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Snowdrift: A Story of the Land of the Strong Cold

by James B. Hendryx · English · Gutenberg #37815 · 519,170 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Snowdrift: A Story of the Land of the Strong Cold

Author: James B. Hendryx


        
Release date: October 21, 2011 [eBook #37815]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37815

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        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SNOWDRIFT: A STORY OF THE LAND OF THE STRONG COLD ***




Produced by K Nordquist, Ron Stephens and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









    SNOWDRIFT

    _A Story of the Land of the Strong Cold_

    By JAMES B. HENDRYX


    AUTHOR OF

    "The Gold Girl," "The Gun Brand," "The Texan,"
    "Prairie Flowers," "The Promise," etc.


        A.L. BURT COMPANY
    Publishers       New York

    Published by arrangement with G.P. Putnam's Sons

    Printed in U.S.A.


    COPYRIGHT, 1922
    BY
    JAMES B. HENDRYX


    BY JAMES B. HENDRYX

    The Promise
    The Gun Brand
    The Texan
    North
    The Gold Girl
    Prairie Flowers
    Snowdrift
    Without Gloves
    At the Foot of the Rainbow

    This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers
    G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON

    The Knickerbocker Press, New York




CONTENTS


                                                 PAGE

    A PROLOGUE                                      3

    CHAPTER

         I.--COARSE GOLD                           41

        II.--ON DYEA BEACH                         60

       III.--AT THE MISSION                        72

        IV.--ACE-IN-THE-HOLE                       84

         V.--LUCK TURNS                            93

        VI.--THE DEALER AT STOELL'S               104

       VII.--"WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?"           120

      VIII.--THE PLOTTING OF CAMILLO BILL         132

        IX.--SNOWDRIFT RETURNS TO THE BAND        143

         X.--THE DINNER AT REEVES'                155

        XI.--JOE PETE                             170

       XII.--ON THE TRAIL                         184

      XIII.--THE CAMP ON THE COPPERMINE           198

       XIV.--IN THE BARRENS                       206

        XV.--MOONLIGHT                            223

       XVI.--CONFESSIONS                          243

      XVII.--IN THE CABIN OF THE "BELVA LOU"      260

     XVIII.--LOST                                 277

       XIX.--TRAPPED                              293

        XX.--"YOU ARE WHITE!"                     305

       XXI.--THE PASSING OF WANANEBISH            323

      XXII.--CLAW HITS FOR DAWSON                 339

     XXIII.--IN THE TOILS                         351

      XXIV.--THE FIGHT AT CUTER MALONE'S          364




SNOWDRIFT




A PROLOGUE


I

Murdo MacFarlane, the Hudson's Bay Company's trader at Lashing Water
post, laid aside his book and glanced across the stove at his wife who
had paused in her sewing to hold up for inspection a very tiny shirt of
soft wool.

"I tell you it's there! It's bound to be there," he announced with
conviction. "Just waitin' for the man that's man enough to go an' get
it."

Margot nodded abstractedly and deftly snipped a thread that dangled from
a seam of a little sleeve. She had heard this same statement many times
during the three years of their married life, and she smiled to herself
as Molaire, her father, who was the Company's factor at Lashing Water,
laid aside his well thumbed invoice with a snort of disgust. She knew
her two men well, did Margot, and she could anticipate almost word for
word the heated argument that was bound to follow. Without rising she
motioned to Tom Shirts, the Company Indian, to light the great swinging
lamp. And as the yellow light flooded the long, low trading room, she
resumed her sewing, while Molaire hitched his chair nearer the stove and
whittled a pipeful of tobacco from a plug.

"There ye go again with ye're tomrot an' ye're foolishness!" exploded
the old Frenchman, as he threw away his match and crowded the swelling
tobacco back into the bowl of his pipe. "Always babblin' about the gold.
Always wantin' to go an' find out for ye'reself it ain't there."

"But I'm tellin' you it _is_ there," insisted MacFarlane.

"Where is it, then? Why ain't it be'n got?"

"Because the right man ain't gone after it."

"An' ye're the right man, I suppose! Still lackin' of twenty-five years,
an' be'n four years in the bush; tellin' me that's be'n forty years in
the fur country, an' older than ye before ever I seen it. Ye'll do
better to ferget this foolishness an' stick to the fur like me. I've
lived like a king in one post an' another--an' when I'm old I'll retire
on my pension."

"An' when I'm old, if I find the gold, I'll ask pension of no man. It
ain't so much for myself that I want gold--it's for them--for Margot,
there, an' the wee Margot in yon." He nodded toward the door of the
living room where the year-old baby lay asleep.

Molaire shrugged: "Margot has lived always in the bush. She needs no
gold, an' the little one needs no gold. Gold costs lives. Come, Margot,
speak up! Would ye send ye're man to die in the barrens for the gold
that ain't there?"

Margot paused in her sewing and smiled: "I am not sending him into the
barrens," she said. "If he goes, I go, and the little Margot, too. If
one dies, we all die together. But there must be gold there. Has not
Murdo read it in books? And we have heard rumors of gold among the
Indians."

"Read it in books!" sniffed Molaire. "Rumors among Injuns! Ye better
stick to fur, boy. Ye take to it natural. There's no better judge of fur
in all the traders I've had. Before long the Company'll make ye a
factor."

As young Murdo MacFarlane filled and lighted his pipe, his eyes rested
with burning intensity upon his young wife. When finally he spoke it was
half to himself, half to Molaire: "When the lass an' I were married,
back yon, to the boomin' of the bells of Ste. Anne's, I vowed me a vow
that I'd do the best 'twas in me to do for her. An' I vowed it again
when, a year later, the bells of Ste. Anne's rang out at the christening
of the wee little Margot. Is it the best a man can do--to spend his life
in the buyin' of fur for a wage, when gold 'twould pay for a kingdom
lies hid in the sands for the takin'?"

Molaire's reply was interrupted by a sound from without, and the
occupants of the room looked at each other in surprise. For it was
February and the North lay locked in the iron grip of the strong cold.
Since mid-afternoon the north wind had roared straight out of the
Arctic, driving before it a blue-white smother of powder-dry snow
particles that cut and seared the skin like white-hot steel filings.
MacFarlane was half way across the floor when the door opened and a man,
powdered white from head to foot, stepped into the room in a swirl of
snow fine as steam. With his hip he closed the door against the push of
the wind, and advancing into the room, shook off his huge bear-skin
mittens and unwound the heavy woolen scarf that encircled his parka hood
and muffled his face to the eyes. The scarf, stiff with ice from his
frozen breath, crackled as it unwound, and little ice-chips fell to the
floor.

"Ha, it's Downey, who else? Lad, lad, what a night to be buckin' the
storm!" cried the trader.

Corporal Downey, of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, grinned as he
advanced to the stove. "It was buck the storm to Lashin' Water post, or
hole up in a black spruce swamp till it was over. She looks like a three
days' storm, an' I prefer Lashin' Water."

"Ye're well in time for supper, Corporal," welcomed Molaire, "and the
longer the storm lasts the better. For now we'll have days an' nights of
real whist. We've tried to teach Tom Shirts to play, but he knows no
more about it now than he knows about the ten commandments--an' cares
less. So we've be'n at it three-handed. But three-handed whist is like a
three-legged dog--it limps."

Neseka, the squaw, looked in from the kitchen to announce supper, and
after ordering Tom to attend to the Corporal's dogs, Molaire clapped his
hands impatiently to attract the attention of MacFarlane and Downey who
were beating the snow from the latter's moose hide parka. "Come,"
insisted the old man, "ye're outfit'll have plenty time to dry out. The
supper'll be cold, an' we're losin' time. We've wasted a hand of cards
already."

"Is the gold bug still buzzin' in your bonnet, Mac?" asked Downey, as
Molaire flourished the keen bladed carving knife over the roasted
caribou haunch.

"Aye," answered the young Scotchman. "An' when the rivers run free in
the spring, I'll be goin' to get it."

A long moment of silence followed the announcement during which the
carving knife of Molaire was held suspended above the steaming roast.
The old man's gaze centered upon his son-in-law's face, and in that
moment he knew that the younger man's decision had been made, and that
nothing in the world could change it. The words of Margot flashed
through his brain: "If he goes, I go, and the little Margot, too. If one
dies, we all die together." His little daughter, the light of his life
since the death of her mother years before--and the tiny wee Margot who
had snuggled her way into his rough old heart to cheer him in his old
age--going away--far and far away into the God-knows-where of bitter
cold and howling blizzard--and all on a fool's errand! The keen blade
bit the roast to the bone, raised, dripping red juice, and bit again.

"_Mon Dieu_, what a fool!" breathed the old man, and as if in final
appeal, turned to Corporal Downey, who had known him long, and who had
guessed what was passing in his mind. "Tell him, Downey, you know the
North beyond the barrens. Tell him he is a fool!"

And Downey who was not old in years but very wise in the ways of men,
smiled. He liked young Murdo MacFarlane, but he was a Scotchman himself
and he knew the hard-headedness of the breed.

"Well, a man ain't always a fool because he goes huntin' for gold.
That's accordin'. Where is this gold, Mac? An' how do you know it's
there?"

"It's there, all right--gold and copper, too. Didn't Captain Knight try
to find it? And Samuel Hearne?"

"Yes," broke in Molaire, "an' Knight's bones are bleachin' on Marble
Island with his ships on the bottom of the Bay, an' Hearne came back
empty handed."

"That's why the gold is still there," answered MacFarlane.

"Where 'bouts is it?" insisted Downey.

"Up in the Coppermine River country, to the north and east of Bear
Lake."

"How do you know?"

"The Injuns had chunks of it. That's what sent Knight and Hearne after
it."

"How long ago?"

"Captain Knight started in 1719, an' Hearne about fifty years later."

"Gosh!" exclaimed Downey. "Ain't that figurin' quite a ways back?"

"Gold don't rot. If it was there then, it's there now. It's never been
brought out."

"Yes--_if_ it was there. But, maybe it ain't there an' never was--what
then?"

"I talked with an Injun, a year back, that said he had seen an Injun
from the North that had seen some Eskimos that had dishes made of yellow
metal."

"He was prob'ly lyin'," observed Downey, "or the Injun that told him was
lyin'. I've be'n north to the coast a couple of times, an' I never seen
no Injuns nor Eskimos eatin' out of no gold dishes yet."

"Maybe it's because you've stuck to the Mackenzie, where the posts are.
Have you ever crossed the barrens straight north--between the Mackenzie
an' the Bay?"

"No," answered Downey, dryly, "an' I hope to God I don't never have to.
You've got a good thing here with the Company, Mac. If I was you I'd
stick to it, anyways till I seen an Injun with some gold. I never seen
one yet--an' I don't never expect to. An' speakin' of Injuns reminds me,
I passed a camp of 'em this forenoon."

"A camp of 'em!" exclaimed Molaire, in surprise. "Who were they? My
Injuns are all on the trap lines."

"These are from the North somewheres. I couldn't savvy their lingo. They
ain't much good I guess. They're non-treaty Injuns--wanderers. They
wanted to know where a post was, an' I told 'em. They'll prob'ly be in
to trade when the storm lets up."

That evening old Molaire played whist badly. His heart was not in the
game, for try as he would to keep his mind on the cards, in his ears was
the sound of the dull roar of the wind, and his thoughts were of the
future--of the long days and nights to come when his loved ones would be
somewhere far in the unknown North, and he would be left alone with his
Company Indians in the little post on Lashing Water.


II

All night the storm roared unabated and, as is the way of Arctic
blizzards, the second day saw its fury increased. During the morning the
four played whist. There had been no mention of gold, and old Molaire
played his usual game with the result that when Neseka called them to
dinner, he and MacFarlane held a three-game lead over Downey and Margot.
The meal over, they returned to the cards. The first game after dinner
proved a close one, each side scoring the odd in turn, while the old
Frenchman, as was his custom, analyzed each hand as the cards were
being shuffled for the next deal. Finally he scored a point and tied the
score. Then he glared at his son-in-law: "An' ye'd of finessed your
ten-spot through on my lead of hearts we'd of made two points an' game!"
he frowned.

"How was I to know?" MacFarlane paused abruptly in the midst of his deal
and glanced in surprise toward the door which swung open to admit four
Indians who loosened the blankets that covered them from head to foot
and beat the snow from them as they advanced toward the stove. Three of
them carried small packs of fur. The fourth was a young squaw, straight
and lithe as a panther, and as she loosened the moss-bag from her
shoulders, a thin wail sounded from its interior.

"A baby!" cried Margot, as MacFarlane made his way to the counter, his
eyes upon the packs of fur. She stooped and patted her own little one
who was rolling about upon a thick blanket spread on the floor. The
squaw smiled, and fumbling in the depths of the bag drew forth a tiny
brown-red mite which ceased crying and stared stolidly at the cluster of
strange white faces. "What a terrible day for a baby to be out!"
continued the white woman, as she pushed a chair near to the stove.
Again the squaw smiled and seating herself, turned her back upon the
occupants of the room and proceeded to nurse the tiny atom.

Meanwhile MacFarlane was trying by means of the Cree language to
question the three bucks who stood in solemn line before the counter,
each with his pack of fur before him. Downey tried them with the
Blackfoot tongue, and the Jargon, while old Molaire and Tom Shirts added
half a dozen dialects from nearer the Bay. But no slightest flicker of
comprehension crossed the face of any one of them. Presently the young
squaw arose and placed her baby upon the blanket beside the white child
where the two little mites sat and stared at each other in owlish
solemnity. As she advanced toward the counter MacFarlane addressed her
in Cree. And to the surprise of all she spoke to him in English: "We buy
food," she said, indicating the packs of fur.

"Where did you come from?" queried the trader. "An' how is it that you
talk English an' the rest of 'em can't talk nothin'?"

"We come from far to the northward," she answered. "I have been to
school at the mission. These are Dog Ribs. They have not been to school.
I am of the Yellow Knives. My man was drowned in a rapids. He was name
Bonnetrouge. He was a Dog Rib so I live with these."

"Why don't you trade at your own post?" asked MacFarlane, suspiciously.
"Is it because you have a debt there that you have not paid?"

"No. We have no debt at any post. We are only a small band. We move
about all the time. We do not like to stay in one place like the rest.
We see many new rivers, and many lakes, and we go to many places that
the others do not know. We have no debt at any post, we trade as we go
and pay with skins for what we buy."

"One of them wanderin' bands," observed Downey. "I've run across two or
three of 'em here an' there. They camp a while somewheres an' then,
seems like, they just naturally get restless an' move on."

The squaw nodded: "The police is right. We do not like to stay and trap
in one place. I have seen many new things, and many things that even the
oldest man has not seen."

MacFarlane opened the packs and examined their contents, fur by fur,
laying them in separate piles and paying for each as he appraised it in
brass tokens of made beaver. The three bucks looked on in stolid
indifference but MacFarlane noted that the eyes of the squaw followed
his every movement.

As a general rule the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company deal fairly
with the Indians in the trading of the common or standard skins, and
MacFarlane was no exception. It was in a spirit of fun, to see what the
squaw would do, that he counted out thirty made beaver in payment for a
large otter skin.

The Indian woman shook her head: "No, that is a good otter. He is worth
more." And with a smile the Scotchman counted ten additional tokens into
the pile, whereat the squaw nodded approval and the trading proceeded.
When at last it was finished the squaw took entire charge of the
purchasing, pausing only now and then, to consult one or the other of
the Indians in their own tongue, and in her selection of only the
essentials, MacFarlane realized that he was dealing with that rarest of
northern Indians, one who possessed sound common sense and the force of
character to reject the useless trinkets so dear to the Indian heart.

While the bucks were making up their packs the squaw plunged her hand
into the bottom of the moss-bag from which she had taken the baby, and
drew out a single skin. For a long time she stood holding the skin in
one hand while with the other she stroked its softly gleaming surface.
MacFarlane and Molaire gazed at the skin in fascination while Margot
rose from the blanket where she had been playing with the two babies,
and even Corporal Downey who knew little of skins crowded close to feast
his eyes on the jet black pelt whose hairs gleamed with silver radiance.
In all the forty years of his trading Molaire had handled fewer than a
dozen such skins--a true black fox, taken in its prime, so that the
silvered hairs seemed to emit a soft radiance of their own--a skin to
remember, and to talk about. Then the squaw handed the pelt to
MacFarlane and smiled faintly as she watched the trader examine it
almost hair by hair.

"Where did you get it?" he asked.

"I trapped it far to the northward, in the barren grounds, upon a river
that has no name. It is a good skin."

"Did you trap it yourself?"

"Yes. I am a good trapper. My man was a good trapper and he showed me
how. These are good trappers, too," she indicated the three Indians,
"And all the rest who are with us. There are thirty of us counting the
women and children. But we have not had good luck. That is all the fur
we have caught," she pointed to the skins MacFarlane had just bought,
"Those and the little black fox. When the storms stops we will go again
into the barren grounds, and we must have food, or, if we have bad luck
again, some of us will die."

"Why do you go to the barren grounds?" asked MacFarlane. "The trappin'
is better to the eastward, or to the westward."

The squaw shrugged: "My man he had been to school a little, but mostly
he had worked far to the westward along the coast of the sea--among the
white men who dig for gold. And he heard men talk of the gold that lies
in the barren grounds and northward to the coast of the frozen sea. So
he went back to the country of his people, far up on the Mackenzie, and
he told the men of the gold and how it was worth many times more than
the fur. But the old men would not believe him and many of the young men
would not, but some of them did, and these he persuaded to go with him
and hunt for the gold. It was when they were crossing through the
country of my people that I saw him and he saw me and we were married.
That was two years ago and since then we have traveled far and have seen
many things. Then my husband was drowned in a rapids, and I have taken
his place. I will not go back to my people. They were very angry when I
married Bonnetrouge, for the Yellow Knives hate the Dog Ribs. Even if
they were not angry I would not go back, for my husband said there is
gold in the barren grounds. He did not lie. So we will go and get the
gold."

"There's your chance, Mac," grinned Corporal Downey, "You better throw
in with 'em an' get in on the ground floor."

But MacFarlane did not smile. Instead, he spoke gravely to the woman:
"An' have you found any gold in the barrens?"

The squaw shrugged, and glanced down at the babies. When she looked up
again her eyes were upon the little fox skin. "How much?" she asked.

MacFarlane considered. Holding the pelt he stroked its glossy surface
with his hand. Here was a skin of great value. He had heard many traders
and factors boast of the black, and the silver grey fox skins they had
bought at ridiculously low price--and they were men who did not hesitate
to give full value for the common run of skins. Always, with the
traders, the sight of a rare skin arouses a desire to obtain it--and to
obtain it at the lowest possible figure. And MacFarlane was a trader.
He fixed upon a price in his mind. He raised his eyes, but the squaw
was not looking at him and he followed her glance to the blanket where
the two babies, the red baby and the white baby--his own baby and
Margot's, were touching each other gravely with fat pudgy hands.

He opened his lips to mention the price, but closed them again as a new
train of thought flashed through his mind. How nearly this woman's case
paralleled his own. The imagination of each was fired by the lure of
gold, and both were scoffed at by their people for daring to believe
that there was still gold in the earth to be had for the taking. Then,
there was the matter of the babies----

When finally MacFarlane spoke it was to mention a sum three times larger
than the one that he had fixed upon in his mind--a sum that caused old
Molaire to snort and sputter and to stamp angrily up and down the room.

The squaw nodded gravely: "You are a good man," she said, simply. "You
have dealt fairly. Sometime, maybe you will know that Wananebish does
not forget."

Two hours later, when the price of the pelt had been paid and the
supplies all made into packs and carried to the toboggans that had been
left before the door, the Indians wrapped their blankets about them and
prepared to depart.

As the Indian woman wrapped the baby in warm woolens, Margot urged her
to remain until the storm subsided, but the woman declined with a
smile: "No. These are my people. I will go with them. Where one goes,
all go."

"But the baby! This is a terrible storm to take a baby into."

"The baby is warm. She does not know that it storms. She is one of us.
Where we go, she goes, too."

As the Indians filed through the door into the whirling white smother
the young squaw stepped to the counter for a last look at her black fox
skin. She raised it in her hand, drew it slowly across her cheek,
stroked it softly, and then returned it to the counter, taking
deliberate care to lay it by itself apart from the other skins. Then she
turned and was swallowed up in the storm as MacFarlane closed the door
behind her.

"Ye could of bought it for half the price!" growled old Molaire, as his
son-in-law returned to the card table.

"Aye," answered the younger man as he resumed his cards. "But the
Company has still a good margin of profit. They're headin' for the
barrens, an' if, as she said, they have bad luck some of 'em would die.
An' you know who would be the first to go--it would be the babies. I'm
glad I done as I did. I'll sleep better nights."

"And I'm glad, too," added Margot, as she reached over and patted her
husband's hand, "And so is papa way down in his heart. But he loves to
have people think he is a cross old bear--and bears must growl."

Corporal Downey grinned at the twinkle that appeared in old Molaire's
eyes, and the game proceeded until Neseka called them to supper.
MacFarlane paused at the counter and raised the fox skin to the light.
And as he did so, a very small, heavy object rolled from its soft folds
and thudded upon the boards. Slowly MacFarlane laid down the skin and,
picking up the object, carried it close under the swinging lamp, where
he held it in his open palm. Curiously the others crowded about and
stared at the dull yellow lump scarcely larger than the two halves of a
split pea. For a long moment there was silence and then MacFarlane
turned to Corporal Downey: "What was it you said," he asked, "about
sticking to my job until I saw an Injun with some gold?"


III

The north wind moaned and soughed about the eaves of the low log trading
post on Lashing Water. Old Molaire rose from his place by the stove,
crossed the room, and threw open the door. Seconds passed as he stood
listening to the roar of the wind in the tree tops, heedless of the fine
powdering of stinging snow particles that glistened like diamond points
upon his silvery hair and sifted beneath his shirt collar. Then he
closed the door and returned to his chair beside the stove. Corporal
Downey watched in silence while the old man filled his pipe. He threw
away the match and raised his eyes to the officer: "It was a year ago,
d'ye mind, an' just such a storm--when that squaw came bringin' her
black fox skin, and her nugget of damned gold."

"It would be about a year," agreed Downey, gravely nodding his head. "I
made this patrol in February."

"It's just a year--the thirteenth of the month. I'll not be forgetting
it."

"An' have you had no word?"

The old factor shook his head: "No word. They left in May--with the
rivers not yet free of running ice. Two light canoes. Margot could
handle a canoe like a man."

"You'll prob'ly hear from 'em on the break-up this spring. Maybe they'll
give it up an' come back."

Molaire shook his head: "Ye don't know Murdo MacFarlane," he said,
"He'll never give up. He swore he would never return to Lashin' Water
without gold. He's Scotch--an' stubborn as the seven-year itch."

"I'm Scotch," grinned Downey, hoping to draw the old man into an
argument and turn his thoughts from the absent ones. But he would not be
drawn. For a long time he smoked in silence while outside the wind
howled and moaned and sucked red flames high into the stovepipe.

"She'd be two years old, now," Molaire said, "An' maybe talkin' a bit.
Maybe they've taught her to say grand-pere. Don't you think she might be
talkin' a little?"

"I don't know much about 'em. Do they talk when they're two?"

The old factor pondered: "Why--it seems to me _she_ did--the other
Margot. But--it's a long time ago--yet it seems like yesterday. I'm
gettin' old an' my memory plays me tricks. Maybe it was three, instead
of two when she begun to say words. D'ye mind, Downey, a year ago we
played whist?"

"Two-handed cribbage is all right," suggested the Corporal. But the old
man shook his head and for a long, long time the only sound in the room
was the irregular tapping of contracting metal as the fire died down
unheeded in the stove. The old man's pipe went out and lay cold in his
hand. The bearded chin sagged forward onto the breast of his woolen
shirt and his eyes closed. Beyond the stove Corporal Downey drowsed in
his chair.

Suddenly the old man raised his head: "What was that?" he asked sharply.

Downey listened with his eyes on the other's face. "I hear nothing," he
answered, "but the booming of the wind."

The peculiar startled look died out of Molaire's eyes: "Yes," he
answered, "It is the wind. I must have be'n dozin'. But it sounded like
bells. I've heard the bells of Ste. Ann's boom like that--tollin'--when
some one--died." Stiffly he rose from his chair and fumbled upon the
counter for a candle which he handed to Downey. "We'll be goin' to bed,
now," he said, "It's late."


IV

Upon a bunk built against the wall of a tiny cabin of logs five hundred
miles to the northward of Lashing Water post the sick woman turned her
head feebly and smiled into the tear-dimmed eyes of the man who leaned
over her: "It's all right, Murdo," she murmured, "The pain in my side
seems better. I think I slept a little."

Murdo MacFarlane nodded: "Yes, Margot, you have been asleep for an hour.
In a few days, now, I'm thinkin' you'll be sittin' up, an' in a week's
time you'll be on your feet again."

The woman's eyes closed, and by the tightening of the drawn lips her
husband knew that she was enduring another paroxysm of the terrible
pain. Outside, the wind tore at the eaves, the sound muffled by its full
freighting of snow. And on the wooden shelf above the man's head the
little alarm clock ticked brassily.

Once more Margot's eyes opened and the muscles of the white pain-racked
face relaxed. The breath rushed in quick jerky stabs between the parted
lips that smiled bravely. "We are not children, Murdo--you and I," she
whispered. "We must not be afraid to face--this thing. We have found
much happiness together. That will be ours always. Nothing can rob us
of that. We have had it. And now you must face a great unhappiness. I am
going to die. In your eyes I have seen that you, too, know this--when
you thought I slept. To-day--to-night--not later than to-morrow I must
go away. I am not afraid to go--only sorry. We would have had many more
years of happiness, Murdo--you--and I--and the little one--" The low
voice faltered and broke, and the dark eyes brimmed with tears.

The man's hands clenched till the nails bit deep into the palms. A great
dry sob shook the drooped shoulders: "God!" he breathed, hoarsely, "An'
it's all my fault for bringin' you into this damned waste of snow an'
ice, an' bitter cold!"

"No, Murdo, it is not your fault. I was as anxious to come as you were.
I am a child of the North, and I love the North. I love its storms and
its sunshine. I love even the grim cruelty of it--its relentless
snuffing out of lives in the guarding of its secrets. Strong men have
gone to their death fighting it, and more men will go--why then should
not I, who am a woman, go also? But, it would have been the same if we
had stayed at Lashing Water. I know what this sickness is. I have seen
men die of it before--Nash, of the Mounted--and Nokoto, a Company
Indian. It is the appendicitis, and no doctor could have got to Lashing
Water in time, any more than he could have got here. They sent the
fastest dog-team on the river when Nash was sick, and before the doctor
came he was dead. It is not your fault, my husband. It is no one's
fault. There is a time when each of us must die. My time is now. That is
all." She ceased speaking, and with an effort that brought little beads
of cold sweat to her forehead, she raised herself upon her elbow and
pointed a faltering forefinger toward the little roughly made crib that
stood close beside the bunk. "Promise me, Murdo," she gasped, "promise
me upon your soul that you will see--that--she--_that she shall go to
school!_ More than I have gone, for there are many things I do not know.
I have read in books things I do not understand."

"Aye, girl," the deep voice of MacFarlane rumbled through the room as he
eased his wife back onto the pillow, "I promise."

The dark eyes closed, the white face settled heavily onto the pillow,
and as MacFarlane bent closer he saw that the breathing was peaceful and
regular. It was as though a great load had been lifted from her mind,
and she slept. With her hand still clasped in his the man's tired body
sagged forward until his head rested beside hers.

MacFarlane awoke with a start. Somewhere in the darkness a small voice
was calling: "Mamma! Daddy! I cold!" For a moment the man lay trying to
collect his befuddled senses. "Just a minute, baby," he called, "Daddy's
comin'." As he raised to a sitting posture upon the edge of the bunk his
fingers came in contact with his wife's hand--the hand that he suddenly
remembered had been clasped in his. Rapidly his brain cleared. He must
have fallen asleep. The fire had burned itself out in the stove and he
shivered in the chill air. Margot's hand must have slipped from his
clasp as they slept. It was too cold for her hand to lie there on top of
the blankets, and her arm protected only by the sleeve of her nightgown.
He would slip it gently beneath the covers and then build up a roaring
fire.

A low whimpering came from the direction of the crib: "Daddy, I cold."

"Just a minute, baby, till daddy lights the light." He reached for the
hand that lay beside him there in the darkness. As his fingers clutched
it a short, hoarse cry escaped him. The hand was icy cold--too cold for
even the coldness of the fireless room. The fingers yielded stiffly
beneath his palm and the arm lay rigid upon the blanket.

MacFarlane sprang to his feet and as he groped upon the shelf for
matches his body was shaken by great dry sobs that ended in low throaty
moans. Clumsily his trembling fingers held the tiny flame to the wick of
the candle, and as the light flickered a moment and then burned clear,
he crossed to the crib where the baby had partly wriggled from beneath
her little blankets and robes. Wrapping her warmly in a blanket, he drew
the rest of the covers over her.

"I want to get in bed with mamma," came plaintively from the small
bundle.

MacFarlane choked back a sob: "Don't, don't! little one," he cried, then
lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, he bent low over the crib.
"S-h-s-h, don't disturb mamma. She's--asleep."

"I want sumpin' to eat. I want some gravy and some toast."

"Yes, you wait till daddy builds the fire an' then we'll be nice an'
warm, an' daddy'll get supper."

Silently MacFarlane set about his work. He kindled a fire, put the
teakettle on, and warmed some caribou gravy, stirring it slowly to
prevent its scorching while he toasted some bread upon the top of the
stove. Once or twice he glanced toward the bed. Margot's face was turned
away from him, and all he could see was a wealth of dark hair massed
upon the pillow. That--and the hand that showed at the end of the
nightgown sleeve. White as snow--and cold as snow it looked against the
warm red of the blanket. MacFarlane crossed and drew the blanket up over
the hand and arm, covering it to the shoulder. Bending over, he looked
long into the white face. The eyes were closed, MacFarlane was glad of
that, and the lips were slightly parted as though in restful slumber.
"Good bye--Margot--lass--" his voice broke thickly. He was conscious of
a gnawing pain in his throat, and two great scalding tears rolled down
his cheeks and dropped to the mass of dark hair where they glistened in
the steady glow of the single candle like tiny globes of fire. He raised
the blanket to cover the still face, lowered it again and crossed to
the table where he laid out a tincup for himself and a little thick
yellow bowl into which he crumbled the toast and poured the gravy over
it. Then he warmed a tiny blanket, wrapped the baby in it and, holding
her on his lap, fed her from a spoon. Between the slowly portioned
spoonfuls he drank great gulps of scalding tea. There were still several
spoonfuls left in the bowl when the tiny mite in his arms snuggled
warmly against him. "Tell me a 'tory," demanded the mite. MacFarlane
told the "'tory"--and another, and another. And then, in response to an
imperious demand, he sang a song. It was the first time MacFarlane had
ever sung a song. It was a song he had often heard Margot sing, and he
was surprised that he had unconsciously learned the words which fell
from his lips in a wailing monotone.

MacFarlane's heart was breaking--but he finished the song.

"I sleepy," came drowsily from the blanket. "I want to kiss mamma."

"S-h-s-h, mamma's asleep. Kiss daddy, and we'll go to bed."

"I want to kiss mamma," insisted the baby.

MacFarlane hesitated with tight-pressed lips. Then he rose and carried
the baby to the bedside. "See, mamma's asleep," he whispered, pointing
to the mass of dark hair on the pillow. "Just kiss her hair--and
we--won't--wake--her--up." He held the baby so that the little pursed
lips rested for a moment in the thick mass of hair, then he carried her
to her crib and tucked her in. She was asleep when he smoothed the robe
into place.

For a long time he stood looking down at the little face on the pillow.
Then he crossed to the table where he sat with his head resting upon his
folded arms while the minutes ticked into hours and the fire burned low.
As he sat there with closed eyes MacFarlane followed the thread of his
life from his earliest recollection. His childhood on the little
hillside farm, the long hours that he struggled with his books under the
eye of the stern-faced schoolmaster, his 'prenticeship in the shop of
the harness-maker in the small Scotch town, his year of work about the
docks at Liverpool, his coming to Canada and hiring out to the Hudson's
Bay Company, his assignment to Lashing Water as Molaire's clerk, his
meeting with Margot when she returned home from school at the
mission--and the wonderful days of that first summer together. Then--his
promotion to the position of trader, his marriage to Margot--step by
step he lived again that long journey from Lashing Water to Ste. Anne's.
For it was old Molaire's wish that his daughter should be married in the
old Gothic church where, years before, he had married her mother.

MacFarlane raised his head and listened, his wide-staring eyes fixed
upon the black square of the window--that sound--it was--only the moan
and the muffled roar of the wind--but, for a moment it had sounded like
the tone of a deep-throated bell--like the booming of the bells of Ste.
Anne's. Slowly the man lowered his head to his arms and groped for the
thread of his thought where he had left it. Lingeringly, he dwelt upon
the happiness that had been theirs, the coming of the little Margot--the
infinite love that welled in their hearts for this soft little helpless
thing, their delight in her unfolding--the gaining of a pound--the first
tooth--the first half-formed word--the first step. He remembered, too,
their distress at her tiny ills, real and fancied. Then, his own desire
to seek gold--not for himself, but that these two loved ones might enjoy
life in a fullness undreamed by the family of a fur trader. He
recollected Molaire's opposition, his arguments, his scoffing, and his
prediction that by the end of a year he would be back at Lashing Water
buying fur for the Company. And he recollected his own retort, that
without the gold he would never come back.

And here, in this little thick walled cabin far into the barren grounds,
he had come to the end of the long, long trail. MacFarlane raised his
head and stared at the crib. But, was it the end? He knew that it was
not, and he groped blindly, desperately to picture the end. If it were
not for her--for this little one who lay asleep there in the crib, the
end would be easy. The man's glance sought the rifle that rested upon
its pegs above the window. It was out of the question to think of
returning to Lashing Water, if he would--the baby could not stand five
hundred miles of gruelling winter-trail. He could not keep her here and
leave her alone while he prospected. He could not remain in the cabin
all winter and care for her--he must hunt to live--and game was scarce
and far afield. He shuddered at the thought of what might happen if he
were to leave her alone in the cabin with a fire in the stove--or worse,
of what might eventually happen if some accident befell him and he could
not return to the cabin.

MacFarlane sat bolt upright. He suddenly remembered that a few days
before, from a high hill some thirty miles to the westward, he had seen
an Indian village nestled against a spruce swamp at a wide bend of a
river. It was a small village of a dozen or more tepees, and he had
intended to visit it later. Why not take the baby over there and give
her into the keeping of some squaw. If he could find one like Neseka all
would be well, for Neseka's love for the little Margot was hardly less
than his own. And surely, in a whole village there must be at least one
like her.

MacFarlane replenished his fire, and groping upon the shelf, found a
leather covered note book and pencil. The guttered candle flared smokily
and he replaced it with another, and for an hour or more he wrote
steadily, filling page after page of the note book with fine lined
writing.

When he had finished he thrust the note book into his pocket and again
buried his face in his arms.


V

Toward morning the storm wore itself out, and before the belated winter
dawn had tinted the east MacFarlane set out for the Indian village. The
cold was intense so that his snowshoes crunched on the surface of the
flinty, wind-driven snow. Mile after mile he swung across the barrens
that lay trackless, and white, and dead, skirting towering rock ledges
and patches of scraggly timber. The sun came out and the barrens glared
dazzling white. MacFarlane had left his snow-goggles back in the cabin,
so he squinted his eyes and pushed on. Three times that day he stopped
and built a fire at the edge of a thicket and heated thick caribou gruel
which he fed by spoonfuls to the tiny robe-wrapped little girl that
snuggled warm in his pack sack. Darkness had fallen before he reached
the high hill from which he had seen the village. He scanned the sweep
of waste that lay spread before him, its shapes and distances distorted
and unreal in the feeble light of the glittering stars. He hardly
expected a light to show from a village of windowless tepees in the dead
of winter, and he strove to remember which of those vague splotchy
outlines was the black spruce swamp against which he had seen the
tepees. Suddenly the silence of the night was broken by the sharp jerky
yelp of a stricken dog. The sound issued from one of the dark blotches
of timber, and was followed by a rabble of growls and snarls. MacFarlane
judged the distance that separated him from the vague outline of the
swamp to be three or four miles, but the shrill sounds cut the frozen
air so distinctly that they seemed to issue from the foot of the hill
upon which he stood. A dull spot of light showed for a moment, rocketed
through the air, and disappeared amid a chorus of yelps and howls. An
Indian, disturbed by the fighting dogs, had thrown back the flap of his
tepee and hurled a lighted brand among them.

Swiftly MacFarlane descended the slope and struck out for the black
spruce swamp. An hour later he stood upon the snow-covered ice of the
river while barking, snarling and growling, the Indian dog pack crowded
about him. It seemed a long time that he stood there holding the dogs at
bay with a stout spruce club. At length dark forms appeared in front of
the tepees and several Indians advanced toward him, dispersing the dogs
with blows and kicks and commands in hoarse gutterals. MacFarlane spoke
to them in Cree, and getting no response, he tried several of the
dialects from about the Bay. He had advanced until he stood among them
peering from one to another of the flat expressionless faces for some
sign of comprehension. But they returned his glances with owlish
blinking of their smoke reddened eyes. MacFarlane's heart sank. These
were the people in whose care he had intended to leave his little
daughter! Suddenly, as a ray of starlight struck aslant one of the flat
bestial faces, a flash of recognition lighted MacFarlane's eyes. The man
was one of the four who had come to trade a year before at Lashing
Water.

"Where is the squaw?" he cried in English, grasping the man by the
shoulder and shaking him roughly, "Where is Wananebish?"

At the name, the Indian turned and pointed toward a tepee that stood
slightly apart from the rest, and a moment later MacFarlane stood before
its door. "Wananebish!" he called. And again, "Wananebish!"

"Yes," came the answer, "What does the white man want?"

"It is MacFarlane, the trader at Lashing Water. Do you remember a year
ago you sold me a black fox skin?"

"I remember. Did I not say that Wananebish would not forget? Wait, and I
will let you in, for it is cold." The walls of the tepee glowed faintly
as the squaw struck a light. He could hear her moving about inside and a
few minutes later she threw open the flap and motioned him to enter.
MacFarlane blinked in surprise as she fastened the flap behind him.
Instead of the filthy smoke-reeking interior he had expected, the tepee
was warm and comfortable, its floor covered thickly with robes, and
instead of the open fire in the center with its smoke vent at the apex
of the tepee, he saw a little Yukon stove in which a fire burned
brightly.

Without a word he removed his pack sack and tenderly lifting the
sleeping baby from it laid her on the robes. Then, seating himself
beside her he told her, simply and in few words what had befallen him.
The squaw listened in silence and for a long time after he finished she
sat staring at the flame of the candle.

"What would you have me do?" she asked at length.

"Keep the little one and care for her until I return," answered the man,
"I will pay you well."

The Indian woman made a motion of dissent. "Where are you going?"

"To find gold."

Was it fancy, or did the shadow of a peculiar smile tremble for an
instant upon the woman's lips? "And, if you do not return--what then?"

"If I do not return by the time of the breaking up of the rivers,"
answered the man, "You will take the baby to Lashing Water post to
Molaire, the factor, who is the father of her mother." As he spoke
MacFarlane drew from his pocket the leather notebook, and a packet
wrapped in parchment deer skin and tied with buckskin thongs. He handed
them to the squaw: "Take these," he said, "and deliver them to Molaire
with the baby. In the book I have instructed him to pay you for her
keep."

"But this Molaire is an old man. Suppose by the time of the breaking up
of the rivers he is not to be found at Lashing Water? He may be dead, or
he may have gone to the settlements."

"If he has gone to the settlements, you are to find him. If he is
dead--" MacFarlane hesitated: "If Molaire is dead," he repeated, "You
are to take care of the baby until she is old enough to enter the school
at some mission. I'm Scotch, an' no Catholic--but, her mother was
Catholic, an' if the priests an' the sisters make as good woman of her
as they did of her mother, I could ask no more. Give them the notebook
in which I have set down the story as I have told it to you. The packet
you shall open and take out whatever is due you for her keep. It
contains money. Keep some for yourself and give some to the priests to
pay for her education."

The squaw nodded slowly: "It shall be as you say. And, if for any
reason, we move from here before the breaking up of the rivers, I will
write our direction and place it inside the caribou skull that hangs
upon the great split stump beside the river."

MacFarlane rose; "May God use you as you use the little one," he said,
"I'll be going now, before she wakes up. It will be better so." He
stooped and gazed for a long time at the face of the sleeping baby. A
hot tear splashed upon the back of his hand, and he brushed it away and
faced the squaw in the door of the tepee: "Goodbye," he said, gruffly,
"Until the rivers break up in the spring."

The Indian woman shook her head: "Do not say it like that," she
answered, "For those were the words of my man when he, too, left to find
gold. And when the river broke up in the spring he did not come back to
me--for the grinding ice-cakes caught his canoe, and he was crushed to
death in a rapids."


VI

For four long nights and four short days MacFarlane worked at the
digging of a grave. It was a beautiful spot he chose to be the last
resting place of his young wife--a high, spruce-covered promontory that
jutted out into a lake. The cabin and its surroundings had grown
intolerable to him, so that he worked furiously, attacking the iron-hard
ground with fire, and ice-chisel, and spade. At last it was done and
placing the body of his wife in the rough pole coffin, he placed it upon
his sled and locking the dogs in the cabin, hauled it himself to the
promontory and lowered it into the grave. Then he shoveled back the
frozen earth, and erected a wooden cross upon which was burned deep her
name, and returning to the cabin, slept the clock around.

If MacFarlane had been himself he would have heeded the signs of
approaching storm. But he had become obsessed with desire to leave that
place with its haunting memories, where every mute object seemed to
whisper to him of his loved ones. He was talking and mumbling to himself
as he harnessed his dogs and headed into the North at the breaking of a
day.

Three hours after MacFarlane hit the trail he left the sparsely timbered
country behind and struck into a vast treeless plain whose glaring white
surface was cut here and there by rugged ridges of basalt which
terminated abruptly in ledges of bare rock.

At noon he made a fireless camp, ate some pilot bread, and caribou meat.
The air was still--ominously dead and motionless to one who knew the
North. But MacFarlane gave no heed, nor did he even notice that though
there were no clouds in the sky, the low-hung sun showed dull and
coppery through a steel-blue fog. He bolted his food and pressed on.
Before him was no guiding landmark. He laid his course by the compass
and held straight North across the treeless rock-ribbed plain. The man's
lean face looked pinched and drawn. For a week he had taken his sleep in
short fitful snatches, in his chair beside the cabin stove, or with his
back against a tree while he waited for the fire to bite a few inches
deeper into the frozen ground as he toiled at the lonely grave. On and
on he mushed at the head of his dogs, his eyes, glowing feverbright,
stared fixedly from between red-rimmed lids straight into the steel
blue fog bank that formed his northern horizon. And as he walked, he
talked incessantly--now arguing with old Molaire, who predicted dire
things, and refused to believe that there was gold in the North--now
telling Margot of his hopes and planning his future--and again, telling
stories to little Margot of Goldilocks and the three little bears, and
of where the caribou got their horns.

The blue fog thickened. From somewhere far ahead sounded a low
whispering roar--the roar of mightly wind, muffled by its burden of
snow. When the first blast struck, MacFarlane tottered in his tracks,
then lowering his head, leaned against it and pushed on. Following the
gust was a moment of calm. Behind him the dogs whimpered uneasily.
MacFarlane did not hear them, nor did he hear the roar of the onrushing
wind.

Around a corner of a rock ledge a scant two hundred yards ahead of him,
appeared a great grey shape, running low. The shape halted abruptly and
circled wide. It was followed by other shapes--gaunt, and grey, and
ugly, between whose back-curled lips white fangs gleamed. The wolf pack,
forty strong, was running before the storm, heading southward for the
timber. Whining with terror, MacFarlane's dogs crowded about his legs in
a sudden rush. The man went down and struggled to his feet, cursing, and
laying about him with clubbed rifle. Then the storm struck in all its
fury. MacFarlane gasped for air, and sucked in great gulps of powdery
snow that bit into his lungs and seared his throat with their stinging
cold. He choked and coughed and jerking off his mitten, clawed with bare
fingers at his throat and eyes. While behind him, down wind, the great
grey caribou wolves, stopped in their wild flight by the scent of meat,
crowded closer, and closer.

In a panic, MacFarlane's dogs whirled, and dragging the sled behind them
bolted. MacFarlane staggered a few steps forward and fell, then, on
hands and knees he crawled back, groping and pawing the snow for his
mitten and rifle. The sharp frenzied yelps as the dog team plunged into
the wolf-pack sounded faint and far. The man threw up his head. He
pulled off his cap to listen and the wind whipped it from his numbed
fingers--but MacFarlane did not know. Moments of silence followed during
which the man strained his ears to catch a sound that eluded him.

When the last shred of flesh had been ripped from the bones of the dogs
the gaunt grey leader of the pack raised his muzzle and sniffed the
wind. He advanced a cautious step or two and sniffed again, then seating
himself on his haunches he raised his long pointed muzzle to the sky and
gave voice to the long drawn cry of the kill--and the shapes left the
fang-scarred bits of bone and sniffed up-wind at the man-scent.

As the sound of the great wolf cry reached his ears above the roar of
the wind, MacFarlane's face lighted with a smile of infinite gladness:
"The bells," he muttered, "I heard them--d'you hear them, Margot--girl?
It's for us--the booming of the bells of Ste. Anne's!" And with the
words on his lips MacFarlane pillowed his head on the snow--and slept.


VII

Years afterward, after old Molaire had been gathered to his fathers and
laid in the little cemetery within the sound of the bells of Ste.
Anne's, Corporal Downey one day came upon a long deserted cabin far into
the barren grounds upon the shore of a nameless lake. He closed the
rotting door behind him, and methodically searching the ground, came at
length upon the solitary grave upon the high promontory that jutted into
the lake. Unconsciously he removed his hat as he read the simple
inscription burned deep into the little wooden cross. His lips moved:
"Margot--girl," he whispered, "if--if--" the whisper thickened and
choked him. He squared his shoulders and cleared his throat roughly. "Aw
hell!" he breathed, and turning, walked slowly back to his canoe and
shoved out onto the water.

And during the interval of the years the little band of non-treaty
Indians--the homeless and the restless ones--moved on--and on--and
on----




CHAPTER I

COARSE GOLD


As Carter Brent pushed through the swinging doors of "The Ore Dump"
saloon, the eyes of the head bartender swept with approval from the
soles of the high laced boots to the crown of the jauntily tilted
Stetson. "What'll it be this morning, Mr. Brent?" he greeted. "Little
eye-opener?"

The young man grinned as he crossed to the bar: "How did you guess it?"

The bartender set out decanter and glasses. "Well, after last night,
thought maybe you'd have a kind of fuzzy taste in your mouth."

"Fuzzy is right! My tongue is coated with fur--dark brown fur--thick and
soft. What time was it when we left here?"

"Must have been around two o'clock. But, how does it come you ain't on
the works this mornin'? Never knew you to lose a day on account of a
hang-over. Heard a couple of the S. & R.'s tunnels got flooded last
night."

Brent poured a liberal drink and downed it at a swallow: "Yes," he
answered, dryly, "And that's why I'm not on the works. I'm hunting a
job, and the S. & R. is hunting a new mining engineer."

"Jepson fired you, did he! Well, you should worry. I've heard 'em
talkin' in here, now an' then--some of the big guns--an' they all claim
you're one of the best engineers in Montana. They say if you'd buckle
down to business you'd have 'em all skinned."

"Buckle down to business, eh! The trouble with them is that when they
hire a man they think they buy him. It's none of their damn business
what I do evenings. If I'm sober when I'm on the job--and on the job six
days a week, and sometimes seven--they're getting all they're paying
for."

"They sure are," agreed the other with emphasis, "Have another shot," he
shoved the decanter toward the younger man and leaned closer: "Say Mr.
Brent, you ain't--er, you don't need a little change, do you? If you do
just say so, you're welcome to it." The man drew forth a roll of bills,
but Brent shook his head:

"No thanks. You can cash this check for me though. Jepson was square
enough about it--paid me in full to date and threw in a month's salary
in advance. I don't blame him any. We quit the best of friends. When he
hired me he knew I liked a little drink now and then, so I took the job
with the understanding that if the outfit ever lost a dollar because of
my boozing, I was through right then."

"What was it flooded the tunnels?"

"Water," grinned Brent.

"Oh," laughed the bartender, "I thought maybe it was booze."

"You'd have thought so all the more if you'd been there this morning to
hear the temperance lecture that old Jepson threw in gratis along with
that extra month's pay. About the tunnels--we get our power from
Anaconda, and something happened to the high tension wire, and the pumps
stopped, and there wasn't any light, and Number Four and Number Six are
wet tunnels anyway so they filled up and drowned two batteries of
drills. Then, instead of rigging a steam pump and pumping them out
through Number Four, one of the shift bosses rigged a fifteen inch
rotary in Number Six and started her going full tilt with the result
that he ran the water down against that new piece of railroad grade and
washed about fifty feet of it into the river and left the track hanging
in the air by the rails."

"The damn fool!"

"Oh, I don't know. He did the best he could. A shift boss isn't hired to
think."

"What did old Jepson fire _you_ for? He didn't think you clim up an' cut
the high tension wire did he? Or, did he expect you to set around nights
an' keep the juice flowin'?"

Brent laughed: "Not exactly. But they tried to find me and couldn't. So
when I showed up this morning old Jepson sent for me and asked me where
I was last night. I could have lied out of it easy enough. He would have
accepted any one of a half a dozen excuses--but lying's poor
business--so I told him I was out having a hell of a good time and wound
up about three in the morning with a pretty fair snootful."

"Bet he thinks a damn sight more of you than if you'd of lied, at that.
But they's plenty of jobs fer you. You've got it in your noodle--what
they need--an' what they've got to pay to get. You might drop around an'
talk to Gunnison, of the Little Ella. He was growlin' in here the other
night because he couldn't get holt of an engineer. Goin' to do a lot of
cross tunnel work or somethin'. Said he was afraid he'd have to send
back East an' get some pilgrim or some kid just out of college. Hold on
a minute there's a bird down there, among them hard rock men, that looks
like he was figgerin' on startin' somethin'. I'll just step down an' put
a flea in his ear."

Brent's eyes followed the other as he made his way toward the rear of
the long bar where three or four bartenders were busy serving drinks to
a crowd of miners. He noticed casually that the men were divided into
small groups and that they seemed to be talking excitedly among
themselves, and that the talk was mostly in whispers.

"The Ore Dump" was essentially a mining man's saloon. Its proprietor,
Patsy Kelliher, was an old time miner who, having struck it lucky with
pick and shovel, had started a modest little saloon, and later had
opened "The Ore Dump," in the fitting up of which he had gone the limit
in expensive furnishings. It was his boast that no miner had ever gone
out of his door hungry or thirsty, nor had any man ever lost a cent by
unfair means within his four walls. Rumor had it that Patsy had given
away thousands. Be that as it may, "The Ore Dump" had for years been the
mecca of the mining fraternity. Millionaire mine owners, managers,
engineers, and on down through the list to the humblest "hunk," were
served at its long bar, which had, by common usage become divided by
invisible lines of demarkation. The mine owners, the managers, the
engineers, and the independent contractors foregathered at the front end
of the bar; the hunks, and the wops, and the guineas at the rear end;
while the long space between was a sort of no-man's-land where drank the
shift bosses and the artisans of the mines--the hard-rock men, the
electricians, and the steam-fitters. Combinations of capital running
into millions had been formed at the front end, and combinations of
labor at the rear, while in no-man's-land great mines had been tied up
at the crooking of a finger.

On this particular morning Carter Brent was the only customer at the
front end of the bar. He poured another drink and watched it glow like a
thing of life with soft amber lights that played through the crystal
clear glass as a thin streak of sunlight struck aslant the bar. The
liquor in his stomach was taking hold. He felt warm, with a glowing,
tingling warmth that permeated to his finger tips. In his mind was a
vast sense of well being. The world was a great old place to live in. He
drank the whisky in his glass and refilled it from the cut glass
decanter. Poor old Jepson--fired the best engineer in Montana--that's
what his friend, the bartender, had just told him, and he got it from
the big guns. Well, it was Jepson's funeral--he and the S. & R. would
have to stagger along as best they could. He would go and see
Gunnison--no, to hell with Gunnison! Brent's fingers closed about the
roll of bills in his trousers pocket. He had plenty of money, he would
wait and pick out a job. He needn't worry. He always was sure of a good
job. Hadn't he had five in the two years since he graduated from
college? There were plenty of mines and they all needed good engineers.
Brent smiled as his thoughts drifted lazily back to his four years in
college. He wished some of the fellows would drop in. "They were a bunch
of damned good sports," he muttered to himself, "And we sure did roll
'em high! Speedy Bennet was always the first to go under--about two
drinks and we'd lay him on the shelf to call for when needed. Then came
McGivern, then Sullivan, and about that time little Morse would begin
flapping his arms around and proclaiming he could fly. Then, after a
while there wouldn't be anyone left but Morey and me--good old
Morey--they canned him in his senior year--and they've been canning me
ever since."

Brent paused in his soliloquy and regarded the men who had been
whispering among themselves toward the rear of the room. There were no
small groups now, and no whispering. With tense faces they were crowding
about a man who stood with hands palm down upon the bar. He wondered
what it was all about. From his position at the head of the bar he could
see the man's face plainly. Also he could see the faces of the
others--the lined, rugged faces of the hard rock and the vapid,
loose-lipped faces of the wops--and of all the faces only the face of
the man who stood with his hands on the bar betrayed nothing of tense
expectancy. Why were these others crowding about him, and why was he the
only man of them all who was not holding in check by visible effort some
pent up emotion? Brent glanced again into the weather-lined face with
its drooping sun-burned mustache, and its skin tanned to the color of
old leather--a strong face, one would say--the face of a man who had
battled long against odds, and won. Won what? He wondered. For an
instant the man's eyes met his own, and it seemed to Brent as though he
had read the question for surely, behind the long drooping mustache, the
lips twisted into just the shadow of a cynical grin.

The head bartender stepped to the back bar and, from beside a huge
gilded cash register, he lifted a set of tiny scales which he carried to
the bar and set down directly before the man with the sun-burned
mustache.

In front of the bar men crowded closer, craning their necks, and
elbowing one another, as their feet made soft shuffling sounds upon the
hardwood floor. One of the man's hands slipped into a side pocket of his
coat and when it came out something thudded heavily upon the bar. Brent
saw the object plainly as the bartender reached for it, a small buckskin
pouch, its surface glazed with the grease and soot of many campfires. He
had seen men carry their tobacco in just such pouches, but this pouch
held no tobacco, it had thumped the bar heavily and lay like a sack of
sand.

The bartender untied the strings and stood with the pouch poised above
the scales while his eyes roved over the eager, expectant faces of the
crowd. Then he placed a small weight upon the pan of the scales and
poured something slowly from the pouch into the small scoop upon the
opposite side. From his position Brent could see the delicate scales
oscillate and finally strike a balance. The bartender closed the pouch
and handed it back to the owner. Then he picked up the scales and
returned them to their place beside the cash register, while in front of
the bar men surged about the pouch owner clawing and shoving to get next
to him, and all talking at once, nobody paying the slightest attention
to the bartenders who were vainly trying to serve a round of drinks.

The head bartender returned to his position opposite Brent, and reaching
for the decanter, poured himself a drink. "Drink up and have one on the
stranger--he just set 'em up to the house."

Brent swallowed the liquor in his glass and refilled it: "What's the
excitement?" he asked, "A man don't ordinarily get as popular as he
seems to be just because he buys a round of drinks, does he?"

"Didn't you see it? It ain't the round of drinks, it's--wait--" He
stepped to the back bar and lifting the scoop from the scales set it
down in front of Brent, "That's what it is--_gold_! Yes sir, pure gold
just as she comes from the sand--nuggets and dust. It's be'n many a year
since any of that stuff has been passed over this bar for the drinks.
I've be'n here seven years and it's the first _I've_ took in, except now
and then a few colors that some _hombre's_ washed out of some dry coulee
or creek bed--fine dust that's cost him the shovelin' an' pannin' of
tons of gravel. Patsy keeps the scales settin' around for a
curiosity--that, an' because the old-timers likes to see 'em handy. Kind
of reminds 'em of the early days an' starts 'em gassin'. But this here's
the real stuff. Look at that boy." He poked with his finger at an
irregular nugget the size of a navy bean, "Looks like a chunk of
slag--an' that ain't all! He's got a bag full of 'em. I held it in my
hand, an' it weighed _pounds_!"

As Brent stood looking down at the grains of yellow metal in the little
scoop a strange uneasiness stirred deep within him. He picked up the
nugget and held it in the palm of his hand. One side of it was flat, as
though polished by a thousand years of water-wear, and the other side
was rough and fire-eaten as though fused by a mighty heat. Brent had
seen plenty of gold--coined gold, gold fashioned by the goldsmith's art,
and gold in bricks and ingots, in the production of which he himself had
been a factor. Yet never before had the sight of gold moved him. It had
been merely a valuable metal which it was his business to help extract
from certain rocks by certain processes of chemistry and expensive
machinery. Yet here in his hand was a new kind of gold--gold that seemed
to reach into the very heart of him with a personal appeal. Raw
gold--gold that had known the touch of neither chemicals nor machinery,
but that had been wrested by the bare hands of a man from some far place
where the fires of a glowing world and the glacial ice-drift had
fashioned it. The vague uneasiness that had stirred him at sight of the
yellow grains, flamed into a mighty urge at its touch. He, too, would go
and get gold--and he would get it not by process of brain, but by
process of brawn. Not by means of chemicals and machinery, but by
slashing into the sides of mountains, and ripping the guts out of
creeks! Carefully he returned the nugget to the scoop, and as he raised
his eyes to the bartender's, he moistened his lips with his tongue.

"Where did he get it?" he asked, huskily.

"God, man! If I know'd that I wouldn't be standin' here, would I?" He
jerked his thumb toward the rear of the room where men were frenziedly
crowding the stranger. "That's what they all want to know. Lord, if he'd
let the word slip what a stampede there'd be! Every man for himself an'
the devil take the hindmost. Out of every hundred that's in on a
stampede, about one makes a stake, an' ten gets their ante back, an' the
rest goes broke. They all know what they're going up against--but the
damned fools! Every one of 'em would stake all they've got, an' their
life throw'd in, to be in on it."

"It's the lure of gold," muttered Brent, "I've heard of it, but I never
felt it before. Are they damned fools? Wouldn't you?"

"Wouldn't I--what?"

"Wouldn't you go--along with the rest?"

"_Hell--yes!_ An' so would anyone else that had any red guts in 'em!"

Brent poured himself a drink, and shoved the decanter toward the other,
"Let's liquor," he said, "and then maybe if we can get that fellow away
from the crowd where we can talk----"

The bartender interrupted the thought before it was expressed; "No
chance. Take a look at him. Believe me, there's one _hombre_ that ain't
goin' to spill nothin' he don't want to. An' when a man makes a strike
like that he don't hang around bars runnin' off at the chin about
it--not what you could notice, he don't. Far as I can see we got just
one chance. It's a damn slim one, but you can't always tell what's
runnin' in these birds' heads. He asked me if Patsy Kelliher was runnin'
this dump, an' when I told him he was, he had me send for him. Said he
wanted to see him _pronto_. An' then he kind of throw'd his eyes around
over the faces of the boys an' he says: 'You're all friends of Patsy's?'
He seen in a minute how Patsy stood acehigh with them all, an' then he
says; 'Well, just kind of stick around 'till Patsy gets down here an' it
might be I'll explode somethin' amongst his friends that'll clean this
dump out.' Now, you might take that two ways, but he don't look like one
of these, what you might call, anarchists, does he? An' when he said
that he laughed, an' he says: 'Belly up to the bar an' I'll buy a little
drink--_an' I'll pay for it with coarse gold!_' Well, you seen how much
drinkin' they done, an'--Here's Patsy, now!"

Brent turned and nodded greeting as the proprietor of "The Ore Dump"
entered the door.

"Is it yersilf that sint fer me, Mister Brint, ye spalpeen?" he grinned,
"Bein' a gintleman yersilf, ye'll be knowin' Oi'd still be at me
newspaper an' seegar. Whut's on yer mind thot ye'll be dhraggin' a mon
from the bossom of his family befoor lunch?"

"It ain't him," explained the bartender, "It's the stranger, I told him
you didn't never show up till after dinner, but----"

"_Lunch! Damn it! Lunch!_" Kelliher's fist smote the bar, and as he
scowled into the face of his head bartender, Brent detected a twinkle in
the deep-set blue eyes. "Didn't the owld woman beat that same into me
own head a wake afther we'd moved into the big house? An' she done ut
wid a tree-calf concoordance to Shakspere wid gold edges thot sets on
the par--livin' room table? 'Tis a handy an' useful weapon--a worthy
substitute, as the feller says, to the pleebeen rollin' pin an' fryin'
pan. Thim tree calves has got a hide on 'em loike the bottom av a
sluice-box. Oi bet they could make anvils out av the hide av a
full-grow'd tree-bull. G'wan now an' trot out this ill-fared magpie that
must be at his chatterin' befoor the break av day!"

At a motion from the bartender the crowd parted to allow the stranger to
make his way to the front, surged together behind him, and followed,
ranging itself in a semicircle at a respectful distance. Thus with the
two principals, Brent found himself included within this semicircle of
excited faces.

The two eyed each other for a moment in silence, the stranger with a
smile half-veiled by his sun-burned mustache, and Kelliher with a
frankly puzzled expression upon his face as his thick fingers toyed with
the heavy gold chain that hung cable-like from pocket to pocket of his
gaily colored vest.

"I figured you wouldn't know me." The stranger's grin widened as he
noted the look of perplexity.

"An' no more I don't," retorted the other, unconsciously tilting his
high silk hat at an aggressive angle over his right eye. "Let's git the
cards on the table. Who are ye? An' what ye got in ye're head that ye
couldn't kape there till afther lunch?"

"I'm McBride."

Brent saw that the name conveyed nothing to the other, whose puzzled
frown deepened. "Ye're McBride!" The tone was good-naturedly sarcastic,
"Well, ye'd av still be'n McBride this afthernoon, av ye'd be'n let live
that long. But who the divil's McBride that Oi shud come tearin' down to
look into the ugly mug av um?"

The stranger laughed: "Nine years ago McBride was the night telegraph
operator over in the yards. That was before you moved up here. You was
still in the little dump over on Fagin street an' you done most of the
work yerself--used to open up mornings. There wasn't no big diamon's
shinin' in the middle of yer bald-face shirt them days--I doubt an' you
owned a bald-face shirt, except, maybe, for Sundays. Anyhow, you'd be
openin' up in the mornin' when I'd be goin off trick, an' I most
generally stopped in for a couple of drinks or so. An' one mornin' when
I'd downed three or four, I noticed you kind of givin' me the once-over.
There wasn't no one else in the place, an' you come over an' leaned yer
elbows on the bar, an' you says: 'Yer goin' kind of heavy on that stuff,
son,' you says.

"'What the hell's the difference?' I says, 'I ain't got only six months
to live an' I might's well enjoy what I can of it.'

"'Are they goin' to hang ye in six months?' you asks, 'Have ye got yer
sentence?'

"'I've got my sentence,' I says, 'But it ain't hangin'. The doctors
sentenced me. It's the con.'

"'To hell with the doctors,' you says, 'They don't know it all. We'll
fool 'em. All you need is to git out in the mountains--an' lay off the
hooch.'

"I laughed at you. 'Me go to the mountains!' I says, 'Why man I ain't
hardly got strength to get to my room an' back to the job again--an'
couldn't even make that if it wasn't for the hooch.'

"'That's right,' you says, 'From the job to the room, an' the room to
the job, ye'll last maybe six months--but I'm doubtin' it. But the
mountains is different.' An' then you goes on an talks mountains an'
gold till you got me interested, an' you offers to grub-stake me for a
trip into the Kootenay country. You claimed it was a straight business
proposition--fifty-fifty if I made a strike, an' you put up the money
against my time." The stranger paused and smiled as a subdued ripple of
whisperings went from man to man as he mentioned the Kootenay. Then he
looked Kelliher squarely in the face: "There wasn't no gold in the
Kootenay," he said simply, "Or leastwise I couldn't find none. I figured
someone had be'n stringin' you."

Patsy Kelliher shifted the hat to the back of his head and laughed out
loud as his little eyes twinkled with merriment. "I git ye now, son," he
said, "I moind the white face av ye, an' the chist bowed in like the
bottom av a wash bowl, an' yer shoulders stuck out befront ye loike the
horns av a cow." He paused as his eyes ran the lines of sinewy leanness
and came to rest upon the sun bronzed face: "So ye made a failure av the
trip, eh? A plumb clane failure--an' Oi'm out the couple av hundred it
cost me fer the grub stake----"

"It cost you more than five hundred," interrupted the other. "I was in
bad shape and there was things I needed that other men wouldn't of--that
I don't need--now."

"Well--foive hundred, thin. An' how long has ut be'n ago?"

"Nine years."

Kelliher laughed: "Who was roight--me or the damn doctors? Ye've lived
eighteen toimes as long as they was going to let ye live a'ready--an' av
me eyes deceive me roight, ye ain't ordered no coffin yet."

"No--I ain't ordered no coffin. I come here to hunt you up an' pay you
back."

Kelliher laughed: "There ain't nothin' to pay son. You don't owe me a
cent. A grub-stake's a grub-stake, an' no one iver yit said Patsy
Kelliher welched on a bargain. Besoides, Oi guess ye got all Oi sint ye
afther. I know'd damn well they wasn't no gold in the Kootenay--none
that a tenderfoot lunger cud foind."

McBride laughed: "Sure--I knew after I'd been there six months what you
done it for. I doped it all out. But, as you say, a grub-stake's a
grub-stake, an' no time limit on it, an' no one ever said Jim McBride
ever welched on a bargain, neither. I ain't never be'n just ready to
come back an' settle with you, till now. I drifted north, and farther
north, till I wound up in the Yukon country. I prospected around there
an' had pretty good luck. I'd got back my strength an' my health till
right now there ain't but damn few men in the big country that can hit
the trail with Jim McBride. But I wasn't never satisfied with what I was
takin' out. I know'd there was somethin' big somewheres up there. I
could _feel_ it, an' I played for the big stake. Others stuck by stuff
that was pannin' 'em out wages. I didn't. They called me a fool--an' I
let 'em. I struck up river at last an' they laughed--but they ain't
laughin' now. Me an' a squaw-man named Carmack hunted moose together
over on Bonanza. One day Carmack was scratchin' around the roots of a
big birch tree an' just fer fun he gets to monkeyin' with my pan." The
man paused and Brent could hear the suppressed breathing of the miners
who had crowded close. His eyes swept their faces and he saw that every
eye in the house was staring into the face of McBride as they hung upon
his every word. He realized suddenly that he himself was waiting in a
fever of impatience for the man to go on. "Then I come into camp, an' we
both fooled with the pan--but we didn't fool long. God, man! We was
shakin' it out of the grass roots! _Coarse gold!_ I stayed at it a
month--an' I've filed on every creek within ten miles of that lone birch
tree. Then I come outside to find you an' settle." He paused and his
eyes swept the room: "These men friends of yourn?" he asked. Kelliher
nodded. "Well then I'm lettin' 'em in. Right here starts the biggest
stampede the world ever seen. Some of the old timers that was already up
there are into the stuff now--but in the spring the whole world will be
gettin' in on it!"

Kelliher was the only self-possessed man in the room: "What'll she run
to the pan?" he asked.

"_Run to the pan!_ God knows! We thought she was _big_ when she hit an
ounce----"

"_An ounce to the pan!_" cried Kelliher, "Man ye're crazy!"

The other continued: "An' we thought she was _little_ when she run a
hundred dollars--two hundred! I've washed out six-hundred dollars to
the pan! An' I ain't to bed rock!"

And then he began to empty his pockets. One after another the little
buckskin sacks thudded upon the bar--ten--fifteen--twenty of them.
McBride spoke to Kelliher, who stared with incredulous, bulging eyes:
"That's your share of what I've took out. You're filed along with me as
full pardner in all the claims I've got. They's millions in them
claims--an' more millions fer the men that gets there first." He paused
and turned to the men of the crowd who stood silent, with tense white
faces, and staring eyes glued on the pile of buckskin sacks: "Beat it,
you gravel hogs!" he cried, "It's the biggest strike that ever was! Hit
fer Seattle, go by Dyea Beach an' over the Chilkoot, an' take a thousand
pounds of outfit--or you'll die. A hell of a lot of you'll die
anyhow--but some of you will win--an' win big. Over the Chilkoot, down
through the lakes, an' down the Yukon to Dawson--" A high pitched,
unnatural yell, animal-like in its nervous excitement broke from a
throat in the crowd, and the next instant pandemonium broke loose in
Kelliher's, and Carter Brent fought his way to the door through a
howling mass of mad men, and struck out for his boarding house at a
run.




CHAPTER II

ON DYEA BEACH


In a drizzle of cold rain forty men stood on Dyea beach and viewed with
disfavor the forty thousand pounds of sodden, mud-smeared outfit that
had been hurriedly landed from the little steamer that was already
plowing her way southward. Of the sixty-odd men who, two weeks before
had stood in Patsy Kelliher's "Ore Dump Saloon" and had seen Jim McBride
toss one after another upon the bar twenty buckskin pouches filled to
bursting with coarse gold in his reckoning with Kelliher, these forty
had accomplished the first leg of the long North trail. The next year
and the next, thousands, and tens of thousands of men would follow in
their footsteps, for these forty were the forerunners of the great
stampede from the "outside"--a stampede that exacted merciless toll in
the lives of fools and weaklings, even as it heaped riches with lavish
prodigality into the laps of the strong.

Jim McBride had said that each man must carry in a thousand pounds of
outfit. Well and good, they had complied. Each had purchased his
thousand pounds, had it delivered on board the steamer, and in due
course, had watched it dumped upon the beach from the small boats.
Despite the cold drizzle, throughout the unloading the forty had laughed
and joked each other and had liberally tendered flasks. But now, with
the steamer a vanishing speck in the distance and the rock-studded Dyea
Flats stretching away toward the mountains, the laughter and joking
ceased. Men eyed the trail, moved aimlessly about, and returned to their
luggage. The thousand pound outfits had suddenly assumed proportions.
Every ounce of it must be man-handled across a twenty-eight mile portage
and over the Chilkoot Pass. Now and then a man bent down and gave a
tentative lift at a bale or a sack. Muttered curses had taken the place
of laughter, and if a man drew a flask from his pocket, he drank, and
returned it to his pocket without tendering it to his neighbor.

When Carter Brent had reached the seclusion of his room after leaving
Kelliher's saloon, he slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrawing
his roll of bills, counted them. He found exactly three hundred and
seventy-eight dollars which he rightly decided was not enough to finance
an expedition to the gold country. He must get more--and get it quickly.
Returning the bills in his pocket he packed his belongings, left the
room, and a few minutes later was admitted upon signal to the gambling
rooms of Nick the Greek where selecting a faro layout, he bought a
stack of chips. At the end of a half-hour he bought another stack, and
thereafter he began to win. When his innings totaled one thousand
dollars he cashed in, and that evening at seven o'clock he stepped onto
a train bound for Seattle. He was mildly surprised that none of the
others from Kelliher's were in evidence. But when he arrived at his
destination he grinned as he saw them swarming from the day coaches
ahead.

And now on Dyea beach he stood and scowled as he watched the rain water
collect in drops and roll down the sides of his packages.

"He said they was Injuns would pack this here junk," complained a man
beside him, "Where'n hell be they?"

"Search me," grinned Brent, "How much can you carry?"

"Don't know--not a hell of a lot over them rocks--an' he said this here
Chilkoot was so steep you had to climb it instead of walk."

"Suppose we make a try," suggested Brent. "A man ought to handle a
hundred pounds----"

"_A hundred pounds!_ You're crazy as hell! I ain't no damn burro--me.
Not no hundred pounds no twenty-eight mile, an' part of it cat-climbin'.
'Bout twenty-five's more my size."

"You like to walk better than I do," shrugged Brent, "Have you stopped
to figure that a twenty-five-pound pack means four trips to the
hundred--forty trips for the thousand? And forty round trips of
twenty-eight miles means something over twenty-two hundred miles of
hiking."

"Gawd!" exclaimed the other, in dismay, "It must be hell to be
eggicated! If _I'd_ figgered that out, _I'd_ of stayed on the boat!
We're in a hell of a fix now, an' no ways to git back. That grub'll all
be et gittin' it over the pass, an' when we git there, we ain't
nowheres--we got them lakes an' river to make after that. Looks like by
the time we hit this here Bonanza place all the claims will be took up,
or the gold'll be rotted with old age."

"You're sure a son of gloom," opined Brent as he stooped and affixed his
straps to a hundred-pound sack of flour. "But I'm going to hit the
trail. So long."

As Brent essayed to swing the pack to his shoulders he learned for the
first time in his life that one hundred pounds is a matter not lightly
to be juggled. The pack did not swing to his shoulders, and it was only
after repeated efforts, and the use of other bales of luggage as a
platform that he was at length able to stand erect under his burden. The
other man had watched without offer of assistance, and Brent's wrath
flared as he noted his grin. Without a word he struck across the
rock-strewn flat.

"Hurry back," taunted the other, "You ort to make about four trips by
supper time."

Before he had covered fifty yards Brent knew that he could never stand
the strain of a hundred-pound pack. While not a large man, he was well
built and rugged, but he had never before carried a pack, and every
muscle of his body registered its aching protest at the unaccustomed
strain. Time and again it seemed as though the next step must be his
last, then a friendly rock would show up ahead and he would stagger
forward and sink against its side allowing the rock to ease the weight
from his shoulders. As the distance between resting places became
shorter, the periods of rest lengthened, and during these periods, while
he panted for breath and listened to the pounding of his heart's blood
as it surged past his ear drums, his brain was very active. "McBride
said a good packer could walk off with a hundred, or a hundred and fifty
pounds, and he'd seen 'em pack two hundred," he muttered. "And I've been
an hour moving one hundred pounds one mile! And I'm so near all in that
I couldn't move it another mile in a week. I wonder where those Indian
packers are that he said we could get?" His eyes travelled back across
the flats, every inch of which had caused him bodily anguish, and came
to rest upon the men who still moved aimlessly among the rain-sodden
bales, or stood about in groups. "Anyway I'm the only one that has made
a stab at it."

A sound behind him caused him to turn his head abruptly to see five
Indians striding toward him along the rock-strewn trail. Brent wriggled
painfully from his pack straps as the leader, a bigframed giant of a
man, halted at his side and stared stolidly down at him. Brent gained
his feet and thrust out his hand: "Hello, there, old Nick o' Time! Want
a job? I've got a thousand pounds of junk back there on the beach,
counting this piece, and all you gentlemen have got to do is to flip it
up onto your backs and skip over the Chilkoot with it--it's a snap, and
I'll pay you good wages. Do you speak English?"

The big Indian nodded gravely, "Me spik Eengliss. Me no nem Nickytam.
Nem Kamish--W'ite man call Joe Pete."

Brent nodded: "All right, Joe Pete. Now how much are you and your gang
going to charge me to pack this stuff up over the pass?"

The Indian regarded the sack of flour: "You _chechako_," he announced.

"Just as you say," grinned Brent, "I wouldn't take that from everybody,
whatever it means, but if you'll get that stuff over the pass you can
call me anything you want to."

"You Boston man."

"No--I'm from Tennessee. But we'll overlook even that. How much you pack
it over the pass." Brent pointed to the flour and held up ten fingers.

The Indian turned to his followers and spoke to them in guttural jargon.
They nodded assent, and he turned to Brent: "Top Chilkoot fi' cent
poun'--hondre poun', fi' dolla. Lak Lindermann, three cent poun'
mor'--hondre poun' all way, eight dolla."

"You're on!" agreed Brent, "Thousand pounds, eighty dollars--all the
way."

The Indian nodded, and Brent produced a ten dollar gold piece which he
handed to the man, indicated that he would get the rest when they
reached Lake Lindermann.

The Indian motioned to the smallest of his followers and pointing to the
sack of flour, mumbled some words of jargon, whereupon the man stepped
to the pack, removed Brent's straps and producing straps of his own
swung the burden to his back and started off at a brisk walk.

As Brent led the way back to the beach at the head of his Indians he
turned more than once to glance back at the solitary packer, but as far
as he could see him, the man continued to swing along at the same brisk
pace at which he had started, whereat he conceived a sudden profound
respect for his hirelings. "The littlest runt of the bunch has got me
skinned a thousand miles," he muttered, "But I'll learn the trick. A
year from now I'll hit the trail with any of 'em."

Back at the beach the Indians were surrounded by thirty-nine clamoring,
howling men who pushed and jostled one another in a frenzied attempt to
hire the packers.

"No, you don't!" cried Brent, "These men are working for me. When I'm
through with them you can have them, and not before."

Ugly mutterings greeted the announcement. "Who the hell do you think
you are?" "Divide 'em up!" "Give someone else a chanct." Others advanced
upon the Indians and shook sheaves of bills under their noses, offering
double and treble Brent's price. But the Indians paid no heed to the
paper money, and inwardly Brent thanked the lucky star that guided him
into exchanging all his money into gold before leaving Seattle.

Despite the fact that he was next to useless as a packer Brent was no
weakling. Ignoring the mutterings he led the Indians to his outfit and
while they affixed their straps, he faced the crowding men.

"Just stay where you are, boys," he said. "This stuff here is my stuff,
and for the time being the ground it's on is my ground."

The man who had sneered at his attempt to pack the flour crowded close
and quick as a flash, Brent's left fist caught him square on the point
of the chin and he crashed backward among the legs of the others.
Brent's voice never changed tone, nor by so much as the flutter of an
eye lash did he betray any excitement. "Any man that crosses that line
is going to find trouble--and find it damned quick."

"He's bluffin'," cried a thick voice from the rear of the crowd, "Let me
up there. I'll show the damn dude!" A huge hard-rock man elbowed his way
through the parting crowd, his whiskey-reddened eyes narrowed to slits.
Three paces in front of Brent he halted abruptly and stared into the
muzzle of the blue steel gun that had flashed into the engineer's hand.

"Come on," invited Brent, "If I'm bluffing I won't shoot. You're twice
as big as I am. I wouldn't stand a show in the world in a
rough-and-tumble. But, I'm not bluffing--and there won't be any
rough-and-tumble."

For a full half minute the man stared into the unwavering muzzle of the
gun.

"You would shoot a man, damn you!" he muttered as he backed slowly away.
And every man in the crowd knew that he spoke the truth.

Three of the Indians had put their straps to a hundred pounds apiece and
were already strung out on the trail. Brent turned to see Joe Pete
regarding him with approval, and as he affixed his straps to a fifty
pound pack, the big Indian stooped and swung an extra fifty pounds on
top of the hundred already on his back and struck out after the others.
At the end of a half-mile Brent was laboring heavily under his load,
while Joe Pete had never for an instant slackened his pace. "What's he
made of? Don't he ever rest?" thought Brent, as he struggled on. The
blood was pounding in his ears, and his laboring lungs were sucking in
the air in great gulps. At length his muscles refused to go another
step, and he sagged to the ground and lay there sick and dizzy without
energy enough left at his command to roll the pack from his shoulders.
After what seemed an hour the pack was raised and the Indian who had
gone ahead with his first pack swung the fifty pounds to his own
shoulders and started off. Brent scrambled to his feet and followed.

A mile farther on they came to the others lying on the ground smoking
and resting. The packs lay to one side, and Brent made mental note of
the fact that these packers carried much of the weight upon a strap that
looped over their foreheads, and that instead of making short hauls and
then resting with their packs on they made long hauls and took long
rests with their packs thrown off. They were at least three miles from
the beach, and it was nearly an hour before they again took the trail.
In the meantime Joe Pete had rigged a tump-line for Brent, and when he
again took the trail he was surprised at the difference the shifting of
part of the load to his head made in the ease with which he carried it.

Two miles farther on they came upon the sack of flour where the Indian
had left it and Joe Pete indicated that this would be their first day's
haul. Six hundred pounds of Brent's thousand had been moved five miles,
and leaving the small Indian to make camp, the others, together with
Brent returned for the remaining four hundred.

This time they were not molested by the men on the beach, many of whom
they passed on the trail laboring along under packs which for the most
part did not exceed fifty pounds weight.

On the return Brent insisted on packing his fifty pounds and much to his
delight found that he was able to make the whole distance of three miles
to the resting place. Joe Pete nodded grave approval of this feat and
Brent, in whose veins flowed the bluest blood of the South, felt his
heart swell with pride because he had won the approbation of this dark
skinned packer of the North.

Into this rest camp came the erstwhile head barkeeper at Kelliher's, and
to him Brent imparted the trail-lore he had picked up. Also he exchanged
with him one hundred dollars in gold for a like amount in bills, and
advised Joe Pete that when his present contract was finished this other
would be a good man to work for.

Day after day they packed, and upon the last day of trail Brent made
four miles under one hundred pounds with only one rest--much of the way
through soft muskeg. And he repeated the performance in the afternoon.
At Lindermann Joe Pete found an Indian who agreed to run Brent and his
outfit down through the lakes and the river to Dawson in a huge freight
canoe.

The first stampeders from the outside bought all available canoes and
boats so that by the time of the big rush boats had to be built on the
shore of the lake from timber cut green and whip-sawed into lumber on
the spot. Also, the price of packing over the Chilkoot jumped from five
cents a pound to ten, to twenty, to fifty, to seventy, and even a
dollar, as men fought to get in before the freeze up--but that was a
year and a half after Brent floated down the Yukon in his big birch
canoe.




CHAPTER III

AT THE MISSION


Far in the Northland, upon the bank of a great river that disgorges into
the frozen sea, stands a little Roman Catholic Mission. The mission is
very old--having had its inception in the early days of the fur trade.
Its little chapel boasts a stained glass window--a window fashioned in
Europe, carried across the Atlantic to Hudson Bay in a wooden sailing
vessel, and transported through three thousand miles of wilderness in
canoes, York boats, and scows, and over many weary miles of portage upon
the backs of sweating Indians. Upon its walls hang paintings--works of
real merit, the labor of priestly hands long dead. A worthy monument,
this mission, to the toil and self sacrifice of the early Fathers, and a
living tribute to the labor of the grave Grey Nuns.

The time was July--late evening of a July day. The sun still held high
above the horizon, and upon the grassed plateau about the buildings of
the mission children were playing. They were Indian children, for the
most part, thick bodied and swarthy faced but among them here and there,
could be seen the lighter skin of a half breed. Near the door of one of
the buildings sat a group of older Indian girls sewing. In the doorway
the good Father Ambrose stood with his eyes upon the up-reach of the
river.

Like a silent grey shadow Sister Mercedes glided from the chapel and
seated herself upon a wooden bench drawn close beside the door. Her eyes
followed the gaze of the priest. "No sign of the brigade?" she asked.
"They have probably tied up for the night. Tomorrow maybe--or the day
after, they will come." Ensued a long pause during which both studied
the river. "I think," continued the Nun, "that when the scows return
southward we will be losing Snowdrift."

"Eh?" The priest turned his head quickly and regarded Sister Mercedes
with a frown. "Henri of the White Water? Think you he has----"

The Sister interrupted: "No, no! To school. She is nineteen, now. We can
do nothing more for her here. In the matter of lessons, as you well
know, she has easily outstripped all others, and books! She has already
exhausted our meagre library."

The priest nodded. The frown still puckered his brow but his lips
smiled--a smile that conveyed more of questioning than of mirth.
Intensely human himself, Father Ambrose was no mean student of human
nature, and he spoke with a troubled mind: "To us here at the mission
have been brought many children, both of the Indians and of the Metis.
And, having absorbed to their capacity our teachings, the Indians have
gone stolidly back to their tepees, and to their business of hunting and
trapping, carrying with them a measure of useful handicraft, a
smattering of letters, and the precepts of the Word." The smile had
faded from the clean-cut lips of the priest, and Sister Mercedes noted a
touch of sadness in the voice, as she watched a slanting ray of sunlight
play for a moment upon the thinning, silvery hair. "I have grown old in
the service of God here at this mission, and it is natural that I have
sought diligently among my people for the outward and visible signs of
the fruit of my labor. And I have found, with a few notable exceptions
that in one year, or two, or three, the handicraft is almost forgotten,
the letters are but a dim blur of memory, and the Word?" He shrugged,
"Who but God can tell? It is the Metis who are the real problem. For it
is in their veins that civilization meets savagery. The clash and the
conflict of races--the antagonism that is responsible for the wars of
the world--is inherent in the very blood that gives them life. And the
outcome is beyond the ken or the conjecture of man. I have seen, I
think, every conceivable combination of physical and mental condition,
save the one most devoutly to be hoped for--a blending of the best that
is in each race. That I have not seen. Unless it be that we are to see
it in Snowdrift."

Sister Mercedes smiled: "I do not believe that Snowdrift is a half
breed. I believe she is a white child."

Father Ambrose smiled tolerantly: "Still of that belief? But, it is
impossible. I know her mother. She, too, was a child of this
mission--long before your time. She is one of the few Indians who did
not forget the handicraft nor the letters." The old man paused and shook
his head sadly, "And until she brought this child here I believed that
she had not forgotten the Word. For she continued to profess her belief,
and among her people she waged war upon the rum-runners. Later, I,
myself, married her to a Dog Rib, a man who was the best of his tribe.
Then they disappeared and I heard nothing from her until she brought
this child, Snowdrift, to us here at the mission. She told me that her
husband had been drowned in a rapid, and then she told me--not in
confessional, for she would not confess, that this was her child and
that her father was a white man, but that he was not her husband."

"She may have lied. Loving the child, she may have feared that we would
take her away, or institute a search for her people."

"She loves the child--with the mother love. But she did not lie. If she
had lied, would she not have said that after the death of her husband
she had married this white man? I would have believed her. But,
evidently the idea of truth is more firmly implanted in her heart
than--other virtues--so she told the truth--knowing even as she did so
the light in which she would stand before men, and also the standing of
her daughter."

"Oh, it is a shame!" cried the Nun, "But, still I do not believe it! I
cannot believe it! Snowdrift's skin, where the sun and the wind have not
turned it, is as white as mine."

"But her hair and eyes are the dark hair and eyes of the Indian. And
when she was first brought here, have you forgotten that she fought like
a little wild cat, and that she ran away and trailed her band to its
encampment? Could a white child have done that?"

"But after she had been brought back, and had begun to learn she fought
just as hard against returning to the tribe for a brief vacation. She is
a dreamer of dreams. She loves music and appreciates its beauty, and the
beauty of art and the poets."

"She can trail an animal through country that would throw many an Indian
at fault."

"She hates the sordid. She hates the rum-runners, and the greasy
smoke-blackened tepees of the Indians. In her heart there has been an
awakening. She longs for something better--higher. She has consented to
go to the convent."

"And at the same time we are in mortal dread lest she marry that prince
of all devils, Henri of the White Water. Why she even dresses like an
Indian--the only one of the older girls who does not wear the clothing
of white women."

"That is because of her artistic temperament. She loves the ease and
comfort of the garments. And she realizes their beauty in comparison to
the ugliness of the coarse clothing and shoes with which we must provide
them."

"Where is she now?"

"Hunting."

Father Ambrose laughed: "And I predict that she will not return until
she has brought down her caribou, or her moose. Would your white maiden
of nineteen be off hunting alone in the hills with her rifle? No. By our
very contentions we have established the dual nature of her. In her the
traits of civilization and savagery are not blended, but each in turn
dominate and order her thoughts and actions. Hers is what one might term
an alternating ego. And it is a thing that troubles me sore. What will
happen down there--down at the convent, where they will not understand
her, and where there is no hunting? To what end will this marvelous
energy exert itself? For, it will not remain pent up within her breast.
It will seek outlet. And then?"

"Who can tell?" answered the Nun, thoughtfully. "At least, I shall be
glad indeed to know that she will be far from the baleful influence of
Henri of the White Water. For, devil that he is, there is no gainsaying
the fact that there is something attractive about him, with his bold
free manner, and his handsome face, and gay clothing. He is a figure
that might well attract a more sophisticated woman than our little
Snowdrift. As yet, though, I think he has failed to rouse in her more
than a passing interest. If she cared for him she would not be away
hunting while everyone else is eagerly watching for the brigade."

Father Ambrose shrugged: "'Tis past understanding--the way of a maid
with a man. But see, here she comes, now." Both watched the lithe form
that swung across the clearing from the bush. The girl was hatless, her
mass of black hair, caught up and held in place by an ingenious twist of
bark. Her face and full rounded throat that rose gracefully from the
open collar of a buckskin hunting shirt showed a rich hazel brown in the
slanting rays of the sun. Buckskin gloves protected her hands from the
ever present mosquitoes. A knee-length skirt of heavy cloth, a pair of
deer skin leggings tanned with the hair on, and Indian moccasins
completed her costume.

"What luck?" greeted the priest.

The girl paused before them and flashing a smile, disclosed a set of
teeth that gleamed like wet pearls: "Good luck," she answered, "A young
bull caribou, and two wolves that were just closing in on a cow with a
young calf. Every bullet went true. I shot three times. Has the brigade
passed?"

The priest shook his head: "No, not yet. They will have camped before
this for the night." As he spoke the girl's eyes strayed to the river,
and at the extreme reach of glistening water, they held: "Look!" she
cried, "They are coming, now!" Around the bend into view shot a scow,
and another, and another, until the whole surface of the river seemed
black with the scows. The playing children had seen them too, and with
wild whoops of delight they were racing for the bank, followed by the
older Indian girls, and by Father Ambrose. For the annual coming of the
brigade is an event in the North, bringing as it does the mail and the
supplies for the whole year to these lonely dwellers of the far
outlands.

Sister Mercedes remained seated upon her bench and standing her rifle
against the wall, Snowdrift sat down beside her, and in silence the two
watched the scows swing shoreward in response to the strokes of the
heavy steering sweeps, and listened to the exchange of shouted
greetings.

Of all the rivermen, the bravest figure was that of Henri of the White
Water. The two women could see him striding back and forth issuing
orders regarding the mooring of scows and the unloading of freight. They
saw him pause suddenly in his restless pacing up and down, and eagerly
scan the faces of the assembled group. Then, his glance travelled back
from the river and rested upon the two silent figures beside the door,
and with a wave of his hand, he tossed the sack of mail to the waiting
priest, and stepping past him strode rapidly up the bank in the
direction of the mission.

The face of Sister Mercedes hardened as she noted the flaunting air of
the approaching man, his stocking cap of brilliant blue, his snow-white
_capote_ thrown open to reveal the flannel shirt of vivid red and black
checks.

With a royal bow, he swept the blue stocking cap from his head and
saluted the two upon the bench: "Ah-ha, greetings, _ma cheres_! From
Henri of the White Water to the fairest flower of the North, and
her--ah, guardian angel--_non_?" His lips flashed a smile, and he
continued: "But, there are times when even a guardian angel is not
desired to be. Come with me, Snowdrift, and we will walk yonder to the
edge of the bank, where we will still be within sight of the ever
watching eye of the church, but well out of hearing of its ever
listening ear. You see, Sister _religieuse_, I am a respecter of your
little laws!" He laughed aloud, "Ah, yes Henri of the White Water is a
great respecter of laws, _voila_!"

Seating themselves upon the high bank of the river the two watched the
sun dip slowly behind the scrub timber. And, as the twilight deepened,
the man talked rapidly and earnestly, while the girl listened in
silence. "And so," he concluded, "When the scows return, in one month
from now, you shall leave this place forever. We shall go away and be
married, and we will journey far, far up the rivers to the cities of the
white men, and only upon occasion will we make flying trips into the
North--to the trade."

"It is said that you trade hooch," said the girl, "I will not marry any
man who trades hooch. I hate the traders of hooch."

"Ah-ha! _Ma chere!_ Yes, I have now and then traded hooch. You see, I do
not deny. Henri of the White Water must have adventure. But upon my
soul, if you do not want me to trade hooch, I shall never trade another
drop--_non_."

"When the scows return in a month, I shall go with them," answered the
girl dispassionately, "But, not to be married. I am going to school----"

"To school! _Mon Dieu!_ Have you not had enough of school? It is time
you were finished with such foolishness. You, who are old enough to be
the mother of children, talking of going to school! Bah! It is to laugh!
And where would you go--to school?"

"To the convent, at Montreal."

"The devil take these meddlers!" cried the man, rising and pacing
rapidly up and down before the girl. Then suddenly he paused and looking
down upon her, laughed aloud. "Ha, ha! You would go to Montreal! And
what will you do when you get there? What will you say when they ask you
who is your father? Eh, what will you tell them?"

The girl looked at him in wide-eyed surprise. "Why, what do you mean? I
shall tell them the truth--that my father is dead. Why should I not tell
them that my father is dead. He was a good man. My mother has told me."

Again the man laughed, his laugh of cruel derision: "Such innocence! It
is unbelievable! They will have nothing to do with you in the land of
the white men. They will scorn you and look down upon you. You never had
a father----"

The girl was upon her feet, now, facing him with flashing eyes: "It is a
lie! I did have a father! And he was a good man. He was not like the
father of you, old Boussard, the drunken and thieving old hanger-on
about the posts!"

"Aye, I grant you that the old devil is nothing to brag of. I do not
point to him with the finger of pride, but he is nevertheless a
produceable father. He and my Indian mother were married. I at least am
no _enfant natural_--no _batarde_! No one can poke at me the finger of
scorn, and draw aside in the passing, as from a thing unclean!"

The girl's face flamed red, and tears of rage welled from her eyes: "I
do not know what you mean!" she cried, "But I do know that I hate you! I
will find out what you mean--and then maybe I will kill you." In her
rage she sprang at the man's throat with her bare hands, but he easily
thrust her aside, and sobbing she ran toward the mission.

It was long after midnight that Snowdrift emerged from the room of
Sister Mercedes. The girl had gone straight to the Nun and asked
questions, nor would she be denied their answers. And so explaining,
comforting, as best she could, the good Sister talked till far into the
night. Snowdrift had gone into the room an unsophisticated girl--she
came out from it a woman--but, a woman whose spirit, instead of being
crushed and broken by the weight of her shame, rose triumphant and
defiant above that shame. For in her heart was bitter hatred against the
white men, whose code of ethics brought shame upon the innocent head of
one whose very existence was due to the lust of a man of their own race.

Silently the girl crossed the clearing to the building in which was her
room, and very silently she made up a pack of her belongings. Then,
taking the pack, and her rifle, she stole silently out the door and
crossing the broad open space, entered the bush. At the edge of the
clearing she turned, and stood for a long time looking back at the
mission with its little buildings huddled together in the moonlight. And
then, with a choking sob that forced itself past her tight-pressed lips,
she turned and plunged into the timber.




CHAPTER IV

ACE-IN-THE-HOLE


On the outskirts of Dawson, city of the tents and log buildings, Brent
pitched his own tent, paid off his Indian canoeman, and within the hour
was sucked into the mad maelstrom of carousal that characterized the
early days of the big gold camp.

It was the city of men gone mad. The saloon was the center of
activity--and saloons there were aplenty; Dick Stoell's Place, which was
"the big game" of Dawson; "The Nugget" of uproarious fame; Cuter
Malone's "Klondike Palace," where, nightly, revel raged to the _n_th
power--where bearded men and scarlet women gave over to debauch
magnificent in its wild abandon; and many others, each with its wheels
of chance, its cards, its music, and its women.

And into the whirl of it Carter Brent plunged with a zest born of youth
and of muscles iron-hard from the gruelling trail. And into it he fitted
as though to the manner born. No invisible lines of demarkation divided
the bars of Dawson as they had divided Kelliher's bar. Millionaires in
blanket coats and mukluks rubbed shoulders with penniless watery-eyed
squaw-men. Sourdoughs who spilled coarse gold from the mouths of sacks,
misfit _chechakos_, and painted women, danced, and sang, and cursed, and
gambled, the short nights through.

The remnant of Brent's thousand dollars was but a drop in the bucket,
and he was glad when it was gone three days after his arrival. Not that
he particularly wanted to be "broke." But in the spending of it, men had
taken his measure--the bills and the coined gold had branded him as a
man from the "outside," a _chechako_--a tenderfoot.

An hour after he had tossed his last yellow disk upon the bar in payment
for a round of drinks he had hired out to Camillo Bill Waters to sluice
gravel at an ounce a day. An ounce was sixteen dollars. Thereafter for
the space of a month he was seen no more in Dawson.

Then one day he returned. He presented a slip of paper signed by Camillo
Bill to the bartender at Stoell's and received therefor thirty ounces of
gold--raw gold, in dust and nuggets. He bought a round of drinks
glorying in the fact that at last he, too, was spending coarse gold. He
bet ten ounces on an Indian foot race, and won. More drinks, and an hour
later he bet his pile on a seven, a ten-spot, a deuce, and a king in a
game of stud poker. Two players called the bet and he flipped over his
hole card--it was a seven-spot and again he won.

He quit the game and danced for an hour, and between dances he drank
whiskey. He got the hunch that this was his lucky day and that he could
win, but the hunch called for quick big bets, and not for long continued
play. He rode his hunch, and at Cuter Malone's wheel he tossed fifty
ounces on Number 21. The ivory ball rolled slower and slower, hesitated
on the 10 and then with a last turn settled into 21. He pocketed
twenty-eight thousand dollars with a grin. The news of the bet spread
swiftly and Brent became a man of sorts. Four times more that night he
placed big bets--and three of the times he won.

One of these plays also in a game of stud earned him the name by which
he became known in the North. With a king, and a queen, showing in his
own hand he mercilessly raised an exposed pair of Jacks. Of the six
other players in the game five dropped out. The holder of the Jacks
stayed for the last draw and checked the bet. Brent laid fifty thousand
dollars on his cards, a king, a queen, an eight spot and a four spot.
The other stared at the hand for a long time. He was a man known for his
nerve and his high play, and he knew that Brent knew this. Whispers of
the big bet had gone about the room and men and women crowded the table.
At length the other turned down his cards in token of surrender, and
with a laugh Brent turned his hole card face up. It was the Ace of
Diamonds, and an audible gasp hissed from twenty throats. Thereafter
Brent was known as Ace-In-The-Hole.

The next morning he deposited one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in
Dick Stoell's safe, and his pockets still bulged with dust. For two days
and nights he drank and danced, but not a card did he touch, nor did he
lay any bet. When questioned he answered that his hunch was not working.
The sourdoughs respected him and treated him as an equal. He spent dust
lavishly but he did not throw it away.

Then suddenly he bought an outfit and disappeared. When the first snow
flew he was back, and into Dick Stoell's safe went many sacks of raw
gold. He drank harder than ever and spent gold more freely. His fame
spread to other camps, and three men came up from Circle to relieve him
of his pile. He was gambling regularly now, and in a game of stud he
caught them at the trick by means of which they had won forty thousand
dollars from him. Many miners, among them a goodly sprinkling of old
timers, were watching the play, and many of them had already detected
the swindle, but after the custom of the country they held their peace.
Brent never batted an eye upon discovering the trick, but when a few
moments later it was repeated, things happened in Stoell's--and they
happened with the rapidity of light. One minute after the trouble
started there was an ominous silence in the room. A circle of men stood
and stared at the wreck of a table, across which sagged the body of a
man killed with his own gun. Another man with his jaw shattered lay on
the floor, and a third lay white and still across him with a wide red
mark on his forehead where a sack of gold dust had caught him fair. And
over all stood Brent with one leg jammed through the rungs of a broken
chair.

The incident placed Ace-In-The-Hole in the foremost ranks of the big men
of the North. He was regarded as the equal of such men as Old Bettles,
Camillo Bill Waters, Swiftwater Bill, and McMann. Sourdoughs sought his
acquaintance and _chechakos_ held him in awe. When the snow lay deep he
bought the best string of dogs he could find, hired an Indian musher,
and again disappeared. He was back at Christmas for a two weeks
carousal, and when he hit the trail again he carried with him several
gallons of whiskey. The sourdoughs shook their heads and exchanged
glances at this, but a man's business is his own. In July he sent his
Indian down for ten men to work his sluices and much whiskey. In
September he came down himself and he brought with him a half million in
gold.

Others had cleaned up big during the summer, and that winter saw
Dawson's highest peak of wild orgies and wild spending. Riding a hunch
when he first hit town Brent doubled and trebled his pile, and then with
Jimmie the Rough, McMann, Camillo Bill and a few others they inaugurated
such a campaign of reckless spending as the North had never seen and
never again did see.

Brent was never sober, now--and men said he never slept. He was the
youngest and by far the strongest of the spenders, the urge of the game
was in his blood, and he rode it as he rode his hunches--to the limit of
his endurance. All men liked him--open hearted, generous to the fault,
and square as a die in his dealings, he spent his money like a prince.
And where the men liked him the painted women worshipped him--but they
worshipped from afar. For despite the utmost blandishments of the most
intriguing of them, he treated all alike--even Kitty, whom men called
"The Queen of the Yukon," failed to hold him in thrall. This dancing
girl who had taken the North by storm, who was the North's darling and
beautiful plaything, whose boast it was that she had never sought any
man, fell violently in love with Brent. Men saw it and marvelled, for it
was known in the camps that she had spurned men who had laid fortunes at
her feet. It was not that he feared women, rather he sought them. He
danced with them, frolicked with them--and then promptly forgot them.
His one real passion was gambling. Any game or device whereupon big bets
could be laid found him an enthusiastic devotee. And his luck became a
byword in the North.

"Sometime your luck will change," warned the dancing girl as the two sat
one evening in the early fall at a little table in Stoell's and drank
champagne which cost Brent fifty dollars the quart. "And then you'll be
broke and----"

Brent who had been idly toying with the rings upon her fingers returned
the slender hand to the table. "It can't change. It's a part of me. As
long as I'm me, I'll be lucky. Look, I'll show you! You want to marry
me--you've told me so. Well, I don't want to marry you, or anyone
else--wouldn't know what to do with you if I did marry you. You want me
to go back on the claim--well, here's a bargain--just to show you that I
can't lose." He pulled a buckskin sack full of gold from his pocket and
held it before the girl's eyes. "See this sack. It isn't very big. It
can't cover many numbers. I'm going to stand up in this chair and toss
it onto the roulette table over there, and play every number it touches.
If I lose I lose the dust--Stoell will get that. But that isn't all I'll
lose--I'll lose myself--to you. If one of the numbers that this sack
falls on don't win, I marry you tonight, and we hit for the claim
tomorrow."

The girl stared at him, fascinated: "Do you mean that--you'll quit
gambling--and you'll sober up and--and live with me?"

Again Brent laughed: "Yes, I'll quit gambling, and sober up, and live
with you till--how does it go--till death us do part."

"Toss it!" The words of the girl came short, with a curious indrawing of
the breath, and her fingers clutched at the edge of the table till the
knuckles whitened. The men who were crowded about the wheel glanced
toward the table at the sound, and standing in his chair Brent waved
them to fall back. Then he told them of his bet--while the dancing girl
sat with parted lips, her eyes fastened upon his face. The men at the
wheel surged back to give room. The proposition caught their fancy.
Ace-In-The-Hole, prince of gamblers, was betting himself--with the odds
against him! And every man and woman in the room knew that if he lost he
would keep his word to the last letter.

Carefully measuring the distance, Brent balanced the sack in his hand,
then with a slow movement of his arm, tossed it onto the table. It
struck almost squarely in the center, covering Numbers 13, 14, 16, 17,
19, and 20. The croupier spun the wheel, and sent the ivory ball
spinning on its way. The men who had been playing, and the men from the
bar, crowded close, their eyes on the whirling wheel. Brent sat down in
his chair, lighted a cigarette, and filled the two empty champagne
glasses from the bottle. He glanced across at Kitty. She was leaning
forward with her face buried in her arms. Her shoulders were heaving
with quick, convulsive sobs. In Brent's heart rose sudden pity for this
girl. What to him had been a mere prank, a caprice of the moment, was to
her a thing of vital import. The black fox fur had fallen away from
about her neck exposing a bare shoulder that gleamed white in the light
of the swinging lamp. She looked little and helpless, and Brent felt a
desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. He leaned toward her,
half rose from his chair and then, at a sound from the table, he settled
back.

"Number 13 wins," announced the croupier, and the room was suddenly
filled with the voices of many men. The croupier scribbled a notation
upon a piece of paper and together with the sack of dust laid it upon
the table between Brent and the girl. A moment later she raised her head
and stared, dry eyed into Brent's face.

"Here, little girl," he said gently. "Forgive me. I didn't know you
really felt--that way. Here, this is all yours--take it. The bet paid
six to one. The weigher will cash this slip at the bar."

With a swift motion of her hand the girl swept sack and slip to the
floor. "Oh, I--I hope you _die_!" she cried hysterically, and gathering
her wrap about her, she sped from the room.




CHAPTER V

LUCK TURNS


Before the advent of the tin-horns, who invaded the Yukon at the time of
the big rush, a "limit" in a poker game was a thing unknown. "Table
stakes" did not exist, nor did a man mention the amount he stood to lose
when he sat in a game. When a player took his seat it was understood
that he stood good for all he possessed of property, whatever or
wherever it might be. If the play on any hand ran beyond his "pile" all
he had to do was to announce the fact and the other players would either
draw down to it, or if they wished to continue the play, the pot,
including the amount of the "short" player's last bet was pushed aside
until the last call was made, the "short" player only participating in
the portion of the pot so set aside. If, in the final show-down his hand
was the highest he raked in this pot and the next high hand collected
the subsequent bets.

Stud poker was the play most favored by Brent, and when he sat in a game
the table soon became rimmed with spectators. Other games would break
up that the players might look on, and they were generally rewarded by
seeing plenty of action. It was Brent's custom to trail along for a
dozen hands or more, simply calling moderate bets on good hands, or
turning down his cards at the second or third card. Then, suddenly, he
would shove out an enormous bet, preferably raising a pair when his own
hand showed nothing. If this happened on the second or third card dealt
it invariably gave the other players pause, for they knew that each
succeeding bet would be higher than the first, and that if they stayed
for the final call they would stand to lose heavily if not be actually
wiped out. But they knew also that the bet was as apt to be made on
nothing as on a good hand, and should they drop out they must pass up
the opportunity to make a killing. Another whim of Brent's was always to
expose his hole card after the play, a trick that aggravated his
opponents as much as it amused the spectators.

The result was that many players had fallen into the habit of dropping
out of a game when Ace-In-The-Hole sat in--not because they disliked him
personally, but because, as they openly admitted, they were afraid of
his play. Many of these spent hours watching his cards. Not a man among
them but knew that he was as square as a die, but every man among them
knew that his phenomenal luck must sometime desert him, and when that
time came they intended to be in at the killing. For only Brent himself
believed that his luck would hold--believed it was as much a part of
himself as the color of his hair or his eyes.

Among those who refused to play was Johnny Claw, from whom Brent had won
ten thousand dollars a month before on three successive hands--two cold
bluffs, and a club in the hole with four clubs showing, against Claw's
king in the hole with two kings showing. Unlike the others who had lost
to him, Claw nursed a bitter and secret hatred for him, and he
determined that when luck did turn he would profit to the limit of his
pile.

Johnnie Claw was one of the few old timers whom men distrusted. He was a
squaw-man who had trapped and traded in the country as far back as any
man could remember. With the coming of more white men, and the
establishment of saloons along the river, Claw had ceased his trapping,
and had confined his trading to the illicit peddling of hooch, for the
most part among the Indians of the interior, and to that uglier, but
more profitable traffic that filled the brothels and the dance halls of
the Yukon with painted women from the "outside." So Claw moved among his
compeers as a man despised, yet accepted, because he was of the North,
and of the civilization thereof a component part.

Brent's luck held until the night before Thanksgiving, then the
inevitable happened--he began to lose. At the roulette wheel and the
faro table he lost twenty-five thousand dollars, and later, in a game
of stud, he dropped one hundred thousand more. The loss did not worry
him any, he drank a little more than usual during the play, and his
plunges came a little more frequently, but the cards were not falling
his way, and when they did fall, he almost invariably ran them up
against a stronger hand.

Rumor that the luck of Ace-In-The-Hole had changed at last spread
rapidly through the camp, and late in the afternoon of Thanksgiving day,
when the play was resumed, spectators crowded the table ten deep. Men
estimated Brent's winnings at anywhere from one to five millions and
there was an electric thrill in the air as the players settled
themselves in their chairs and counted their stacks of chips. The game
was limited to eight players, and Camillo Bill Waters arriving too late
to be included, promptly bought the seat of a prospector named Troy,
paying therefor twenty-thousand dollars in dust. "We're after yer hide,"
he grinned good-naturedly at Brent, "an' I'm backin' the hunch that
we're a-goin' to hang it on the fence this day."

"Come and get it!" laughed Brent. "But I'll give you fair warning that I
wear it tight and before you rip it off someone's going to get hurt."
Cards in hand he glanced at the tense faces around the board. "I've got
a hunch that this game is going to make history on the Yukon," he
smiled, "And it better be opened formally with a good stiff round of
drinks." While they waited for the liquor his eye fell upon the face of
Johnny Claw, who sat at the table, the second man from his right. "I
thought you wouldn't sit in a game with me," he said, truculently.

"An' I wouldn't, neither, while yer luck was runnin'--but, it's
different, now. Yer luck's busted--an' you'll be busted. An' I'm right
here to git my money back, an' some of yourn along with it."

Brent laughed: "You won't be in the game an hour, Claw. I don't like
you, and I don't like your business, and the best thing you can do is to
cash in right now before the game starts."

A moment of tense silence followed Brent's words, for among the men of
the Yukon, open insult must be wiped out in blood. But Claw made no move
except to reach out and finger a stack of chips, while men shot sidewise
glances into each other's faces. The stack of chips rattled upon the
cloth under the play of his nervous fingers, and Kitty, who had taken
her position directly behind Brent with a small slippered foot upon a
rung of his chair, tittered. Claw took his cue from the sound and
laughed loudly: "I'll play my cards, an' you play yourn, an' I'll do my
cashin' in later," he answered. "An' here's the drinks, so le's liquor
an' git to goin'." He downed his whiskey at a gulp, the bartender
removed the empty glasses, and the big game was on.

The play ran rather cautiously at first, even more cautiously than
usual. But there was an unwonted tenseness in the atmosphere. Each man
had bought ten thousand dollars worth of chips, with the white chips at
one hundred dollars, the reds at five hundred, and blues at a
thousand--and each man knew that his stack was only a shoestring.

After five or six deals Camillo Bill, who sat directly across the table
from Brent tossed in a red chip on his third card which was a queen.
Claw stayed, the next man folded, and Brent, who showed a seven and a
nine-spot raised a thousand. The others dropped, and Camillo Bill saw
the raise. Claw, whose exposed cards were a ten-spot and a jack,
hesitated for a moment and tossed in a blue chip. Camillo Bill's next
card was an ace, Claw paired his jack and Brent drew a six-spot. With a
grin at Brent, Claw pushed in a blue chip, and without hesitation Brent
dropped in four blue ones, raising Claw three thousand. Camillo Bill
studied the cards, tilted his hole card and glanced at its corner, and
raised Brent two thousand. Claw, also surveyed the cards:

"Yer holdin' a four-straight damn high," he snarled at Brent, "but I've
got mine--my pair of jacks has got anything you've got beat, an' Camillo
hain't got no pair of queens or he'd of boosted yer other bet. I'd ort
to raise, but I'll jest stay." And he dropped five blue chips into the
pot. Camillo Bill paired his ace with the last card, Claw drew a deuce,
and Brent a ten spot. Camillo Bill bet a white chip, Claw stared at
Brent's cards for a few moments and merely called, and Brent laughed:

"Here's your white chip, Bill, and I'll just lift it ten thousand--I'm
that much light in the pot for a minute."

Camillo Bill called after a moment's deliberation, and Claw sat staring
at the pot. He had just two blue chips left before him. "I ain't got ten
thousan'," he whined, "I figger I've got about five thousan' outside
this here stack, an' if I call fer that an' lose I'm busted flat." His
hand pushed the two blue chips toward the pot, hesitated, and was
quickly withdrawn. "Damned if I do!" he snarled, "My jacks-up ain't
worth it--not agin luck like yourn." He turned over his hole card which
was a deuce, and again Brent laughed and flipped his hole card over. It
was the king of spades.

"I haven't got a damned thing, and I never did have. What have you got
buried, Bill, another ace?"

Camillo Bill grinned and shook his head: "Nope, my down card's a king,
too. All I got is them pair of aces. Where's yer guts, Claw?"

Claw glared at Brent as the latter bought a new stack of chips,
scribbled an I.O.U. for ten thousand upon a scrap of paper, and tossed
it across to Camillo Bill. Then clutching his two chips he rose from the
table: "You jest done that to git me!" he growled, "I ain't got no show
in this game--if you can't beat me yerself you'll run me up agin a
better hand till I'm busted, if you lose money doin' it!"

"You've got it doped right, Claw," said Brent, evenly. "I told you you
wouldn't last an hour, and if you'd have listened to me you'd have been
eight thousand better off. Your hour isn't up yet, we've got plenty of
time to get the rest of it."

"You'll raise hell gittin' the rest of it!" muttered the man, and as he
walked toward the bar, Troy, who had sold his seat to Camillo Bill,
slipped into the vacated chair.

The incident served to liven the game up, and thereafter red and blue
chips outnumbered the white ones in nearly every pot.

There was no thought of stopping for supper, and when the game broke up
long past midnight Brent had lost three hundred thousand dollars. He
turned to Kitty, who had never left her post at the back of his chair:
"Come on, girl, let's go find something to eat and some fuzzy water," he
smiled. "They sure had my number, tonight, but I'll go after them
tomorrow."

Brent ordered and drank three glasses of whiskey, while waiting for the
meal to be served, and after it was over, the girl leaned back in her
chair and studied him as she sipped her champagne.

"You're different than you were a year ago," she said.

Brent laughed: "Sure, I was a poor man, then----"

The girl straightened in her chair and interrupted him abruptly, "And
you'll never amount to a _damn_ until you're a poor man again!" she
exclaimed, with such feeling that Brent stared at her in surprise.

"What! What do you mean?"

"I mean just what I said. A year ago you were _some man_. Folks say
you're a mining engineer--educated in a college. What are you now?
You're a gam., that's what you are, and the hooch is putting its mark on
you, too--and it's a shame."

"What in the world is the matter with you, Kitty?" The man stared at her
in surprise, "The hooch don't hurt me any--and I only play for the fun
of the game----"

"No you don't! You play because its got into your blood, and you can't
help playing. And you'll keep on playing till you're busted and it'll be
a good thing when you are! Your luck has changed now, and they'll get
you."

"I'm still playing on their money," retorted Brent a little nettled at
the girl's attack. "If they clean me out, all right. They'll only win
the half million I took out of my two claims--the rest of it I took away
from them. Anyway, whose business is it?" he asked sullenly.

"It ain't nobody's business, but yours. I--I wish to God it was mine.
Everybody knows the hooch is getting you--and that is just what they all
say--it's a shame--but it's his own business. I'm the only one that
could say anything to you, and I'm--I'm sorry I did."

"They're right--it's my business, and no one else's. If they think I'm
so damned far gone let them come and get my pile--I'll still have the
claims, and I'll go out and bring in another stake and go after them
harder than ever!"

"No you won't--they'll get the claims, too. And you won't have the
nerve, nor the muscles to go out and make another strike. When you once
bust, you'll be a bum--a has-been--_right_."

"I suppose," sneered Brent, thoroughly angry now: "that I should marry
you and hit out for the claim so we could keep what's left in the
family--and you'd be the family."

The girl laughed, a trifle hysterically: "No--I wouldn't marry you on a
bet--now. I was foolish enough to think of it, once--but not now. I've
done some thinking since that night you tossed that sack of dust on the
board. If you married me and did go back to where you were--if you quit
the cards and the hooch and got down to be what you ought to be--where
would I stand? Who am I, and what am I? You would stick by your
bargain--but you wouldn't want me. You could never go back outside--with
_me_. And if you wouldn't quit the cards and the hooch, I wouldn't have
_you_--not like you are now--flabby, and muddy-eyed, an' your breath so
heavy with rot-gut you could light it with a match. No, that dream's
busted and inside of a week you'll be busted, too." Setting down her
glass the girl quitted the table abruptly, leaving Brent to finish the
bottle of champagne alone, after which he sauntered down to Cuter
Malone's "Klondike Palace" and made a night of it, drinking and dancing.

The week that followed was a week of almost unbroken losses for Brent.
In vain, he plunged, betting his cards more wildly, and more recklessly
than ever before, in an effort to force his luck. But it only hastened
the end, which came about midnight upon the Thursday following
Thanksgiving Day, at the moment he looked into the eyes of Camillo Bill
Waters and called a bet of fifty-thousand: "That's good," he announced,
as Bill showed Aces-up. "And that just finishes me--I held the claims at
a million--and that's the last of it."




CHAPTER VI

THE DEALER AT STOELL'S


On the morning after the final game of stud in which he had slipped the
last dollar of his fortune across the green cloth, Brent threw back his
blankets and robes and sat upon the edge of his bunk. He had long since
discarded his tent for a cabin and his eyes took in the details of the
rough furnishings in the grey light that filtered through the heavily
frosted window panes. He drew on his shirt and trousers and glanced at
his watch. It was ten o'clock. He built a roaring fire, broke the ice
that had formed upon the surface of a huge pail of water, filled his
coffee-pot, and set his wash pan beside it upon the stove. Then he
returned to his bunk and, feeling beneath his pillow, withdrew a flat
quart bottle and took a long drink. When the water had warmed in the
pan, he shaved before a small mirror that hung above his rude wash
stand. Twice during the process he returned to the bottle for a swallow
of liquor.

"Kitty was right," he confided to his reflection in the glass, "My luck
did turn--and now, I'm broke."

He finished shaving and, as he was about to turn from the wash stand
paused, and thrusting his face close to the mirror, subjected it to
careful scrutiny.

"Eyes _are_ a little muddy," he grudgingly admitted, "And face a little
pouchy and red, but, hell, it isn't the hooch!--I don't drink enough to
hurt me any. It's being indoors so much, and the smoke. Two days on the
trail will fix that. I've got to slip out and make another strike. And
when I come back--that bunch will be in for an awful cleaning."

He threw a handful of coffee into the pot, and sliced some bacon into a
frying pan, and when the grease ran, he broke a half-dozen eggs and
scrambled them with the bacon.

"She said I wouldn't have the nerve nor the muscles to hit out and
locate another claim," he grinned as he swallowed a draught of scalding
coffee. "I'll show her!"

He finished his meal, washed the dishes, and drew on his mukluks and
blanket coat. As he opened the door he was met by a blast of wind-driven
snow that fairly took his breath, and drawing back into the room he shut
the door.

"I thought it was pretty dark in here for this time of day--some
blizzard!"

He drew down the ear-flaps of his fur cap, hunted up his heavy mittens,
and once more opening the door, pushed out into the storm.

Twenty minutes later he entered Stoell's place, and as he stamped the
snow from his garments, and beat it from his cap and mittens, Camillo
Bill greeted him from the bar.

"Hello, Ace-In-The-Hole! I'm buyin' a drink." The room was deserted
except for the bartender who promptly set out bottle and glasses. "Let's
go over here," suggested Camillo Bill, when the empty glasses had been
returned to the bar. He led the way to a small table.

"Bring the bottle and glasses!" called Brent over his shoulder, and
Camillo Bill seconded the order with a nod.

"Now," he began, as Brent filled his glass, "Let's get this here deal
straightened out. In the first place, is them two claims of yourn worth
a million?"

Brent flushed, hotly, but Camillo Bill forestalled his reply. "Hold on,
now. I didn't mean what you're thinkin' about--an' you ort to know me
well enough to know I didn't. When you said them two claims was worth a
million, not me, nor no one else questioned your word, did we? Well,
what I'm gettin' at is are they worth more than a million, 'n' how much
more?"

Brent laughed: "They're worth more than a million. How much more I don't
know. I took out a half a million last summer, and I don't think I'm
half way to bed-rock at the deepest."

Camillo Bill nodded: "All right, that's what I wanted to know. You see,
there's five or six of us holds your slips an' markers that totals a
million over an' above what was in Stoell's safe. I'll jest cash them
slips an' markers, an' take over the claims."

Brent shrugged, "Go ahead. It don't make any difference to me how you
divide them up."

Camillo Bill grinned: "It does make a hell of a lot of difference to you
how we divide 'em up," he said. "It's like this: I like your style.
You're a _tillicum_--a natural borned sourdough. You're white clean
through. When you said there's so and so much in Stoell's safe, the dust
was there. An' when you know'd yer claims was worth more than a million,
you says a million instead of stretchin' it to two million, an' maybe
stickin' some one. Now when I cash them markers that's out agin the
claims, an' figger in the slips an' markers I hold myself, I'll have a
million invested, won't I? An', that's what I won--a million--not a
million an' a half, or two million--just a million. Well, when I get
that million back--you get the claims back--see?"

Brent stared at the man in amazement: "What do you mean? I lost the
claims--lost them fair and square----"

"No you didn't," interrupted the other, "You lose just what yer slips
an' markers says you lose--an' not a damn cent more. The claims was only
a sort of security for the dust. C'latteral the banks would call it. Am
I right, or wrong?"

Brent drank the whiskey in his glass and refilling it, shoved the bottle
toward Camillo Bill, but the man shook his head. "No more for me. Too
much of that stuff ain't no good. But about them claims--am I right, or
wrong?"

"You're the whitest damned white man that walks on two legs, if that's
what you mean," answered Brent, in a low voice. "I'll make the claims
over to you, now."

"Don't say that," replied Camillo Bill, "they was five or six of us that
figgered out this play--all friends of yourn. We all of us agreed to do
what I'm doin'--it was only a question of who could afford to carry the
load till next fall. I kin. Right's right--an' wrong ain't deuce-high,
nowheres. A million's a million--an' it ain't two million. An' you don't
need to make over them claims to me, neither. Jest you sign a paper
givin' me the right to go into 'em an' take out a million, an' we'll
tear up them slips an' markers."

"But what if there isn't a million in them. I believe there is--much
more than a million. But, what if they're 'spotted,' and I just happened
to hit the spots, or what if bed-rock shows a lot shallower than I think
it will----"

"What if! What if! To hell with what if! If the claims peter out I ain't
no better off if I hold title to 'em, am I? If they ain't good for the
million, what the hell difference does it make who owns 'em? I'd ruther
someone else holds a bum claim than me, any day," he added with a grin.
"An' now that's settled, what you goin' to do, while I'm gettin' out my
dust?"

Brent drank his liquor, and reached for the bottle: "Why, I'm going to
hit out and locate another strike," he said, a trifle thickly.

Camillo Bill regarded him thoughtfully: "Where at?"

"Why I don't know. There are plenty of
creeks--Eldorado--Ophir--Doolittle----"

The other laughed: "Listen here," he said, "While you be'n here in town
rollin' 'em high an' soppin' up hooch, they's be'n a hell of a change on
the creeks. Ain't you stopped to notice that Dawson's more'n twict as
big as she was in August, an' that the country is gittin full of
tin-horns, an' _chechakos_. Well it is--an' every creek's filed that's
worth a damn--an' so's every one that ain't. They ain't a claim to be
took up no more on Bonanza, nor Ophir, nor Siwash, nor Eldorado, nor
Alhambra, nor Sulphur, nor Excelsis, nor Christo, nor Doolittle, nor not
hardly none on no pup nor dry wash that runs into 'em."

"All right, I'll go farther, then," retorted Brent, pouring more liquor
into his glass. "I'll go beyond the last creek that's staked. And, by
God, I'll find gold!"

Camillo Bill shook his head: "Look a here, you ain't in no shape to hit
out on no long trip. You've laid up too long to tackle it, an' you've
drunk too much of that damned hooch. It ain't none of my business what
you do, or what you don't do--maybe you ain't drinkin' enough of it, I
don't know. But that there's damn poor stuff to train on for a long
trail in winter--an' I'm tellin' it to you that winter's sure hit these
diggin's an' hit 'em hard. Tell you what I'll do. I've be'n nosin'
'round buyin' claims while you be'n layin' abed daytimes sleepin' off
the hooch. I've got more'n what I kin 'tend to alone. I'll give you two
thousand a month to help me look after 'em, an' you can sort of ease off
the hooch, an' get broke in easy agin. If you sleep nights, an' keep out
doors daytimes, an' lay off the cards an' the hooch, you'll be good as
ever agin spring."

"Not on your life," flared Brent, "I'm as good a man right now as I ever
was! And a damn sight too good a man to be anybody's pensioner. You know
damned well that you don't need me at two thousand a month, or any other
figure, except at an ounce a day, the same as anyone else gets. What the
hell's the matter with everybody?" A querulous note crept into Brent's
voice, "I tell you I'm as good a man as I ever was! Kitty told me the
same thing--that I'm drinking too much! Whose business is it if I am?
But, I'm not, and I'll hit the trail tomorrow and show you all!"

"So long," said Camillo Bill as he rose from his chair. "I told you it
wasn't no one's business but yourn, so they ain't no argyment there.
Only, jest you remember that I'm a friend of yourn, an' so is
Kitty--an' a man might have a damn sight worse friend than her, at
that."

Later in the day Stoell accosted Brent as he stood drinking alone at the
bar. "They romped right up your middle, didn't they, the last week or
so?"

Brent nodded: "They cleaned me out. I played them too high for the cards
I was holding."

"What you figuring on doing now?"

"Going to hit out and locate another claim when this storm lets up."

"You've got a long trip ahead. Everything's staked."

"So they say, but I guess I'll find something, somewhere."

"Why don't you take an inside job this winter. Hell of a lot of grief
out there in the snow with only a tent and a bunch of huskies."

"What kind of a job?"

"I'm figuring on starting up a new layout--faro. How'd you like to deal?
Just till spring when the weather lets up a little. You can't tell what
you're staking under ten foot of snow anyhow."

"I never dealt faro."

"It won't take you long to learn. I only run one big game now because I
can't trust no one to deal another--but I could get plenty of play on
one if I had it goin'. I figure that the boys all like you, an' you'd be
a good card. They all know you're square an' I'd get a good play on your
layout. What do you say? It's a damn sight better than mushin' out
there in the cold."

"What will you pay?"

"Well, how would five hundred a month, an' five percent of the winnings
of the layout do? You wouldn't need to come on till around nine in the
evening, and stay till the play was through. I'll throw in your supper,
and dinner at midnight, and we won't keep any bar tab. You're welcome to
what drinks you want--only you've got to keep sober when you're on
shift."

Brent did not answer immediately. A couple of men came through the door
in a whirl of flying snow, and he shivered slightly, as the blast of
cold air struck him. Stoell was right, there would be a hell of a lot of
grief out there on the long snow trail. "I guess I'll take you up on
that," he said, "When do I start?"

"It'll take me a day or so to get rigged up. Let's make it day after
tomorrow night. Meantime you can do your eating and drinking here--just
make yourself at home. The boys'll be tickled when they hear the
news--it'll spread around the camp pretty lively that you're dealing
faro at Stoell's, and we'll get good play--see."

During the next two days Brent spent much time in Stoell's, drinking at
the bar, and watching the preparation of the new layout over which he
was to preside. And to him there, at different times came eight or ten
of the sourdoughs of the Yukon, each with a gruff offer of assistance,
but carefully couched in words that could give no offense. "You'll be on
yer feet agin, 'fore long. If you need any change in the meantime, just
holler," imparted one. Said another: "Here, jest slip this poke in yer
jeans. I ain't needin' it. Somethin'll turn up d'rectly, an' you can
slip it back then." But Brent declined all offers, with thanks. And to
each he explained that he had a job, and each, when he learned the
nature of the job, either answered rather evasively, or congratulated
him in terms that somehow seemed lacking in enthusiasm. Old Bettles was
the only man to voice open disapproval: "Hell," he blurted, "Anyone c'n
deal faro. Anyone c'n gamble with another man's money, an' eat another
man's grub, an' drink another man's hooch. But, it's along the cricks
an' the gulches you find the reg'lar he-man sourdoughs."

At the words of this oldest settler on the Yukon, Brent strangely took
no offense. Rather he sought to excuse his choice of profession: "I'm
only doing it till spring, then I'm going to hit into the hills, and
when I come back we'll play them higher than ever," he explained. "I'm a
little soft now and don't feel quite up to tackling the winter trail."

"Humph," grunted Bettles, "You won't be comin' back--because you ain't
never goin' to go. If yer soft now, you'll be a damn sight softer agin
spring. Dealin' from a box an' lappin' up hooch ain't a-goin' to put you
in shape for to chaw moose-meat an' wrestle a hundred pound pack. It'll
sap yer guts." But Brent laughed at the old man's warning, and the next
evening took his place behind the layout with the cards spread before
him.

As Stoell had predicted, Brent proved to be a great drawing card for the
gambling house. Play at his layout ran high, and the table was always
crowded. But nearly all the players were _chechakos_--men new to the
country, who had struck it lucky and were intent upon making a big
splash. Among these tin-horns and four-flushers, Ace-In-The-Hole was a
deity. For among petty gamblers he was a prince of gamblers. Rumors and
fantastic lies were rife at all the bars concerning his deeds. "He had
cleaned up ten million in a summer on a claim." "He killed three men
with three blows of his fist." "The Queen of the Yukon was all caked in
on him, and he wouldn't have her. He tossed her a slip for half a
million that he had won on a single bet at the wheel, and because she
was sore at him, she ground it into the floor with her foot." "He had
bet a million on an ace in the hole--hence his name. He had gambled away
twenty million in a week." And so it went. Men fell over themselves to
make his acquaintance that they might ostentatiously boast of that
acquaintance at the bars. One would casually mention that
"Ace-In-The-Hole says to me, the other day, he says--" Or, "I was
tellin' Ace-In-The-Hole about one time I an' a couple of tarts down in
'Frisco--" Or, "Me an' Ace-In-The-Hole was eatin' supper the other
night, an' he says to me--" When he was off duty, men crowded to stand
next to him at the bar, they plied him with drinks, and invited him to
dine. All of which meant increased business for Stoell. So that upon
several occasions when Brent was too drunk to attend to business, Stoell
himself dealt his game and said nothing.

It was inevitable that this sudden popularity should in a measure turn
Brent's head. Personally, he detested the loud-mouthed fawning
_chechakos_, but as his association with them grew, his comradery with
the real sourdoughs diminished. They did not openly or purposely cut
him. They still greeted him as an equal, they drank with him, and
occasionally they took a fling at his game. But there was a difference
that Brent was quick to notice, and quick to resent, but powerless to
dispel. He was a professional gambler, now--and they were mining
men--that was all.

Only once since he had taken up his new vocation had he seen Kitty. She
had come into Stoell's one evening, and slipping behind the table stood
at his elbow until the end of the deal. As he shuffled the cards
preparatory to returning them into the box, she placed her lips close to
his ear: "Who are all your friends?" she whispered indicating the
tin-horns and _chechakos_ that rimmed the table. Brent flushed,
slightly, and answered nothing. "So this is what you meant by hitting
the trail when they broke you, is it? Well, take it from me, it's a
short trail, and a steep grade slanting down, and when you're on the
toboggan it ain't going to take long to hit the bottom--with a bump."
And before Brent could reply she had slipped away and lost herself in
the crowd.

Night after night, although his eyes sought the crowd, he never saw her
again, nor did he find her upon his excursions to "The Nugget," or to
Cuter Malone's "Klondike Palace." If she were purposely avoiding him,
she was succeeding admirably.

Along in February, Brent was surprised one day to receive, in his own
cabin, a visit from Johnny Claw. "What do you want?" he asked as the man
stood in the doorway.

Claw entered, closing the door behind him. He removed his cap and
mittens, and fumbling beneath his parka, produced a sealed bottle of
whiskey which he set upon the table: "Oh, jest dropped in fer a little
visit. Been 'outside.' Try a shot of this hooch--better'n anything
Stoell's got."

Brent sat down upon the edge of his bunk and motioned the man to a
chair: "Didn't know you were so damned friendly with me that you would
lug me in a bottle of hooch from the outside," he said, "What's on your
chest?"

Claw produced a corkscrew and opened the bottle, then he poured a
half-tumbler into each of two glasses. "Le's liquor," he said, offering
one to Brent. "Good stuff, ain't it?"

Brent nodded: "Damned good. But what's the idea?"

"Idee is jest this," announced Claw, eyeing him shrewdly, "You damn near
busted me, but I ain't holdin' that agin' you." He paused and Brent, who
knew that he was lying, waited for him to proceed. "You told me right
plain out that you didn't like the business I was in! That's all right,
too. I s'pose it ain't no hell of a good business, but someone's got to
bring 'em in or you bucks wouldn't have nobody to dance with. But,
layin' all that aside, you're dealin' the big game for Stoell."

"Yup."

"Well, listen: You're hittin' the hooch too hard fer to suit Stoell. At
the end of the month you're out of a job--see? He's goin' to let you
out, 'cause yer showin' up too reg'lar with a bun on. Says it's got to
where yer crocked so often he might's well be dealin' the game hisself."

"Who did he tell this to--you?"

The other leered: "Naw, not to me. He don't like me no more'n what you
do. But, I happened to hear him tellin' it to Old Bettles an' Camillo
Bill. 'That's right,' says Bettles, 'fire him, an' maybe we kin git him
into the hills.' 'I'm 'fraid not,' says Camillo Bill. 'Leastways not
till spring. An' at the rate he's goin', by that time he'll be countin'
bees.' 'It's a shame,' says Bettles, 'There's a damn good man gone
wrong.' 'He is a damn good man,' says Stoell, 'They ain't many I'd trust
to deal that big game. He's square as hell--but, the hooch has got
him.'"

"The hell it has," said Brent, with a short laugh. "They're damned
fools! I don't drink enough to hurt me any. I'm as good a man as I ever
was!"

"Sure you be," assented Claw. "What little you drink wouldn't hurt no
one. What's it any of their business? You don't need no guardeen to tell
you when to take a drink," he paused and refilled Brent's glass. "'Yer
square as hell,'" says Stoell--"but what's it gittin' you? He's goin' to
fire you, ain't he?"

"Well?"

"Well--why not git even with him, an' at the same time clean up big fer
yerself? They ain't no chanct to git caught."

"What do you mean?" Brent's voice rasped a trifle harshly, but Claw did
not notice.

"I got it all doped out. Cold deck him--an' I'll play agin the fixed
deck an' make a cleanin'--an' we'll split."

"You mean----"

"I mean this. Me an' you will fix up a deck, an' I'll copy off how the
cards lays. Then you slip 'em into the box an' start the deal, an' I'll
lay the bets. Of course, knowin' how they'll fall, I kin win whenever I
want to. No one'll ever b'lieve it's a frame-up, 'cause they know you're
square, an' likewise they know you hate me, an' they wouldn't figger
we'd git together. I'll make the play strong by comin' in fer a night
er two before we spring it an' braggin' that I've got a system. Then
I'll have my slip of paper an' I'll look at it, an' make bets, an' of
course I'll lose--'cause they ain't no system. An' the next night I'll
do the same an' the third night we'll slip in the fixed deck--an' then
my system'll win. An' all the time I'll be sneerin' at you, like I hated
yer guts----"

The sentence was never finished. In a blind rage Brent hurled himself
upon the man, and both crashed to the floor together. The fight was fast
and furious while it lasted. But, flabby, and with his brain befuddled
with liquor, Brent was no match for the other, who a year before, he
could have killed with his bare hands. He got in several good blows at
the start, which slowed up his antagonist, and rendered him incapable of
inflicting serious damage later, when Brent winded and gasping, was
completely at his mercy. A referee would unhesitatingly have declared it
Claw's fight, for when he slipped from the cabin it was to leave Brent
nursing two half-closed and rapidly purpling eyes, with nose and lips to
match.

When, four days later he showed up at Stoell's, the latter called him
aside and weighing out what was coming to him in dust, informed him that
his services were no longer required.




CHAPTER VII

"WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?"


From Stoell's Brent drifted to "The Nugget," where for a month, he dealt
faro on percentage in a "limit" game--for with the tin-horns and the
_chechakos_ had come also "limits" and "table stakes."

Here, "The Queen of the Yukon" passed and repassed his layout a dozen
times in an evening on her way to and from the dance-hall in the rear,
but never by even so much as a look did she admit that she recognized
him.

On the afternoon of his first payday, he sat in a "table stakes" game of
stud and a run of luck netted him seven hundred dollars. Whereupon he
promptly went on a spree that lasted three days and when he again showed
up for duty another dealer was presiding over his layout.

The next day Cuter Malone called him into a little back room and sounded
him out. "Hear how yer out of a job," quoth Cuter, as he set two glasses
and a bottle upon the little table between them. Brent nodded, and the
other continued: "Want to keep on dealin'?"

"Why yes, I guess so. I'm going to hit the trail right after the
break-up, but until that comes I might as well be doing something."

"Sure. Well I got a good percent proposition fer you. You'll draw quite
a little trade--you done it at Stoell's, an' then swung the heft of it
over to 'The Nugget.'"

"Is it a limit game?" asked Brent. "What percentage will you pay?"

Malone filled the glasses from the bottle, and having drank combed at
his black beard with his fingers: "W-e-e-l, that's accordin'. This here
game I'm figgerin' on is a sure thing--that is, o' course, lots o' turns
has got to lose, but in the long run she wins big."

"What do you mean--a sure thing?"

Cuter grinned craftily: "D'ye ever hear tell of a double-slotted box?
Well, I've got one, an'----"

Brent interrupted him with a short laugh: "What you mean is that because
I've got the reputation for being square, you want to use me for a
decoy, and when they come in, rob them on a percentage."

"Well, that's--er--talkin' it out kind of plain----"

"You can go to hell!" exclaimed Brent, "and that's talking it out kind
of plain, too."

Cuter laughed: "Don't git sore about it. Business is business, an' I'm
into it to git the money, one way an' another. If you don't want to
deal, how about goin' behind the bar? That's a square enough game." He
paused and grinned. "An' I wouldn't mind fer onct havin' someone
handlin' my dust that I wouldn't feel like friskin' every time he went
out the door to see how much of it had stuck to him."

And so Brent began tending bar in the notorious "Klondike Palace," and
Kitty, as she faced him for the first time with her dancing partner and
called for a drink, addressed him in words that to her partner meant
nothing: "Your toboggan is going good, now--ain't it, Ace-In-The-Hole?
You're most there, now--most to the bump that lays at the end of the
trail." And Brent served the drinks, and answered nothing.

The "Klondike Palace" was the wildest and most notorious of all the
dives of the big camp. Unlike Stoell's and "The Nugget," everything
downstairs was in one big room. The bar occupied a whole side, the
gambling tables and devices were in the rear, and the remainder of the
wide floor space was given over to dancing. At the rear of the bar a
flight of stairs led upward to the rooms of the painted women.

And it was concerning one of these painted women that, three weeks
later, Brent had his first "run in" with Cuter Malone. It was bitter
cold and snowing thickly, and Brent, with lowered head, was boring
through the white smother on his way to work. He paused in the light
that shone dully through the heavily frosted windows of Malone's and was
about to push open the door, when from the thick darkness around the
side of the building he heard a woman scream. It was a sharp, terrible
scream, that ended in a half-muffled shriek. And without an instant's
hesitation, Brent dashed around the corner. The "Klondike Palace" was
located well upon the edge of the big camp, beyond it being only a few
scattered cabins. Scarcely fifty feet from the street he came upon a man
standing over a woman who was cowering in the snow. Neither saw him, and
even as he looked the man struck with a coiled dog whip. Again the woman
screamed, and the man jumped upon her and started to kick her first with
one foot then with the other as she lay in the snow. Like an avalanche
Brent hurled himself upon the man, his fist catching him squarely upon
the side of the head and sending him sprawling. Without waiting for him
to get up, Brent jerked the woman to her feet and pushed her toward the
street. He saw then that she was one of the girls who roomed over
Malone's, and that she was clad in the thinnest of silk stockings, and
the flimsiest of semi-transparent gowns. One of her high-heeled slippers
had been lost in the snow. Scarce able to stand, the girl staggered
whimpering toward the light. Turning upon the man who had regained his
feet Brent found himself looking into the muzzle of a forty-five. So
close was the man that even in the darkness he could see his face. It
was Johnnie Claw, and Brent saw that the recognition was mutual. Claw's
thick lips writhed back in a grin of hate, and Brent could hear his
breath sucking heavily between his clenched teeth. Eye to eye they
stared as Brent's lips moved in a sneer: "Well--you--damned--pimp--why
don't you shoot?" To his intense surprise, the gun wavered, dropped to
the man's side and, jamming it into the pocket of his fur coat, Claw
pushed past him toward the street, mumbling thick curses.

Later, that night, when business was a little slack during a dance
Malone motioned him aside: "Say, what the hell be you buttin' in on
other folks business fer?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. What did you go knockin' Johnnie Claw down fer,
when he was givin' that damn Violet what was comin' to her, fer holdin'
out on him?"

"Giving her what was coming! My God, man, he would have kicked her to
death there in the snow--that's what he would have done!"

"Well, what if he did--she's hisn, ain't she?"

A surge of swift anger almost overcame Brent. His fists clenched, and it
was with difficulty that he refrained from striking Malone down where he
stood. Instead, he leaned a trifle closer to the man: "Just let this
stick to you, Malone," he said, "What passes between me and Claw, or me
and anyone else, when it isn't on your premises and on your time, is my
business--see?"

Malone laughed, shortly, and with a shrug, turned away, while Brent
served drinks to a couple who had left the dance and sauntered to the
bar. The couple were Kitty, and a strapping young _chechako_ called
Moosehide Charlie, the name referring to an incident that had occurred
early in the winter when he had skinned out a moose and, finding himself
far from camp and no blankets, had wrapped himself in the green hide and
gone to sleep. In the morning he awoke to find himself encased in an
iron-hard coffin of frozen moosehide unable to move hand or foot.
Luckily a party of hunters found him and spent half a day thawing him
out over a roaring fire.

Said Kitty to Moosehide Charlie, as she sipped at the liquid that by
courtesy was called port wine: "That's Johnnie Claw over there by the
door. He's one-two-three with Cuter Malone--some say they're pardners."

Her companion swallowed his liquor and glanced indifferently toward the
object of the girl's remarks. "It ain't worryin' me none who he's
pardners with. I don't like the looks of him, nohow."

"Sh-sh-sh," warned Kitty, "What a man learns in this country don't hurt
him any. I was just telling you so if you ever happened to run foul of
Claw, you'd know enough to keep your eye on Malone, too."

"Guess I ain't goin' to run foul of him. Come on, let's dance."

Kitty had not even favored him by so much as a glance, but as Brent
removed the glasses from the bar, he smiled.

The days were rapidly lengthening on the Yukon. At noon each day the sun
was higher in the heavens and its increased heat was heralded by little
streams of snow water that trickled over the ice of the creeks.

One evening when the grip of winter had broken and the feel of spring
was in the air, Moosehide Charlie stood at the bar drinking with Johnnie
Claw. It was too early for the dancers and three or four of the girls
sat idly along the opposite wall. As Brent served the drinks, he noticed
that Claw appeared to be urging the younger man into a deal of some
kind--he, caught a word now and then, of reference to dumps, slucings,
and water heads. Moosehide seemed to be holding out. He was a man who
drank little, and after two drinks he turned from the bar shaking his
head. "Come on," urged Claw, "Have another."

"No, two or three's my limit. I don't aim to git drunk."

"Drunk, hell!" laughed Claw, "I don't nuther. You've only had two. Make
it three, an' I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll throw off a leetle on
that claim. I ain't got time to fool with it, noways."

Moosehide returned to the bar: "Well, one more, then, an' that's all.
But you'll have to throw off more'n just a little on that property, fer
me to touch it."

Claw filled his glass and pushed the bottle toward the other and as
Moosehide Charlie measured his liquor, out of the tail of his eye, Brent
saw Claw pour something from a small vial into his own glass and return
the vial swiftly to his pocket. The next moment he was talking earnestly
to Moosehide who, as he listened, toyed with his glass, rubbing into
patterns the few drops of liquor he had spilled upon the bar.

Cuter Malone had himself carried a tray of drinks to be served at one of
the poker tables in the rear, and just at this moment, tray and glasses
struck the floor with a loud crash. Moosehide Charlie turned quickly at
the sound, and as he did so Brent saw Johnnie Claw deftly switch the
glasses upon the bar. Malone returned, grumbling at his clumsiness, for
another tray of drinks, and Claw raised his glass. "I guess we kin deal,
all right. Le's drink, an' then we'll slip into the back room there an'
figger it out."

As Moosehide picked up the glass before him, Brent reached out swiftly
and took it from his fingers. He looked into it for a second and tossed
its contents onto the floor. "Better fill her up again," he said, "There
was a fly in it." A fly on the Yukon, with the rivers still frozen, and
the sodden snow three feet deep on the ground! Moosehide stared, and
before Brent could move, Cuter Malone had floored him with a blow from a
heavy bottle. The truth flashed upon Moosehide Charlie. One blow of his
fist settled Claw, while with his other hand he reached across the bar
and jerked a gun from the hand of Cuter Malone. The poker players rose
from their chairs and started for the bar, but Moosehide motioned them
back with the gun. "Jest go on with yer game, boys," he said meaningly.
"Don't mind me." And as they settled into their places he stepped around
the bar, keeping Malone covered. Kitty, who had been chatting with the
girls on the opposite side of the room, darted across the floor and
brushing past Moosehide, knelt beside Brent. "Jest raise up his head,
girl, an' throw some water in his face," ordered Moosehide, "An' pour a
little licker down his throat. If he can't swaller it, it'll make him
gag an' bring him to." Then he turned to Malone: "An' you, you damn
crook! You git busy an' weigh out what's comin' to him. An' weigh it
damn quick--an' weigh it right. 'Cause if it ain't right, I'm a-comin'
back here with about forty or ninety of my friends an' I'm tellin' it to
you, we'll gut this damn joint--an' you along with it!"

Brent only partially revived under the water and choking whiskey, and
between them they managed to get him out the door and onto Moosehide's
sled. Then they hauled him to his cabin and put him to bed, where he lay
for two weeks, delirious with fever, while Kitty stayed day and night
at his side and nursed him. Another week passed, during which the girl
came daily and cooked his meals, and made him get up for a little while
each day while she aired and rearranged his blankets. At length came a
day when he rose and dressed himself and stayed up till evening.

"You won't be needing me any more," said the girl, simply, as she stood
in the doorway late in the afternoon. She pointed to two small buckskin
sacks which she had laid upon the table. "There's your pay that was
coming to you from Cuter Malone, and a sack that Moosehide Charlie left
for you."

"Moosehide Charlie? He don't owe me anything."

"Says he owes you a whole lot, and he wanted me to give you that. He's
gone off on a trip up Indian River."

Brent picked up the sack, which was a dozen times the weight of the
other, and extended it toward the girl: "Give this back to him," he said
shortly. "I don't need it."

Kitty did not take it: "You do too need it," she said, "How long will
that pinch of dust last you? And what are you going to do when it's
gone?"

"It don't make any difference what I do when it's gone. Whatever I do, I
won't live on charity." And he tossed the sack past her through the
doorway where it buried itself in the snow.

"You're a fool, Ace-In-The-Hole," she said, quietly, "A _damn fool_."

The man nodded, slowly: "That's right, I reckon. Anyway we won't quarrel
about it. Will you do me just one more favor?"

"What is it?"

"Take this dust and get me a bottle of hooch--a quart bottle--two of
them."

"No, I won't!"

Brent rose to his feet: "I'll have to go myself, then," he said, as he
cast his eyes about for his hat.

"You ain't able! You're weak as a cat, and you'd fall down in the snow."

"I'll get up again, then." He found the hat and put it on.

"I'll go," the words were hurled at him, and he handed her Cuter
Malone's sack. "Never mind that--"

"Take it! Or I won't touch the hooch."

Reluctantly, she took it and in half an hour she was back and without a
word deposited two quart bottles upon the table.

"Will you drink with me?" Brent asked, as he drew the cork.

"No! I'm going, now."

Brent rose to his feet and held out his hand: "Good bye, Kitty," he
said, gravely. "I know what you've done for me--and I won't forget it.
You'll come to see me--sometimes?"

"No. I hate you! An' if you could see yourself the way I see
you--knowing what you are, and what you ought to be--you'd hate
yourself!"

Brent flushed under the sting of the words: "I'm as good a man as I ever
was," he muttered, defiantly.

The girl sneered: "You are--like hell! Why, you ain't even got a
job--now. You're a bum! You hit the bump that I told you was at the end
of your trail--now, where do you go from here?" And before Brent could
reply she was gone.

"Where do I go from here?" he repeated slowly, as he sank into a chair
beside his table, and swallowed a stiff drink of whiskey. And, "Where do
I go from here?" he babbled meaninglessly, three hours later when, very
drunk, his head settled slowly forward upon his folded arms, and he
slept.




CHAPTER VIII

THE PLOTTING OF CAMILLO BILL


With the rapidly lengthening days the sodden snow thawed and was carried
away by the creeks which were running waist-deep on top of the ice. New
snow fell, lay dazzling white for a day or two, and then under the ever
increasing heat of the sun, it, too, turned sodden, and sullen, and
grey, and added its water to the ever increasing torrent of the creeks.
Bare patches of ground showed upon south slopes. The ice in the creeks
let go, and was borne down by the torrents in grinding, jamming floes.
Then, the big river broke up. Wild geese and ducks appeared heading
northward. Wild flowers in a riot of blazing color followed up the
mountain sides upon the heels of the retreating snow-banks. And with
bewildering swiftness, the Yukon country leaped from winter into summer.

From his little cabin Carter Brent noted the kaleidoscopic change of
seasons, and promised himself that as soon as the creeks receded into
their normal beds he would hit the gold trail. He ate little, drank
much, and spent most of his days in reading from some books left him by
a wandering Englishman who had come in overland from the North-west
territories, where for a year or more he had prowled aimlessly among the
Hudson's Bay posts, and the outposts of the Mounted. The books were, for
the most part, government reports, geological, and geodetical, upon the
Canadian North.

"She said I am a bum," he muttered to himself one evening as he laid
aside his book, and in the gathering darkness walked to the door and
watched the last play of sunlight upon the distant glittering peaks.
"But, I'll show her--I'll show her where I'll go from here. I'm as good
a man as I ever was." This statement that he had at first made to
others, he now found necessary to make to himself. A dozen times a day
he would solemnly assure himself that he was as good a man as he ever
was, and that when he got ready to hit the trail he would show them.

The sunlight faded from the peaks, and as he turned from the doorway,
his eyes fell upon his pack straps that hung from their peg on the wall.
Reaching for his hat, he stepped to the door and peered out to make sure
that no one was watching. Then he stooped and fixed his straps to a
half-sack of flour which he judged would weigh about fifty pounds. After
some difficulty he got the pack onto his back and started for the bank
of the river, a quarter of a mile away. A hundred yards from the cabin
he stopped for breath. His shoulders ached, and the muscles of his neck
felt as though they were being torn from their moorings as he pushed his
forehead against the tump-line. With the sweat starting from every pore
he essayed a few more steps, stumbled, and in clumsily catching his
balance, his hat fell off. As he stooped to recover it, the weight of
the pack forced him down and down until he was flat on his belly with
his face in the mud. For a long time he lay, panting, until the
night-breeze chilled the sweat on his skin, and he shivered. Then he
struggled to rise, gained his hands and knees and could get no farther.
Again and again he tried to rise to his feet, but the weight of the pack
held him down. He remembered that between the Chilkoot and Lake
Lindermann he had risen out of the mud with a hundred pounds on his
shoulders, and thought nothing of it. He wriggled from the straps and
carrying, and resting, staggered back to his cabin and sank into a
chair. He took a big drink and felt better. "It's the fever," he assured
himself, "It left me weak. I'll be all right in a day or so. I'm as good
a man as I ever was--only, a little out of practice."

After that Brent stayed closer than ever to his cabin until the day came
when there was not enough dust left in his little buckskin sack to pay
for a quart of hooch. He bought a pint, and as he drank it in his cabin,
decided he must go to work, until he got strong enough to hit the
trail. Houses were going up everywhere, houses of boards that were
taking the place of the tents and the cabins of the previous year. Work
there was a plenty, and the laborers were few. _Chechakos_ were pouring
in by the thousands and staking clear to the mountain tops. But, none of
them would work. Crazed by the lure of gold they pitted the hillsides
and valleys and mucked like gnomes in their wild scramble for riches.
Brent worked for a week in a sawmill, and then quit, bought some hooch
and some necessary food, and retired to his cabin to reread his reports
and laugh at the efforts of the hillside miners.

The old timers were scattered out in the hills, and the tin-horns and
_chechakos_ who had worshiped at his shrine were dispersed, or had
forgotten him. Life moved swiftly in the big camp. Yesterday's hero
would be forgotten tomorrow. And the name of Ace-In-The-Hole meant
nothing to the newcomers. Occasionally he met one of the old timers, who
would buy him a drink, and hurry on about his business.

Spasmodically Brent worked at odd jobs. He fired a river steamboat on a
round trip to Fort Gibbon. Always he promised himself pretty soon, now,
he would be ready to hit the trail. Stampedes were of almost daily
occurrence, but Brent was never in on them and so the summer wore on and
still he had not hit the trail. "I'll just wait now, for snow," he
decided late in August. "Then I'll get a good dog team together, and
make a real rush. There's no use hitting out with a poling boat, the
creeks are all staked, and back-packing is too hard work for a white
man. I'm as good a man as I ever was, and when the snow comes I'll show
them."

Brent's wardrobe was depleted until it consisted of a coarse blue jumper
and ragged overalls drawn over underclothing, laced and tied together in
a dozen places. He had not shaved for a month.

Later in October Camillo Bill came to his cabin. He stood in the doorway
and stared into the dirty interior where Brent, with the unwashed dishes
of his last meal shoved back, sat reading.

"Hello, Camillo," greeted the owner of the cabin as he rose to his feet
and extended his hand, "Come in and sit down."

Camillo Bill settled himself into a chair: "Well I'll be damned!" he
exclaimed under his breath.

Brent rinsed a couple of murky glasses in the water pail, and reached
for a bottle that sat among the dirty dishes: "Have a drink," he
invited, extending a glass to his visitor.

Camillo Bill poured a taste of liquor into the glass and watched Brent,
with shaking hand, slop out a half a tumblerful, and drink it down as
one would drink water. He swallowed the liquor and returned the glass to
the table.

"Take some more," urged Brent, "I've got another quart under the bunk."

"No thanks," refused the other, curtly, "I heard you was down an' out,
but--by God, I wasn't lookin' for this!"

"What's the matter?" asked Brent, flushing beneath his stubby beard,
"What do you mean?"

Righteous indignation blazed from Camillo Bill's eyes. "Mean! You know
damn well what I mean!" he thundered. "Look around this shack! Look in
the lookin' glass up there! You're livin' here worse'n a dog lives!
You're worse'n a--a squaw-man!"

Brent rose to his feet, and drew himself proudly erect. Ragged and
unshaven as he was, the effect was ludicrous, but Camillo Bill saw
nothing of humour as he stared at the wreck of his friend. Brent spoke
slowly, measuring his words: "No man--not even you can insult me and get
away with it. I'm as good a man as I ever was, and I'll prove it if
you'll step outside."

"You couldn't prove nothin' to nobody, noway. Kitty told me you'd gone
to hell--but, I didn't know you'd gone on plumb through."

Brent sank weakly into his chair and began to whimper: "I'm as good a
man as I ever was," he sniveled.

"Shut up!" Camillo Bill's fist struck the table, "It makes me mad to
look at you! You're a hell of a lookin' object. You won't winter
through. They'll find you froze some mornin' half ways between here an'
some saloon."

"I won't be here when winter comes. I'm going to hit the trail when
snow flies, with a dog outfit."

"Where do you aim to go?"

"Over beyond the Mackenzie. Over in the Coppermine River country.
There's gold over there, and there aren't a million _chechakos_ gouging
for it."

Camillo Bill roared with laughter: "Over beyond the Mackenzie! Picked
you out the roughest an' the furtherest place to go there is. An'
nuthin' there when you get there--only you'd never get there. You ain't
got the strength nor the guts to cross Indian River--let alone the
Mackenzie. An' besides, where do you aim to get your outfit?"

"I'll work in the sawmill till I get enough, or anyone will grub-stake
me--you will."

"I will--like hell! An' no one else won't, neither. You'd never buy
nothin' but hooch if they did."

A gleam of hope flashed into Brent's eyes: "Say," he asked, "How about
my claims? You must have taken out your million by this time."

Camillo Bill smiled and his eyes never wavered as they met Brent's gaze:
"Petered plumb out," he said, "That's what I come to tell you about.
They ain't an ounce left in 'em."

"Did you get yours?" asked Brent dully. "If you didn't, just let me know
how much you are shy, and I'll make it good--when I make my strike, over
beyond the Mackenzie."

This time the other did not laugh. His fists clenched, and he muttered
under his breath: "All gone to hell--puffed an' bloated, an' rotten
with hooch--an' still square as a brick school house!" For a long time
he sat silent, staring at the floor.

Brent poured himself another drink: "How much are you shy?" he repeated.

The words roused Camillo Bill from a brown study: "Huh?" he asked.

"I said, how much are you shy of that million?"

"Oh, I don't know yet. I ain't cleaned up the tailin' of the dump. It
ain't goin' to be so far off, though. I'll let you know later." He got
up and crossed to the door. "So long," he said, and without waiting for
Brent's adieu, struck out at a fast walk for Stoell's where he found old
Bettles and Swiftwater Bill drinking at the bar with Moosehide Charlie,
who was telling of a fresh strike on a nameless creek to the westward.

Camillo Bill motioned the three to a small table, and when they were
seated he ordered the drinks: "We got a job to do," he announced,
plunging straight into his subject, "An' we got to do it thorough."

"Meanin' which?" asked Bettles.

"Meanin' to kidnap a man, an' hide him out fer a year, an' make him work
like hell every minute he ain't sleepin' or eatin'."

"That sounds like a hell of a contrack," opined Swiftwater Bill. "Who's
goin' to keep him workin', an' what at, an' what for?"

"For the good of his soul," grinned Camillo, "The spark of a man's
there yet--an' a damn good man. But if we all don't git down an' blow
like hell the spark's goin' out."

"Clear as mulligan," grinned Moosehide Charlie.

Camillo Bill looked into the faces of his companions: "Anyone saw
Ace-In-The-Hole, lately?" he asked.

Bettles shook his head, and Swiftwater Bill spoke up: "I seen him about
a month ago--bought him a drink. He's on the toboggan."

Moosehide Charlie broke in: "I ain't seen him since spring when he saved
me from gettin' doped in Cuter Malone's. Cuter floored him with a bottle
an' Kitty an' I got him home an' she looked after him till he got
better. I give her a sack of dust to give him, but he wouldn't take
it--throw'd it out in the snow, an' Kitty dug it out an' brung it back.
If you all is figgerin' on gettin' up a stake fer him, let me in I'll go
as high as the next."

Camillo Bill shook his head: "Nothin' doin' on the stake stuff. He
wouldn't take it, an' if he did it would be the worst thing we could do
to him. He'd blow it all in fer hooch. I went over to his cabin just now
to turn back his claims. I've took out my million, an' only worked one
of 'em. An' it ain't worked half out. They must be two or three million
in 'em yet. Kitty told me the hooch had got him right--but she didn't
tell it strong enough. He's in a hell of a shape, an' thinks he's as
good a man as he ever was. He's dirty, an' ragged, an' bloated with
hooch an' broke--an' yet, by God--he's a man! When I seen how things
was, I decided not to say anything about the claims because if he got
holt of 'em now, he'd blow 'em in as fast as he could get out the dust.
But, after a while he asked me, an' I told him they'd petered out. He
never batted an eye, but he says, 'Did you get out your million?
'Cause,' he says, 'if you didn't just tell me how much you're shy, an'
I'll make it good!' He thinks he's goin' somewhere over beyond the
Mackenzie when the snow comes--but, hell--he ain't in no shape to go
nowheres. What we got to do is jest na'chelly steal him, an' put him in
a cabin somewheres way out in the hills, an' hire a couple of guards for
him, an' keep him workin' for a whole damn year. It'll nearly kill him
at first, but it'll put him back where he was, if it don't kill him--an'
if it does, it's better to die workin' than to freeze to death drunk
like McMann did."

"I got the place to put him," said Swiftwater, "The claim's no good, but
it's way to hell an' gone from here, an' there's a cabin on it."

"Just the ticket," agreed Camillo.

"We better send out quite a bunch of hooch. So he can kind of taper
off," suggested Moosehide Charlie.

"Taper--hell!" cried Bettles, "If you taper off, you taper on agin. I
know. The way to quit is to quit."

"We'll figger that out," laughed Camillo, "The best way is to ask the
doc. I'll tend to that, an' I'll get a guard hired, an' see about grub
an' tools and stuff. We'll meet here a week from tonight an' pull the
deal off, an' Swiftwater he can go along fer guide--only you don't want
to let him see you. I'll get guards that he don't know, an' that don't
know him. We'll have to pay 'em pretty good, but it's worth it."

Old Bettles nodded: "He was a damn good man, onct."

"An' he'll be agin'!" exclaimed Camillo, "If he lives through it. His
heart's right."

And so they parted, little thinking that when they would gather for the
carrying out of their scheme, Brent would have disappeared as completely
as though the earth had swallowed him up.




CHAPTER IX

SNOWDRIFT RETURNS TO THE BAND


As Snowdrift plodded mile after mile, in her flight from the mission,
her brain busied itself with her problem, and the first night beside her
little campfire she laid her plans for the future. In her heart was no
bitterness against old Wananebish--only compassion that resolved itself
into an intense loyalty and a determination to stay with her and to
lighten the burden that the years were heaping upon her. For she knew of
the old woman's intense love for her, and the hardships she willingly
endured to keep her in school at the mission. The blame was the white
man's blame--the blame of the man who was her father.

Her face burned hot and her eyes flashed as her hatred of white men grew
upon her. Gladly would she have opened her veins and let out the last
drop of white blood that coursed the length of them. At least she could
renounce the white man's ways--his teachings, and his very language.
From now on she was Indian--and yet, again came that fleeting, elusive
_memory_--always, ever since she had been a little girl there had been
the _memory_, and when it came she would close her eyes, and press her
hands to her head and try and try in vain to grasp it--to bring the
picture clean-cut to her mind. Then the _memory_ would fade away--but it
would return again, in a month--a year--always it would return--a log
cabin--wind-tossed waters--a beautiful white woman who held her close--a
big man with a beard upon his face like McTavish, the factor. At first
she had told Wananebish of the _memory_, but she had laughed and said
that it was the wives of the different factors and traders at the posts
who were wont to make much of the little girl when the band came to
trade. The explanation never quite satisfied Snowdrift, but she accepted
it for want of a better. Was it a flash of memory from another
existence? There was the book she had borrowed from Father Ambrose, the
peculiar book that she did not understand, and that Father Ambrose said
he did not understand, and did not want to understand, for it was all
about some heathenish doctrine. She wondered if it could not be possible
that people lived over and over again, as the book said, and if so, why
couldn't they remember? Maybe last time she had been a white girl, and
this time she was a half-breed, and the next time she would be an
Indian--she wouldn't wait till next time! She was an Indian now. She
hated the white men.

And so it went as hour on hour she worked her plans for the future. She
knew that Wananebish was getting old, that she was losing her grip on
the band. Many of the older ones had died, and many of the younger ones
had deserted, and those who were left were dissatisfied, and always
grumbling. There were only eighteen or twenty of them all told, now, and
they preferred to hang about along the rivers, trapping just enough fur
to make a scanty living and pay for the hooch that the free-traders
brought in. They were a degenerate lot and old Wananebish had grown
weary in trying to get them back into the barrens where there was gold.
They scoffed at the gold. There had been so little of it found in so
many years of trying--yet she had not been able to get them to leave the
vicinity of the river. But, now, to the river had come news of the great
gold strike beyond the mountains to the westward. Snowdrift reasoned
that if there were gold to the westward there would be gold also to the
eastward, especially as Wananebish knew that it was there--had even
found some of it long years ago. Maybe they would go, now--far back into
the barrens, far, far away from Henri of the White Water.

Upon the fourth day after her departure from the mission, the girl
walked into the camp of the little band of non-treaty Indians. Straight
to the tepee of Wananebish, she went--to the only mother she had ever
known. The old squaw received her with open arms, and with much
wondering, for upon her last visit to the mission the good Sister
Mercedes had told her that Snowdrift would go and continue her studies
at the great convent in the far away land of the white man. It was the
thing she had most feared to hear, yet, by not so much as the flicker of
an eyelash did she betray her soul-hurt. All the long years of
deception, during which MacFarlane's note book had lain wrapped in its
waterproof wrappings and jealously guarded in the bottom of the moss bag
had gone for naught. For it was to guard against the girl's going to the
land of the white man that the deception had been practiced. None but
she knew that no drop of Indian blood coursed through the veins of the
girl, and she knew that once firmly established among her own people she
would never return to the North. At that time she had almost yielded to
the impulse to tell the truth to them, and to spread the proofs before
them--almost, but not quite, for as long as the girl believed herself to
be half Indian there was a chance that she would return, and so the
squaw had held her peace, and now here was the girl herself--here in the
tepee, and she had brought her all her belongings. Wananebish plied her
with questions, but the girl's answers were brief, and spoken in the
Indian tongue, a thing that greatly surprised and troubled the old
woman, for since babyhood, the girl had despised the speech of the
Indians.

The two prepared supper in silence, and in silence they ate it. And for
a long time they sat close together and silent beside the mosquito
smudge of punk and green twigs. The eyes of the old squaw closed and she
crooned softly from pure joy, for here beside her was the only being in
the world that she loved. Her own baby, the tiny red mite she had
deposited that day upon the blanket in the far away post at Lashing
Water, had died during that first winter. The crooning ceased abruptly,
and the black, beady eyes flashed open. But why was she here? And for
how long? She must know. Why did not the girl speak? The silence became
unbearable even to this woman who all her life had been a creature of
silence. Abruptly she asked the question: "Are you not going to the land
of the white men?"

And quick as a flash came the answer in the Indian tongue: "_I hate the
white men!_" The suppressed passion behind the words brought a low
inarticulate cry to the lips of the squaw. She reached for the sheath
knife at her belt, and the sinews upon the back of the hand that grasped
it stood out like whip cords. The black eyes glittered like the eyes of
a snake, and the lips curled back in a snarl of hate, so that the yellow
fangs gleamed in the wavering light of a tiny flame that flared from the
smouldering fire.

Words came in a hoarse croak: "Who is he? I will cut his heart out!"

Then the hand of the girl was laid soothingly upon her arm, and again
she spoke words in the Indian tongue: "No, no, not that."

The old squaw's muscles relaxed as she felt the arm of the girl steal
about her shoulders. The knife slipped back into its sheath, as her body
was drawn close against the girl's. For a long time they sat thus in
silence, and then the girl rose, for she was very tired. At the door of
the tepee she paused: "There are some good white men," she said, "Tell
me again, was my father a good white man?"

Still seated beside the fire the old squaw nodded slowly, "A good white
man--yes. He is dead."

The eyes of the girl sought with penetrating glance the face beside the
fire. Was there veiled meaning in those last words? Snowdrift thought
not, and entering the tepee she crept between her blankets.

When the sound of the girl's breathing told that she slept old
Wananebish stole noiselessly into the tepee and, emerging a moment later
with the old moss bag, she poked at the fire with a stick, and threw on
some dry twigs, and seated herself in the light of the flickering
flames. She thrust her hand into the bag and withdrew a packet from
which she undid the wrappings. Minutes passed as she sat staring at the
notebook of MacFarlane, and at the package of parchment deer-skin still
secure in its original wrapping. For never had the squaw touched a
dollar of the money left in her care for the maintainance and education
of the girl. Poor as she was Wananebish had kept Snowdrift in school,
had clothed and fed her solely by her own efforts, by the fruits of her
hunting and trapping. All during the years she had starved, and saved,
and driven shrewd bargains that the girl might receive education, even
as she herself had received education.

And, now, tonight, she knew that the girl had been suddenly made to
realize that she was one of those born out of wedlock, and the shame of
it was heavy upon her. The old woman's heart beat warm as she realized
that the girl held no blame for her--only an intense hatred for the
white men, one of whose race had wrought the supposed wrong.

For a long time Wananebish sat beside the fire her heart torn by
conflicting emotions. She knew right from wrong. She had not the excuse
of ignorance of the ethics of conduct, for she, too, had been an apt
pupil at the mission school. And for nearly nineteen years she had been
living a lie. And during those years right had struggled against love a
thousand times--and always love had won--the savage, selfish love that
bade her keep the object of her affections with her in the Northland.
Upon the death of her baby soon after the visit of MacFarlane, her whole
life centered upon the tiny white child. In the spring when the band
moved, she had left false directions in the caribou skull beside the
river, and instead of heading for Lashing Water to deliver the babe to
old Molaire, she had headed northward, and upon the third day had come
upon the remains of a sled, and a short distance farther on, a rifle,
and a sheath knife--the same that now swung at her own belt, and which
bore upon its inside surface, the legend "Murdo MacFarlane." A thousand
times she had been upon the point of telling the girl of her parentage,
and turning over to her the packet, but always the fear was upon her
that she would forsake the North, and seek the land of her own people.
Years before, when she had entered the girl at the mission, she had
smothered the temptation to tell all, and to deliver the packet to the
priest. But instead, she invented the story of her illegitimate birth
and accepted the shame. She knew from the first that Sister Mercedes
doubted the tale, that she believed the girl to be white, but she
stoutly held to her story, nor deviated from it so much as a hair's
breadth, during years of periodical questioning.

But now? What should she do now that the girl herself was suffering
under the stigma of her birth? Should she tell her the truth and deliver
to her the packet of her father? If she did would not the girl turn upon
her with hatred, even as she had turned against the people of her own
race? Should she remain silent, still living the lie she had lived all
these years, and thus keep at her side the girl she loved with the
savage mother love of a wild beast? Was it not the girl's right to know
who she was, and if she so willed, to go among her own people, and to go
among them with unsullied name? Clearly this was her right. Wananebish
admitted the right, and the admission strengthened her purpose. Slowly
she rose from the fire and with the packet and the notebook in her hand,
stepped to the door of the tepee and stood listening to the breathing of
the sleeping girl. She would slip the packet beneath the blankets, and
then--and then--she, herself would go away--and stay until the girl had
gone out of the North. Then she would come back to her people. Her eyes
swept the group of tepees that

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