MAMMON'S PAY
This little excitement quite delighted and pleased Katrine. She had
spoken just the truth when she said she wished something like it would
happen every day; and the only thing that spoilt the fun of it was
Stephen's dejection and the persistently depressed way he looked and
felt over it. After a day or two the pleasant sense of life having
something worth living for passed away again, and the time seemed
heavier and slower than ever. Day followed day in a dreadful monotony,
and the girl visibly lost health and spirits. She changed a good deal,
and both men noticed it. She lost her wonderful sweetness and evenness
of temper and her bright smiles, and became fretful and irritable,
discontented, and sharp in her replies. In the long winter mornings now
she would not spring up in the early darkness as formerly, but try to
fall asleep again after waking, and put her arm across Stephen and tell
him there was no use of getting up, that the day was long enough anyway,
and it was too dark to do anything; and then she would abuse him if he
insisted on getting up in spite of her, and let the breakfast wait so
long, that after a time the men drifted into the habit of having it
alone, and going out without seeing her. Katrine had grown to hate the
day, to hate every minute in fact when she was not sleeping, and to try
to make the night last as long as possible. Stephen noticed all this,
and spoke to Talbot about it in distress. Talbot merely said, "Perhaps
it's her health; you'd better ask her." Stephen did so, and found there
was a reason for her apparent illness, which delighted and consoled him;
but when Katrine flew into a passion, declared it was detestable, that
it would take away her freedom and her power to ride and enjoy herself,
Stephen was shocked and grieved, and said he was disappointed in her;
whereupon Katrine replied she hated him, and Stephen quoted scripture
texts to her till she ran out of the cabin and rushed across to Talbot's
in a passion of sobs and tears. At least, she knew he would not quote
texts to her. Talbot did all he could to smooth out matters between the
two, and after that Katrine spoke very little; she took refuge in a
dejected silence, and grew paler each day. It was only when the men had
gone out to work, and she was left alone with a great pile of things to
mend, work which she hated, that she would go to the door and stand
looking out over the grey waste under the snow-filled lowering sky, with
the tears rolling silently down her checks. From where she stood she
could see, through the greyish air, the men working far down at the
other end of the claims, and the long line of trenches and the banks of
frozen gravel; sometimes, in the light fog, made of the tiny sharp
snow-flakes, sifting through the air, they would look misty, like ghosts
or shadows; and sometimes the dulled click and scrape of the spades
would reach her.
"Slaves, slaves, just like slaves," she would think, watching the
muffled-up figures continually bending over their work; "and they're
digging graves, graves." And she would think of Annie, and the grave
Will had been digging for her while he dug for gold. A red sun, dull as
copper, hung above them, and sometimes the great Northern Lights would
send up a red flame behind the horizon; and to Katrine it seemed like a
blood-covered sword held up by Nature to warn them off a land not fit
for men. One afternoon, when the sun looked more sullen and the sky more
threatening than ever, and the men moving at the end of the claim
looked no more than mere blots in the cold mist, she stood watching the
steady red blade shoot up in the ashen sky, and began comparing its
colour to other things. "It's as red," she said to herself softly, "as
Hearts and Diamonds;" and then her thought wandered to the cards
themselves, and she thought of the hot saloons at nights crowded with
faces, and the tobacco smoke in the air, and the jabber of voices, and
the laughter of the miners, and their oaths and jokes and stories, and
their friendly ways to her, and the admiration on their rough and
sometimes honest faces, and the long tables and the spat, spat of the
falling cards as they were dealt, and the chink of the glasses and the
hot spirits burning your throat, and then the feeling of jollity, and
then the warmth and life and cheeriness of it all. Her eyes brightened
and her chest heaved a little as she leaned against the lintel. If she
could have one night of it again! And here, what would it be when the
men came back? Supper, and then Talbot and Stephen talking of their
work, and the probable value of the claims, and the pans they could
make, and what the dirt would run to, and then dismissing the whole
subject as impossible to decide till the spring came and they could wash
the gravel, and then having so dismissed it, they would fall to
speculating again what the spring would show them the dirt was worth,
and so on all over again from the beginning. Oh, she had heard it so
often, nothing, nothing but the same topic night after night, and after
that, cups of coffee, of which she was sick, or water, and then reading
a chapter of the Testament, and then going to bed, and Stephen too dead
tired to give her a good-night kiss. If they had had a game of cards in
the evening now, all together, and become interested in that and
forgotten to talk of their claims, and some good whisky after it, or
cleared out one of the cabins and had a dance there with some of the
hands who lived near, and a man to whistle tunes for them if there was
no other orchestra; but no! Stephen thought that cards were wrong and
wouldn't have them in his house, and whisky too, and dancing worst of
all, and only the sin of avarice and the lust of gold was to be connived
at there. As she stood there, the thought slipped into her mind quite
suddenly, so suddenly that it surprised herself, "Why not go down to
town and have a good time as she used?" Her heart beat quickly, and the
old colour came into her cheek. She glanced at the dull, coppery sun
growing dimmer and dimmer behind the thickening snow fog, and the pink
light flickering on the horizon, at the dim figures of the men and the
grey wastes on every side. There was a thick silence, broken only by a
faint far-off click of a shovel from the trenches. There would be
half-an-hour's more daylight, half-an-hour before the men returned to
miss her. She would get a good start anyway. She turned into the cabin
again, her face aglow and her eyes sparkling. She knew that Stephen
would be fearfully angry with her--she had not been once to the town
since her marriage--but she had a stronger nature than Stephen's, and
felt no fear of his anger.
"He thinks I am a reformed character," she muttered contemptuously to
herself, as she put on her thick rubber boots. "Well, I told him there
was only one chance to reform me, and that was to take me away from
here, and he wouldn't do it."
She built up the fire in an enormous bank, and left the men's slippers
and dry socks beside it. Then she slipped into her long skin coat, and
crushed the fur cap down on her eyebrows and pulled it over her ears. As
she went out she took a long look at the claims--the men were still busy
there. "Slaves," she muttered. She closed the door with a sharp snap and
left the key hanging on it, as was usual when she was inside. Then she
turned her face to the town trail, and set off at a long steady stride
through the dead silent air. The town was within easy walking distance
for her, and though it would be dark before she reached it, that
mattered very little, her eyes were strong and almost as good as a wild
cat's in the dark. On every hand the sky seemed to hang low and
threatening over the earth, and the air had the grip of iron in it, but
Katrine pushed on at the same even pace without even an apprehensive
glance round. Her spirits rose as she walked. She felt the old sense of
gladness in her youth and strength and health, and in her freedom, and
she bounded along over the hard, glittering snow, full of a mere
irresponsible animal pleasure, such as moves the young chamois in his
bounds from rock to rock. Darkness had come like a blot upon the earth
before she had done half the distance, but now she had the twinkling
lights and the reddish haze of Dawson before her. Her own eyes
brightened as she caught sight of them, and she hastened her steps. By
the time night had fairly settled down she came into the side streets of
the town. Dawson is an all-night town, and things were in full
blast--saloons, shooting-galleries, dance-halls, and dog-fights going on
just as usual. She noted with satisfaction that nothing seemed to have
altered a little bit since she saw it last, and as she turned into Good
Luck Row, to walk down it for old acquaintance' sake, a big,
disreputable old yellow dog she had fed through last winter, came
bounding up and leaped all over her in delighted recognition. Katrine
was pleased at this welcome, and spent quite a time at the corner with
him, asking how many dog-fights he had had lately, and being answered
with short triumphant barks that she took to mean he had demolished all
the small dogs of that quarter. Then she went on and passed her own
former house, and saw to her surprise it was vacant, and so was Annie's
next it. That looked as if Dawson was not pressed for space. As she was
turning out of the row she saw ahead of her another old acquaintance,
this was a human one, and Katrine felt as if she had quite slipped back
into her own life as she hailed him.
"Sam!" she called gently. "Hello, Sam!"
The miner turned, and as soon as he saw her a broad, genial smile
overspread his countenance and stretched his mouth from one edge of his
fur ear-flaps to the other.
"Why, Kate, you down here again; you've cut the parson fellow, eh?"
"Oh, no," said Katrine hastily, reddening a little; "I'm just in town
for a day or so. How's your wife?"
"Well," answered Sam slowly, as he put himself at her side and slouched
heavily along the side-walk with her. "She's all right--leastways I
reckon she ought to be; she's in 'eaven now."
"Oh, Sam!" said Katrine, in a shocked voice, "is she dead? How did she
die? when?"
"Why, I reckon it was the cold like, she kind of froze to death. When I
got home one night the fire was out, and she was just laying acrost the
hearth; the room was awful cold, and there warn't no food neither--I
'spect that helped it. I'd bin away three or four days, and the food
give out quicker than I thought, and the firin'. I arst a doctor here
wot it was, and he said it was sincough or sumthin'."
"Syncope?" suggested Katrine.
"Yes, that's what 'e said; but I sez it was just the cold a ketchin' of
her heart like, and stopping it."
"What were you doing?" asked Katrine.
"Why, I was out arter gold, o' course."
Katrine shivered. They passed the "Sally White" at that moment, with
its flaring lights and noise of merriment within.
"Let's go in, Sam, and get a drink. Your tale has pretty near frozen
me."
They turned in, and as Katrine pushed open the door there was a shout of
recognition and welcome from the men round the bar. The door fell to
behind them, shutting out the icy night.
* * * * *
When the light failed, and the night had come down on the claims like a
black curtain let fall suddenly, the men left the ground, and stiff with
cold, their muscles almost rigid, plodded slowly and silently back to
the cabin. The hired men dispersed in different directions, some going
down town and some to their cabins near. When Stephen and Talbot entered
they found the fire leaping and crackling as if it had just been tended,
and both men sat down to change their boots in the outer room. The door
into the bedroom was shut, and they supposed Katrine was within. They
were too tired and frozen to speak, and not a word was exchanged between
them. After a time Stephen got up and went into the inner room; there
was no light in it, and the door swung to behind him. Talbot, with a
white drawn face, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
When Stephen entered he thought Katrine was probably asleep upon the
bed, and crossed the room to find a light. When the match was struck and
a candle lighted, he stared round stupidly--the room was empty. He
looked at the bed, Katrine was not there; then his eyes caught a little
square of white paper pinned on to the red blanket. He went up to it,
unpinned it slowly, and read it with trembling fingers. Talbot, waiting
in the other room, hungry and thirsty, got up after a time and began to
lay the supper. This done, he made the coffee, and when that was ready
and still Stephen had not reappeared, he rapped at the door. There
seemed a muffled sound from within, and Talbot pushed the door a little
open. Inside, he saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at
the paper in his hand.
"What's the matter?" said Talbot.
Stephen handed him the paper in a blank silence, and Talbot took it and
held it near the candle. This is what he read:--
"I have gone down to the town to get a little change and to relieve the
dreadful monotony of this life. Don't follow me; just leave me alone,
and I'll come back in a day or two. There's no need to be anxious. You
know I can take care of myself."
Talbot laughed quietly, and walked back into the sitting-room.
"Well, she gives you good advice," he said; "I should follow it. Let her
have a day or two to herself--a day or two of liberty. She'll come back
at the end all the better for it."
Stephen followed him into the firelight; his face was the colour of wood
ash, and his eyes looked haggard and terrified. With all his faults he
really loved his wife, in his own narrow, limited, selfish way,
intensely.
"Oh, Talbot! to think she's gone back to it all! How awful!"
Talbot gave a gesture of impatience. He understood the girl so much
better than Stephen ever had that his methods seemed unreasonably
foolish to him. And now he was excessively tired and cold and hungry,
and his supper seemed of more importance than a world full of injured
husbands.
"You can't wonder at it, old man," he said. "This life must be
intolerable for a girl like that."
"Why? how?" questioned Stephen, blankly.
"Oh, so quiet; no excitement."
"But women ought to like quiet, and excitement's sinful," returned
Stephen hotly, becoming the Low Church missionary school-teacher at
once.
Talbot merely laughed and shrugged his shoulders, but his laugh was not
friendly, and there was an angry light in his eyes.
"What am I to do?" asked Stephen mechanically, still standing, the
pallor and the horror of his face growing each minute.
"I've told you. Let her have the few days' enjoyment she asks for; then
her heart will reproach her, and she will come back to you."
"But she might think me indifferent," murmured Stephen, his voice almost
choked in his throat.
"I shouldn't leave her long. If she does not return the day after
to-morrow, then you might go; but if you go now and attempt to force her
back, you'll probably make a mess of it."
"But think--my wife--"
"That's all right," returned Talbot, looking at him and understanding
what he was thinking of. "In one way, at least, you know she is a good
girl. She will only gamble a little and drink and get very jolly, and
she'll come back to you in a day or two with no harm done--what are you
doing?" he broke off suddenly, as Stephen began to tear off his slippers
and socks and get his thick wet boots on.
"I'm going after her," he said sullenly, in a thick voice, "to bring her
back home here--alive or dead."
"It will be dead probably, and you'll be exceedingly sorry," returned
Talbot in a cutting tone.
Stephen made no answer, but continued fastening his boots.
"You'd better have your supper before you go out again," remarked
Talbot, sarcastically.
Stephen made no reply. When he had his boots on he put an extra
comforter inside his fur collar, put his cap on, and walked over to the
door. There he hesitated and looked back. Talbot sat unmoved by the
fire, his profile to the door. Stephen stood for an instant, then came
back to the hearth.
"Talbot!" he said, standing in front of him.
The other looked up. "Well?"
"Come with me. Help me to find her and bring her back."
Talbot compressed his lips.
"Aren't you capable of managing your own 'wife yourself?" he asked.
"You have so much influence with her," said Stephen, pleadingly.
"I suppose I only have that influence because I am not quite a fool,"
returned Talbot angrily, commencing to pull off his slippers.
He was angry with Stephen, and feeling excessively wearied and
disinclined for further effort. He hated to turn out again, and his
whole physical system was craving for food and rest. But he was not the
man to resist an appeal in which he saw another's whole soul was
thrown, and angry and annoyed as he was with Stephen, he still disliked
the idea of letting his friend go out alone in the Arctic night on such
an errand. It seemed to him supremely ridiculous for Stephen to have to
call in another man's aid in these personal matters, but then he was
more than twice Stephen's age, and had got into the habit of making
excuses for him. So, tired and exhausted though he was, he dragged on
his frozen boots again, and prepared to accompany Stephen.
"You'd better have some of this first," he said, pouring out a cup of
the coffee he had made, which stood ready on the stove.
They each took a cup standing, and then turned out of the cabin, locking
the door behind them. The atmosphere and aspect, the whole face of the
night, had changed since the girl started. The fog had lifted itself and
rolled away somewhere in the darkness. The air was now clear and keen
as the edge of steel. The stars were of a piercing brilliance, and all
along the black horizon flickered and leaped a faint rosy light. The two
men, stiff, tired, and aching, took much longer to accomplish the
distance than the girl had done with her light, eager feet, and when
they got down to the town the night was well on its way. At the bottom
of Good Luck Row, which is, as explained already, one of the first
streets you come to, on the edge of the town, they halted and took
counsel as to where they would be most likely to find the object of
their search.
"Perhaps she's gone up to the 'Pistol Shot,'" suggested Stephen. "We'd
better go up to old Poniatovsky."
"She hasn't come down to see her father, I should imagine," remarked
Talbot, in his dryest tone.
But Stephen persisted she might be there, and so they tramped straight
across towards the main street and turned into the "Pistol Shot." They
pushed their way unheeded through the idle, lounging, gossiping crowd
within, found their way behind the bar, and asked for Poniatovsky. The
little Pole came out of his back parlour and met them in the passage. He
listened to their story, his long pipe in one hand, his mouth open, and
his own vile whisky obscuring and clouding his brain.
"Wot! she haf run away?" he exclaimed, as Stephen paused; "and who is de
cause? Is it this shentleman here?" and he stared up at Talbot's slight,
tall figure, imposing in its furs, and at the finely-cut, determined
features that presented such a contrast to Stephen's weak boyish face.
"No, no," said the latter angrily; "she hasn't run away at all. She has
only come down here for an hour or so. I thought she might have come
here to see you."
"No," replied the Pole deprecatingly, shrugging his shoulders and
spreading out his hands, "I haf not seen her. If she come here, I shut
the door upon her. I say, 'I vil haf no runaway wives here.' My fren,
before you vos marrit did not I say, a truant daughter make a truant
wife. She haf left me first, now she haf left you."
He had taken Stephen by the front of his coat, and was pushing in his
words by the aid of a dirty forefinger.
Talbot abandoned Stephen to argue the matter out with his drunken
father-in-law, and strolled back through the passage, through the
bar-room, and then stood, with his gloved hands deep in his fur-lined
pockets, at the saloon door, looking up and down the street. Presently
one of the wrecks of the night came drifting by, a girl of nineteen or
so, with her cheeks blue and pinched in the terrible cold under their
coat of coarse paint. He signalled to her, and she drifted across to
him, and stood, with her hands thrust up her sleeves, in the light from
the "Pistol Shot."
"I expect you've seen the inside of most of the drinking-houses
to-night," he said, speaking in a kind voice, for the pitiful, cold face
of the girl touched him; "have you seen anything of Katrine Poniatovsky,
a girl who used to live here?"
"Wot's she like?" the girl asked sullenly. She was so hoarse that she
could hardly make the words audible.
"A tall girl, dark, and very handsome."
"Yes, I seed her, not more'n an hour ago, in the 'Cock-pit.' She's
a-makin' more money in there than I can make if I walk all night. Curse
her! She sits there, and the devil sits behind her, a-playing for her, I
know; but she'd better look out--you don't play with that partner long."
"The 'Cock-pit.' That's on the other side, isn't it, away from the
river?" Talbot's heart sank a little as he recognized the name of the
worst den for gambling in the whole town.
"Go down here, and turn to your left. Any one will tell you where the
'Cock-pit' is," said the girl, with a hollow laugh.
Then she lingered in the light, and looked at Talbot wistfully. He put
some money into her hand. "Go into the warmth," he said kindly, "and get
yourself something."
Then he turned back into the saloon to find Stephen. He met him, having
broken away at last from the fatherly advice of the Pole, and brushing
the front of his coat down with his hand. He was very flushed and angry.
"You'd better waste no more time," remarked Talbot, calmly. "She is down
at the 'Cock-pit,' playing."
Stephen gasped. "How did you find out that?" he asked.
"I've just been told by one of the habitues. Come along at once." Both
the men went out, and Talbot, following the girl's directions, marched
on decidedly, scarcely noticing Stephen's questions, which he could not
answer.
"I don't know," he said, for the fiftieth time, to Stephen's last absurd
query as to how long she had been there.
The houses became poorer and shabbier as they walked. Even in log-cabins
there is a great difference marked between the respectable and the
disreputable. And the figures that passed them from time to time, though
more rarely here in this quarter, looked of the toughest, most
cut-throat class.
"How can she like to come here alone?" exclaimed Stephen, with a
shudder. "I wonder she is not afraid. I'm surprised she has not come to
some harm long ago."
Talbot smiled to himself inside his fur collar and said nothing. The
girl's absolute fearlessness was the point which he admired most in her
character, and the immunity from danger seemed in her case, as in
others, the natural accompaniment of it. Fortune is said to favour the
brave. Misfortune certainly seems to spare them.
"I think this is the place," said Talbot at last, and they stopped
before a large, but old and dirty-looking cabin. It was sunk beneath the
usual level of the ground, and reached by some crooked, slippery steps.
At the foot of these steps was a sort of yard, which you had to cross
before reaching the cabin door itself. What was in the yard, or what its
condition was, it was too dark to see, but a sickening smell came from
it as the men descended the steps, and the ground seemed slippery or
miry in places above the frozen snow. The windows of the cabin in front
gave out no light whatever, but that there was light inside, and very
bright light, was evidenced by that which burst through the chinks all
over it.
"I shouldn't wonder if I stumbled over a corpse next," muttered Talbot,
as he slipped and almost fell in the darkness on a slimy something under
his feet that reminded him of blood. They got up to the door and tried
the latch. It would not yield; then they thumped on it with their gloved
fists.
The latch was drawn back by some hand inside, and the door opened just
wide enough to admit them, and was pushed to again. Stephen and Talbot
found themselves in a crowd of loiterers inside the door, who apparently
took no notice of them beyond a sodden stare.
It was a long, low room that they entered, so low that it seemed to
Talbot the ceiling was almost upon their heads. The atmosphere was
stifling, evil-smelling beyond endurance, and so clouded with tobacco
smoke that they could not see the farther end.
A long table covered with green cloth took up the centre of the room,
and all round the walls were ranged smaller ones. The place was full
when the two men entered, all space at the centre table was occupied,
the side tables were filled, and men standing up between blocked the way
up the room. The windows at the end were barred and shuttered, not a
breath of outer air could enter. The cheap lamps nailed at intervals
along the grimy walls were mostly black and smoking, adding their acrid
fumes to the thick atmosphere. There were very few women present, some
painted, worn, unhappy-looking creatures, hovering like restless
phantoms round the tables where the thickest crowds were, that seemed
all. Stephen looked round on every side with haggard face and anxious
eyes. She was nowhere near the door, and after a hurried survey of all
those lower tables they forced and pressed and pushed their way towards
the other end. At last they caught sight of her. She was sitting at a
small table, with her face turned towards the room, intent upon the
game. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. She had flung her fur cap
aside, and her ruffled black hair lay loose upon her forehead. The
collar of her bodice was open and turned back a little from her round
white neck. She looked, with her soft young face, like a fresh flower
dropped by chance into this evil, tainted den. Talbot gave her a keen
scrutiny as they approached, and understood Stephen's infatuation. As
for Stephen himself, his heart went out to her, and he was filled with a
bitter self-reproach and sudden resolutions. His love and his darling!
How could he have let her be found here! His claims and his gold, they
might all go. He would take her away in safety at once. He would not
hesitate again.
When they reached the table they saw there was a large stake on the
cloth between the two players. Her companion was a youngish man,
seemingly a miner, dressed in the roughest clothes. Neither looked up
till both men were close by them and between them and the lights. Then
Katrine raised her eyes and started violently as she recognised them.
Her face flushed deeper, and her eyebrows contracted with annoyance.
Stephen went round to the back of her chair and laid his hand on her
shoulder.
"Come away; oh pray, come away," he said, in an imploring tone. It was
all he seemed able to articulate.
"I'm just in the middle of a game," she answered petulantly. "You
mustn't interrupt me."
"But it isn't safe for you to be here."
"Stuff! I used to be here every night before I married you!"
A death-like pallor overspread the man's face as he heard. He could not
believe her, could not realise it. Had she indeed been here night after
night?
"Why do you come here and interfere?" she continued pettishly, looking
up from Talbot to his companion. "I always have such luck, and I'm
likely to lose it if you worry me."
The young miner sat back in his chair, thrust both hands in his pockets,
and stared rudely at the intruders. He did not mind the interruption as
much as she did, since he was losing, and had been steadily ever since
he sat down to play with Katrine, and doubts and angry questionings of
his opponent's methods began to stir in his dull, clouded brain, as
toads stir the mud in some thick pool.
"You ought not to be here at all," said Stephen hotly.
"Well, why shouldn't I make money as well as you?" returned the girl
quickly, with a flash of scorn in her dark eyes, and Stephen whitened
and winced.
"Haven't you made enough for one night, in any case?" interposed Talbot
quietly.
"Yes, I think I have," she answered, with a glance at the glistening
pile on the cloth. "I'll come," she added suddenly, "if Jim's no
objection. What do you say, Jim?" she asked, looking across to the young
fellow, who had been a sulky, silent spectator of the whole scene.
"Shall we quit for to-night?"
"If you give me back my money," he answered. "That's mine," he said,
pointing to the pile. "It's my money, gentlemen; she's been winning all
the evening."
"Yes, I always do have luck," retorted Katrine. "I told you so when we
began."
"You may call it luck; I don't," muttered the miner, his face turning a
dusky purple.
"And what do you call it?" returned Katrine, white with anger in her
turn at the insinuation, while Talbot, who saw what was coming, tried to
draw her away.
"What does it matter? Come away; leave him the money."
No one in the room noticed what was going on in their corner. The others
were all too busy with their own play, absorbed in their own greed;
besides, squabbles over the tables were of such common occurrence, they
ceased to excite any curiosity.
"I shan't," returned Katrine, shaking herself free.
The oily, smoky light from above fell across her face; it seemed to
bloom through the foul, dusky air like a rose.
"It's my money--I won it."
"Yes, by cheating," shouted the miner, forgetting everything but the
approaching loss he foresaw of the shining pile.
"You lie," said Stephen, hoarsely. "She has not cheated you."
The miner staggered to his feet, and before any of them realised it he
had drawn his pistol and fired. His hand was unsteady from drink and
rage, and the ball passed over Stephen's shoulder and went into the
wall behind him. Talbot tried to draw Stephen to one side. The miner,
blind with anger, half conscious only of what he was about, and drawing
almost at random, turned his revolver on Talbot. Like a flash Katrine
interposed between them, and Jim's bullet found a lodgment in her lungs.
She had fired also. The shots had been simultaneous, and the miner fell,
without a groan, without a murmur, forward across the table, carrying it
with him to the floor. The gold pile scattered amongst the filthy
sawdust on the ground. Katrine sank backwards into Talbot's arms, and
her head fell to his shoulder like that of a tired child falling to
sleep.
In an instant they were surrounded by an eager inquiring throng. All the
tables, with some few exceptions, were deserted; the players all crowded
up to the end of the room, and Stephen and Talbot were carried back to
the wall by the pressing crowd. Some of the men raised the body of the
miner; he was dead. The people pressed round, and one glance at the set
face told them. A momentary awe spread amongst them, and the men who had
raised the body carried it to a bench and laid it there. Stephen, pallid
as the dead man himself, looked round in desperation on the staring
crowd.
"Is there a surgeon or a doctor here?" he asked.
Katrine heard him, and raised herself a little in Talbot's arms; he was
standing against the wall now. She turned her eyes towards Stephen and
stretched out her hand.
"It's no use, Steve, dear," she said; "I'm done for. Don't worry with a
doctor. I shall be gone in five minutes."
Stephen dropped on his knees and seized the little soft brown hand
extended to him, covering it with kisses.
"Oh no, no, don't say it," he said in a voice suffocated with anguish,
heedless of the staring faces around. Some of the mob looked on with
interest, some turned back to their own tables, others went down on
their hands and knees to scrape up the scattered gold dust that had
mixed in the trampled sawdust.
"Lay me a little flatter," she murmured to Talbot, and he sank on one
knee and so supported her, her head resting on his arm.
"If we could get her to the air," Stephen exclaimed.
"No, the moving pains me; let me be," she replied. "I tell you I'm
dying."
Stephen groaned.
"Pray then, pray now. Oh, Katie dear, pray before it is too late. Aren't
you afraid to die like this, in this place?"
Katrine shook her head wearily. "No, I don't think I've ever been
afraid," she murmured.
"Did I kill him?" she asked a second later, opening her eyes.
Talbot looked down and nodded. Stephen's voice was too choked for
utterance.
"I'm glad of that," she murmured, letting her eyes close again; "I never
missed a shot yet."
"Oh, Katie, Katie," moaned Stephen. The room was black to him; it seemed
as if he saw hell opening to swallow up for ever his beloved one.
Katrine opened her eyes at his agonised cry.
"Now, Steve, it can't be helped; I'm dying, and it's all right. I only
don't want you to worry over it. Nothing is worth worrying for in this
world. And I guess we'll all meet again very soon in a warmer place than
Alaska."
Stephen, utterly broken down, could only sob upon her hand.
Talbot felt a sort of rigor passing through the form he held, and
thought she was dying. He was stirred to the innermost depths of his
being by her act. She had stepped so calmly between him and death, given
up her life with the free generous courage of a soldier or a hero.
"Why did you come between us?" he asked, suddenly bending over her; "why
did you do it?"
The calm light eyes looked down into the dark passionate depths of the
dying girl's pupils, and a long gaze passed between them. What secrets
of her soul were revealed to his in that instant when they stood face to
face with only Death between? Then Katrine turned her head wearily.
"I don't know," she answered faintly; "mere devilry, I think." And she
laughed.
The laugh shook the wounded lung. Her face turned from white to grey,
her teeth clenched. There was a spasm as of a sudden wrenching loose
from the body, then it sank back, collapsed, motionless, against
Talbot's breast.
The two men carried her out between them. The crowd made way for them,
standing on either side in respectful silence. Such incidents were not
uncommon, and excited nothing more than a dull and transient interest.
They took her out, and the gold for which two lives had been sacrificed
was left unheeded, scattered in the dust. They went out the way they had
come, through the noisome court, up the narrow flight of rotten,
slippery stairs into the pure icy air.
Stephen turned to Talbot and took the girl's body wholly into his arms.
"I want to carry her up to my cabin," he said in a choking voice, and
the other nodded.
The night was glorious with the deadly glory of the Arctic regions; the
air was still, and of a coldness that seemed to bite deep into the
flesh; but overhead, in the impenetrable blackness of the sky, the
stars shone with a brilliance found only in the north, throwing a cold
light over the snowy ground. To the south and east, low down, burned two
enormous planets, like fiery eyes watching them over the horizon.
Slowly the two men walked over the hard ground. Not another living being
was within sight.
Stephen walked first with heavy, uneven steps, and his breath came
quickly in suppressed and sobbing gasps. Talbot followed closely, deep
in painful thought. All had happened so suddenly. The whole horrible
tragedy had swept over them in a few minutes; she had passed away from
them both for ever. His brain seemed dazed by the shock. He could not
realise it. He saw her dark head lying on Stephen's shoulder. It seemed
as if she must lift it every second. He could not believe that she was
lifeless, lifeless, this creature who had always been life itself, with
her gay smiles, and light tones, and quick movements. Now, she and they
were blotted out for all time. She had died against his breast, and for
him. That was the horrible thought; it came into his brain after all the
others, suddenly, and seemed as if it must burst it. And why, why should
she have done it? Her last words rang in his ears, "mere devilry." So
she had always been; reckless, open-handed, generous, she had often
risked her life for another, and now she had given it for him. And in
her last words she had tried to minimise her own act, tried to relieve
him of the burden of a hopeless gratitude. But for all that he would
have to bear it, and it seemed crushing him now. That she should have
given her life, so young, less than half his own, so full of value and
promise, for his! It seemed as if a reproach must follow him to the end
of his days.
He walked as in a dream. He had no sense of the distance they were
going, hardly any of the direction, except that he was following
mechanically Stephen's slow, uneven, halting footsteps, and watching
that little head that lay on his shoulder. Once when Stephen paused, he
stretched out his arms and offered to take the burden from him, but
Stephen repulsed him fiercely, and then the two went on slowly as
before, how long he did not know, it seemed a long time. Suddenly, in
the middle of the narrow pathway before him, Talbot saw Stephen stagger,
fall to his knees, and then sink heavily sideways in the snow, his arms
still tightly locked round the rigid body of the girl. Talbot hurried
forward and bent over him, feeling hastily in his own pockets for his
flask. Stephen's eyes were wide open and gazed up at him with a
hopeless, despairing determination that went to Talbot's heart and
chilled it.
"I can't go any farther, not another step," he muttered.
Talbot had been searching hurriedly through all his pockets for the
flask he always carried.
"Good God!" he exclaimed, "I haven't got it; I must have dropped it
coming up here, or they stole it in that hell down town."
Stephen feebly put up his hand.
"Don't trouble, I don't want it. I am just going to lie here and wait
with her. Was she not lovely?" he muttered to himself, raising himself
on his knees and laying the body before him on the snow.
The sky above them arched in pitchy blackness, but the starlight was so
keen and brilliant that it lighted up the white silence round them.
Stephen, on his hands and knees, hung over the still figure and gazed
down into the marble face. The short silky black hair made a little blot
of darkness in the snow, the white face was turned upward to the
starlight. Talbot, looking down, caught for an instant the sight of its
pure oval, its regular lines, and the sweet mouth, and the passionate,
reasonless face of the man crouching over it, and then looked
desperately up and down the narrow lonely trail. They were five miles
from the town, a little over three from the cabins. Glistening whiteness
lay all around, till the plains of snow grew grey in the distance;
overhead, the burning, flashing, restless stars; and far off, where the
two planets guarded the horizon, the red lights of the north began to
quiver and flicker in the night.
The man on the ground noticed them, and straightening himself suddenly,
looked towards them.
"The flare of hell!" he muttered, with staring, straining eyes; "it's
coming very near."
Talbot saw that his reason had gone, failed suddenly, as a light goes
down under a blast; he was delirious with that sudden delirium born of
the awful cold that seizes men like a wolf in the long night of the
Arctic winters.
For a second the helplessness of his situation flashed in upon Talbot's
brain--alone here at midnight on the frozen trail, with a madman and a
corpse!
He saw he must get help at once, and the cabins were the nearest point
where help could be found. He could get men who would carry Stephen by
force if necessary, but would he ever live in the fangs of this pitiless
cold till they could return to him? He stood for one moment irresolute,
unwilling to leave him to meet his death, and that horrible fear that he
read in those haggard eyes watching the horizon, alone; and in that
moment Stephen looked up at him and met his eye, and the madness rolled
back and stood off his brain for an instant. He beckoned to Talbot, and
Talbot went down on his knees beside him on the snow.
"My claims," muttered Stephen; "those claims will be yours now, do you
understand? I've arranged it all with that lawyer Hoskins, down town.
They were to be hers if anything happened to me, but we shall both go
to-night, and they will be yours. She said I had sunk my soul in them,
Talbot; she was right. The gold got me, I neglected her; I let her slip
back into evil; I've murdered her for the claims. They are the price
hell paid me. But you keep them. All turns to good in your hands. They
can't harm you. Keep them. They are my grave."
"Stephen, rouse yourself! You are alive! you've got to live," said
Talbot desperately, shaking him by the shoulder. "I am going now to
bring men back with me to help you home. You've got to live till I
return, do you hear?"
Stephen had turned from him again and put his arms round the motionless
form before them.
"They are coming nearer," Talbot heard him mutter; "but they shall burn
through me first, little one;" and he stretched himself across the
corpse as if to shield it from the approaching flames, and far off the
red eyes of the planets sank nearer the horizon, but still seemed to
watch them across the snowy waste.
Talbot felt the only one thin thread of hope was to go as fast as his
fatigue-clogged feet could move up to the cabins, and he rose and faced
the homeward trail. He felt the hope of saving Stephen was just the
least faintest flicker that ever burned within a heart; still there was
the chance--the chance that, even should he be already in the sleep that
ends in death when he returned, they could rouse him from it and drag
him into life again. He forced his heavy feet along, and with a great
effort started into a run. His limbs felt like lead, and all his body
like paper. The long hours of cold and fatigue, the excitement, the rush
of changing emotions he had gone through, had been draining his
vitality, but he called upon all that he had left and put it all into
the effort to save his friend. He knew that any one second lost or
gained might be the one to turn the balance of life or death, and he
urged himself forward till a dull pain filled all his side, and his
temples seemed bursting, and the great lights before him swam in a
blood-red mist.
Stephen, left alone, raised his head and gazed round him once, then he
laid his cheek down on the cold cheek, pressed his lips to the cold
lips, and his breast upon the cold breast just over where the bullet had
ploughed its way through the flesh and bone. The night gripped him
tighter and tighter, and slowly he sank to sleep.
_L'ENVOI._
Noontide in June. A sky of the clearest, palest azure, and a rollicking,
swelling, tumbling sea, full of smooth billowy waves chasing each other
over its deep green surface--waves with their white crests blown
backwards, throwing their spray high in the air and seeming to laugh and
call to each other in gurgling voices; and between sea and sky the
liquid golden sunlight filling the warm, throbbing air, spreading itself
in dazzling sheets upon the water, and glinting in ten thousand
glittering points on the flying spray thrown up by a steamer's screw. It
was the steamer _Prince_, homeward-bound from Alaska, carrying
passengers and a cargo as rich and yellow as the sunshine. And as if it
knew of its precious and costly charge, the steamer cut proudly through
the turbulent water, cleaving its straight passage homeward, homeward.
On the deck of the boat, leaning back idly in a long chair, his calm,
grey eyes fixed on the receding shores, where the golden sunshine seemed
palpitating on their perilous loveliness, Talbot was sitting, with the
freshening breeze stirring his hair and bringing to him the breath of a
thousand spring flowers on the land. He was returning, and returning
successful, with his work accomplished, his toil over, his aim achieved,
and amongst all the lines of pain stamped on his pale and quiet face
there was written a certain triumph, that yet perhaps was not so much
triumph as relief. It was just four months since that terrible night
when he had lost both his comrades, just a little less than four months
since he had seen them both laid side by side in their lonely grave in
the west gulch; and those four months would ever be a blot of horrible
blackness on his life. Should he ever be able to forget the blank
desolation that had closed in upon him night after night as he sat by
his lonely hearth or paced the floor, his steps alone breaking the awful
stillness? Yet he had forced himself to stay and face it, had continued
his work and his method of life unchanged. His men had noted little
difference in him. He had stayed the time he had appointed for himself,
had accomplished his self-appointed task, and at last, when the summer
burst in upon the gulch and loosened all Nature's fetters, he found
himself also free; and now, like a black curtain rent in twain and torn
from the bright face of a picture, the clouds of the past seemed falling
away, leaving his future clear to his gaze. It stretched before him
bright as the laughing sunlit sea beneath his eyes. If they could but
have shared his joy, if they could have had their home-coming, his
fellow-toilers, his fellow-prisoners! and the salt tears stung his lids
until he closed them, shutting out the vivid yellow light, as he
thought of the desolate grave in the gulch.
The fresh, cool air fanned his face and the sun smiled upon him, a loose
piece of canvas of an awning near him flapped backwards and forwards
with a monotonous musical sound, the plash and gurgle of the tumbling
waves fell soothingly on his ears. Gradually sleep came over him gently,
and enwrapped his strained, wearied body, his sore bruised mind.
When he opened his eyes again it was afternoon. The steamer was still
flying onward, but the sea was quiet and smooth, and lay still on every
side in the sun's rays as a pool of liquid gold, and the shores of
Alaska had vanished, lost in a burnished haze of light.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Girl of the Klondike, by Victoria Cross