A STORY IS BEGUN
"It's fonny t'ing how two brown eye
Was changin' everything--
De cloud she's no more on de sky,
An' winter's jus' lak' spring
Dey mak' my pack so very light,
De trail, she's not so long--
I'd walk it forty mile to-night
For hear her sing wan song
But now I'm busy mak' fortune
For marry on dat girl,
An' if she's tole me yass, dat's soon,
Bonheur! I'm own de worl'!"
Poleon Doret sang gayly as the trader came towards him through the open
grove of birch, for he was happy this afternoon, and, being much of a
dreamer, this fresh enterprise awoke in him a boyish pleasure. Then
Necia had teased him as he came away, and begged him, as was always her
custom, to take her with him, no matter whence or whither, so long as
there was adventure afoot. Well, it would not be long now before he
could say yes, and he would take her on a journey far longer than
either of them had yet taken--a journey that would never end. Had not
the gods looked with favor, at last, upon his long novitiate, and been
pleased with the faith he had kept? Had not this discovery of "No
Creek" Lee's been providentially arranged for his own especial benefit?
A fool could see that this was a mark of celestial approbation, and
none but a fool would question the wisdom of the gods. Had he not
watched the girl grow from a slip of thirteen and spoken never a word
of his love? Had he not served and guarded her with all the gentle
chivalry of an olden knight? Of course! And here was his reward, a gift
of wealth to crown his service, all for her. Now that she was a woman,
and had seen him tried, and knew he was a man, he would bring his
burden of prosperity and lay it at her feet, saying:
"Here is another offering, my Necia, and with it go the laughter and
the music and the heart of Poleon Doret."
Sacré! It would not take her long to wake up after that! The world was
very bright indeed this afternoon, and he burst again into song in
company with the voices of the forest people:
"Chanté, rossignol, chanté!
Toi qui à le coeur gai;
Tu as le coeur à rire
Mai j' l' ai-tà pleurer,
Il y a longtemps que j' t'aime
Jamais je ne t'oublierai."
[Footnote:
"Sing, little bird, oh, sing away!
You with the voice so light and gay!
Yours is a heart that laughter cheers,
Mine is a hearts that's full of tears.
Long have I loved, I love her yet;
Leave her I can, but not forget."]
"Whew!" said Gale, slipping out of his pack-straps, "the skeeters is
bad."
"You bet your gum boots," said Poleon. "Dey're mos' so t'ick as de
summer dey kill Johnnie Platt on de Porcupine." Both men wore
gauntleted gloves of caribou-skin and head harnesses of
mosquito-netting stretched over globelike frames of thin steel bands,
which they slipped on over their hats after the manner of divers'
helmets, for without protection of some kind the insects would have
made travel impossible once the Yukon breezes were left behind or once
the trail dipped from the high divides where there was no moss.
"Let's see. It was you that found him, wasn't it?" said Gale.
"Sure t'ing! I'm comin' down for grub in my canoe, w'en I see dis
feller on de bank, walkin' lak' he's in beeg horry. 'Ba Gar!' I say,
'dere's man goin' so fast he'll meet hese'f comin' home!' Den he turn
roun' an' go tearin' back, wavin' hees arms lak' he's callin' me, till
he fall down. Wen I paddle close up, I don' know 'im no more dan
stranger, an' me an' Johnnie Platt is trap togeder wan winter. Wat you
t'ink of dat?"
"I saw a fellow killed that way at Holy Cross," interpolated the trader.
"'Hello,' I say, 'w'at's de matter?' An' den I see somet'ing 'bout 'im
dat look familiar. Hees face she's all swell' up an' bleedin' lak' raw
meat." The Frenchman curled his upper lip back from his teeth and shook
his head at the remembrance.
"Jesu, dat's 'orrible sight! Dem fly is drive 'im crazee. Hees nose an'
ears is look lak' holes in beeg red sponge, an' hees eye are close up
tight."
"He died before you got him in, didn't he?"
"Yes. He was good man, too. Some tam' if I ever have bad enemy w'at I
like to see catch hell I'm goin' turn 'im loose 'mong dose skeeter-bug."
"Holy Mackinaw!" ejaculated Gale. "Who'd ever think of that? Why,
that's worse than dropping water on his skull till he goes crazy, like
them Chinamen do."
The Frenchman nodded. "It's de wors' t'ing I know. Dat's w'y I lak' to
geeve it to my enemy."
"Imagine fightin' the little devils till they stung you crazy and
pizened your eyes shut!"
Gale fell to considering this, while Poleon filled his pipe, and,
raising his veil, undertook to smoke. The pests proved too numerous,
however, and forced him to give it up.
"Bagosh! Dey're hongry!"
"It will be all right when we get out of the woods," said the elder man.
"I guess you been purty glad for havin' Necia home again, eh?" ventured
the other after a while, unable to avoid any longer the subject
uppermost in his mind.
"Yes, I'm glad she's through with her schooling."
"She's gettin' purty beeg gal now."
"That's right."
"By-an'-by she's goin' marry on some feller--w'at?"
"I suppose so. She ain't the kind to stay single."
"Ha! Dat's right, too. Mebbe you don' care if she does get marry, eh?"
"Not if she gets a man that will treat her right."
"Wal! Wal! Dere's no trouble 'bout dat," exclaimed Doret, fervently.
"No man w'at's livin' could treat her bad. She's too good an' too purty
for have bad husban'."
"She is, is she?" Gale turned on him with a strange glare in his eyes.
"Them's the kind that get the he-devils. There's something about a good
girl that attracts a bad man, particularly if she's pretty; and it goes
double, too--the good men get the hellions. A fellow can't get so tough
but what he can catch a good woman, and a decent man usually draws a
critter that looks like a sled and acts like a timber wolf."
"Necia wouldn't marry on no bad man," said Doret, positively.
"No?" said Gale. "Let me tell you what I saw with my own eyes. I knew a
girl once that was just as good and pure as Necia, and just as pretty,
too--yes, and a thousand times prettier."
"Ho, ho!" laughed Doret, sceptically.
"She was an Eastern girl, and she come West where men were different to
what she'd been used to. Those were early days, and it was a new
country, where a person didn't know much about his neighbor's past and
cared less; and, although there were a heap of girls thereabouts, they
were the kind you'll always find in such communities, while this one
was plumb different. Man! Man! But she was different. She was a WOMAN!
Two fellows fell in love with her. One of them lived in the same camp
as her, and he was a good man, leastways everybody said he was, but he
wasn't wise to all the fancy tricks that pretty women hanker after;
and, it being his first affair, he was right down buffaloed at the very
thought of her, so he just hung around and slept late so that he might
dream about her and feel like he was her equal or that she loved back
at him. You know! The other fellow came from a neighboring town, and he
wasn't the same kind, for he'd knocked around more, and was a better
liar, but he wasn't right. No, sir! He was sure a wrong guy, as it came
out, but he was handsomer and younger, and the very purity and
innocence of the girl drew him, I reckon, being a change from what he
had ever mixed up with."
"W'y don' dis good man tak' a shot at him?" asked Poleon, hotly.
"First, he didn't realize what was going on, being too tied up with
dreaming, I reckon; and, second, neither man didn't know the other by
sight, living as they did in different parts; third, he was an ordinary
sort of fellow, and hadn't ever had any trouble, man to man, at that
time. Anyhow, the girl up and took the bad one."
"Wat does de good man do, eh?"
"Well, he was all tore up about it, but he went away like a sick quail
hides out."
"Dat's too bad."
"He heard about them now and then, and what he heard tore him up worse
than the other had, for the girl's husband couldn't wear the harness
long, and, having taken away what good there was in her, he made up in
deviltry for the time he had lost. She stood it pretty well, and never
whimpered, even when her eyes were open and she saw what a
prize-package she had drawn. The fact that she was game enough to stand
for him and yet keep herself clean without complaint made the man
worse. He tried to break her spirit in a thousand ways, tried to make
her the same as he was, tried to make her a bad woman, like the others
he had known. It appeared like the one pleasure he got was to torture
her."
"W'y don' she quit 'im?" said Doret. "Dat ain' wrong for quit a man
lak' him."
"She couldn't quit on account of the kid. They had a youngster. Then,
too, she had ideas of her own; so she stood it for three years, living
worse than a dog, till she saw it wasn't any use--till she saw that he
would make a bad woman of her as sure as he would make one of the
kid--till he got rough--"
"No! No! You don' mean dat? No man don' hurt no woman," interjected
Doret.
"By God! That's just what I mean," the trader answered, while his face
had grown so gray as to match his brows. "He beat her."
Poleon broke into French words that accorded well with the trader's
harsh voice.
"The woman sent for the other man after that, for he had been living
lonely, loving her all the time, and you'd better believe he went."
"Ha! Dat's fine! Dat's dam' fine!" said the other. "I'll bet dere's
hell to pay den--w'at?"
"Yes, there was a kind of reckoning." The old man lapsed into moody
silence, the younger one waiting eagerly for him to continue, but there
came the sound of voices down the trail, and they looked up.
"Here comes Lee," said Gale.
"Wat happen' den? I'm got great interes' 'bout dis woman," insisted
Poleon.
"It's a long story, and I just told you this much to show what I said
was true about a good girl and a bad man, and to show why I want Necia
to get a good one. The sooner it happens the better it will suit me."
Neither man had ever spoken thus openly to the other about Necia
before, and although their language was indirect, each knew the other's
thought. But there was no time for further talk now, for the others
were close upon them. As they came into view, Gale exclaimed:
"Well, if he hasn't brought Runnion along!"
"Humph!" grunted Doret. "I don' t'ink much of dat feller. Wat's de
matter wit' 'No Creek,' anyhow?"
The three new arrivals dropped down upon the moss to rest, for the
up-trail was heavy and the air sultry inside the forest. Lee was the
first to speak.
"Did you get away without bein' seen?" he asked.
"Sure," answered Gale. "Poleon has been here two hours."
"That's good; I don't want nobody taggin' along."
"We came right through the town boldly," announced Stark; "but if they
had seen you two they would have suspected something, sure."
Runnion volunteered nothing except oaths at the mosquitoes and at his
pack-straps, which were new and cut him already. As no explanation of
his presence was offered, neither the trader nor Doret made any comment
then, but it came out later, when the old miner dropped far enough
behind the others to render conversation possible.
"You decided to take in another one, eh?" Gale asked Lee.
"It wasn't exactly my doin's," replied the miner. "Stark asked me to
let Runnion come 'long, bein' as he had grub-staked him, and he seemed
so set on it that I ackeressed. You see, it's the first chance I ever
had to pay him back for a favor he done me in the Cassiar country.
There's plenty of land to go around."
It was Lee's affair, thought the trader, and he might tell whom he
liked, so he said no more, but fell to studying the back of the man
next in front, who happened to be Stark, observing every move and trick
of him, and, during the frequent pauses, making a point of listening
and watching him guardedly.
All through the afternoon the five men wound up the valley, following
one another's footsteps, emerging from sombre thickets of fir to
flounder across wide pastures of "nigger-heads," that wobbled and
wriggled and bowed beneath their feet, until at cost of much effort and
profanity they gained the firmer footing of the forest. Occasionally
they came upon the stream, and found easier going along its gravel
bars, till a bend threw them again into the meadows and mesas on either
hand. Their course led them far up the big valley to another stream
that entered from the right, bearing backward in a great bow towards
the Yukon, and always there were dense clouds of mosquitoes above their
heads. At one point Stark, hot and irritable, remarked:
"There must be a shorter cut than this, Lee?"
"I reckon there is," the miner replied, "but I've always had a pack to
carry, so I chose the level ground ruther than climb the divides."
"S'pose dose people at camp hear 'bout dis strike an' beat us in?"
suggested Poleon.
"It wouldn't be easy going for them after they got there," Stark said,
sourly. "I, for one, wouldn't stand for it."
"Nor I," agreed Runnion.
"I don't see how you'd help yourself," the trader remarked. "One man's
got as good a right as another."
"I guess I'd help myself, all right," Stark laughed, significantly, as
did Runnion, who added:
"Lee is entitled to put in anybody he wants on his own discovery, and
if anybody tries to get ahead of us there's liable to be trouble."
"I reckon if I don't know no short-cut, nobody else does," Lee
remarked, whereupon Doret spoke up reassuringly:
"Dere's no use gettin' scare' lak' dat, biccause nobody knows w'ere
Lee's creek she's locate' but John an' me, an' dere's nobody w'at knows
he mak' de strike but us four."
"That's right," said Gale; "the only other way across is by Black Bear
Creek, and there ain't a half-dozen men ever been up to the head of
that stream, much less over the divide, so I don't allow there's any
use to fret ourselves."
They went on their way, travelling leisurely until late evening, when
they camped at the mouth of the valley up which the miner's cabin lay.
They chose a long gravel bar, that curved like a scimitar, and made
down upon its outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of
insects. They were all old-stagers in the ways of camplife, so there
was no lost motion or bickering as to their respective duties. Their
preparations were simple. First they built a circle of smudges out of
wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks,
upon which he cooked, protected by the smoke of the others, while Gale
went back to the edge of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the
branches of which he clipped. These Poleon and Runnion bore down to the
end of the spit for bedding, while Stark chopped a pile of dry wood for
the night. Gale noted that the new man swung an axe with the free
dexterity of one to whom its feel was familiar, also that he never made
a slip nor dulled it on the gravel of the bar, displaying an all-round
completeness and a knack of doing things efficiently that won reluctant
approval from the trader despite the unreasoning dislike he had taken
to him.
Lee was ready for them by the time they had finished their tasks, and,
fanned by the breeze that sucked up the stream and lulled by the
waters, they ate their scanty supper. Their one-eyed guide had lived so
long among mosquitoes and had become so inoculated with their poison
that he was in a measure impervious to their sting, hence the insects
gathered on his wrinkled, hair-grown hide only to give up in melancholy
disgust and fly to other and fuller-blooded feeding-grounds. Camp had
been made early, at Gale's suggestion, instead of pushing on a few
miles farther, as Lee had intended; and now, when the cool evening fell
and the draught quickened, it became possible to lay off gloves and
head-gear; so they sat about the fire, talking, smoking, and rubbing
their tired feet.
It is at such hours and in the smoke of such fires that men hark
backward and bring forth the sacred, time-worn memories they have
treasured, to turn them over fondly by the glow of dying embers. It is
at such times that men's garrulity asserts itself, for the barriers of
caution are let down, as are the gates of remembrance, and it is then
that friends and enemies are made, for there are those who cannot
listen and others who cannot understand.
"No Creek" Lee, the one-eyed miner who had made this lucky strike, told
in simple words of his long and solitary quest, when ill-luck had risen
with him at the dawn and misfortune had stalked beside him as he
drifted and drank from camp to camp, while the gloom of a settled
pessimism soured him, and men began to shun him because of the evil
that seemed to follow in his steps.
"I've been rainbow-chasin' forty years," he said, "and never caught
nothin' but cramps and epidemics and inflammations. I'm the only miner
in Alaska that never made a discovery of gold and never had a creek
named after him."
"Is that how you got your name?" asked Runnion.
"It is. I never was no good to myself nor nobody else. I just occupied
space. I've been the vermifuge appendix of the body politic; yes,
worse'n that--I've been an appendix with a seed in it. I made myself
sore, and everybody around me, but I'm at the bat now, and don't you
never let that fact escape you."
"How are you going to spend your money?" inquired Stark.
"I'm goin' to eat it up! I've fed on dried and desiccated and other
disastrous and dissatisfactory diets till I'm all shrivelled up inside
like a dead puff-ball; now it's me for the big feed and the long drink.
I'm goin' to 'Frisco and get full of wasteful and exorbitant grub, of
one kind and another, like tomatters and French vicious water."
Poleon Doret laughed with the others; he was bubbling with the spirits
of a boy whose life is clean, for whom there are no eyes in the black
dark that lies beyond a camp-fire, and for whom there are no
unforgettable faces in its smoke. When Lee fell silent the trader and
Stark resumed their talk, which was mainly of California, it seemed to
the Frenchman, who also noted that it was his friend who subtly shaped
the topics. In time their stories revived his memory of the
conversation in the birch grove that morning, and when there occurred a
lapse in the talk he said:
"Say, John, w'at happen' to dat gal we was talkin' 'bout dis mornin'?"
Gale shook his head and turned again to his companion, but the young
man's mind was bent on its quest, and he continued:
"Dat was strange tale, for sure."
"What was it?" questioned Runnion.
"John was tell 'bout a feller he knowed w'at marry a good gal jus' to
mak' her bad lak' hese'f."
"How's that?" inquired Stark, turning curiously upon the old man; but
Gale knocked the ashes from his pipe and replied:
"Oh, it's a long story--happened when I was in Washington State."
Poleon was about to correct him--it was California, he had said--when
Gale arose, remarking sleepily that it was time to turn in if they
wished to get any rest before the mosquitoes got bad again, then
sauntered away from the fire and spread his blanket. The rest followed
and made down their beds; then, drawing on gloves and hat-nets, and
rolling themselves up in their coverings, fell to snoring. All except
the trader, who lay for hours on his back staring up at the stars, as
if trying to solve some riddle that baffled him.
They awoke early, and in half an hour had eaten, remade their packs,
and were ready to resume their march. As they were about to start, Gale
said:
"I reckon we'd better settle right now who has the choice of locations
when we get up yonder. I've been on stampedes where it saved a heap of
hard feeling."
"I'm agreeable," said Stark. "Then there won't be any misunderstanding."
The others, being likewise old at the game, acquiesced. They knew that
in such cases grave trouble has often occurred when two men have cast
eyes on the same claim, and have felt the miner's causeless "hunch"
that gold lies here or there, or that the ground one of them covets is
wanted by the other.
"I'll hold the straws," said Lee, "and every feller will have an even
break." Turning his back on the others, he cut four splinters of
varying lengths, and, arranging them so that the ends peeped evenly
from his big hand, he held them out.
"The longest one has the first choice, and so on," he said, presenting
them to Gale, who promptly drew the longest of the four. He turned to
Doret, but the Frenchman waved him courteously to Stark, and, when both
he and Runnion had made their choice, Lee handed him the remaining one,
which was next in length to that of the trader. Stark and Runnion
qualified in the order they drew, the latter cursing his evil luck.
"Never min', ole man," laughed Poleon, "de las' shot she's de sure wan."
They took up their burdens again, and filed towards the narrow valley
that stretched away into the hazy distances.