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A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE
By
VICTORIA CROSS
"_Quid non mortalia pectora cogis
Auri sacra fames?_"
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
_A Girl of the Klondike is now issued
in America for the first time
by arrangement with the author._
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I A NIGHT IN TOWN 9
CHAPTER II AT THE WEST GULCH 49
CHAPTER III KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS 99
CHAPTER IV GOD'S GIFT 167
CHAPTER V GOLD-PLATED 211
CHAPTER VI MAMMON'S PAY 265
L'ENVOI 314
CHAPTER I
A NIGHT IN TOWN
Night had fallen over Alaska--black, uncompromising night; a veil of
impenetrable darkness had dropped upon the snow wastes and the
ice-fields and the fettered Yukon, sleeping under its ice-chains, and
upon the cruel passes where the trails had been made by tracks of blood.
Day by day, as long as the light of day--God's glorious gift to man--had
lasted, these trails across the passes, between the snowy peaks, the
peaks themselves, had been the theatre of hideous scenes of human
cruelty, of human lust and greed, of human egoism. Day by day a slow
terrible stream of humanity had wound like a dark and sluggish river
through these passes, bringing with it sweat and toil and agony, torture
and suffering and death. As long as the brilliant sun in the placid
azure of the summer heavens above had guided them, bands of men had
laboured and fought and struggled over these passes, deaf to all pity or
mercy or justice, deaf to all but the clamour of greed within them that
was driving them on, trampling down the weak and the old, crushing the
fallen, each man clutching and grasping his own, hoarding his strength
and even refusing a hand to his neighbour, starving the patient beasts
of burden they had brought with them, friends who were willing to share
their toil without sharing their reward, driving on the poor staggering
strengthless brutes with open knives, and clubbing them to death when
they fell beneath their loads with piteous eyes, or leaving them to
freeze slowly where they lay, pressing forward, hurrying, fighting,
slaughtering, so the men went into the gold camps all the summer, and
the passes were the silent witnesses of the horror of it all and of the
innocent blood shed. Then Nature herself intervened, and winter came
down like a black curtain on the world, and the passes closed up behind
the men and were filled with drifts of snow that covered the bones and
the blood and the deep miry slides, marked with slipping tracks where
struggling, gasping lives had gone out, and the river closed up behind
the men and the ice thickened there daily, and the men were in the camps
and there was no way out.
And now, in the darkness of the winter night, in the coldness in which
no man could live, there was peace. There was no sound, for the snow on
the tall pines never melted and never fell, the water in the creeks was
solid as the rocks and made no murmur, there was no footfall of bird nor
beast, no leaf to rustle, no twig to fall.
But beyond the silent peaks and the desolate passes, beyond the rigid
pines, low down in the darkness, there was a reddish glow in the air, a
strange, yellowish, quivering mist of light that hovered and moved
restlessly, and yet kept its place where it hung suspended between white
earth and black sky. All around was majestic peace and calm and
stillness, nature wrapped in silence, but the flickering, wavering mist
of light jumped feverishly in the darkness and spoke of man. It was the
cloud of restless light that hung over the city of Dawson.
Within the front parlour of the "Pistol Shot," the favourite and most
successful, besides being the most appropriately named saloon in Dawson,
the cold had been pretty well fought down; a huge stove stood at each
end of the room, crammed as full as it would hold with fuel, all windows
were tightly closed, and lamps flared merrily against the white-washed
walls.
At this hour the room was full, and the single door, facing the bar,
was pushed open every half minute to admit one or two or more figures to
join the steaming, drinking, noisy crowd within. It was snowing outside.
As the door swung open one could see the white sheet of falling flakes
in the darkness; the air was full of snow--that cruel, light, dry snow,
fine and sharp like powdered ice, borne down on a North wind. The
figures that entered brought it in with them, the light frosty powder
resting on their furs and lying deep in the upturned rims of their seal
caps.
There had been a successful strike made that afternoon, and the men were
all excited and eager about it. Every one pressed to the "Pistol Shot"
to hear the latest details, to discuss and gossip over it. There was as
much talk as digging done in Dawson. Men who had no chance and no means
to win success, who owned no claims and never saw gold except in another
man's hands, loved to talk work and talk claims and talk gold with the
rest. It was exhilarating and exciting, and there was only that one
topic in the world for them. They were like invalids in a small
community afflicted by a common disease who never meet without
discussing their symptoms. They were all invalids in reality, all
suffering from the same horrible plague and fever, the gold fever that
was eating into their brains.
At one end of the bar counter, between it and the back wall, a girl was
standing idly surveying with indifferent eyes the animated crowd that
moved and swayed round her, the men jostling each other in their efforts
to push up to the thickly surrounded counter. She was tall rather than
short, and her figure well made, showing good lines even in the rough
dress she was wearing; long rubber boots came to her knees, where they
met her short buckskin skirt, and above this, in place of bodice, she
wore merely a rough straight jacket drawn into the waist by a broad
leather belt, in which was stuck, not ostentatiously but still
sufficiently conspicuously a brace of revolvers. Her hair was cut short,
and only a few dark silky rings showed themselves beneath the edge of
her sealskin cap, pushed down close to her dark eyebrows. The dark eyes
beneath looked out upon the scene before her with a half-disdainful,
half-wearied expression which deepened into scorn now and then as she
watched the bar-tender rake over the counter double and three times the
price of a drink in the generous pinch of gold dust laid there by some
miner almost too drunk to stagger to the bar. She had a very attractive
face, to which one's eyes would wander again and again trying to
reconcile the peculiar resolution, even hardness of the expression with
the soft, well-moulded features and the sweet youthful lips full of
freshness and colour. The miners took very little notice of her, and she
certainly made no effort to attract it, leaning listlessly against the
bar with one elbow on the counter, a silent and motionless spectator of
all this excited eager humanity. There was no thought in their mind, no
word on their lips just then but gold. Gold! gold! The thought possessed
them with a grip on their brains like the grip of fever on the body, and
the word sounded pleasant as the sweetest music to their ears. Gold! The
syllable went round and passed from mouth to mouth, till the very air
seemed to be getting a yellow tint above the grey fumes of tobacco.
Amongst the last batch of incomers was a slim young fellow of twenty odd
years, and when he had worked his way with difficulty up to the crowded
counter, he found himself near the girl's corner. She looked at him,
letting her dark eyes wander critically over his face. He formed a
strong contrast to the figures around him, being slight and delicate in
build, with a pale good-looking face that had a tender sympathetic
expression like a woman's. Feeling the girl's gaze upon him, he glanced
her way, and then having looked once, looked again. After a series of
glances between drinks from his glass, the furtive looks began to amuse
the girl, and the next time their eyes met she laughed openly, and they
both spoke simultaneously.
"You're a new comer, aren't you?" she said.
"I haven't seen you here before," was his remark.
"You might have done, I should think," answered the girl carelessly;
"but I don't come here very often, although my father is running this
place."
"Are you Poniatovsky's daughter?" he asked in surprise, unable to
connect this splendid young creature with the ugly little Pole he knew
as the proprietor of the saloon.
The girl nodded. "Yes, Katrine Poniatovsky is my name--what's yours?"
"Stephen Wood," he answered meekly.
"What have you come here for--mining?" she asked next. Although her
queries were direct there was nothing rude in the fresh young voice
making them.
The young fellow coloured deeply, the rush of blood passed over his face
up to his light smooth hair and deep down into his neck till it was lost
beneath his coat collar.
"No--yes--that is--well, I mean--I do mine now," he stammered after a
minute.
The girl said nothing, and when Stephen glanced around at her he saw she
was regarding him with astonished eyes under elevated eyebrows. This
expression made the pretty oval face fairly beautiful, and the young
man's heart opened to her.
"I came with the intention of doing some good here amongst the
people--in a missionary, religious way I mean, but"--and he stopped
again in painful embarrassment.
Katrine laughed.
"For the present you've laid religion aside and you're going to do a
little mining and make a fortune, and then the religion can be taken up
again," she said.
The young fellow only flushed deeper and turned his glass around
nervously on the counter.
"That's all right," the girl said soothingly, after a second. "This
place is a corner of the world where we all are different from what we
are anywhere else. As soon as men come here they get changed. They
forget everything else and just go in for gold. It's a sort of madness
that's in the air. You'd be able to missionise somewhere else all right,
but here you are obliged just to dig like the rest, you can't help it.
Got a claim?"
The young man's face paled again.
"Yes," he answered in a low tone. "It was the claim that tempted me.
It's one of the best, I believe, over in the west gulch, only about ten
miles from here."
There was a pressing movement round them as some fresh miners came
pushing their way through to the bar, and Stephen and Katrine moved
away, to make room for them, towards the wall of the room; they put
their backs against it and looked over the mass of moving heads towards
the door.
"Look at this fellow coming in now," Stephen said to his companion
suddenly, as the door swung open, to a mist of whirling whiteness, and
two or three men entered: "Henry Talbot. He has the claim next mine in
the gulch. He has just struck a fresh lot of gold, and he'll soon be one
of the richest men here."
The girl craned her neck to get a good view between the intervening
heads, and though she had not been told which of the incoming figures
to look at, she fixed her eyes as if by instinct on the right one. A man
of rather tall, slight figure, pale face, and marked features. He made
his way towards the bar, and then catching Stephen's signals to him, he
smiled and came their way.
"What are you doing down here?" he said, speaking to Stephen but looking
at Katrine, who in her turn was scanning his face closely.
"Why, enjoying Miss Poniatovsky's society," answered Stephen, with a
bow. His friend bowed too, and then they all three laughed and felt
instinctively they were friends. There is nothing truer than the saying,
"Good looks are perpetual letters of introduction." These three carried
their letters of introduction on their faces, and they were all mutually
satisfied.
"I know your father quite well," remarked Talbot to her. "This 'Pistol
Shot' has been an institution longer than I have been here, but I never
knew he had a daughter."
"No," said Katrine, tranquilly, "I daresay not. Father and I quarrelled
a little while ago, and since then I have been living by myself in one
of those little cabins in Good Luck Row. Do you know it?"
"No," answered Talbot. "I come into town very seldom, only when I want
fresh supplies. I stay up at the claim nearly all the time. Do you live
all by yourself then?" he added, wondering to himself as he looked at
her, for her beauty was quite striking, and she was certainly not over
twenty, yet there was something in the strong, noble outlines of her
figure, in the tranquil calm of her manner, the self-reliance of her
whole bearing, and the business-like way those pistols were thrust in
her belt, that modified the wonder a little.
"Quite," she said, with a laugh. "Oh, I've always been accustomed to
take care of myself."
"But don't you feel very dull and lonely?"
"Sometimes," answered the girl; "but then I would much rather live alone
than with some one I can't agree with."
Both the men knew the drunken habits of old Poniatovsky, so that they
silently sympathised with her, and there was a pause as they watched
other miners coming in.
"Well," said Katrine after a few seconds, straightening herself from her
leaning attitude, "I think I will go home now; this place is getting so
full, we shan't be able to breathe soon."
The men looked at each other, and then spoke simultaneously: "May we see
you as far as your cabin?"
Katrine smiled, such a pretty arch smile, that dimpled the velvet cheeks
and illumined the whole face.
"Why yes, do, I shall be delighted."
They all three went out together: the cold outside seemed so deadly that
Talbot drew his collar up over his mouth and nose, unable to face it;
the girl, however, did not seem to notice it, but laughed and chatted
gaily in the teeth of the wind, as they made their way down the street.
It was still snowing--a peculiar fine powdery snow, light and almost
imperceptible, filled the whole air. Katrine walked fast with springing
steps down the side-walk, and the two men plunged along beside her. Such
a side-walk it was: in the summer a mere mass of mud and melted snow and
accumulated rubbish--for in Dawson the inhabitants will not take the
trouble to convey their refuse to any definite spot, but simply throw it
out from their cabins a few yards from their own door, with a vague
notion that they may have moved elsewhere before it rots badly,--now
frozen solid but horribly uneven, and worn into deep holes. On the top
of this had been laid some narrow planks, covered now by a thick glaze
of ice, which rendered them things to be avoided and a line of danger
down the middle of the path. Katrine made nothing of these slight
inconveniences of the ground, but went swinging on in her large rubber
boots, and talking and jesting all the way. At the bottom of the street,
at the corner, there was a large wooden building, a double log-cabin
turned into a saloon. Lights were fixed outside in tin shades, and the
word "Dancing" was painted in white letters on the lintel. Katrine
stopped suddenly.
"Let's go in and have a dance," she said, and turned towards Talbot, as
if she felt instinctively he was the more likely to assent.
"If you like," he answered from behind his collar. "But can you dance in
those boots?"
"Oh, I can dance in anything," said Katrine, laughing.
"Oh, don't go in, come on," remonstrated Stephen, trying to push on past
the saloon.
"Why not?" said Katrine; "it's too early to go to bed. Come in, I'll
pay," and before either of them could answer she had pushed open the
door, and was holding it for them with one hand, while with the other
she laid down three quarters on a small trestle inside, where an old man
was sitting as doorkeeper.
It was a large oblong room, with a partition running half-way down the
middle, dividing it into the front part, where they were standing and
where the bar was, and the back part, which was strictly the dancing
portion. Stephen sat down on a bench that faced the inner portion, with
the determination of a man who was not to be moved from his seat. At the
other side of the room was a low raised platform, where some very
seedy-looking musicians were sawing out a jerky tune from their feeble
violins. The room was fairly full, and a more heterogeneous collection
of human beings Stephen thought he had never seen. There were miners in
the roughest and thickest clothing, labourers, packers, a few Indians,
some youths in extraordinary attempts at evening dress, some negro
minstrels with real dress shirts on and diamond studs, girls with old
velvet skirts and odd bodices that didn't match; and here and there,
idling against the wall, looking on with absent eyes, one could find a
different figure--that of student, or artist, or newspaper
correspondent, or gentleman miner; one need not despair of finding
almost any type of humanity in that room.
Talbot looked at the girl's bright sparkling face as they entered, and
then without a word slipped his arm round her waist and they started
over the rough wooden floor.
"You dance fine," observed Katrine, after a long silence, in which they
had both given themselves up to the pleasure of mere motion. "I guess
you have had lots of practice before you came out here."
Talbot smiled down into her admiring eyes.
"Yes," he said, thinking of the foreign embassies, the English
ball-rooms, the many polished floors his feet had known, "in England."
"My! I expect you're a great swell!" remarked the saloon-keeper's
daughter.
"All the same," he answered, laughing, "I have never had a partner that
danced so perfectly as you do."
"Now that's real kind of you," answered Katrine, with a flush of
pleasure, and then they gave themselves up to silent enjoyment again.
At the end of the dance they came back to Stephen, and found him in the
same corner, watching the room with a doleful sadness on his face.
Katrine, flushed and with sparkling eyes, sat down on the corner of the
step beside him.
"You look so miserable," she said. "Come and have a dance with me to
cheer you up."
"I can't dance," said Stephen, shortly.
"I'll teach you," volunteered Katrine, leaning her chin on her hands and
looking up at him.
Stephen flushed angrily.
"It's not that--my conscience won't allow me to."
"I'll make you forget your conscience," with a very winning smile on her
sweet scarlet lips.
Stephen turned towards her and looked at her with a sudden horror in his
eyes. The girl looked back at him quite undisconcerted and unmoved. She
saw nothing in what she had said. To her, conscience was a tiresome
possession, that might, she knew, trouble you suddenly at any time, and
if any one could succeed in making you forget you had one, he was surely
entitled to your gratitude. Words failed Stephen, he only looked at her
with that silent horror and fear growing in his eyes. Katrine waited
what she considered a reasonable time for him to reply or to accept her
offer, and then she rose and turned to Talbot, who had been standing
looking down upon them both with amusement.
"I'm very thirsty, let's go and have a drink," she said, and they both
strolled across the room, and then down into the farther end where the
bar was. They elbowed their way to the counter and stood there waiting
to be served. Most of the men seemed to know Katrine and made way for
her, and she had a word of chaff, or a nod, or a smile or laugh or
friendly greeting, for nearly all of them. Talbot noted this, and noted
also that though the men seemed familiar, none of them were rude, and
though rough enough, there was apparently no disrespect for her. Talbot
wondered whether this was due to her morals or her pistols.
"Who's your friend?" asked two or three voices at her side while they
stood waiting.
"Mr. Talbot--one of the lucky ones!" replied Katrine promptly. "He has a
claim up the gulch that's bringing him in millions--or going to," she
added mischievously. The men looked Talbot up and down curiously. Even
in his rough miner's clothes, he looked a totally different figure from
themselves. Slim and tall and trim, with his well-cut head and figure,
with his long neck and refined quiet face, he was a type common enough
in Bond Street, London, or on Broadway, New York, but not so common in
the Klondike.
"Well, if that's so, pardner," slowly observed a thick-set, crop-haired
man, edging close up to him, "you won't mind standing a drink for us?"
"Delighted," returned Talbot, with a pleasant smile. "Give it a name."
The result of taking votes on this motion was the ordering of ten hot
whiskies and two hot rums, the latter for himself and Katrine. Talbot
never drank spirits at all, and the terrible concoctions of the cheap
saloons were an abomination to him. He took his glass, however, to show
his friendliness, had it filled nearly to the brim with water, and then
could hardly drink it. The fluid seared his throat like red-hot
knife-blades. Katrine took hers straight as it was handed across the
counter and tossed it down her throat at one gulp, seeming to enjoy it.
"Well, Jim," she said to the young miner next her, "what luck have you
had lately?"
"None," he replied gloomily. "Since I left the old place, I've lost all
along in the 'Sally White.'"
Talbot thought they were speaking of claims and that the man was
referring to his work, and the next minute when Katrine turned her head
to him and said rapidly, "The 'Sally White' is the third in the next
street," he was rather mystified. He came so little into town, and
mixed so little with the uncongenial life and company it offered, that
he was ignorant of its prevailing fashion, pastime, and vice--gambling.
Fortunes were made and lost across the trestle tables of the saloons
quicker and easier than up on the claims. He did not now take much
notice of what she had said, nor ask her for an explanation. The girl
was handsome and a beautiful dancer, but the company at the bar he did
not appreciate at all, and his only idea was to withdraw her from it.
"Are you not ready for another dance?" he said, as the violin began to
squeak out another tune.
Katrine nodded, and they had already turned away, when a voice said over
her shoulder, "You won't quite forget me this evening, will you?"
Katrine, without turning her head, answered, "You shall have the next,
if you come for it."
Then they started, and for the next ten minutes Talbot tried to forget,
to be oblivious of the sordid common scene around him, to get a glimpse
back into his old life, which seemed so far away now, as one tries to
re-dream a last night's dream.
Stephen, sitting in his corner, whence he had never stirred, watched her
sullenly. She was not dancing with Talbot now. Stephen could see that
he, too, was watching her from the other side of the room, standing with
his back to the wall. She was waltzing with a man Stephen had not seen
before, evidently a stranger in every way to the place and the
surroundings. He was a young fellow, sufficiently good-looking, and
danced with as much ease as if he were in a New York ball-room. His left
hand clasped Katrine's and drew it high up close to his neck and
shoulder, his right arm enclosed her waist and drew her to him so firmly
that the two figures seemed fused into one as they glided together over
the imperfect floor. Katrine was giving herself up wholly to the
pleasure of the dance. Stephen saw, as her face turned towards him, that
her eyes were half closed, and a little smile of deep satisfaction
rested on her lips. The young fellow's face showed he was equally
absorbed and lost to his surroundings, and there was something in its
expression, coupled with the peculiar ease and sway of the two blent
forms, which raised a savage and jealous anger in Stephen's breast. To
an absolutely unprejudiced eye, and one that saw only the extreme grace
of the movement, which neither their rough clothes, the uneven floor,
nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious
and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now
darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a
sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the
second time, still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes
fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him,
he started up as if to plant himself in their way, then checked himself,
and when they had passed went across the room to where Talbot was
standing.
"You see her dancing?" he said excitedly, without any preface.
Talbot nodded.
"Did you notice how they are dancing? that's what I mean."
Talbot laughed slightly. "That's not dancing, that's--"
Stephen flushed a dull red. "It's disgraceful; I'm going to stop her,"
he muttered.
"My dear fellow, remember you only met her this evening."
"I don't care; she ought not to dance like that."
"I don't like it myself," answered Talbot, "but _you_ can't interfere."
"I'm going to."
"You'd much better not make an ass of yourself," returned Talbot,
putting his hand on the other's arm.
"Leave me alone," said Stephen, roughly shaking it off, as the two
delinquents, still in the same manner, came moving up towards them.
Stephen waited till they were just opposite him, then he stepped forward
and seized the girl's arm and dragged it down from the level of the
young fellow's neck where he had drawn it. Both the dancers stopped
abruptly, and the man faced Stephen with an angry flush and kindling
eyes.
"What the devil do you mean, sir?" he said angrily, advancing close to
Stephen, who had his eyes fixed on Katrine's face, all warm tints and
smiling, as a child's roused from a happy dream.
He ignored the man and addressed her.
"You are not going to dance any more to-night," he said with sombre
emphasis.
The young man's face went from red to purple. He put his hand to his hip
with an oath, and had half drawn his pistol, when Katrine sprang forward
and seized his wrist.
"Now don't be silly; I'm tired anyway, Dick. I'll dance with you
to-morrow night. This is Mr. Stephen Wood. Mr. Wood--Mr. Peters. Now
let's go and have some drinks. I'm not going to have any fighting over
me."
She put herself, smiling, between the two men, who stood glaring at each
other in silence. She was annoyed at the dance being broken off, but she
saw in Stephen's interference the great tribute paid to her own
attraction, and therefore forgave him. At the same time she had no wish
to have her vanity further gratified by bloodshed. There was a certain
hardness but no cruelty in her nature. She turned from the men and
strolled very slowly in the direction of the bar, and they followed her
as if her moving feet were shod with magnets and theirs with steel.
Talbot went too, and in a few minutes the four were standing at the
counter with glasses in their hands.
Peters kept close beside Katrine, and he and Stephen did not exchange a
word. Katrine kept up the chatter between herself and the two other men.
"May I see you home?" Peters said abruptly to her, interrupting the
general talk.
"No," returned Katrine, lightly; "to-morrow night, not to-night. I have
my escort," and she smiled at Stephen and Talbot.
"I will say good-night then," and Peters, after a slight bow to Talbot,
withdrew, taking no notice of Stephen, who since the girl's surrender of
the dance had looked very self-contented and happy, and was now standing
glass in hand, his eyes fixed upon her face.
"I think I really will go home now," she said. "We've had a jolly time.
I only wish you'd have joined us. Are you always so very good?" she said
innocently to Stephen. He flushed angrily and said nothing.
A few seconds later they were on the way to Good Luck Row. One of the
neatest-looking cabins in it had a light behind its yellow blind, and
here Katrine stopped and thanked them for their escort. They would both
have liked to see the interior, but she did not suggest their coming in.
She wished them good-night very sweetly, and before they had realised it
had disappeared inside.
They walked on down the row slowly, side by side. The next thing to do
was to find a lodging for the night, and they both felt about ready to
appreciate a bed and some hours' rest.
"There's Bill Winters," said Stephen, after a moment's silence. "He said
he'd always put us up when we came down town; let's go and try him."
"Do you know where his cabin is?"
"I think so. Turn down here; now it is the next street, where those
little black cabins are."
They walked on quickly, following Stephen's directions, and made for a
block of cabins that had been pitched over and shone black and glossy in
the brilliant moonlight. When they got up to them the men were puzzled,
each was so like its neighbour, and Stephen declared he had forgotten
the number, though Bill had given it to him.
"Well, try any one," said Talbot, impatiently, as Stephen stopped
bewildered. They were standing on the side-walk, now a slippery arch of
ice, between two rows of the low black cabins. There was no light in any
of them; it was two o'clock; the moon alone shone up and down the
street. Talbot felt his moustache freezing to his face, and his left eye
being rapidly closed by the lashes freezing together, and that's enough
to make a man impatient. Stephen did not move, and Talbot went up
himself to the nearest cabin and knocked at the door. They waited a long
time, but at last a hand fumbled with the catch inside, and the door was
opened a little way; through the crack came out a stream of warm air,
the fumes of tobacco and wood smoke; within was darkness.
"Is this Bill Winters'?" Talbot asked, and the door opened wider.
"I guess it is," said a voice in reply. "Why, it's Mr. Talbot and Mr.
Wood--come in, sirs."
Talbot and Wood stepped over the threshold into the thick darkness, and
the door closed behind them. There was a shuffling sound for an instant
as Mr. Winters groped for a light, then he struck a match and lighted up
a little tin lamp on the wall. The light revealed a good-sized cabin
with a large stove in the centre, round which, with their feet towards
it, four or five men rolled up in skins or blankets were lying asleep.
"You want a bed for the night, I expect," Winters went on; "we've all
turned in already, but I guess there's room for two more."
Wood and Talbot both expressed their sense of contrition at disturbing
him, but Winters would not listen.
"Oh, stow all that," he said, as he set about dragging forward two
trestles and covering them with blankets. "You two fellows are so damned
polite, you don't seem suited to this town, you don't seem natural here,
that's a fact."
He was stepping over and about amongst the prostrate forms, and
sometimes on them, but none of them roused themselves sufficiently to do
more than utter a sleepy ejaculation and turn into a fresh position.
Wood and Talbot stood waiting close against the door. It was
half-an-hour before Bill had prepared their beds just as he wanted them,
extinguished the lamp again, and retreated to his own corner. Then
darkness and stillness reigned again over the smoky interior.
The low trestles on which the men lay were hard and unyielding, and a
doubled-up blanket makes a poor mattress; the air of the cabin was thick
and heavy, and the stove, which was close to Talbot's head, having been
stuffed to its utmost capacity with damp wood that it might burn through
the night, let out thin spirals of acrid smoke from all its cracks.
Stephen did not close his eyes long after they had lain down, and there
was utter silence in the place except for heavy breathings. He lay with
open eyes staring into the thick darkness, a thousand painful wearying
thoughts stinging his brain. Talbot, tired and worn out with bodily
fatigue, but with that mental calm that comes from an absolute
singleness of aim and hope and purpose, fell into a deep and tranquil
sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. He lived now but to work;
the night had come when he could not work, therefore he slept that he
might work again on the morrow.
When the faint grey light of morning came creeping into the low and
narrow room, which was not very early, as the nights now were far longer
than the days, Talbot was the first of the sleepers to awake. He
refilled the stove, which had burned down in the long night hours, and
then let himself out.
When he returned Bill and the other men were all stirring, and Stephen
sitting up on his trestle rubbing his red and weary-looking eyes.
"Well, pardner, what are you going to do to-day?" he asked a few minutes
later, when they had the cabin to themselves for a moment.
"Going to do?" replied Talbot in astonishment, looking up from turning
the coffee into the coffee-pot, according to Bill's orders. "Why, if we
collect together all the stores we want, and get back to the diggings
this afternoon, we shall have about enough to do."
"Oh, I meant about the girl."
"What girl?" queried Talbot, now standing still and staring Stephen in
the face.
"The girl you danced with last night--the saloon-keeper's daughter,
Katrine Poniatovsky--do you want any more identification?" returned
Stephen, sarcastically, opening his heavy lids a little wider.
"Well, _what_ about her?" returned Talbot, looking at him expectantly.
"Oh, well, I didn't know; I thought perhaps we wouldn't go back to-day,
that's all," answered Stephen, rather sheepishly.
To his sympathetic, impulsive nature, open to every new impression,
easily distracted like the butterfly which may be caught by the tint of
any chance flower in its path, the incident of last night was much. To
Talbot, self-concentrated, determined, and absorbed, it was nothing. He
looked at his friend now with something like contempt.
"She's so handsome, and dances so well," Stephen went on hurriedly,
feeling foolish and uncomfortable before the other's gaze.
"I did not come here to dance with girls," remarked Talbot shortly,
going over to the stove, and the entry of the other men at that moment
stopped the conversation.
They had breakfast together at the rough wood table in the centre of the
room. The coffee was the redeeming feature of the meal: from that bright
brown stream of boiling liquid the men seemed to gain new life; they
watched it lovingly, expectantly, eagerly, as Bill poured it out into
their thick cups.
The moment the meal was over Talbot crushed his hat on to his eyes, but
before he left the cabin he glanced at Stephen, who was standing
irresolutely by the stove.
"I shall get all I want," he said, "and be back here by two at the
latest. If you're here then, we can start up together; if not, I shall
go ahead;" and he went out.
Stephen lingered by the stove, then he and Bill drifted into a
discussion over some of the latest discoveries of gold in Colorado, and
they both fell to wondering how much more had been found since their
last news, seven months old; and they had a pipe together, and then Bill
thought he'd drop down to the "Pistol Shot," and Stephen crushed on his
fur cap as determinedly as Talbot had done and went out--to Katrine's
number in Good Luck Row.