GOLD-PLATED
The next afternoon, when Stephen returned to the west gulch and Talbot
heard his news, he said he was glad, and meant it. Life at the gulch was
very desolate and dreary, and such a bright glad presence as the girl's
would alleviate the monotony and disperse the gloom.
For the following week both men were busy preparing Stephen's cabin for
her reception and trying to impart to it a bridal appearance. The hands
were left to do the work on the claims, and Talbot and Stephen were too
busy indoors to even oversee them. The cabin was large and well built.
It stood looking across the gulch, and half-way down it, over the tops
of the dark green pines and facing towards the western horizon, where
the pink lights played and the little sundogs gambolled in the fall of
the short grey snowy afternoons. Stephen was down in town once in the
week, and came back with his pony laden with mysterious packages, and
when Talbot came in in the evening he found Stephen on his knees,
tacking down strips of carpet by the bed in the inner room. Narrow
curtains had also been nailed up beside the window, and altogether the
cabin presented a luxurious appearance.
"This is quite magnificent," remarked Talbot, strolling about with an
admiring air.
"D'ye think so?" replied Stephen in a pleased tone, lifting a flushed
face from his tacks and sitting back on his boot heels. "She's awfully
handsome, isn't she? Say, it's strange to come to a hole like this and
meet the handsomest girl you've ever seen!"
"She is very handsome," assented Talbot, sitting down by the stove and
stretching out his frozen feet before it. He was in the other room, but
close to the open door leading into the bedroom, and facing Stephen as
he sat on the floor with the screw of tacks by his side that had been
paid for in gold.
"And good, too, eh? good at heart, don't you think? Only not exactly
religious, of course," he continued.
"No, she's not very religious," returned Talbot, with the dry, hard tone
in his voice that his subordinates knew and hated.
"But it's not every one who says, 'Lord, Lord, that shall enter the
kingdom of heaven,'" quoted Stephen; "you remember, Christ said that,"
he pursued in an anxious tone, peering up at the other for
encouragement.
Talbot gave his slight, quiet laugh.
"You've got the handsomest girl in the place," he said, "and a very
nice, charming one, too. I don't see what more you want."
To his strong, determined character this perpetual straining after a
religion that was cast to the winds first at the temptation of gold, and
then at a saloon-keeper's daughter's smile, was rather contemptible.
"And 'there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,' etc.,"
Stephen continued, anxious to persuade himself into a comfortable frame
of mind.
"Has Miss Poniatovsky repented?" asked Talbot, still more dryly.
"Why, yes; I told you all she said. She won't gamble any more."
Talbot was silent; through his mind was running a line of Latin to the
effect that wool once dyed scarlet can never recover its former tint,
but he said nothing.
It did not take Katrine long to prepare for her wedding. There was no
such thing as buying a trousseau in Dawson. She gathered together her
coarse woollen underclothes, her stout short dresses, and thick boots,
and packed them in two flat cases, such as can be strapped to a burro's
side, and these were to be all she would take up to the cabin in the
gulch besides her wealth of natural beauty. She did go to many of the
stores around, buying trifles such as might happen to find themselves
there and suit her: a small looking-glass here, a ribbon or a piece of
lace there, and as she leaned across the rough trestle counter she
generally remarked to the storekeeper, "I'm going to be married." She
said it in the shyest, happiest tone imaginable, and a little blush
stole over her smooth cheeks. In this way the news got round to
Katrine's old friends and associates. She would have liked to have told
them herself, but the old hunting grounds were forbidden to her now, and
Stephen's wishes made a barrier between her and the entrance of all the
saloons. He had tried to make her give him a solemn promise never to
enter one again, but this Katrine would not do.
"I can't be tied like that," she had said. "Something might occur to
make it necessary for me to go into one of those places; and if I had
promised you in this way, I could not. You have said you don't wish me
to go; I have said I won't. Isn't that enough?" And Stephen had looked
into the clear dark eyes and had said "Quite."
The day of Stephen's marriage, the day when Katrine was to arrive as a
bride at the west gulch, was calm and still. There was no wind and no
snow falling. The sky stretched black and gloomy above the plains of
snow; it was a day of the Alaskan winter, but still a good day for that.
Stephen had gone down the previous day, and slept the night in Dawson.
Talbot was waiting at the cabin to receive them on their return. As he
stood at the little window that overlooked the trail, waiting for the
first glimpse of them, and staring across the dismal waste that ran into
grey and dreary mist in the distance, a great revolt stirred in his
usually calm and philosophic breast--a sudden longing swept over him for
the blue skies and warm air of the lands he was accustomed to, and a
wilder longing still for a glimpse of the sunlight held in two eyes that
were fairer than any sky. He shut his teeth hard, and his hand closed
tightly on the window frame. "Only a little longer," he muttered to
himself, and then far in the distance came a soft silvery tinkle of
bells. Recalled to himself, he relaxed his face in a pleasant smile, and
went to the door and opened it. In a second or two they came in sight,
riding single file up the narrow trail, the girl first and Stephen
following. She wore a large skin coat of some shaggy fur which concealed
her figure, though not its splendid upright pose, and on her head was a
small fur cap of some light colour, white fox or rabbit. Beneath showed
her dark glossy hair curling upwards over the brim, and her glowing
face rich and fresh as a Damascus rose.
Talbot was greatly struck. The realisation of her beauty came home to
him very forcibly in this cold, envious light of open day. "Stephen's
not such a fool, after all," was his inward comment as he went forward
to meet them. As he lifted her from her pony and bade her welcome to the
cabins and the west gulch, she smiled down upon him. What a mysterious,
magic thing human beauty is, and the human smile! It seems to light the
dreariest sky, people the loneliest landscape. Where there is a human
smile to reflect one's own, not even a desert seems desolate, not even a
prison cell seems cold. Talbot felt this very strongly in that moment.
As the warm, bright, laughing, youthful face looked into his, the sun
seemed to have suddenly burst out upon that dreary snowy plain, and as
the two men escorted her over the threshold it seemed to both that they
were throwing open the door not only to her concrete self but to the
abstracts, warmth and light, and gaiety and laughter, and that these all
flowed in with her into the simple rough interior, transforming and
illumining it.
Katrine was delighted with her new home; she walked about examining
every detail and showing her joy and pleasure in each little trifle that
had been prepared for her. She had a very soft voice and manner when she
chose,--she was too young yet for her gambling, drinking, and rough
associates to have spoiled,--and Stephen stood in the centre of the
room, flushed and silent with the fulness of his pleasure, following her
eagerly with his eyes. After all, in this world of ours, everything
stands in such close relation to its surrounding objects and
circumstances that there is no absoluteness left. Or you may consider it
the other way, that the feelings are absolute and always the same. A
millionaire bridegroom could not receive more pleasure from the
pleasure of his bride when viewing the mansion he had prepared for her,
than Stephen did now from Katrine's approval of his log hut, and her
thanks and smiles were as sweet over a little wooden shelf tacked
against the wall, as if a two thousand dollar chandelier had called them
forth.
Then Stephen took her arm and drew her into the next room, and here she
was so shy and nervous she could not look about at all. Stephen took off
her cloak and all her outer wraps, and then made her come and see her
reflection in a little square looking-glass that he had obtained for her
at quite a high price; but Katrine could not face the mirror, and hid
her blushing cheeks and downcast eyes on his shoulder instead. Stephen
put his arm round her. "You don't regret what you have done?" he asked
in alarm, pressing her close to him.
"No, oh no, dear Steve, only it's all so strange; let's go back to the
other room."
They returned, as she wished, and found that Talbot had laid the dinner
for them,--a dinner he had spent all the morning in preparing,--and they
sat down to it with a gaiety that made up for the shortness of supplies.
After dinner they drew close round the fire and prolonged the roasting
and eating of chestnuts and drinking whisky throughout the
afternoon,--for whisky was there, strongly as Stephen objected to see
her drink it; still it was their wedding day, and he let it pass. As
darkness came down a whirling snow-storm swept through the gulch; they
could see the thin sharp flakes fly past the window on the cutting wind,
and hear the whistling roar of the storm as it struck and beat upon the
cabin. They only flung more logs into the stove, and gave a backward
glance over their shoulders from time to time towards the window. By
nine in the evening, when Talbot was leaving them to go to his own
cabin, it had calmed down a little, though the wind still moaned in the
hollows of the gulch.
Stephen and Katrine stood at the window a second after he had gone,
looking out into the curious misty whiteness and blackness commingled of
the night.
"I am sorry there should be such a storm the first day you are here,
darling," said Stephen softly, putting his arm round her waist.
"Why, what does that matter? I do not mind, I have you to protect me.
You will always now, Steve, won't you, from everything? I don't want
ever to go back to that gambling life again."
He drew her into his arms.
"Of course, of course I will," he said, kissing her. "I will always take
care of you."
Her arms were interlaced about his neck, they looked into each other's
eyes, and neither knew any more whether it was a storm or a calm in the
night outside.
For the first few weeks after their marriage Katrine was more than
happy, and it seemed to those lonely beings, sheltered from the savage
siege of Nature only by those frail little cabins built by their own
hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had
blossomed for them suddenly--a perfect spring in winter. The girl's
wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and
she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to
smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless
existence. Nothing seemed to have the power to disturb her, the most
irritating and annoying incident never even brought a frown to her face;
it filled her with consternation for the men, and an immediate desire to
smooth it over for them, if possible to prevent their being ruffled by
it. For herself, she seemed above the reach of any circumstance to
disconcert. One morning the men had an instance of this. They were all
three living together in Stephen's cabin now. That is to say, Talbot
took all his meals there, and used it as his own home in every way,
except that he still went back to his cabin to sleep. It had seemed
cheerless to both Katrine and Stephen for Talbot to be eating alone a
few yards from them, and though it gave the girl more work, and for that
reason Talbot was slow to accept the arrangement, she herself coaxed him
into it. They came in late from the claims to lunch, and found her
bending over the fire, with flushed cheeks and happy eyes. She was
stirring a great saucepan of inviting looking and smelling stew, that
she had spent the whole morning in preparing. The large handle of the
pan projected from the stove some distance, and as Stephen threw off his
overcoat he managed in some way to tip up the saucepan with a sudden
jerk that sent the contents half into the fire, half over the girl's
bare arm, from which her sleeve was rolled to the elbow. She did not
utter a sound as the scalding liquid ran burning over her flesh, but
Talbot saw her face grow deadly pale with the sickening pain. After a
second of agony, when she found her voice, and Stephen was remorsefully
spreading fat over the blistered, cracking flesh, the first thing she
said, with her eyes full of disappointed tears, was, "Oh dear! how
unlucky! Now you won't get anything hot for lunch." And as soon as a
bandage was twisted round her scalded arm, she was over at the cupboard
collecting all the best of her cold supplies and laying them out on the
table.
There was not a word of anger or reproof to Stephen for his
carelessness, not a word of her own pain. The great sorrow that she was
anxious to smooth over and atone for to them was that they would have to
put up with a cold luncheon!
Her one idea, the sole thought that occupied her, was to make these two
men happy, at any cost to herself. All day she studied how she could
make their life, so hard and rough smoother for them, how she could
alleviate the labour and monotony of it. She rose in the morning long
before either was awake, and had the fires blazing, wood brought in,
water melted out, and the coffee made by the time they came into the
sitting-room, looking white and sleepy in the flare of the common
candles. All the house work they had formerly found hard, when counted
in addition to their outside labour, she took entirely upon herself, and
insensibly they both felt the relief very great. There was no coming
home now, worn out and frozen, to a cheerless cabin, and being obliged
to chop wood and light fires and split ice before they could get warm
and rested. A glowing hearth, a laid table, a smiling face, always
awaited them. Often coming up from the dump at the lower end of the
claim, they could see the square patch of red light flung out from the
window on the snow, bidding them hurry in to the welcome warmth and
light inside.
The daylight only lasted them now from ten to two, and for these hours
the men worked out of doors. During their absence the girl went out on
shooting expeditions of her own. She had invented a modified snow-shoe,
broad and short, with slightly curved-up ends, and with these strapped
on to her lithe feet, her fur coat fastened up to her chin, and her fur
cap drawn over her ears and to her brows, she defied the fall of the
mercury, and skimmed over the snow as silently and swiftly as a shadow
moving.
She enjoyed these long, lonely excursions, with her heart kept warm by
the hope of discovering something she could bring down with her pistol
or her shot-gun, and carry back as a surprise and a treat for the men
for supper. There was not much indeed to be found; but a small breed of
snow-bird was prevalent, and quite a flock of these would very often
follow or precede a snow-storm, and whenever Katrine's keen eye caught
sight of the little dark patch that a cluster of them made against the
snow, she would glide swiftly over in that direction, and have eight or
ten of them swinging at her belt to take home. They were small, but
cooked as she knew how to cook them, they were a delicacy beyond price
to the men who for months had tasted little but beans and hard bacon.
Katrine felt quite happy if she could return through the suddenly
falling gloom of the afternoon and cross the darkened threshold just as
the men came back, half frozen, from the creek, and show her cluster of
victims swinging by their long-necked heads from her waist.
She thought of them, planned for their comfort, and worked for them all
day; while to her husband she was absolutely devoted, and one would
think that for such devotion a few smiles, a kiss, and some kind words
was a small price to pay. Yet after the first few weeks, and even during
them, Stephen, who worked all day to secure his mining gains, would not
even exert himself to that degree to return the affection that was worth
all his claims put together. One kiss given before he went out to his
work in the morning would have made Katrine happy all day, one tender
inquiry on his return would have amply rewarded her for all her labours,
yet he invariably went out to the claims without bestowing the one, and
returned without making the other. Hard work, privations, loneliness,
even the absence of all the amusements she had delighted in, would not
have broken her spirits; she would have accepted them all cheerfully, if
her husband had only thrown over them the little light and warmth of his
affection that she longed for. Each day she hoped it might be
different; but no, he grew more and more absorbed by the gold fever that
was eating away his heart and brain, and the girl grew more and more
depressed and resentful. "It would be no trouble to him," she murmured
to herself over and over again, as she stood at the wash-tub, wringing
out his shirts, or knelt on the floor of the cabin scrubbing the boards,
"just a kiss or a smile."
She did not in the meantime relax any of her attention to him. Her smile
for him was always as sweet when he returned, her efforts to please him
as untiring, but in her heart her thoughts turned more and more
constantly day by day to the idea of leaving him, of returning to her
own life, where at least she had not been tormented by this perpetual
hope and expectation and disappointment.
Stephen never dreamed that the girl's thoughts were as they were; though
if he had done so, he probably would not have altered his own
course--for Katrine in several angry outbursts had appealed to him, had
told him how she hungered after, not great and difficult proofs of his
love, but the little ones, the trifles, how he was starving and killing
her love for him by his neglect of it, and he either could not, or would
not, understand. But that she contemplated ever leaving him never
crossed his brain, any more than the conception of the passionate hate
she felt for him at times when he left undone some trifling thing, that
if done, would have roused an equally passionate access to her love. He,
jaundiced with this mental yellow fever, thought his rich claims, his
great wealth, had probably had some influence on the daughter of the
Polish Jew when she accepted him. He relied, in fact, on his wealth, and
on the material advantages she would gain by clinging to him, to hold
her to him. And with Katrine this was a rope of sand. She cared no more
for Stephen's wealth and for his claims than if they had been ash
heaps. There was not a touch of avarice, of calculating greed, in her
whole character, and to gratify her own impulse she would have cast all
material advantages aside. From Stephen she wanted love, and that only,
and this was the only chain that could hold for an instant her proud,
independent, reckless will.
There were the makings of a splendid character in the girl, all the
foundations of all the best qualities in her: a little care, a little
culture bestowed on them, and she would have developed into a fine and
noble woman; but Stephen's eyes were blinded by the glare of the gold he
saw in his visions, and the far greater and more wonderful treasure, the
living human soul, that chance had given over to his care, unfolded
itself slowly before him in all its beauty, and he could no longer see
it. To Talbot it seemed incredible that Katrine through her mere
physical beauty did not obtain a greater hold upon him, that she seemed
so unable to absorb him, that she could not triumph over him by the road
of the senses. Talbot himself was absorbed in his work, but even he, the
onlooker, the outsider, felt the influence of this brilliant young
presence that had come suddenly into their sordid life, like the sun
rising in radiant majesty over a barren plain. The common table at which
they sat seemed no longer the same now that she was at the head, with
her beautiful figure rising above it, and her laughing, lovely
nineteen-year-old face looking down it. To him, those liquid flashing
eyes, and arching brows, and curled red lips seemed to light, positively
light, the small and common room. But the eye grows accustomed to beauty
and ceases to heed it, just as it grows accustomed to, and ceases to
heed, ugliness and deformity, especially where there is no standard, no
measure for it, no comparison with other objects. Just as any
shortcoming, any mental or physical defect that a man hardly notices in
a woman he loves, when alone with her, becomes painfully apparent to him
when he sees her surrounded by others, so does her beauty strike him
when reflected in other eyes, and pass unheeded when seen only by his
own. Katrine was alone, there was no other woman's face to either rival
or be a foil to hers, and after the first six weeks her beauty ceased to
sting and surprise Stephen's senses. She, as it were, became the
standard, since there was no other. And there is no absoluteness about
beauty, nor our admiration for it. When we say we admire a woman because
she is beautiful, we mean we admire her because she is more beautiful
than other women. If all others were the same as she, she would cease to
be called a beautiful woman, and if there were none others than she,
then she would simply be a woman for us. We could not know whether she
was beautiful or not. Man's senses are made not to perceive, but to
compare, and he cannot judge except by comparison. Talbot knew all this,
and he could not help feeling sorry that a girl such as this should be
so isolated with them, and that the man who possessed her should realise
his good fortune so little. He suggested often, for the girl's sake,
excursions down into the town; but Stephen, partly from his religious
views, and more from his anxiety not to waste a minute of his literally
golden time, always frowned down the question, and though the girl
looked at him wistfully she never complained against his decisions. She
seemed to have completely accepted the idea that her marriage meant the
renunciation of all the things she had delighted in, and if her marriage
had given her more of what she had hoped for, she would have been
contented with the change.
One evening, when Stephen was out in the shed at the back of the cabin
stacking up some wood by the light of a candle stuck in a chink of the
logs, Talbot and the girl were sitting idle on each side of the stove,
and somehow, though Talbot seldom opened his lips on such matters,
seldom in his life offered opinion or advice to others, they had now
been speaking of her marriage, and Stephen's attitude towards her.
There were tears in her great eyes, and her under lip quivered and
turned downwards like a wet rose-leaf.
"He is so _very_ wrapped up in all this digging business, why did he
want to marry me at all?" she said, in a sort of helpless childish
wonder.
Talbot was silent, looking at her, and then instead of answering her
question, said--
"Why don't you make him notice you more? why can't you appeal to him?"
"Appeal to him!" she repeated; "it's no use. Why, he is
gold-plated--eyes, ears, touch, everything, all plated over; you can't
reach him through it."
"Have men nothing like affection in them?" she said, after a minute.
"Have they nothing between their mad bursts of passion and a cold
incivility? What do they do with all the charming ways they have before
they possess a woman? Stephen was so gentle, so nice, so interested,
when he used to visit me down town; and now you see how rude and hateful
he is very often. Why do they change? I have not changed. I am still as
attentive, as eager to please him, more so, than when he came to my
cabin. Oh," she added, after a minute, "I'm getting so tired of it all,
I feel I'd like to throw it all up and go back to my own life and
freedom. All the men are so civil and so nice and so devoted as long as
a woman does nothing for them," she said simply, not fully realising
perhaps the terrible ironical truth she was half-unconsciously uttering.
"I could love him immensely," she added, stretching out her arms; "oh,
he could have such a love from me, if he wanted it; but as it is, I
don't see much use in my staying with him. I feel I'd like to go back to
my own life and forget I ever married him."
"Oh, you must not do that," said Talbot, startled out of his usual calm,
and fixing his eyes on her; "pray don't think of such things."
"Do you think he would care?" she said, opening her eyes in her turn.
"I'm sure he would," Talbot answered, with so much emphasis and decision
that the girl sat silent and impressed for some seconds.
"Why is he not more amiable then?" she asked.
"It's men's way," returned Talbot, not knowing exactly what to say, and
accidentally hitting the truth completely.
"They're fools," replied Katrine, angrily, while the hot tears fell
thickly into her lap.
Stephen came in at the moment, and though Katrine made no attempt to
conceal the fact that she was crying, he took no notice of her, but
began talking to Talbot about the wood.
"We shall have to take the sleigh to-morrow and go up the gulch and get
some more wood somehow, if we can. There's only a few bundles left," he
said, blowing out the candle and dragging some heavy logs over to the
fire.
"Can I come with you?" asked Katrine, looking at him with her soft
pathetic eyes, still brimming with tears.
"Why--yes--I suppose so," returned Stephen, slowly opening the stove and
looking in.
"I shall enjoy it so much," answered Katrine, her face beginning to
sparkle with its accustomed smiles. "We have not had a sleigh ride
together once, have we? I'd like to go with you better than anything.
You'll like it too, won't you?"
"I don't know; it's a confounded nuisance having to leave the claims a
whole afternoon, I think."
Katrine got up suddenly from where she was sitting and walked into the
next room without a word. Her tears were dried, her smiles killed.
The following day was clear and bright, and a cold, pinky-looking winter
sunlight filled the air. Katrine and Stephen started early, and Talbot
did not expect them back till dark. He was out on the claims all the
morning, and came in to his lunch late and did not go out again
immediately. It was a day for a half-holiday, and all his men left
early; the claims were deserted, and Talbot found himself in solitary
possession of the gulch. He felt restless and unsettled, and walked
about his little bare room in an aimless way quite unusual to him, and
the early part of the afternoon had passed away before he realised it.
In one of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The
gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and
desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour
by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day.
It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges
and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and
listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and
oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's
figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly
where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence and loneliness, that
Talbot started a little with sheer surprise; and then another appeared,
and another. They were coming, one behind the other, singly, round the
corner of the house, and as they emerged into view on the level platform
in front of it Talbot looked them over and saw at a glance to what order
they belonged.
"As tough a crowd of claim-jumpers as I have seen," he murmured to
himself as he watched their movements. They did not seem very decided or
certain, nor well agreed amongst themselves. There were six in all, and
they advanced towards the house in a loitering way, pausing once or
twice to talk with each other, and glancing over the cabin. They were
all dressed alike, in large slouch hats, thick boots and high leggings,
and short coats with a belt round the waist, from which depended their
enormous six-shooters. As they finally, in their loitering fashion,
neared the door, Talbot walked to it, threw it wide open, and asked them
what they wanted. They hung back from the door a little and looked at
each other, and then one said he had a lease on the claims from General
Marshall.
"I am the only person who has power or authority to give a lease on
these claims," returned Talbot in a short, hard voice.
The men hesitated. Talbot looked pretty tough himself as he stood there
facing them, clothed in buckskin from head to foot, his head nearly
touching the lintel of the doorway above him, his revolver on his side,
and behind him looming the tunnel, a gaping mouth of blackness.
The men shuffled their feet on the snow and grinned at each other
uneasily. It did not seem they could work the game of bluff here that
they had thought out in the town.
"Well, that's your opinion," returned the leader in a bantering tone,
while the others closed in nearer the threshold in a jeering circle;
"but a lease from General Marshall's good enough for us, and I guess
we're coming in."
"You'd better try it," returned Talbot, and he slammed to the heavy door
in their faces, and fastened it on the inside.
He expected them to force it, and he hastily dragged together some sacks
of rich dirt that were lying in the tunnel and piled them up, forming
quite a respectable barricade. Behind these he took his stand, his
revolver in his hand. With six against one he felt they must win in the
end, but he thought he could put a bullet through half of their number
as they advanced, and he'd sell his claim and his life dear.
He waited some moments, but nothing happened. There was silence outside,
and after a second or two he stepped back to his sitting-room and looked
out of the window. A council of war was taking place seemingly. The men
had all withdrawn to a little distance, where there was some old tin
piping. They had seated themselves on this, and were now in earnest
conversation. Talbot stood at the window and watched them with a dry
smile. He could tell their talk almost from their expressions and their
gestures. It was one thing to come up and bluff a man out of his
property, and walk in and take it as he walked out; and another to force
a narrow tunnel against the straight, steady fire of a fearless devil
like this. They could overpower him in the end, there was no doubt of
that; but then when they walked in it would be over his dead body, that
was clear, and several others besides him, for he was known to be the
quickest, straightest shot in the district, and could certainly get away
with some of them. It was this part they did not like, for each man felt
he might be the one to be picked off and stretched stiff in the tunnel.
So there was considerable parleying and hesitation amongst them, and
Talbot stood motionless at the window watching them as they sat there,
and noting the length of their six-shooters that dangled down the sides
of their legs. At last there was a concerted movement amongst them: they
got up with one accord, and without another glance at the cabin walked
slowly away across the plateau in front of the house and round the
corner of it towards the town trail, the way they had come. Talbot
watched them disappear in the grey light of the gulch with surprise, and
then drew a deep breath. He hardly knew whether he felt relieved or
disappointed. His blood was up then, and he would have liked to send a
bullet through a few of them. He roamed about restlessly for some time,
and went to the back of the house to a little square window, and from
there watched the last of them mount the trail and disappear from the
gulch. Then all was silence and solitude again, in the swiftly falling
darkness. He turned into his sitting-room, and stirred the fire into a
blaze and lighted up the lamps--his lamps always burned well and
brightly, being kept scientifically clean and trimmed with his own
hands,--then he flung himself into a chair and sat there gazing into the
flames, his revolver beside him on the table. He half expected the men
to return, and his ears remained attentive to the slightest sound
without. But there was nothing, absolute stillness reigned all around
him; not a crackle of the frosted snow nor the fall of a leaf broke the
grave-like silence.
When the other two came in, he told his afternoon's adventure in the
quietest, simplest way possible, and the fewest words. The girl listened
with flushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
"What fun!" she said at last when he had finished, and kicking off her
snow-laden boots as she sat by the stove. "And you held off six men by
the 'power of your eye?' what a convenient eye that is! I don't see
you've any need to carry a six-shooter! I wish they'd come back
to-night, we'd give them something of a reception."
Talbot laughed, and looked pleased at the praise from her bright young
lips. Stephen only looked anxious.
That night they sat up rather later than usual, and Katrine was quite in
a pleased state of expectation. No visitors made their appearance,
however, and at last Talbot left to go to his own cabin.
"Now, if they come in the night," remarked Katrine, laughing, as she
said good-night, "don't slay them all with your eye, mind, but give me a
chance."
Talbot promised to use his eye mercifully, and Katrine and Stephen put
their lights out and went to bed.
It seemed to Katrine she had been asleep some time, when she awoke
suddenly and put her hand on her husband's arm. "Steve, I hear steps."
"Nonsense," murmured Stephen, drowsily; "it's your fancy. Go to sleep."
But Katrine's ears were like those of a wild animal, quick and not to be
deceived.
"Go to sleep yourself, if you can," she retorted, and sprang up in the
darkness, found her day clothes, and hustled them on. There was silence
now outside, but Katrine hurried all she could, and then with one
revolver in her belt and one in her hand went into the other room.
Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, there was a crash, a sound
of tearing and splitting wood, and the door was crushed inward, letting
in a blast of icy air. There was pitch darkness within and without.
Katrine answered immediately by two shots fired in succession; there was
a heavy groan, a muttered curse, and some shuffling of feet outside.
Katrine, standing flat against the wall to avoid offering a mark for
wandering shots, chuckled inwardly and waited. A second later a shot
came in return, but the bullet went high. Katrine heard it whizz into
the wood somewhere between the wall and roof.
She stood motionless, listening. Just in front of her, on the other side
of the room, was the stove, and in this there still glowed an
unextinguished portion of log, making one small spot of blood red in
the surrounding darkness. Katrine fixed her eye on this glowing spot. To
enter farther into the cabin the men must pass between it and her. She
raised one of her revolvers into a line with it. When that spot was
obliterated, she would know, however silently they moved, the enemy had
advanced, and in that second she meant to fire; the stove was high, and
a man passing in front of it would have that red spot in a line with his
heart.
With her heart beating fast with exultation, and not a tremor in her
steady fingers, she waited motionless as a statue against the wall. She
was not a girl of a cruel nature, but her husband lay behind that slim
partition on her right, and unarmed, for Stephen would never carry a
pistol, and she would have shot unhesitatingly each man in succession
that tried to pass her to him. There seemed to be some talking outside
and a trampling of feet on the broken wood of the door, and then
suddenly the soft red fire spot was eclipsed in the total darkness
around, and on the instant Katrine's finger had pulled the trigger.
There was no groan this time after the shot, only a heavy thud and a
crash as a falling body struck some fire-irons by the stove. The red
spot glowed out of the darkness again and stared Katrine cheerfully in
the eyes. There was a confusion of voices outside: Katrine could hear
the thick oaths and one man apparently enjoining another to come out of
there and have done with the business. Katrine smiled as she heard. She
guessed that the man addressed was the one that lay now between her and
the stove, and his ears were for ever closed. In the same moment she
heard the inner door open, and for an instant Stephen appeared, pale and
in his night clothes and with a flaring candle in his hand. With a
spring like a leopard Katrine had reached him and put her hand over the
flame of the candle, crushing it out beneath her palm. The darkness she
knew was their only shield. By their voices and their footsteps she
could tell the men without numbered not less than four or five. Once let
a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl,
they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible
pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such
precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin
was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It
was the fears of the besiegers now simply that was protecting the
besieged.
"Go back," she said, with her lips on his ear, "unless you can find a
pistol, and be ready to shoot," and she pushed him within the door
again.
She stood as before, in an even line with the red bull's-eye of the
stove, and listened; there was still a scraping of feet and muttering
of voices outside, but not so near the door, and she wondered if the
enemy were going round the cabin to attack it from another side.
Suddenly a shot rang out in the stillness outside, then another, and the
ball came through the window behind her and passed over her shoulder;
there seemed to be a rush and stampede towards the door. She turned and
faced it, raising both revolvers, and as she heard the wood of the
fallen door split under the trampling feet, her fingers had almost drawn
the triggers to welcome the incomers, when out of that cold blackness
beyond the door came a slight cough. Katrine's hand dropped to her side,
a sick, cold horror came over her as she realised what she would have
done in the next instant. That was Talbot's cough. One second more of
silence, one more step forward, and her shot would have found his heart.
She reeled where she stood, against the wall, with the sickness of the
thought. She could not shoot again now: he was there outside amongst
them--and Stephen, was he there too, or inside? Talbot, she supposed,
roused by the noise, had come out and attacked them between the two
cabins. Then what she had said to Stephen recurred to her. Suppose he
had searched and found a gun, and should come out from the inner room,
he would not count upon Talbot's presence any more than she had done; he
would naturally shoot at the first who crossed the threshold, as she
herself had done; he would shoot in the dark, by her orders. The
thoughts flashed quicker than lightning through her brain. The horror of
the situation, this uncertainty, this killing blindly in the confusion
and the darkness, was too great to be borne. The danger now was greater
than even the light could bring. She dropped the pistols on to a stool
beside her, drew a match from her pocket, and heedless of the perfect
mark she herself offered now, struck it and held it over her head. In a
second, the body across the hearth, the wrecked door, and two pale faces
looking in at her from the opening, leaped into sight; the enemies, the
living ones, were gone. A pool of blood beyond the threshold, and blood
on the splintered wood, and their dead companion, only remained. For a
moment the three faces, all pale with fear and anxiety, not for
themselves, but for each other, stared nervously into each other's eyes
in silence. Then Katrine broke it with a laugh, and brought down the
match from over her head and put it to the lamp on the table.
"Oh, you frightened me so," she said, as she turned up the wick and made
it burn, and the men stepped over the door and came in. "I thought I
might kill you."
She looked up at them both in the lamplight, as if to reassure herself
they were really there alive.
Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.
"You frightened me," he returned, jestingly. "I wouldn't come under that
straight fire of yours for anything. The men outside were easier to deal
with, they got so scared with you shooting in here and me shooting in
their rear; they thought we were a band of a dozen at least."
"I'd no idea you were there," murmured Katrine, shuddering still, as she
moved from the lamp to the fire, and began drawing the half-burnt logs
together.
"Stephen climbed out of the back window and came round to me, but the
first shot had already wakened me; I was getting my clothes on when he
came," answered Talbot, walking over to where the dead man lay between
the hearth and the door, and surveying him. "Some of your good work, I
see," he said, after a minute. "This is one of the lot that came up
yesterday afternoon. Tough-looking chap, isn't he? Well, you see I did
not kill them all. I gave you the chance you asked for," he added,
looking at her with admiring eyes.
"And haven't I made the most of it?" she returned, lifting her flushed
face, sparkling with smiles, from the fire.
Stephen had crept in, pale-faced as the corpse itself, and stood now
staring at it in a dumb horror. He could not understand how Talbot and
his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless
between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he
wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of
mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with
herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the
flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred,
as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold. Stephen,
reassured for her, let his eyes travel to the corpse, and then, with a
sort of groan of horror, sank back on a chair with his face covered in
his hands. Katrine looked up quickly from the fire, and then went over
to him, putting an arm softly round his neck.
"What is it, Steve, dear? you weren't hurt, were you?"
"Oh, to have killed him! to have killed a man, how horrible!" muttered
Stephen, without lifting his head.
Katrine looked amazed. "Well, but he would have killed us if he could,"
she answered. "You kill a mosquito if it annoys you, and that's right.
You only kill a man if he tries to kill you, that's quite fair."
"But a murderer!" and Stephen shuddered. She felt the shiver of horror
under her hand.
"Isn't it better to be a murderer than murdered?" she asked, with a
little smile, feeling she had an unanswerable argument.
"Murdered, your body is killed, murderer, your soul," came back in the
same stifled voice.
Katrine was silent. She was thinking what a nuisance it was to have a
soul that needed so much looking after, never seemed to do any good, and
was always obtruding itself and spoiling your best moments of fun in
this life.
"We'll take him away," she said softly, after a minute, noticing that
Stephen kept his fingers closely locked over his eyes, as if to shut out
some fearful sight. "Talbot, let's take him out," she said to their
companion, who stood with his back to the fire watching them. Stephen
made no sign.
Talbot and the girl walked over to the body. It was stiffening rapidly,
and the wide-open eyes glared up glassily to the black rafters of the
cabin.
"Might this be useful?" said Talbot, stooping over the man and half
drawing the second large revolver from his belt.
"No, take nothing," answered Katrine, hastily; "we want nothing."
Talbot let the weapon slide back to its place, and they both bent down
and lifted the corpse between them. Talbot walked backwards over the
cabin door behind him. It was dark outside--a thick, pitchy darkness,
with only a grey glare close to the ground from the snow.
"Let's take him to the gulch," whispered Katrine, "and send him down it;
it will worry Stephen so if he sees him again."
It was only a few yards to the edge of the ravine; they moved towards it
cautiously and stopped upon the brink.
"Are you ready?" Talbot asked in a low tone, and Katrine whispered back
"Yes." There was a heavy thud, then a soft rolling sound, and then
silence, as the drift snow in the bottom of the gulch received and
closed over its gift. They waited a second, then Talbot stretched out
his hand towards her, found her arm in the darkness, and they both
walked back together.
"It's a pity Steve is so sensitive," said Katrine, plaintively. "I just
saved him, and his house, and his precious gold, and everything,
to-night, and he does not like me a bit for it."
"I think you are a very brave little girl," said Talbot, softly.
"Do you?" returned Katrine, in a pleased voice; and Talbot felt that she
turned her face and looked up at him in the darkness. "Steve and I don't
fit very well, do we?" she added, with a sigh; "and he does not fit this
life. Somehow, I don't believe we shall ever leave this place alive--I
have a presentiment we shan't. You will--you'll make a success and go
back; but we shan't."
Talbot did not answer, as they were at the cabin.
Stephen met them at the door as they came in, with a white stricken
face. "Where have you put it?" he asked in an awed, trembling whisper.
"Down the gulch," replied Katrine, composedly. "Now, Steve, you're not
to worry about it any more--it was a necessity."
She glanced round the room and saw that Stephen had been too much shaken
to think of putting it in order. The coffee-pot stood where she had left
it, and the coffee was boiling over and wasting itself in the fire. She
ran to it, took it off, and began pouring it into the cups on the table;
as she did so the men noticed blood dripping from her wrist into one of
the saucers.
"Oh, yes," she said indifferently, in answer to Stephen's startled
exclamation, "I thought I felt my sleeve getting very damp and sticky;
there's a graze on the shoulder, I think, and the blood has been
crawling slowly down my arm, tickling me horribly. Let's see how it
looks!"
She unfastened her bodice and took it off, seemingly unconscious of
Talbot's presence. He stood silently by the hearth watching her, and
thought, as he saw her bare white arms and full, strong white neck, how
well she would look in a London ball-room. Stephen, all nervous anxiety,
was examining her shoulder. A bullet had gone over it, leaving a furrow
in the flesh, where the blood welled up slowly. Katrine turned her head
aside and regarded it out of one eye, as a bird does. Stephen bent over
her and kissed her, murmuring incoherent words of remorseful sorrow.
Katrine flung her arms round him and laughed.
"Why, I am delighted! it's been quite worth it, the fun we've had
to-night. That's all right--it will be healed in a couple of days; just
tie it up with your handkerchief."
It was an easy place to bind, by passing the bandage under the arm, and
this, by Katrine's directions, Stephen did, with trembling fingers.
Talbot had turned away from them, and occupied himself by fixing up the
door and stuffing the chinks where the wood had broken. When this was
done and the bandaging finished, Stephen brought a shawl from the other
room and wrapped it round the girl's shoulders, and they all drew in
round the fire in a close circle with their cups in their hands.
Their common danger and the sudden realisation of how much they were,
each of this lonely trio, to the other; how easily any one of them might
have been taken from the circle that night, and how irreparable would
have been the loss, drew them all closely together as they had never
been before--that delicious chord of sweet human sympathy that lies deep
down, but ever present, in the human breast, vibrated strongly in their
hearts, and they sat round the cheery blaze, talking and laughing
softly, and looking at one another, and then smiling as their eyes met,
for mere lightheartedness.