KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS
Good Luck Row was a little row of small, insignificant cabins towards
the back of the city, and at right angles to the direction of the main
street. Dawson faces the Yukon, and its main thoroughfare lies parallel
with the river. In the summer, when the Yukon and the Klondike, that
joins it just above, are free, the waters of the two rivers united come
rolling by in jubilant majesty, tossing loose blocks of ice, the
remnants of their winter chains, on their swelling tide. They form a
little eddy in front of the city, and their waters roll outward and
swirl back again to their course, as if the great stream made a bow to
the city front as it swept past. Here in the summer, with the steamboats
ploughing through the rocking green water, and the sun streaming down
upon the banks crowded with active human beings, glinting on the gay
signs of the saloons and the white and green painted doors of the
warehouses, with the brilliant azure sky stretched above, and far off
the tall green larches piercing it with their slender tops,--in the
summer this main street is a pleasant, cheerful sight; but now, with the
river solid and silent, the banks black and frozen, and the bleak,
bitter sky above, it looked more desolate than the inner streets of the
town, more uninviting than Good Luck Row, which had little cabins on
each side, and where the inhabitants overlooked their opposite
neighbours' firelit interior instead of the frozen river. The side-walks
of the row were like the other side-walks of the city, a wealth of soft
mud and slush and dirt through the warm weather, and now frozen hard
into uneven lumps, big depressions, and rough hummocks. The cabins were
uniform in size, small, with one fair-sized window in the front, beside
the door, which opened straight into the main room, where the front
window was. At the back there was another smaller room with a tiny
window, looking out over a black barren ice-field, for Good Luck Row was
on the edge of the town.
Katrine lived at No. 13. This cabin had been the last to be occupied on
account of its unlucky number, but Katrine only laughed at it, and
painted it very large in white paint upon the door. Here Katrine lived
alone, though her father, the little stunted Pole who kept the "Pistol
Shot," was one of the richest men in the city.
And because she lived alone some of her neighbours declared she was not
respectable. As a matter of fact, she was more respectable than many of
the married women living in the row, and Katrine knew many a story with
which she could have startled an unsuspecting husband when he came into
town after a week or two's absence prospecting or at work on the claims;
but she did not trouble about other people's affairs; she gave her
friendship to those who sought it, and heeded not at all those who
condemned her.
On an afternoon about three weeks after her first meeting with Stephen,
Katrine stood in front of her little glass in the corner of her cabin,
smoothing her short glossy hair; when this was flattened with
mathematical exactness to her well-shaped head--for Katrine was always
trim and neat in her appearance--she turned to the table and wrote on a
slip of paper, "I'm next door;" this she pinned to the outside of her
door, and then locking it went into the next cabin in the row. She had
grown quite accustomed to Stephen's visits now, and generally left a
note on her door when she went out, in case he should come unexpectedly
in her absence. The cabin she entered presented a different appearance
from her own. There was the same large stove opposite the door, the same
rough table in the centre and wooden chairs round, but the floor was
dirty and gritty, quite unlike Katrine's, which always maintained a
white and floury look from her constant attentions, and the stove looked
rusty and uncleaned. The small square panes of the window, too, hardly
let in any light, they were so obscured by dust inside and snow frozen
on to them without. By the stove sat a young woman, in whose face
ill-health and beauty struggled together for predominance. Her hair,
twisted into a loose knot at the back of her head, was of the lightest
gold colour, like a young child's, and her face brought to one's mind
the idea of milk and violets, the skin was so white and smooth and the
eyes so blue. This was the beauty which no disease could kill, but
ill-health triumphed in the livid circles round the eyes, the drawn
lines round the faded lips. Katrine entered with her brightest smile.
"Well, Annie, are you better to-day?" she asked.
The woman rose with an unsteady movement from the chair, and before she
could answer burst suddenly into a rain of tears. "Better? Oh, Katie, I
shall never be any better! But I wish I could go home to die!"
Katrine advanced and put her arms round her, drawing the frail
attenuated form close against her own warm vigorous frame.
"What nonsense!" she said gently. "You are not going to die at home or
anywhere yet. Why, Will is going to make a big strike, and take you home
to live in style all the rest of your life."
"No," sobbed the girl,--for she was no more than a girl in age,--falling
back in her chair again. "No, it won't come in time for me."
"Where is Will?" asked Katrine, looking round.
"He's just got a job up at the west gulch on Mr. Stephen Wood's claim,"
returned the other. "Oh, I am that thankful he's found some one to
employ him at last."
"Yes, it's delightful," returned Katrine, absently, as she sat down on
the other side of the rusty stove and looked round the dirty, cheerless
room. It was due to her urgent pleading with Stephen that Will had
obtained the place on the claim, but his wife did not seem to know, and
Katrine did not tell her.
"But then it don't lead to nothing," continued Annie, despairingly. "He
can't look out for himself if he's working another man's ground."
"Well, he only does a few hours' work, I believe, and has the rest of
the day to look round for himself," returned Katrine.
"It don't amount to much, anyway; this time of the year there ain't no
day to speak of," replied the other, gazing plaintively through the dim
glass of the window. "And then if he do see a bit of land he fancies,
why, he can't buy it, he's got no money."
"I think Mr. Wood will advance him enough to buy any ground he thinks
well of," replied Katrine, gently.
"Mr. Wood!" repeated Annie, opening her sunken eyes wide with the first
display of interest she had shown. "Why should he help my man along?"
"I don't know," returned Katrine, evasively, with heightened colour;
"but he told me he would do so, and I know he will. How is Tim to-day?"
she added suddenly, to divert the conversation.
The mother looked round.
"Tim!" she called; "where is that child? Katie, you go and look if you
can see him in the wood-shed."
Katrine crossed the room to the lean-to attached to the cabin and looked
in. On the floor of the wood-shed, with the happy indifference to the
cold usually displayed by Klondike infants, little Tim sat on the floor
with a pile of chips beside him. Great icicles hung from the rafters
above him, and his tiny hands were blue with cold, but he was
contentedly and silently piling up the wood on the frozen ground.
Katrine picked him up and carried him into the next room, and put him by
the fire at his mother's feet. He did not cry nor offer any resistance,
but when put in his new location looked round for a few minutes, and
then calmly leaned towards the stove and began to play with the cinders
in place of his vanished wood chips.
"What a good little fellow he is!" said Katrine, leaning over him.
"Yes; he's his mother's darling, that's what he is!" returned the other,
stooping to smooth the curly head that was only a shade lighter than
her own.
"Will you have some coffee?" asked Annie presently, looking helplessly
towards the dirty stove, where a feeble fire was burning sulkily amongst
the old wood ash.
"No," returned Katrine, cheerfully; "you must be getting tired of
coffee. I brought you some tea for a change," and she extracted a neat
little packet from one of her pockets. "May I do up the fire and make
some for you?"
"Why, it will make you so dirty; that stove is in an awful state,"
replied Annie, looking over the other's neat dress and figure dubiously.
"I don't mind that. Pick up the baby," Katrine answered, rolling up her
sleeves and displaying two rounded muscular arms white as the snow
outside. "You'd better move farther out of the dust," she added, going
down on her knees before the stove. Annie picked up the child and
retreated to a chair by the window, from where she watched the other
with a sort of helpless envy.
"Lord! I've grown that weak lately I can't do nothing," she said after a
minute. "You know how nice I used to keep the place for Will when we
first came."
Katrine nodded in silence, and two bright tears fell amongst the wood
ash she was taking from the stove. She did remember the bright, active
young wife, the united little family moving into the cabin next her only
a year ago; she remembered the interior that had always been so neat and
clean and cheerful to receive Will when he came home, the unceasing
devotion of his wife, and the mutual love and hope that had buoyed them
up and made them face all hardships smilingly. Then she had watched
sorrowfully the gradual deterioration of the man under the constant
disappointment; she had met him more and more frequently in the
saloons, less and less at his home. She had seen day by day the rapid
decline of the bright, beautiful young creature he had brought with him
into this poor faded wraith dragging herself about in the neglected,
cheerless cabin.
"You'll get stronger again in the warm weather," she said after a
minute, when her voice was steady.
"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen what I saw on the snow this morning
when I'd been coughing there back of the wood-shed," returned Annie,
drearily leaning her tired head against the dingy pane.
"What do you mean?" asked Katrine, looking up apprehensively. "Blood?"
The other nodded in silence, and there was quiet in the cabin except for
the crooning of the child. Then Katrine rose from the hearth impulsively
with a flushed, lovely face and the ash dust on her hair and dress. She
went over to Annie and drew her head on to her strong, warm bosom.
"Oh, you poor, poor thing! What can we do?" she said desperately.
"Nothing," murmured Annie, closing her eyes in the girl's soothing
embrace, "unless you could persuade Will to take me home, and nobody
could do that now, he's so set upon the gold. That's the second bleeding
from the chest that I've had this month; now the third'll do for me."
She shivered as if from cold, and Katrine kissed her and hastened back
to her work at the fire. It is not a pleasant nor an easy thing to do to
clean out a stove that has been left to itself for a week or more and
fresh fires kindled on the old ashes every day, but in a few minutes
Katrine had the work completed and the fresh wood crackling and filling
the stove with red flame. Then she made the tea rapidly, and neither of
them spoke again till Annie held a great tin mug of it to her white
lips. Katrine pulled her chair close to the stove again, and took Tim on
her own lap, where he found a new toy in her cartridge belt. Annie
sipped from her mug and gazed absently into the flames.
"Lord, we were so happy," she said musingly, a little colour coming into
her face under the influence of the hot tea and the warmth from the
re-invigorated fire. "We had the nicest little home down in Brixham. I
daresay you don't know where that is?" Katrine shook her head. "It's
just the prettiest, sweetest village in the world, down in Devonshire;
and we had a cottage there, quite in the country, with pink roses all
over the front,--I can smell those roses now. Oh, it was lovely; and
Will had regular work all the time, and he was the best husband woman
ever had. He used to bring his wages in Saturdays, and say to me,
'Annie, old girl, ain't there enough there to get you a new ribbon for
Sunday or a fresh sash for the baby?' He never spent a penny for drink
nor tobacco. And Sunday we'd go out on the downs and stand looking at
the sea; it do come in so splendid there, and the wind from it seems to
put new life in yer. We was as happy and as well as could be, all of us;
and then them newspapers got to printing all those tales of the gold in
the Klondike, and Will he just got mad like, and nothing would do but he
must sell the house and come out here. He thought he'd come back so
rich; well, so he may, but he won't have no wife to go back with."
She lay back in her chair, and Katrine, gazing at her white face and
transparent hands, said nothing.
"I'm glad I stuck to Will, though," the woman went on softly after a
minute, "and didn't let him come out here alone. A wife's place is by
her husband wherever he goes, and I'd rather die with him than be
separated. But there, I do hate the name of gold. It broke up our home,
it's broke up our lives, and it's just killed me, that's what it's done.
And what's the good of it? Why, as I said to Will before we came, 'We
can't be no more than happy, and we're that now.'"
Katrine said nothing. She was one of those women who in society would
have gained the name of a good conversationalist, for she always
listened attentively and spoke hardly at all.
It grew rapidly darker outside and began to snow a little, the peculiar
sharp, small snow of Alaska. The two women could hardly see each other's
faces in the gloom, when Katrine rose and offered to light the lamp.
"There ain't no oil left," returned Annie, drearily. "I just sit in the
dark most of the time; I don't mind as long as I have a bit of fire. It
do seem more lonesome though when you've no light," she added with a
sigh.
"Haven't you any money to buy it with?"
Annie shook her head. "Not till Will comes back."
"Well, here's enough to keep you in oil for the next three months," said
Katrine, taking a little object from her belt which looked like a
well-filled tobacco pouch and putting it on the shelf above her head.
"What's that? dust?" said Annie. "Where-ever do you get so much money?"
she added, staring at her.
"I won that last night," returned Katrine, lightly. "I do have such
luck. I wish you could come, Annie, and see the fun we have down town of
a night, instead of moping up here; and I do have such luck," she
repeated again with a half sigh. "I don't know what I'd do if it should
change. I'd have to be bar-keep for a living, I suppose. Think I'd make
a good bar-keep?" she said, getting up and stretching her arms above her
head. All her full lissom figure was revealed to advantage by the
attitude, and the firelight fell softly on the gay, bewitching face,
slanted over to one shoulder as she put the question.
"I do that," replied Annie, with emphasis. "Your bar would always be
crammed by all the chaps in the place, my dear."
Katrine laughed. "I'm glad you think so. I'll bring you some of my oil
to burn for to-night, and then I must be off earning my living."
She went into her own cabin and brought back a can of oil with her,
trimmed and cleaned and lit Annie's lamp, and then with a kiss bade her
good-bye till next day, and took her way down to the main street. She
had only a little dust in her belt, just enough to start playing with,
and if luck should go against her she would have to return empty handed;
but then she always trusted to luck, and it had never forsaken her. Her
mode of life, precarious and uncertain, dangerous and unsatisfactory as
it might seem to an onlooker, never troubled her. She was in that state
of glorious physical health and strength which lends an unlimited
confidence to the mind, a sense of being able to cope with any
difficulty which might suddenly present itself, when every present or
possible trouble looks small, and when mere life itself, the mere
sensation of the blood being warm in one's veins, is a joy. She loved
the excitement, even the uncertainty of her life, and she had more
friends in the town than she could count, who would be glad to lend her
all she needed if her luck failed.
That night, when Katrine lay fast asleep in her small inner room, her
curly head tucked down comfortably under the rugs, she dreamed she heard
a knocking on her door. The sound seemed faint at first, but grew
louder, and after a minute she woke up, lifted her head, and listened.
Yes, there was a tapping on her door, she heard it quite distinctly.
She got up immediately, slipped into her fur coat and boots, and taking
one of her pistols in her hand, went to the door. That there was danger
in answering such a summons at such an hour she knew quite well, but
that did not hinder her. She was accustomed to live with her life in her
hand, and she felt instinctively confident of being able so to hold it,
and meant to keep a tight grip on it. When she opened the door it was to
a vivid moonlight, clear and brighter than day; the whole white world
was shining under it.
"Annie!" she exclaimed as her eyes fell on the slight, feeble figure
muffled in a blanket that stood on her steps. "What is the matter? Come
in," and she put the door wide open and stood back for her to pass.
"Oh, Katie," she said, seizing the other's hands when they stood inside
the room, "forgive me for waking you, but I want Will. I feel I'm going
to die to-night, and I can't without him--I can't," and she burst into a
flood of tears broken by short sobbing coughs. She had slipped to her
knees and was holding Katrine's hands in a feverish clutch. The blanket
had fallen from her head and shoulders, and showed to Katrine that she
was still in her day dress; it did not seem as if she had been to bed at
all. There was a dark, half-dried stain upon the front of her bodice.
"I'm dying! Oh, Katie, it's so dreadful all alone there. Will you go and
bring Will to me? Oh, do."
Katrine looked down upon her as she tried to raise her to her feet. The
fire was still burning brightly and filled the room with light. Many
people older than Katrine would have laughed at the woman's statement in
face of her ability to come to them and make it, but Katrine's keen
perceptions read much, too much, in the bright glazed eyes that looked
up at her, in the hoarse grating tones that came from the sunken chest,
and the feverish grasp of those burning fingers. She stooped down and
put her arms round the kneeling figure and drew her up.
"Why, of course I will. I will bring him to you. But you are only ill,
dear; you're not dying."
"Oh, I may not, I know; but if I should, and he not here! Katie, can you
go now?--it's so late, and so cold, and so far. I don't see how you
can."
"He's working up on Mr. Wood's claim at the west gulch. I suppose if I
go to Mr. Wood's cabin he can tell me where to find Will."
"Oh, yes, yes," returned Annie, eagerly, a crimson flush now lighting up
each cheek; "go straight to Mr. Wood and ask him for Will. One of Will's
ponies is down here, back of our house; you can take him and ride up.
Oh, it may kill you to go; I ought not to ask it. Oh, what shall I do?"
Katrine laughed. "Kill me!" she said. "It would take more to kill me
than that, I think. I shall be up there and Will down here before you
know where you are. Now you've just got to drink this brandy while I go
and get some things on. You're just fretting for Will, that's what is
the matter with you. I believe you will feel all right when you see him
again."
She put the trembling woman into a chair, and went back to her room to
put her clothes on. She noticed that her boots, which had been damp the
night before, had frozen to the ground, and she had to break them from
it by force.
"I shall be lucky if I get back with my feet unfrozen," she thought to
herself, looking regretfully at the warm bed she had left; but it never
once, even remotely, occurred to her to refuse the unwelcome mission.
She put on all her thickest garments, buckled her pistols on her hip,
and went back to Annie, who was crouching over the fire in the next
room.
"I had better take the pony," she said; "he'll get me there and back
quicker than I can walk, if you think the little animal is up to it."
Annie nodded. "He's well fed," she said, "and has had nothing to do
since Will's been gone."
Katrine shut the stove up, and the two women went out together.
It was a still dead cold without, the sort of night on which your limbs
might freeze beyond recovery, and without your knowing it, so insidious
and so little aggressive was the cold.
"You go in and keep warm," said Katrine; "I'll find the pony and manage
him," and she pushed Annie gently within her own door, and went round to
the shed at the back of the cabin where the pony was. Her hands in that
short time had grown so stiff with cold she could hardly put the saddle
on and fasten the girth and straps. The pony knew her, and pricked his
ears and snorted while she was getting him ready; he had been idle in
his stable two days, and by this time was willing to welcome any change
in the monotony of life. When she had adjusted everything carefully by
the light of the strong moon falling through the little window, she
threw herself cross leg upon his back and rode him out of the shed.
Annie had her face pressed eagerly against the back window of her cabin,
watching for her to appear. Katrine smiled at her, lifted her fur cap
above her head for an instant as a man would do, and then the next
moment was cantering away over the snowy waste that stretched behind
Good Luck Row. She went at a good pace, urged on by that last glimpse of
the pale face, with the terrible look of haunted fear on it, pressed to
the window.
The temperature was very low, but the absence of wind and dampness in
the air made the cold bearable. Katrine, haunted by the fear of
frostbite, kept pinching her nose and pulling her ears and banging her
feet against the pony's side to keep the blood stirring in them. Inside
the first half-hour she was away some distance from the lights of
Dawson, and nothing but great snowy stretches lay around her.
That night up at the west gulch it happened that neither Stephen nor
Talbot had gone to bed. There is little to choose between night and day
there, since half of the day hours are dark as the blackest night, and a
man can sleep in them as profitably or more so than in the moonlit hours
of the night. Three o'clock in the morning had come, and the two men
were still sitting talking on each side of the stove, with an opened
whisky bottle on the table between them, in Stephen's cabin, when the
dull sound of a horse's footfall broke the blank silence of the gulch.
Both sprang to their feet on the instant, and Talbot drew his pistol
from his belt and stood listening with it in his hand.
"I always said we oughtn't to keep our gold up here," said Stephen, and
his face whitened.
Talbot held up his hand to enjoin silence, and they waited while the
sound of hoofs moving slowly over the treacherous and uneven soil came
nearer. Then there was a pause, which seemed to the men inside endless.
Then two distinct taps at the door. Talbot, who was nearer it, made a
forward movement, but Stephen caught his arm.
"What are you going to do?" he whispered.
"Open it and fire," returned Talbot, laconically, and he pushed back the
latch and raised his revolver as he opened the door.
Stephen was close behind him, and Talbot almost stepped upon him as he
drew back with astonishment the next instant. Katrine jumped from the
pony's back and stepped over the threshold without invitation.
"How lucky I am to find you up!" she exclaimed, and then seeing Talbot's
hastily lowered revolver in his right hand she burst out laughing. "So
you were going to shoot, were you?" she said, drawing out her own.
"Well, I was quite ready; I have been all the ride. I am sorry I
frightened you."
"Frightened us!" repeated the two men in a breath, with an indignant
glance.
"Oh no, of course I didn't mean that," rejoined Katrine, laughing.
"Disturbed you, I should say. Oh, Stephen, give me some of that whisky;
I am almost dead with cold."
Her face did indeed look frozen white with cold under her fur cap, and
her dark eyes shone in it with a liquid splendour that made Stephen's
heart beat tumultuously against his side. He poured out some of the
spirit for her and pushed her gently into a chair, commencing to pull
off her thick gloves for her.
"I want Will Johnson," she said, with her customary directness.
"Stephen, I've come up to fetch him. He's one of your men. Tell me where
I can find him."
"What do you want with him at this time of night?" questioned Stephen,
while Talbot silently extracted a plate of bread and bacon from the
cupboard and put it on the table at her elbow.
"I don't want him for myself," she answered mischievously. "His wife has
sent me up to find him; she thinks she is dying, and wants to see him
to-night. Where can I find him?"
"His cabin is a little higher up the gulch, but you mustn't go there; I
will go after him," said Stephen hastily.
"I don't know," replied Katrine; "I'd better ride up there and then take
him on home with me, hadn't I?"
"Ride back again to-night!" exclaimed Stephen. "What madness! It was
bad enough to make the ride once. She mustn't think of it, must she,
Talbot?" and he turned to his friend for corroboration.
"Certainly not, I should say," returned Talbot, in his quiet but final
way. "I will ride up to Johnson's place and send him down home, and you
can make Katrine comfortable here."
The girl sprang to her feet.
"Why, what an idea!" she said, with a flush on her pale cheeks. "I only
came to you to find Will. Of course I can't stay here all night."
"Your mission will be accomplished, won't it, if Will goes to his wife?"
returned Talbot quietly. "There is no need to risk your life again.
There is no good in it; besides, it will save time if you let Will have
the pony at once to take him back. You can have one of ours in the
morning."
She looked up at him. She admired Talbot exceedingly. His voice was so
invariably gentle and quiet, so different from all the voices that she
heard round her daily. Stephen's, though his resembled it, had not the
same curious accent of refinement. His manner, too, had the same extreme
gentleness; and yet beneath this apparent softness she knew there
existed a courage that equalled any in the whole camp. He looked very
handsome too, she thought, at this moment, as she met a soft smile in
his eyes, and her tones were more hesitating as she repeated--
"I think I ought to return."
"Well, I'm going to despatch Will for you," replied Talbot, turning
away. "I leave it to you, Stephen, to persuade her to stay," and he
walked out. A second later they heard the pony's hoofs going up the
narrow trail past the cabin.
"You can have my room; I'll sleep here on the floor," remarked Stephen.
The girl got up.
"No," she said in her most decided tone. "I'll stay if you let me sleep
here on the floor, or I'll go home. Turn you out of your own comfortable
bed I will not."
"Go home you can't," said Stephen in an equally decided tone, "so I'll
make you up a bed here just in front of the stove."
He went into the next room, and Katrine, left alone, drank up her whisky
and gazed round the cabin. It was not at all an interesting interior,
and had not the faint suggestions of artistic taste that redeemed
Talbot's. A few prints were on the walls, seemingly cut from illustrated
papers and principally consisting of views of cathedrals and school
buildings, which Katrine's eyes wandered over without interest. At the
farthest end from her there were some stout shelves nailed against the
wall, and on these rested a row of flat tin pans; between the pans were
pushed one or two books, and she recognised amongst them his Greek
testament. She rose and strolled over to the shelf, and standing on
tiptoe looked into the pans. As she thought, they contained thin layers
of gold dust. She was standing there looking into them when Stephen
returned and came up behind her.
"They look fine, don't they?" he said. "That's a thirty dollar pan."
Katrine turned, and looking up was startled by the eager light in his
face and the greed written in every line of it. For herself, reckless,
happy-go-lucky gambler that she was by nature, gold had little value for
her except to toss by the handful on the tables to buy half-an-hour's
excitement. With a sudden movement she seized the fullest pan by the rim
in one hand and the Greek testament beside it in the other, and danced
away from him to the other side of the room. Stephen turned with an
involuntary cry, and followed her with anxious eyes.
"Now which would you rather lose?" she said, laughing.
His eyes were fixed upon the pan, which was heavy and as much as she
could support with one hand. He dreaded each minute to see it tip up and
its golden treasure pour out on the floor.
"Oh, I don't know. Don't be foolish," he said in a vexed tone.
Katrine sidled up to the window.
"Answer, or I'll--"
Stephen turned white. He felt she was capable of doing any mad thing
when he met those mocking, sparkling eyes.
"Oh--I--I--would rather lose the book," he stammered, in an agony to see
the gold safely put back. "I could replace that, you know."
Katrine advanced to him, balancing the pan as if weighing it.
"Stephen, this is very heavy," she said, looking him straight in the
eyes.
"Let me take it from you," he said, eagerly stretching out his hands.
"Do you know what makes it so?" she said, still balancing it and still
looking at him. "Your soul is in it!" and she gave it back to him.
Stephen reddened angrily, and took both the book and the gold from her
and replaced them sulkily on the shelf. Katrine had turned her back and
walked over to the fire, humming.
"What a royal couch you've made me!" she remarked, breaking the awkward
silence that followed, and looking down on the pile of red blankets he
had spread in front of the stove.
He had, in fact, stripped his own bed and collected blankets from every
corner to make a comfortable resting-place for her. Before Stephen could
answer he was summoned to the door. Talbot looked in upon them, but
would not come inside.
"I've sent Will off," he said; "he swore like anything, but he is gone.
No, thanks, Steve, I won't come in. I'm tired, and going to my own cabin
now. See you at breakfast. Good-night," and before Katrine could thank
him he was gone.
The two thus left entirely alone in the deep quiet of the gulch to pass
the night together looked at each other for a moment with a shade of
silent embarrassment. But the girl, accustomed as she was to take care
of herself in all sorts of situations and surroundings, and endued with
a certain fierce chastity of nature, recovered herself instantly and
spoke quite naturally.
"I feel tired too, and would like to go to sleep now, if I may."
"Certainly," said Stephen. "You have this room to yourself. The stove
will burn till daylight, and you have the whisky if you feel cold in the
night. Good-night."
His tone was very formal, for he would so much have liked it to be
otherwise, and without looking at her he took a match from his pocket
and went into the other room, shutting the door after him. The girl
waited a moment, then she shut the door of the stove and threw herself
down on the soft pile of blankets, and drawing one of them over her to
her ears, drew a deep, contented sigh, and was peacefully asleep in a
few seconds.
The next morning Stephen rose stiff and cramped from his denuded bed.
When he was completely dressed he silently opened his door and crept
noiselessly into the adjoining room. The girl was not yet awake, and he
stole softly over to the bed on the hearth and looked down at her. She
lay warm and sleeping comfortably amongst the blankets. She was fully
dressed, just as she had been the previous evening, except that two or
three buttons were unfastened at the collar of her dress, and allowed
the solid white neck to show beneath the rounded chin. The little head,
with its mass of dark silky curls, lay inclined towards the stove, and
the curled rosy lips had a softer smile than they generally wore in the
daytime. Stephen leaned over her, entranced and breathless. As his eyes
followed the dark arch of the eyebrows, the sweet delicate contour of
the cheek, he forgot the horror he felt of her sometimes in her waking
moments, forgot the hideous background of the saloons, forgot all the
evil there might be in her, and bowed before that supreme power that
human beauty has over us; he worshipped her as he had never worshipped
his God. For a few seconds it was enough for him to gaze on her, then
came an overwhelming impulse to stoop and kiss the soft youthful lips,
to touch them even if ever so lightly. If he could without awakening
her! But no, she was his guest, under his roof and protection. All that
was best in his nature rose and held him motionless like a hand of
iron. After a few seconds Katrine stirred, and Stephen, feeling she was
about to awake, would have moved away, but his eyes seemed fixed and as
impossible to remove from her face as one's hands are from an electric
battery. The next minute her lids were lifted, and her eyes, two wells
of living light, flashed up at him.
"Good-morning," she said, sitting up. "How dreadfully pale you look,
Stephen! What is the matter?"
"Do I?" he answered, with a forced laugh, feeling the blood, which had
seemed to rest suspended in his veins for those few seconds, rush to his
heart again in great waves.
"You do indeed," she said, getting up. "I expect you want your
breakfast. Tell me what I can do to make myself useful."
She shook her hair straight, fastened the collar of her bodice, and, was
dressed. She needed no toilet apparently, but looked as clean and fresh
as a rose waking up in its garden.
"Nothing," returned Stephen hastily. "Go over and tell Talbot to come in
to breakfast, if you like; I'll have it ready when you come back."
Katrine looked round regretfully, as if she would have liked to stay and
help him; then concluding she had better do as she was told, she took up
her fur cap and went out.
The west gulch looks magnificent in the first early light, with all
degrees of shadows, some black, some dusky, some the clearest grey,
lingering in its snowy recesses, and the first glimpse of gold falling
down it from the east. Katrine stopped and gazed up at the impressive
beauty above and around her: trees in the gulch, now covered with a
thick snowy mantle, stood assuming all sorts of grotesque forms, and
extending their arms as if calling the spectator to their cold embrace.
It was beautiful, but to Katrine it seemed so silent, so overawing, and
so death-like, that she shivered as she looked up and down from the
flat plateau where she stood, and hurried on the few necessary yards to
Talbot's cabin.
When they came back together they found Stephen had all in readiness,
the fire blazing on the hearth and the breakfast waiting on the table.
He made Katrine sit at the head and pour out the coffee for them, which
she did with pleased, smiling eyes. Talbot said good-bye to her and went
out to his claim immediately it was over, and Katrine and Stephen were
left alone. He said he would go and get a pony for her and Katrine rose,
but then Stephen hesitated and did not go after all. He turned to her
instead, and came back from the door to where she was standing.
"Will you listen to something I want to say to you?" he said, his heart
beating wildly.
"Why, certainly I will," the girl answered simply, and she sat down in
the chair behind her and folded her hands. Then she looked up
inquiringly, waiting for him to begin, but Stephen's voice was dried up
in his throat. He stood in front of her, one damp hand nervously
clasping the back of a chair, unable to articulate a word. Confusion and
excitement overwhelmed him, and he stood turning paler and paler,
staring at the proud, handsome face framed in the living yellow sunshine
before him. At last he felt he could not even stand, and he turned away
with a groan and sank down on the nearest chair with his face in his
hands. Katrine, who had been watching him anxiously for the last few
seconds, sprang up and went over to him.
"What is the matter?" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Are
you ill?"
"No, oh no," said Stephen, catching the little hand in both of his. "No,
I want to tell you I love you. Do you care for me? Will you marry me
right away, and come up and live here with me?"
His voice had come back to him all right now, and he turned and gazed
eagerly up at her.
Katrine did not answer immediately, but she did not withdraw her hand
that he was pressing hotly between his own, and a faint smile that came
over her face showed she was not displeased; and here Stephen missed his
cue--he should have taken the hesitating figure into his arms and kissed
the undecided lips. In the sudden awakening of womanly feeling, in the
momentary excitement, in the glimpse into passion, Katrine would have
consented, welcoming as her nature did any new emotion; but Stephen was
embarrassed and afraid. Fear and uncertainty held him back, the kiss
burned ungiven on his own lips, and Katrine uninfluenced by passion
could think clearly.
What! come up here and live in this deathly quiet, away from even such
amusement as the camp offered? Submit to all his tiresome religious
conversations, and, above all, give up those feverish nights of
excitement? the hazard and the stimulus of the long tables and the
little heaps of gold dust? and her free life, her incomings and
outgoings, with no one to question her? No, it was an impossibility.
The next thing Stephen knew was that she was smiling and looking down
into his eyes, shaking her head.
"No, Stephen, I can't do that. I like you awfully, and should like you
to come and see me; but I wouldn't do for your wife at all, and if you
knew all about me you wouldn't want it either."
Stephen clung fast to her hand.
"What is it that I don't know?" he said desperately, putting, as people
always do, the worst construction he could upon her words, and at the
same time feeling he would forgive her everything, and in a sort of
background in his brain contemplating the figure of the forgiven
Magdalen at the feet of Christ.
Katrine dragged her hand away suddenly. She was not going to tell him
she was a gambler and devoted to the excitement of the tables. She knew
that if she did their pleasant talks in the evenings would be at an end.
He could never come to see her without thinking it his duty to try to
reform her; and as she knew she was not going to reform, what would be
the good of it?
"What does it matter to you? I am not your wife, and am not going to be;
I am an acquaintance. If you like me as I am, very good; if you don't,
no one cares."
Stephen got up and faced her. He was as white as the snow outside.
"You make me think the worst by refusing to confide in me."
Katrine laughed contemptuously.
"I don't care a curse what you think! Haven't I just told you so? Great
heavens," she added, with a burst of conviction, "it would never do for
us to marry! Never! Your one idea is to curtail a person's liberty."
"No," answered Stephen quietly, "not liberty in a general way; only the
liberty to sin and do evil, the liberty to be ignorant and do things
which have terrible consequences that you don't know."
He looked very well at this moment, his pale ascetic face and
sympathetic eyes lighted up with enthusiasm. Katrine looked at him and
then smiled with her quick, impulsive smile.
"Stephen, you are a good man, and perfectly charming at times; but I am
not a good woman, and don't want to be, and we should never get on. So
don't let's bother any more about this question at all."
An exceedingly pained expression came over Stephen's face, and Katrine
was quick enough to feel that from her words he judged her errors to be
other than they were. In a few words she might have cleared his mind
from the idea of her actual immorality, but she was too proud to stand
upon her own defence before him; besides, if her faults were not of that
class, he would want to know what they were, and in his eyes a girl that
gambled and drank and swore, and preferred the dance halls and variety
shows to the mission church any day, was quite bad enough; so she
concluded in her thoughts, "It doesn't matter if he is mixed."
Stephen at the moment was afraid to press her further, and did not know
quite how to treat her; but he was not wholly discouraged, and he
thought it best to retain the ground he already had.
"Well, I shall be in town in a few days," he said, "and I shall come to
see you as usual, mayn't I?"
"Of course," returned Katrine, and they did not speak again till they
were outside and she was mounted at the head of the trail.
What a morning it was! The crisp air was like a bath of sparkling
sunlight; the untrodden snow glittered everywhere. Far above the trail a
ridge of dark green pine broke against the pale azure of the sky.
Stephen leaned against the pony's side and gazed into the warm, lustrous
eyes.
"Good-bye, my darling--my own darling perhaps some day."
"I don't think so," she answered, with a mischievous smile, and set the
pony at a trot down the trail.
She had to pass Talbot's cabin on her way back, and as she approached
she saw him a little way up the creek surrounded by his men. She reined
in her horse to a walk as she passed, and contemplated him. His figure
always pleased and arrested her eyes--it had a certain height and
strength and grace that marked it out distinctly from others; and then
what an advantage it was, she thought, he had no religion and believed
in none of those things, and, in short, was quite as bad or worse than
she herself was. She walked her horse on slowly, thinking. Somehow it
seemed to her that life in his cabin would be far more piquant and
amusing than in Stephen's. Yet he neither drank nor gambled, and as for
the dance halls and theatre,--well, he had told her he liked dancing;
and what a waltz that had been they had had together! But life with
Stephen! He would be too good for her, and too stupid. She had a vague
sense that what she lived for, excitement, he condemned in all its
forms. Just what she cared for in drink, in play, in the dance, the
electric pleasure of them, was just what he shrank from as a wile of the
Evil One. Even the religious services of the High Church he condemned
for the same reason. No, it would never do; life with him would be as
cold as the snow around her. She was glad that her answer had been as it
had. There was a level place in the trail here, and she put the horse
to a gallop, and so came into town with her cheeks stung into rich
crimson by the keen air, and her spirits exhilarated and ready for any
mischief going.
She went at once to No. 14 in the row, and found Will sitting by his
wife's bedside like a model husband. The girl was lying down, her weak
white hand clasped in and nearly hidden by the swollen, rough red hand
of the miner. She gave a little cry as Katrine entered, and buried her
head under the blanket.
"You are not angry with me for sending you up when it wasn't really
necessary?" came a smothered voice.
Katrine flung herself on her knees beside the bed and put her arms
impetuously round the thin form under the coverlet.
"Angry with you for not dying!" she said, between laughing and crying.
"Why, I think you're the best girl in the world, and Will's a pretty
good doctor, too!" she added, glancing up at him.
Will coloured and looked a little uneasy, remembering his oaths of last
night when he was roused to a ten-mile ride; but Katrine couldn't or
wouldn't notice anything amiss. She said sweet things to both of them,
and then, unwilling to rob Annie of any part of Will's company, she
withdrew to her own cabin.
Two or three weeks passed, and dreary weeks they were. The temperature
fell below the zero mark and stayed there, the sun hardly ever shone,
the whole sky being blotted out as behind a thick grey curtain. The few
hours of daylight that each twenty-four hours brought round was little
more than a dismal twilight. Times were dreary, too, provisions ran
scarce and very high, and the cheerless cold and darkness seemed to
paralyse the energies of the strongest and lay a grip upon the whole
town. Many months of the winter had already gone by, and strength and
spirits were beginning to flag; health and courage had worn thin, and
men who had faced the bitterness of the cold with a joke when it had
first set in felt it keenly now like the rest. In Good Luck Row matters
were worse than anywhere else in the town; the occupants were mostly
very poor, and the pressure of the high prices was sharpest upon them.
In addition to all else they had to suffer, typhoid broke out amongst
them, and another horrible fear was added to the terror of the cold. In
the universal gloom that hung over the city, under the mantle of
darkness, want and starvation and fear and disease wrangled together,
while Death walked silently and continually about the darkened streets.
During all this time Katrine was about the only one who kept up her
spirits and courage. She was the light and comfort of the row, there was
not a cabin in it that had not been brightened and cheered by her
smiles and benefited by her gifts. She was absolutely without fear
herself. The quality seemed to have been left out of her composition, or
perhaps it was only that her great physical health and strength made her
feel unconsciously that it was impossible for any harm to come to her.
She went in and out of the fever-stricken cabins all day, doing what she
could for each one of the inmates, and always with her brilliant smile,
which was a tonic in itself, and half the night she would sit gambling
in the saloons, winning the money to spend upon her sick patients the
following day.
As soon as Stephen learned that typhoid had broken out in the row, he
came down to her and urged her to marry him and come away to the west
gulch, if only as an asylum. But Katrine simply laughed and joked, and
would not listen to him. Then he begged her to look upon herself merely
as his tenant; he and Talbot would share the same cabin, and she could
occupy his in perfect peace and security, and be safely away from the
depressing influences of the town and its disease-laden atmosphere. Then
she grew very grave, and said simply in a sweet tone that echoed through
all the chambers of his heart--
"Dear Stephen, you are very good to be so anxious for me, but I'm not a
bit anxious for myself. I should feel like a coward if I went away from
the row now. These people are so dependent upon me, and I can do so many
little things for them. I feel it's a duty to stay here, and I'd rather
do it;" and Stephen had kissed her hand passionately and gone back to
the gulch, more in love with her than ever.
She saw very little of him, and was too busy to think about him or note
whether he came or not, having so many anxieties on her mind just then,
of which the heaviest was the girl-wife Annie in the next cabin. Since
the semi-crisis in her illness, over which Katrine had helped her, there
seemed to be little change in her condition from day to day. That is,
the change did not show itself externally; within the delicate
structure, the disease, aided by the cold, the foul damp air of the
town, and hopeless spirits, crept steadily and quickly on, but gave
little or no outward sign, and Katrine hoped against hope that she could
possibly tide her over the time till Will perhaps made a strike and
could take her away. She knew how the sick woman clung to this idea. For
months now she had been shut off from all communication with the outer
world, she never saw a paper or a book, she could not move from her
cabin, her whole sphere was bounded now by its four rough walls, and so
the one idea that was left to her starved brain and heart was that Will
should make a strike. And as a weed runs over a bare and neglected
garden, so will one single idea completely absorb and fill a neglected
brain, and grow and grow to gigantic strength. This was Annie's one
idea; she brooded over it, pondered over it, nursed it, slept with it,
and talked to Katrine of it with burning eyes, till the latter felt if
it could only be fulfilled the joy of it would almost cure her. And it
might be fulfilled, she knew, any day. It was early days in the Klondike
then, and plenty of good ground lay around waiting to be discovered. She
heard from Stephen that Will was steady and energetic, had given up
drink, and was set upon the idea of prospecting for land of his own.
Katrine's heart beat hard with pure sympathy as she heard, and she
begged Stephen as the one thing he could do for herself to facilitate
Will's efforts in every way and aid him for her sake. Meanwhile, her own
care was to keep the fragile creature who was living upon hope still on
this side of the Great Divide. And to this end she worked night and
day. She kept her cabin clean and well lighted and well warmed. She
bought and made soup, and gave fabulous prices for meat and wine, and
sat with her long hours cheering her with stories heard in the saloons
and picked up in the streets, and scraps of news from the gulch and
farther points.
The disease seemed so quiescent that Katrine began to hope more and more
that she should be rewarded, and one morning a hurried note scribbled in
pencil was brought in to Annie while Katrine was scrubbing the cabin
floor, telling her in a few ill-spelt words that Will thought he might
get in to town that night. A bright flame of colour leaped over the
woman's pale face, and then the next moment faded as her hands with the
note in them fell listlessly to her lap.
"He ain't made no strike yet," Katrine heard her mutter to herself.
"You don't know," rejoined Katrine, looking up flushed and warm from her
hard work. "He may have some good news to tell you any way."
Annie merely shook her head and gazed out of the window.
"He'd have told me," she murmured, and that was all.
Katrine had a long and heavy round of visits to make that day, and for
two long hours she sat motionless by a dying woman's bedside, fearing to
withdraw her hand, to which the poor terrified enterer into the Valley
of the Shadow was clinging. In her arms, and with her tired head on
Katrine's young bosom, the woman drew her last breath; and Katrine,
feeling her own soul wrenched asunder and her body aching with strain
and shock, came round in the afternoon to Annie. She would not say a
word to her of the death-bed from which she had come. With an effort she
talked of cheerful things, of the spring-time that was on its way to
them, of the pleasure of seeing Will again, and so on, till her head
ached. She did a few domestic offices for the girl, and then feeling she
must break down herself if she stayed longer, she said she needed sleep,
and if Annie could take care of herself for a time she would go and lie
down. Annie noticed how heavy the lids were over her eyes and begged her
to go at once, though a strange fear, like a child's of the dark, came
over her.
"Will will be soon with you now--the best company," Katrine said, with a
tired smile; "and if you want me, a knock on the wall here will bring me
to you," and Annie was left alone.
As the afternoon closed in her cough seemed to grow more and more
troublesome; the pain in her chest, too, had never been so bad; she had
to keep her hand there all the time as she laboured round the room
putting everything to rights, making sure that the cabin was neat and
tidy against Will's return. At last she sat down in the circle of hot
light round the fire, and little Tim crawled into her lap. She put her
arms round him and held him absently. She was thinking over Katrine's
words. The Spring! were they really near it? "so near," she had said,
"it was almost here." Her eyes looking upwards to the darkening windows
caught the old and smoke-hued almanac pinned up to the wall beside it.
She set the child down, and getting up walked slowly over to it and ran
one trembling finger down the dates. Each one from December, when they
had first hung it up, had a heavy black line against it, where she had
scratched it out with eager fingers; only the last days had no mark
against them. She had been too weary, too heart sick, to note them any
longer. What did it matter to her when the Spring came? the almanac for
her would have come to an end before that. But now a fresh gleam of
hope seemed to have entered her heart, and with a feverish movement she
drew the old stump of pencil from her pocket and scratched off the
unmarked days, and then stood gazing at the date of that day; they were
still far, far from the Spring--too far. Oh, to go back in the Spring,
to escape from this prison of darkness, this country of horror and
starvation and misery, to be back once more in her home in the Spring!
Her mind fled away from the dreary interior of the darkening cabin. She
stood once more in the rich grassy meadow with the golden sunlight of an
evening summer sky warm around her, the song of the birds in her ears,
the hot scent of the meadow-sweet in her nostrils, before her the little
narrow path leading to the cottage that seemed to bask sleepily in the
yellow glow. She made a step forward with dilated eyes, then the cough
seized her, the vision dissolved and fled. Again the cabin with its
blackened rafters enclosed her. She turned from the calendar. What was
the Spring's coming? It might come, but they would not go back. What
right had she to think of it? They had made no strike, and had not Will
sworn he would never go back without the gold? This accursed gold! If
they could but have found it as others had! She put her hands to her
head to drive away the thoughts, they were familiar and so useless. She
had thought them over and over again so often. As she went back to the
fire she noticed one of Will's woollen shirts lying on a chair. Why,
that was the one she had meant to wash that morning! How could she have
forgotten it? And now perhaps she would not get it done before he
returned. Her heart began to beat, her limbs trembled. How weak and
queer she felt this afternoon! Still, she would do it somehow. There was
hot water on the fire that Katrine had put there. She lifted with an
effort the great iron kettle from the fire, and with that in one hand
and the shirt in the other she went into the adjoining sloping roofed
compartment that served as scullery, wood-shed, pantry, and wash-house.
It was many degrees colder here, and the long iron nails that kept the
boards together overhead had sparkling icicles on them that glittered as
the firelight from the inner room touched them, and she could hardly
draw her breath. Nevertheless she walked over to the wash-tub and poured
in the water, and set to work with shaking hands. "Had ever shirt seemed
so large?" she wondered vaguely, and her thin arms moved slowly, lifting
it up and down with difficulty. It seemed getting so dark, too. She
should have lighted the candles, it wouldn't look so cheery for Will if
he came back to find the cabin dark. But was this only the twilight
falling? No, it was in her eyes. She leaned heavily on the edge of the
wooden tub, trembling, the floor unsteady beneath her, a strangling
suffocation in her throat, a swimming darkness before her eyes. A sense
of terrible loneliness pressed in upon her, and then suddenly she knew
that in the chill of that dark twilight she was alone with Death. He had
come for her at last.
Oh, to have had Will's strong arms round her, a human breast to lay her
head down upon, and so die! A nameless terror possessed her, overwhelmed
her; she started from the wash trestle. There was a sudden cry, "Will!
Will!" and she fell forward on the damp flooring, a little eager scarlet
stream of blood pouring out from the nerveless lips to stain the
soap-suds under the trestle.
The child sitting playing in the ring of warm firelight in the adjoining
room heard that last cry, and startled, dropped his toys, looking with
round eyes to the blackness beyond the open door. He listened with one
tiny finger in his mouth for many minutes, but no further sound came to
disturb him from the wash-house, and he went on playing.
An hour passed perhaps before Will set foot in Good Luck Row, and he
tramped up it with a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the
blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had elastic springs in
their soles. Yet he carried an extra weight with him. There was
something in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand as if it
had been red-hot iron when he touched it. As he came to No. 14 and saw
the windows dark he merely hurried his pace, and hardly stayed to lift
the door latch, but just burst through the half-opened door and brought
his huge burly frame over the threshold.
"Well, Annie, my girl, we've struck it at last," he shouted at the top
of his voice, "and you shall come home right away. Where are you, Annie?
Didn't I say wait a bit for me?"
He had entered by the wash-house, but the darkness was thick, almost
palpable, before his face and revealed nothing. He went forward to the
open door, beyond which the burned-down fire gave only a faint red
light, and his foot kicked something heavy on the floor. With a curious
feeling gripping his heart, he stopped dead short where he stood and
fumbled for a match. Then he struck it, and in its sickly glare looked
down. "Annie, my dear!" he called in a shaking voice, and bent down
holding the match close to the upturned face. The light played for an
instant upon it and went out. "Annie!" he called again, and the word
broke in his throat.
A thin wail went up from little Tim in the dusk of the inner room. Where
the man stood was silence and darkness. His strike had come too late.
His wife was dead.
* * * * *
Half-an-hour later a man burst into the "Pistol Shot." It was between
hours, and the bar-tender was just going round lighting the lamps; the
place was nearly empty, only a few miners were standing at the end of
the counter, talking together. The new customer staggered across the
floor as if already under the influence of drink, kicking up the fresh
sawdust on the ground; then he reached the counter and demanded drink
after drink. He tossed the whiskies handed to him down his throat, and
then retreated to a bench that stood against the wall and sat down
staring stupidly in front of him. The little group of men looked at him
once or twice curiously, and then one said--
"Why, it's Bill Johnson, who's just made a strike. Come up, boys, let's
congratulate him."
The men moved up to the motionless, staring figure, and one of them
slapped him on the shoulder.
"Say, Bill, old man, you're in luck, and we'll all drink your health.
Got any gold to show us?"
The sitting figure seemed galvanised suddenly out of its stupor. Will
raised his head with a jerk, and the men involuntarily drew back from
the glare of his bloodshot eyes. He put his hand to his pocket and drew
out a small dirty buckskin bag. He dashed it suddenly on the ground with
all his force, so that the sawdust flew up in a little cloud.
"Curse the gold!" he said, and got up and tramped heavily out of the
saloon.