was a tributary of the famous Eldorado, and on account of its proximity to fully exploited fields offered great promise of pay dirt.
Britton took the ice-trail up the frozen Klondike, veered off to the right, and rounded the great, cone-shaped, snow-laden mountain in whose chasms the most noted gold streams, including the Bonanza, have their origin. He travelled fast, unimpeded by snow-crust on the white, glistening surface of the river, and on nearing the south branch of the Samson, overtook many who had started out before him.
"Got anything staked?" panted a miner, as Britton went by.
"Not yet," Rex answered.
"Then you can't get in," the man said.
"Why?" Britton cried impatiently.
"Why?" echoed his informant. "Ge-mima!–why? Look there!"
They had topped the glacial slope of the watershed and paused for breath upon the crest, overlooking the creek's bed. Britton beheld the valley, freshly staked as far as his eye could reach, with endless processions of men moving upstream.
"Get in?" said the miner. "Not much! I must hike down and see nobody squats on the claims I took last fall."
The man moved off, and Britton, angry disappointment raging within him, stood and watched the burden-bearing lines below.
Over on the west where the mountains bulked up so huge and taciturn, the ruby sunset was coloring the summits. Dull, spotless snow-cornices and shining ice-fields gleamed with rosy hues that gradually deepened to rich crimson, as if some Titan hand had poured over them a flood of ancient wine. The glacier tips scintillated like the steel sabre-wall of a cavalry column, and the scraggy hemlocks on the peaks quickened with sapphire glints against their sober green.
Britton watched the magnificent panorama hold its glory for some moments; then all turned shaded and blue in a trice as a sheer rock precipice capped the lens of the sun.
He turned away, dejectedly, toward the north branch, remembering the hint of Franco Lessari, the courier. He crossed South Samson, intercepting scores of men who mushed dog-teams, dragged Yukon sleighs, or bore great loads on their wet backs. They strained in single file up the beaten river-path–low-browed, cruel-looking fellows who might have been thugs and who cursed those that delayed them; eager-faced, unbroken fools who had come in by steamer in the heat of summer, housed themselves warmly in Dawson when the frost fell, and had yet to learn the smiting wrath of a Klondike blizzard; luckless gamesters whom a winning turn never blessed; and shrewd old pioneers, suspicious of everyone, noting everything with keen, wilderness-trained eyes, and pushing on indefatigably to conserve their fall stakings. Along the sinuous river course heaps of boxes and sacks and caches of food marked the journey; overweighting baggage, thrown down to await more convenient handling, blotched the ice with unsightly disorder; discarded trifles, pack rubbish, and the snarl of sleigh and tent ropes littered all the route.
By dark Britton camped on North Samson, four miles away. There, for three days, he burned holes in doubtful-looking gravel, enduring uncomplainingly the manifold discomforts of tent life with the mercury fifty below.
Meanwhile, the influx to the south continued, and, all the explored stream being taken, the overflow reached the northerly branch. Rex watched them come, more motley and dishevelled than ever, unwilling to back-trail to Dawson and yet with a secret dread gnawing at their hearts, the fear of winter's lash whose torment the ache of hunger might assist. He saw them arrive, as bitter and despairing as himself, and with them staggered Franco Lessari, dragging the most meagre of meagre outfits.
Lessari had no sleeping-bag, only blankets. and thin ones at that; he did not carry a tent, depending upon the snow hut dug in the river drifts, and his food was a bag of coarse beans and dried salmon.
"Ah," he cried delightedly, on seeing Britton, sitting between his tent flaps, "you listened at me? But come to-morrow after me. Where I say, you dig!"
He was moving farther up-stream, but Rex called him back.
"Look here," he began, full of commiseration for the pathetic figure plainly in worse circumstances than himself, "you might as well bunk in beside me. There's plenty of room in the tent, and we'll prospect together wherever you say. If you're going to share a good thing with me, I must make some return. Come along! Throw in your packs."
Gratitude showed in the Corsican's brown, harrowed face as he wrestled with his limited English vocabulary in the attempt to thank Britton for the generous offer, of which he reluctantly took advantage.
"You are so much kindness," he sighed repeatedly.
In the morning they shifted their camp another mile up North Samson to a certain bend near an icy ravine, called Grizzly Gulch, where, Lessari said, a trapper had declared he had found good gold-signs. For three days more they burned out the beach and excavated the frozen gravel without success. The trapper must have been mistaken, or they had struck the wrong spot. They branched out with their operations and covered the dip of the ravine in all directions, but their ill success proved unvarying.
The bed of the gulley lay pock-marked with burned holes, and the dump outside the tent grew large. It was after weeks of this trying toil that Rex Britton discovered Lessari's one vice.
Rex came in one night from a late probing in Grizzly Gulch to find an Indian of the Thron-Diucks keeping company with the Corsican by his camp stove. Both men were joyously drunk, and they hailed Britton as a welcome returned prodigal.
The Thron-Diuck held up an empty bottle which had, no doubt, been dearly bought from some trafficking miner, and lamented the absence of whiskey in woeful Indian jargon. Lessari jumped to his unsteady feet, attempting to embrace Britton and dinning in his ears a hopelessly mixed tale of gold.
"Gold, gold, gold!" he would cry, dancing aside to pat the Indian on the back. "Him tell where gold for give him whiskey."
"Yes, Mis'r," the Thron-Diuck volunteered, ingratiatingly. "Give whiskey! Me tell where big gold come from–heap much gold."
Britton laughed mockingly.
"That tale's too old," he said. "I've heard of the combination of the drunken Indian, the bottle of whiskey, and the golden valley ever since I started on these cursed northern trails. Now, if you want to sleep by our fire, you'll have to stop shouting. I wouldn't turn a dog out upon a night like this, but you must be quiet. Understand?"
He made Lessari sit down, and kicked the Indian's emptied bottle out of the tent.
"You'd sell your big gold pretty cheap," he commented drily.
"Think me lie?" the vagrant cried aggressively.
Rex could see that he was at that stage peculiar to red men's intoxication when they will sell their bodies or souls to satisfy the abnormal craving of their unbridled natures. The whiskey's flame licked through his veins, and there was no checking the thirst for fire-water which only drunken insensibility could satiate.
"I think you are imagining things," Rex replied, "and I have no whiskey to spare in barter. A mouthful of what you two wasted might have been useful some time in saving a life in this deadly cold."
"Me no lie," the muddled Indian persisted.
"You do," said Britton, with pointed sternness.
The Thron-Diuck's fingers fumbled in his rags for an instant and came forth closed.
"Think me lie!" he shouted dramatically. "Heap big gold–like that!"
From the Indian's extended palm, the yellow flash of native gold filled Britton's startled eyes.
[image]"From the Indian's extended palm the yellow flash of native gold filled Britton's startled eyes."
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"From the Indian's extended palm the yellow flash of native gold filled Britton's startled eyes."
CHAPTER XIII.
"Gold! Gold! Gold!" screamed the excitable and drunken Corsican, as he danced about the tent.
At the bright gleam of the yellow metal, Rex had sprung forward and grasped the precious specimen from the Thron-Diuck's hand.
"Where did you get this?" he demanded, breathlessly.
A look of cunning overspread the Indian's coppery features, and discolored teeth were displayed in his gaping grin.
"Give fire-water," he said, fawningly, "then me tell."
Britton examined the piece of ore from every angle in the candle-light and recognized a wonderful sample of alluvial gold. It weighed probably eight ounces, and Rex trembled in excitement not to be repressed. There was no doubt of its origin, and he knew that the carousing rascal must be speaking the truth. The glacier-worn edges of the specimen told that it had come from a heavy deposit, a place of "big gold."
"Where did you get this?" Rex hoarsely repeated, his hands shaking as if weighted down with golden pounds instead of ounces.
"Bring whiskey, then me tell where heap much gold come from," was the Indian's laconic response.
"No, you won't," said Britton. "You'll tell first, and then you may have the fire-water."
He dived into a small kitty-bag wherein he kept some few medicinal mixtures, whipped out the solitary flask, which he was accustomed to carry against a possible dire emergency of the rigorous trails, and held it enticingly before the candle flame.
The liquor sparkled in the light, and the poor red wretch smacked his lips and clawed at it. Rex held him off.
"Afterwards–afterwards," he said with decision.
"Ha!" exclaimed the tantalized Indian, "go heap long way up the White River–"
"The Klondike?" interrupted Rex.
"Yes, as you call, Mis'r," answered the Thron-Diuck, gesticulating frantically with lean, bony fingers like talons. "Go heap way up Klondike; find ice-hills with much frozen springs; there big gold where him be!" His claws pointed at the sample in Britton's fist.
"You mean the headwaters of the Klondike–its source?" questioned Rex, earnestly. "You're sure of that? For heaven's sake don't make any mistake!"
The Indian shook his whole body and stamped in anger.
"Me no mistake," he declared. "Me no lie. Go heap way up where you say, Mis'r, to–to–"
"To the headwaters," prompted Britton.
"Yes, to big chief waters! There five hills like heap big beaver houses all by one dam. White River run through. There place of heap big gold!"
Rex wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead.
"This is the way I understand you," he said. "Listen and tell me if I'm right! The place lies straight up the Klondike at its headwaters, right in the middle of five beaver-house hills which the stream cuts through. Is that correct?"
"Right, heap right," replied the Thron-Diuck, overjoyed at being properly understood. He reached for the whiskey again, but Britton was not yet done.
"Wait till I draw a sketch," he said quickly, "and you shall mark these hills in the exact spot."
Rex found his map of the Klondike River in his breast pocket and drew the stream on a larger scale upon a sheet from a notebook. At the river's mouth was a deserted Indian village, lately occupied by Thron-Diucks who had moved back into the fastnesses of the snowy mountains, and no other trace of habitation marked the frozen waterway, which lost itself in bleak heights away to the north, unexplored except by Indians and a few venturesome white trappers.
"Now," said Britton, when he had outlined the sketch, "show me exactly where these hills stand from the source or headwaters of the river."
The Indian touched his talons to the drawing just below a group of low mountains, named on the map the Klondike Hills.
"How far below?" Rex questioned very earnestly.
"Half day, as you call, Mis'r," the Thron-Diuck answered. "Half day with heap good dogs!"
"So?" cried Britton, warming to the scent of the treasure. "How many hills on this side of the stream?"
The Indian located three with as many dabs of his skinny forefinger and showed where the other two hills lay across the river. Rex marked them with small circles, mentally calculating by the scale their distance from the source and thus knowing their position at least approximately.
The Thron-Diuck regarded his handiwork with satisfaction.
"Heap right," he said triumphantly, "Mis'r heap smart man! Give fire-water, Mis'r; you got much big gold!"
Rex passed over the flask without further parley.
"Yes, it's yours," was his final word, "but heaven help you if you have deceived me as to the position of this stuff!"
Lessari lurched forward to share the Indian's draught, but Britton pushed him rudely back upon his bed.
"You go right to sleep," he ordered, "and get fit for the trail in the morning."
Rex sat beside him to enforce the obeyance of the order till the Corsican dropped into slumber, while over beside the camp stove the Thron-Diuck lay in stupefaction.
The thermometer registered forty-eight below when Britton and Lessari mushed out of the North Samson valley at sunrise. The Indian, now partly sobered and conscious that he had sold a well-guarded secret of his tribe, promptly proceeded to efface himself despite the inducements Britton offered him to act in the capacity of guide, so that the two travelled alone.
As they advanced upon the lonely trail which snaked northward to where the Klondike's source was somewhere hidden in unknown hills, the atmosphere grew keener with intense cold. A merciless, cutting frost fell in fine showers till the two men were covered with a hoary coating which scintillated like glaring tinsel. The icy powder stopped their ears and choked their nostrils, chilling every breath they took.
Lessari unfitted by his natural temperament for such a climate as the Yukon, had always found his respiration labored in winter, and, since he had contracted a severe cold from his soaking in Lake Bennett, his plight was now worse than ever.
Owing to the pressure on his chest he was forced to breathe through the open mouth. Britton pleaded with him not to do this, but the finer fibred Corsican could not endure the strain on his nasal passages and relapsed into breathing between parted lips. As a result, he soon chilled his lungs and began to cough with a dry, hacking sound which Rex heard with foreboding dread.
The mercury dropped lower with every mile they mushed. Icicles formed on their eyebrows, noses and chins, while thin films of ice encased their cheeks, prohibiting any speech.
A thickness of hoar-frost decorated the loaded sled, and the hairy backs of the five dogs were white with it. At intervals they shook themselves roughly in the harness, sending ice particles flying in all directions.
Mingled with this rattle and the grinding song of the sleigh was the leader's "gruff! gruff!" as he blew the congealed snow from his nose.
Camp was made at noon outside an immense ravine which Rex knew by hearsay to be the great cañon of the Klondike. After an hour's rest and a good meal they entered it, finding a precipitous-sided gorge of stupendous size and beauty.
The gigantic gray walls, seamed and full of wide cracks, sloped upward, forming an almost complete arch overhead that admitted a dull glow of light to mingle with the white sheen of the ice below. Great icicles hung by thousands from the rock-crevices, while eternal drippings through the cavern-like roof had formed immense ice columns resembling unsmoothed marble pillars.
The scene before Britton and Lessari looked like a weird, uncanny ice forest full of frozen trunks and clammy, oozy nooks where underworld spirits and grotesque goblins might be expected to reside. The hollow booming of the mighty river, straining in its imprisonment, filled the whole place with a resounding roar, and the force of the fettered torrent shook the coated cave walls till the icicles fell and scattered their rainbow hues upon the floor.
Rex thought this cañon was the most potent symbol of a potent land that could be imagined. It impressed him vividly with the awesome magnitude, the salient ruggedness, the terrible power of the country of which it was an emblem.
His dog-train swayed with shrieking runners among the massed ice-pillars and emerged from the gorge into a wider valley where the hills rose naturally bright in the sunshine with the welcome blue sky resting upon their peaks.
Britton could see that the Klondike River was the main recipient of the long trains of ice which slid with snail-like motion from the crests of the glaciers. Frozen gullies full of these moving, mile-long torrents broke in upon the larger river and piled the junction points full of massive, chaotic ice-bridges which were painfully difficult to cross.
Lessari stumbled upon one huge jam and went down among the sharp, crystal fragments. He gasped when he regained his feet, and the dry, hacking cough became more convulsive. Seeing that he was nearly spent, Rex beckoned for a few minutes' halt, though having hopes of reaching mountainous shelter before nightfall, he did not wish to delay very long.
While they rested on a high ice-bridge quite a distance above the Klondike Cañon, they heard a thin, hissing wail far back in its depths.
"Sled!" exclaimed the listening Corsican, breaking into speech without thinking of the consequence.
At his effort the icy casing which covered his cheeks snapped in showering splinters, gashing the skin in a dozen places. He groaned in pain while the blood trickled down his face.
Britton thawed his mouth free by the warm pressure of his fur gauntlets.
"You're right, Lessari," he said. "It sounds like a dog-train coming through the cañon. Surely that cursed Indian hasn't been spreading the news! Or perhaps someone has trailed us from Samson because they think we know of a find up this way."
Britton's tone was angry as well as disappointed. He had not undertaken the dangerous and arduous trip up the Klondike for the purpose of showing the way to some trailers who might contest the ground with him. If any rough characters were following because they suspected he had knowledge of a gold deposit, Rex knew he would have to fight for what he found, and fight, no doubt, with the odds against him.
"We'll wait and see who is tracking us," he grimly observed to Lessari.
The whining sound of a dog-train continued, borne through the cold void with clear persistence. Rex strained his eyes on the distant mouth of the cañon to mark who came out, but he watched in vain. The noise ceased as suddenly as it arose, and though they dallied another fifteen minutes, nothing could be seen.
"That's odd," commented Britton. "Wasn't it a dog-sled, Lessari?"
"Sound like him much!" answered the Corsican, in an awed voice. He was somewhat superstitious, and he nursed his cut face apprehensively, as if it were responsible for the strange incident.
"I could have sworn to that as the shriek of runners," Rex declared, "but it may have been ice. In any event we can't stop longer. Ho! there–mush, mush!"
They forged on, climbing to a still higher altitude and meeting with a frigid air that reached to the very marrow of their bones. Lessari weakened, and Britton made him take to the sled for the rest of the afternoon while he himself continued his heart-breaking tramp beside the dogs, surmounting all obstacles, no matter how formidable, with that intrepid grit and unbroken muscle-strength which was his heritage.
The short, sub-Arctic day closed in swiftly, shrouding everything with a heavy fog, and night caught the two travellers among the black river boulders.
It was a desolate place of incomparable bleakness in which they were forced to camp, but when the stove was set going inside the pitched tent and they had infused some heat into their frost-tried bodies, the outlook seemed more cheerful.
The next day saw a repetition of their hardships and trials. Lessari declared himself strong enough to keep his feet, but Britton forced him to ride behind the dogs. The Corsican lay wrapped in robes, and the spasms of coughing that wrenched his frame told about how fit he was to travel the trail afoot. There were places so rough and so hard to scale that he could not stay upon the loaded sled while the dogs dragged it over. At such points he was compelled to walk, and Rex had to assist him.
They had penetrated into the timbered regions which flanked the Klondike, and the way grew wilder although there was some solace of shelter. According to Britton's estimate of the Thron-Diuck's directions the place of the five mountains could not be many miles distant, and, even in that soul-chilling waste, his blood warmed every inch of his body when he thought success might soon reward his strenuous stampedes.
With the reaching of the forested stretches, grizzly tracks were seen in profusion, indicating that these hungry prowlers were finding the severe weather very hard, for they had covered vast distances in search of food.
As they traversed mile after mile, making rapid progress without hindrance of blistered ice, Britton began to think that his hopes of camping that night among the five beaver-house hills would be realized. Every time they rested for a moment to give the dogs a breathing spell, he eagerly scanned the sketch which he had made. From the contour of the river and the position of the mountains he tried to judge exactly how far he had advanced. Each scrutiny, thus indulged in, gave fresh hope and assurance, and he would dash on with greater speed than was generally attained on the Fields.
The steep granite headlands gave place to more sloping bluffs, and when Britton's dog-train swept round the river's curve past the first long belt of pine forest, there loomed at a probable distance of six miles the tops of five hills set in a circle.
"It's the place," he shouted joyfully. "By heaven, it's the place–Lessari!"
But Lessari, his endurance worn out by the continual jolting, had rolled from the sled in a dead faint. He could not be revived easily, so Britton had to pitch the tent, light a fire, and attend to him.
The Corsican came to, weak and trembling, and when Rex had given some nourishment, Lessari looked at him with dazed, troubled eyes.
"I am much sorrow," he said confusedly. "Your journey I spoil! Put me on the sled, and it somehow we can reach."
Britton felt a twinge of conscience for a selfish wish as he heard these words from a man who was courageous to the core though obviously unable to continue.
"No," he gravely replied, "you haven't spoiled the journey. We can well rest here and go on to-morrow. Make your mind easy, Lessari!"
The Corsican, still lamenting the check to their advance, fell into an exhausted sleep, while Britton, the selfish desire recurring involuntarily within him, chafed silently as he watched from a distance the peaks of his far-sought gold Mecca.
CHAPTER XIV.
Five dead dogs, their stark bodies clearly outlined on the snow by a sparkling aurora, met Britton's startled gaze when he stumbled sleepily out of the cramped quarters of the tent. A cry of something like despair escaped him as he ran to examine them, turning the gaunt carcasses over and over.
Lessari heard the shout of perturbation and shuffled forth from under the flaps.
"What wrong have you?" he asked anxiously.
Rex stood aside and showed the corpses of their faithful animals.
"They're killed," he said briefly, "and you know what that means for us!"
White horror grew in the Corsican's brown face till it was blanched to a sickly hue. He fully realized that the loss of the dog-team had buried them alive in a frozen wilderness whose relentless cruelty would slowly crush their lives. In a dazed way, he fingered the bodies.
"Not any marks–not any marks," was his vacant observation.
"No," agreed Britton, who controlled himself with difficulty, "they have been neither knifed nor shot, yet some man's hand has done it. Gaucho and the rest of the huskies appeared as well last night as they ever did. No, Lessari, it wasn't an epidemic or even the bitter frost."
"How they are killed, then?" the Corsican inquired petulantly.
"That's the mystery," Rex woefully ruminated, aloud. "I wonder if that snake of a Thron-Diuck followed us and perpetrated this deed! You remember we heard what we thought was a dog-train coming behind us through the Klondike Cañon?"
"Ah! yes," responded his companion, "that I recall–curse him!" Lessari's eyes were vindictive and full of a strange wildness as he stared at Britton.
"Of course that is only a supposition," said Rex, judicially, "but I know how jealous the Indian tribes are of gold-laden creeks. The Thron-Diucks know a good many secrets, but they will not divulge them, and fearing the wrath of his fellows if we located on this deposit, the red wretch may have repented his bargain and taken steps to prevent our profiting by it."
"Look for tracks!" exclaimed the Corsican, on sudden inspiration, but Britton shook his head.
"No use," he lamented, pointing to the pine-banked curve of the river, shining like glass, "the ice is too clean!"
"Curse him! Curse him!" exploded Lessari, again, growing more violent of speech.
"There's no use in cursing, either," Britton said seriously. "We're facing death, Lessari, but we must keep alive as long as possible. We have a tent and some food, and we'll make a strong fight."
The Corsican studied his dubious expression. "Go back?" he asked.
"It can't be done," said Rex. "Our provisions will not last half the time required to make the journey on foot, and there is nothing to shoot over those barren stretches."
"Go on where gold is, then?" Lessari inquired dismally.
"Yes," Britton answered, "our path lies over those five hills. We have only two chances, Lessari, and they are mighty slim! There is the chance of stumbling on the encampment of these Thron-Diuck Indians–they have retired somewhere in these mountains–and the possibility of finding game in the pine forests. The way lies yonder, and, if we find gold there, we'll stake it in case a miracle should bring us out of this trap."
Rex stirred the nose of his dead leader with the toe of his shoepack as he finished speaking, and Lessari saw him bend quickly.
"See that!" Britton exclaimed in quivering anger. He held out something between his fingers, and the Corsican recognized a piece of frozen whitefish covered with reddish powder.
"Poisoned!" he ejaculated with renewed horror.
"Yes, someone has fed them poisoned whitefish," said Rex, vehemently. "Gaucho had this in his teeth!"
Lessari broke out in a flood of denunciation. Britton quelled his own indignation and began untying the tent-ropes.
They thawed their canvas shelter from the banked ice and snow by means of several brush fires and loaded the sled. Any articles which could be dispensed with and which unnecessarily impeded them were cast away. The outfit was reduced to a minimum, and Rex packed all the remaining provisions carefully in one large sack. He preserved, too, the food intended for the dogs, for he thought they might easily find themselves in such straits as to be glad of it.
When all was securely lashed on the heavy Yukon sleigh, the two men harnessed themselves in the traces and started laboriously toward the circle of hills six miles away. For Lessari, they were six long and excruciating miles. He was weak and unfit, and though Britton took the heavier portion of the toil, the tramp told rapidly on his companion.
The river curved with such a sweep that they struck overland to shorten the distance. They bridged wide gullies full of blistered ice and swerved erratically with the loaded sled among rugged rocks and slippery hummocks that barred their path. Lessari continued to mutter and complain during the whole six miles, his mumblings toward the end becoming somewhat incoherent.
When they slipped down a long ravine which opened on the river right in the middle of the circling hills, the Corsican was staggering along with protruding tongue.
"You're fagged!" Rex exclaimed, noticing his plight. "Better rest here a minute!"
Lessari's answer was a vicious pull on the sleigh rope that nearly took Britton off his feet. They moved on because the Corsican would accept no delay, and Rex saw that the other's motive power was a sort of delirium which instilled unlimited feverish energy.
The pair of toilers emerged at last from the black rift and climbed an ice-capped ridge which fell like a sloping watershed in a southward direction. Around them the five beaver-house mountains rose strangely dome-like, the great river apparently losing itself in the bowels of the thousand ice chasms which furrowed the base of the valley-beds.
"This is the Klondike's source," Rex murmured as he contemplated the scene, "and it looks cold enough to kill you."
"Yes," sighed Lessari, "you have it right. But the gold–the gold is warm. Here I feel it!" He put his hand to his breast, and smiled contentedly.
"It's all that's keeping you warm," Rex gruffly commented. The observation quickly altered Lessari's expression, and he glared with a wild impenetrable look as they proceeded to skirt the fringing line of gravelled granite which was the shore of the now glacier-like stream.
Here the detached ice lay scattered about in huge blocks, an impediment to their feet, where it had glided with the shining rubble from the farther plateaus. In the shallow cup that the five hills formed, they met with a long, treacherous crevasse whose yawning depth of three hundred feet effectually cut off any further progress in a direct line. The great abyss seemed to possess a fascination for Lessari, and he trod dangerously near the edge to peer over.
"Don't do that!" Britton sharply cautioned, pulling him back. "A slip of your moccasin would put you at the bottom. We'll have to leave the sled here and see if there is any way round!"
The immense crevasse dipped from an overhanging glacier on one of the five mountains and slanted across the granite ridge they had been skirting. The two men left the Yukon sleigh standing, blocked, above the deep split and followed along the edge, searching for a place to cross. The slant of the ravine became more, acute, and, where the sides were jagged and shelved, they clambered down lower and lower till the whole formation suddenly broke upon a vast cavern that nosed into the river-bed and opened on the other side where the way was passable though extremely hard.
"It's rough going, but we must get across," Rex said, turning round to Lessari.
The latter was handling some rusty-looking pebbles which he had kicked out of the black cavern floorway.
"Ironstone!" he grunted scornfully, gazing at the cave side where similar fragments with glacier-worn edges stuck out.
"Let me see," cried Britton, hastily jumping forward. Lessari dropped the stones in his hand, and Britton's heart leaped at the weight of them.
"Ironstone!" he exclaimed, his voice all trembling. "My God, Lessari, it's gold!"
"Santa Virgin!" the Corsican screamed–"Gold!" He snatched frantically at the precious pebbles, chattering madly.
"I'm positive it is," Rex said excitedly, "but the flame-test will soon tell."
He produced a bit of candle from his coat and lit it with unsteady fingers. While Lessari held the specimens, he applied the flame to them. The heat singed the Corsican's hands, but he did not seem to feel any pain. Presently the rusty red covering of the pebbles disappeared as fine dust in the blaze, and Lessari gripped pure alluvial gold.
"Santa Virgin!" he screamed again. "We're rich! We're rich!"
Rex was off immediately, running about the cavern walls, making a hasty survey with his candle end. The walls, like the floor, were studded here and there with peeping corners of the precious ore for which he had endured two thousand miles of pitiless Yukon trails. Unbounded wealth lay within his grasp, and, with the triumph of the moment, he forgot that he was a millionaire in a death-trap.
"Go up for a spade, Lessari," he cried. "It is a mighty deposit–'big gold,' as the Thron-Diuck said."
The Corsican started up as a faint, rushing noise sounded above, like ice sliding upon ice.
"What's that?" asked Britton anxiously.
They listened, but heard no further echo. Rex appeared ill at ease.
"We're among glaciers, Lessari," he said, "and we must be careful. An avalanche might easily bury us in a hole like this. Get that shovel quickly!"
Lessari climbed up the lip of the ravine and disappeared, while Britton pottered about, speculating, as well as exulting, over the magnificent find. It was a showing that gave promise of surpassing such far-famed creeks as the Eldorado and Bonanza, and Rex gloated over his prospects. Standing in that deep cavern under the Klondike's bed, his thoughts went back to the green Sussex lands, Hyde Park in the London season, and the foaming Channel swells under theMottisfont'sbows. He thought of the estates this buried gold would buy, the power it would bring, the restoration to public favor it would effect, and he laughed mirthlessly at the idea of purchasing his way into quarters of society and diplomacy which had closed their doors to him after his Algerian escapade.
A shrill cry from Lessari above interrupted his cogitations. He scrambled out of the cavern and clawed his way up the slippery side of the rift.
The Corsican was staring down into the abyss where they had left the sled. On his face there rested a look of terrified bewilderment, and he pointed into the gloomy depths.
"Gone!" he wailed–"gone down!"
Britton looked around for the sleigh, but it had vanished. A sharp fear assailed him as he dashed to Lessari's side and saw the mark of the runners on the powdered edge of the ravine where the laden sled had taken the leap.
"That's what we heard slide," Rex groaned, "and it has all our food!"
He went mechanically to the exact spot where the Yukon sleigh had stood. There lay the piece of granite which had blocked the runners, with the print of a husky's foot-pad in a minute snow-pocket at its side. Rex showed it to the Corsican, a swift, ominous wrath mantling his countenance.
"By heaven, Lessari, this is too much!" he cried. "It has been done purposely like–like the poison! There's a hand in the dark somewhere, and it means murder!"
The Corsican's harrowed senses appeared incapable of comprehending the statement.
"Starving–and rich!" he muttered wildly. "Rich–and starving!" He walked without fear to the brink of the chasm and began to lower himself over the rock with his hands.
"Here!" Rex roared in terror, rushing up. "What do you mean?"
"Stay back!" snarled the Corsican. "I go down to eat."
"The gold has turned your head!" Britton exclaimed. "You couldn't get down there for all the food on earth. Why, man, it's three hundred feet!" He sprang with a lithe movement and dragged the Corsican from his perilous position.
Lessari gave an inhuman cry and closed with Britton. Rex saw his eyes as they struggled and knew, with a feeling of chill horror, that they were the eyes of a madman.
"Ha!" gasped the demented fellow. "This time you go!"
He strove to throw Britton into the gulf, for resistance had resulted in giving his mania a different trend. The delirium gave him the strength of six men, and Rex found himself being gradually pushed into the crevasse. He strained and tugged with all the mighty power of his shoulders and corded arms, but it was of no avail against the frenzied Lessari. He tried another tack!
"Cool yourself, Lessari," he said soothingly, "and we'll get this sled." They could never get it, but he hoped the artifice might serve! Even that attempt at reason proved useless, for the Corsican redoubled his efforts. The eternal cold, his illness, the death of the dogs, the fever of the gold-finding, and the loss of their provisions had all combined to drive him mad.
"Devil!" he screamed, "you threw the food down!" And Rex knew he was indeed demented.
Fighting every inch of the way, Britton was forced toward the abyss. Three feet from it, he felt the necessity for desperate action. Watching his opportunity, he tripped Lessari on the iced rock, and they both fell heavily. Rex wound his arms about the Corsican, putting forth the last ounce of strength; that grip of steel would have held a giant, but it could not hold a madman. Lessari tore himself free and gained the uppermost position, with hands on Britton's throat.
Rex gazed into the rolling eyes, the wild, distorted visage of the Corsican, and felt himself shoved to the very brink of the crevasse. He wrenched violently at Lessari's wrists and arms, but they were as iron rods, and the movement brought his head out over the rim of the rock.
In one fleeting vision he saw the white, rising ice-fields cutting into the blue sky, with glacier-capped peaks banking up behind; he saw three of the five circling hills, their frozen gorges shining emerald in the sun; then, as Lessari's wolfish face came closer to his own and his arms were pressed down, the fingers felt the revolver butt in his belt.
In sheer despair he grasped it as a drowning man snatches at an oar. Its report cracked out and rattled in a hundred blatant echoes down the gorge. Lessari uttered a gasping groan and lurched to one side, his fingers lax and weak.
Britton wormed his shoulders back from the edge of the abyss, shifting the Corsican's weight with his legs, and arose in safety. His lungs were heaving with the tremendous strain like those of a spent Channel-swimmer, and the cords of his throat were taut.
When he turned over the limp form at his feet, he looked into Lessari's dead face.