The Fates, in weaving the intricate web of human lives, smile grimly
oftentimes over the curious intermingling of the threads. Often, too,
the incomplete design might well move them to a cruel mirth, but that
they see beyond the seeming tangle of events to the perfecting of their
pattern at the last. So, perhaps, they are content of their task, though
we mortals, with short-sighted eyes, seeing dimly, look on the
happenings of our lives as the blessed or the baneful work of chance.
Thus, now, the Fates had brought here, beneath the flickering of the
Northern Lights, all the actors in the drama of the years agone, when
the happiness of a home had been shattered by a villain's ruthless
passion. Their presence within a short radius of miles had every
appearance of purest chance. Nevertheless, the Fates had brought them
within reach of one another, that thus the seeming snarl in the threads
of these lives might be shown as in fact untangled and woven into a
design just and harmonious and beautiful.
Dan McGrew moved sociably among the men of the village, as they
celebrated the wedding with many jovial libations. He was
hail-fellow-well-met with each and all, for it had come to be a matter
of professional necessity with him to attain a fair measure of
popularity whithersoever he went. He had deteriorated much with the
passage of the years. He had sunk to be a common gambler, and on
occasion had not scrupled at worse methods in pursuit of ill-gotten
gains. To-day his keen eyes were speedily drawn to one of the men, who
was especially lavish in hospitality.
"Who is he?" Dan asked of the bar-tender. "Seems flush, all right."
"That's Sam Ward," was the answer. "He's got a hole somewhere up in the
hills, which nobody don't know nothin' about--'cept it's cussed rich.
Sam blows a pokeful o' dust ev'ry time he hits town."
Dan eyed the fortunate prospector greedily, and his predatory instinct
brought him to a quick decision. He went to Lou, who was sitting,
drearily enough, alone at a table in a corner of the room. He spoke to
her softly, that none might overhear, though of this there was little
danger amid the noise of rollicking gayety.
"There's a chap here I mean to chum up with a bit," Dangerous Dan
explained. "I'll introduce him, and you must be nice enough to him to
make him talk."
The woman nodded assent. For it had come to such a pass. Often, she had
stooped to play decoy for the man in his schemes against his fellows.
Dan McGrew had persistently lied to this woman. By his arts he had
ruined her life. But Lou had still no inkling of the truth. One great
fact was impressed upon her as time passed: This man loved her--and he
was loyal to her. Since she had lost everything dear, it seemed her
duty to give the worthless remnant of her life to the one who thus
esteemed it something precious.
* * * * *
When Lou returned to consciousness, after the fever and delirium that
seized her the dreadful night of the flight from home, her first
question was concerning the drowned child.
The man at the bedside met her imploring gaze steadfastly, and spoke his
falsehoods so convincingly that she had never a doubt. The river had
been searched with every care, he declared. The body had not been found.
The bereaved mother had been denied the last pitiful solace of grief--a
place of burial wherein to mourn over the lost.
After the final deprivation, Lou was apathetic. The light had gone out
of her life. She was numb with misery. Her most distinct emotion was a
sort of passive gratitude toward the man who had so frightfully wronged
her. It was in obedience to the promptings of this feeling that Lou
meekly accepted his every suggestion. She did so with the more
readiness because these suggestions were so skillfully contrived as to
seem the epitome of unselfishness.
Thus, for example, there was the matter of divorce. Dan learned that the
kindly woman into whose house he had brought Lou suffered from
nostalgia. She had come out into the West with an eager, improvident
husband, who had died and left her with this tiny home, on which the
mortgage of a few hundreds rested as a burden beyond her strength to
remove. She was sick with longing to go back among the home-folk. Dan's
sympathetic voice and candid, honest eyes won confidence from the lonely
old woman. And, too, she quickly grew fond of the invalid in her house.
Therefore, she had no hesitation in acceding to the proposal made to her
by Dan McGrew: that she should travel to the East with Lou, as nurse and
companion. The money offered to her by Dan McGrew for these services was
enough to ease her declining years. Moreover, there was the added
inducement that, in this manner, she would be able to return to the
place for which she longed.
Lou made no objection to the arrangement. She liked the old woman, and
the instinct of flight was still upon her.... She was only grateful to
the man who was at such pains in her behalf.
In due time, the three were duly established in the East. Dangerous Dan,
in the course of his daily visits to Lou from a lodging he had taken
close at hand, guided her thoughts so craftily that, with no suspicion
of having been influenced, the heart-broken woman decided that she
should get a divorce. Dan had chosen a location in a State where
desertion was a sufficient cause. Lou brought suit, and the issue was
expedited in the courts. She believed that thus she gave to her husband
an opportunity to marry the woman with whom he had become infatuated,
and thus, too, an opportunity to restore in some degree his
self-respect.... She could not guess that, owing to the treachery of the
man on whose advice she relied, her husband had no knowledge whatsoever
of these proceedings. The newspapers, with their formal advertisements
to the defendant in the action instituted in the courts, were never
posted to the address of the ranch-owner.... Dan McGrew saw to that.
Eventually, there came a decree _nisi_. In due time, the divorce was
made absolute. Throughout this interval of delay, the man demonstrated
the firmness of his purpose by the patience with which he waited for the
attainment of his ends.
It was not until a year after her flight from home that Lou became the
wife of Dangerous Dan McGrew.... Why should she not give herself to him
who had so befriended her?
* * * * *
The late dawn of the morning after the wedding came on clear, with a
soft wind blowing from the south. Under its gentleness, the sun was able
to thaw the surface of the snow. Then the wind swung to the north.
Within an hour, the crust on the snow, as the Arctic air blew over it,
was strong enough to support a horse. And Dan McGrew and many another
took advantage of the fact. There were a few meagerly fed horses in the
town, remnants from the discontinued Lodestar Mine, which had failed to
pay a profit, after elaborate installation of equipment. They knew that
at the first change of the weather their mounts would become worse than
useless. In the meantime, however, there was a luxury in this form of
travel that appealed. And there were hangers-on in the town, too poor
for a grub-stake, who for a pittance would run on foot with the train,
and afterward take back the horses to the village, when a softer snow
should make them a hindrance rather than a help.
Nell used the voice of wifely authority:
"Why, the idea! Of course I shall go too!" She was all eagerness. For
years she had lived with those who were informed with the spirit of the
frontiers. Her husband, thus far in his battling with the Northland, had
been successful. He had found claims of value. Some of them he had sold;
some of them he had worked. From most of them he had won a deserved
profit. So, when the news of the strike on Forgotten Creek came--even
though it was his wedding-day--Jack Reeves was all agog with
anxiety to be off to this region whither fortune beckoned.... And Nell
would not be left behind. She would follow her husband where fate led.
She would not be denied.
Thus it came about that the bridal pair were among the crowd that surged
in the village street before the Dyea Hotel on the morning after their
wedding. Jack had a team of dogs, the best within hundreds of miles.
They were strong enough to make play of hauling the long sled, laden
with provisions, on which Nell was seated with ease, well-wrapped in
furs, and sheltered beneath a drapery of white--the skin of a polar
bear, which Jack had brought back with him as a trophy of experiences
beneath the Arctic night.
There were in the throng men who had no dogs. They carried on their
backs the small allowance of bacon, beans, flour, tea, coffee, sugar,
tobacco. The adventurers were of all sorts. Some went well supplied.
Others joined in the stampede recklessly. They might starve, or freeze,
out there in the mountains. But they were caught and drawn on by the
lust for riches. Somewhere out there in the cold and the distance gold
was lying. In the sands of the creeks, in the ledges of the mountains,
were the golden flakes, the riches for which each and every one
craved....
[Illustration: THE ADVENTURERS WERE OF ALL SORTS. THEY WERE DRAWN ON BY
THE LUST FOR RICHES.]
The huskies yelped and snarled in fierce rivalry. Harry, the Dog-Man,
snapped his whip with a vicious crack like the report of a gun. The dogs
strained against the breast-straps in their fierce lunge forward. Along
the line was everywhere impetuous, eager movement. The stampede had
begun.
Dangerous Dan McGrew, who rode beside his wife, spoke to her softly, so
that his question would not be overheard by Sam Ward, who rode on her
other side:
"What does he say?"
Lou answered in a whisper:
"He'll leave to-night, when the camp's quiet, for his own claim."