The Quitting
“Are you satisfied, Len? Does it make you feel good?”
McLagan was observing the dark, mobile features of the younger
man. They were alight with the look he knew so well. It was the
expression he had seen time and again in those men of Beacon whose
whole horizon was bounded by gold and all it meant in their lives.
It was a similar expression to that which had played in Len Stern’s
features at that time when his strong fingers had raked through the
heaping gold dust spread out before him at the far-off camp on the
Australian coast.
McLagan was more than interested. For the man was gazing upon the
goodly pile of smallish canvas bags lying on the earthen floor
against the log wall of the hut overlooking the mouth of the Alsek
River. At that moment humanity was uppermost in the engineer. A
goodly satisfaction was stirring in his heart. And his manner had
lost much of that roughness which was so characteristic of him.
Len nodded, his eyes remaining fascinated by the thing they were
gazing upon.
“That don’t begin to say the thing I feel,” he said awkwardly.
He raised a strong, sunburnt hand and passed it back over his
forehead. Then he laughed. It was a short, jerky laugh that was an
expression of some feeling he had no words for. “Do you know how a
shipwrecked feller ’ud feel when his feet find solid earth again?”
He shook his head. “That’s how those darn bags of dust make me
feel. That, an’ something else. Yes, I feel I want to say all sorts
of stuff how I think of you. But I can’t.”
McLagan brushed aside the man’s desire to express his gratitude.
“But you weren’t--shipwrecked?” he said quickly.
The other’s reply came with a laugh.
“It cost me all but my last thousand dollars to answer that message
you sent out, and--get around.”
“But you were on a big strike? You and poor Jim?”
“Sure. The biggest in the world--on a fever-racked coast that I
don’t guess I’ll ever get near to again. The fever got me. I only
got away by the scruff of my neck. And the stuff I took out did
little more than satisfy the dope merchants of Perth who did their
best for me. I guess I was shipwrecked both ways. Physical and
financial. Man, you’ve done an almighty glad thing.”
McLagan sat himself on the cabin trunk just behind him, and Len
Stern flung himself into the chair which usually stood against the
table where McLagan was accustomed to work. The small wood stove,
radiating a pleasant warmth in the chill of the late summer air,
stood between them. And Len Stern mechanically held out the palms
of his hands to it.
There was physical weariness in him. It was the same with the
hard-driving engineer. The voiceless waste of desolate muskeg with
its surface of shaking tundra lay far behind them now. So with
the wearisome portage to the Alsek River meandering through its
coal-laden, oil-soaked territory of hills. The gateway to the
ocean had been reached and passed only that morning. And now they
had gained the shelter of McLagan’s home overlooking the bay, ready
for the last stage of that effort which had been crowded into days
that should have been weeks.
It had all been a whirlwind rush from the moment of Stern’s landing
until this return to McLagan’s home. Stern was the least weary of
the two. But then he and Sasa Mannik had had the blessed break of
a day’s complete rest up at McLagan’s oil camp, while the engineer
endured an added gruelling in the work that was his. He had spent
the time with Peter Loby in completing preparations for the time
when the men of finance behind him should arrive to set the seal of
their approval upon his achievements. It had meant a swift change
of effort for him from that which had been an expression of a man’s
deepest emotions to the sheerly mental aspect of those affairs
which represented the material side of his life.
They had eaten the midday meal with which Sasa Mannik’s indifferent
skill had provided them. And the whole place was a-litter with
books, charts, papers, and clothing, hopelessly mixed up with the
utensils of the meal of which they had just partaken. They were in
the midst of the preparations for McLagan’s final quittance, which
was to take place that day. It was a portentous operation regarded
without optimism by the engineer. And Len Stern, while ready and
willing, found himself of little service.
McLagan lit one of his long, lean cigars, glad enough to abandon
his labours for a few minutes. Stern lit and drearily sucked his
charred old briar. The contemplation of those bags of gold dust,
that never in his most fantastic dreams had he hoped to see again,
had warmed his heart and eased the strain he had laboured under.
It was all very amazing, and McLagan himself was the most amazing
thing of it all. It was all mystifying, too. And as he sat
luxuriating in the reek of his pipe the man from Australia found
himself marvelling at the mystery in the midst of which he had
found himself so suddenly plunged.
He knew now that McLagan had been responsible for the message
Goodchurch had sent out. Even its enticing wording. At the time he
had read it in the local news sheet in Perth he had not seriously
considered it beyond the reply he must make. Then had come his
arrival at the coast on the tubby mail boat on its way to Seward.
Then his meeting with McLagan, and his instant whirling off on
a breathless rush that was only just about to terminate. He had
been asked very little and told less. McLagan had relied on visual
rather than verbal demonstration. He had seen the _Imperial_ again
after believing the vessel to be fathoms deep at the bottom of the
ocean. He had gazed upon some weird, supernatural demonstration
upon her deck. He had been hurried off to help in the capture of
the man who had murdered his partner, and robbed them of the fruits
of their labours. The capture had been achieved and a confession
extracted. Then he had been called upon to agree to the murderer’s
release. True, he had the assurance of McLagan that the murderer
would not, could not escape. But----
And now he was sitting in McLagan’s home gazing on the wealth
of gold dust that he and poor Jim Carver had washed out on the
fever-laden coast of Australia. It had come back to him. And
McLagan was the man who had recovered it. How? How? How had it all
been achieved? How had McLagan discovered in the _Limpet_ of Boston
the foul tragedy of his friend’s death, and recovered for him the
gold that had been stolen? The mystery of it all; McLagan’s refusal
to enlighten him; these things were utterly confounding. In his
own phraseology he felt the whole thing was just “one darn mystery
after another” and he wanted to fling up his hands in complete
helplessness.
But there was no outward expression of these feelings. He sat
gladly regarding that small, comforting pile of wealth which
McLagan had told him was his.
“I’m glad you’ve told me that, Len.” McLagan’s smile was almost
gentle. “We haven’t told much, have we?”
“No. And sometimes I feel it ’ud be good to tell--things.”
Len Stern’s eyes came back from the pile of gold. It almost seemed
as though McLagan had broached something of a deeper interest for
him.
“Maybe it would. Well, ther’s Claire and her mother’ll be
yearning.” McLagan laughed. “And I’ll be there, too.”
“Which is just another way of saying you haven’t a thing you’re
going to tell.”
Len grinned into the other’s face and shook some juice out of his
pipe stem on to the stove.
“It doesn’t mean just that, boy,” McLagan said.
“No?”
Len waited. Then he went on.
“See, McLagan, you’ve done a swell thing. Sure I don’t want to say
a thing to hurt. You’ve left me guessing, an’ I’m content to go
right on guessing if it suits you. You see, I’m just thankful. But
maybe you won’t mind saying ‘Why,’ if you object to ‘How.’ The only
thing that finds me worrying is leaving that swine Caspar free.”
McLagan removed the cigar from his strong mouth. He rolled it
between his fingers which seemed to crush it unnecessarily. He
shook his head.
“I’m not yearning to tell ‘why’ any more than ‘how,’” he said,
with a return to his rougher manner. “It wouldn’t hurt a thing
telling it, except for the laugh it’s liable to raise. You see,
boy, I’ve a head full of notions. Some of ’em some folks might
reckon sort of crazy. But they aren’t. They’re just a throw back
to something that’s in us all. The only thing is I’ve given way to
’em, and they’ve got so that I have to hand ’em best. One time I
felt the only thing in life was to make good. I’m older since then.
I still guess that making good needs to be done, but I get tired
beating the other feller. It kind of seems waste of effort, unless
the other feller needs beating. I’m glad for poor old Jim, who’s
Claire’s brother, to be able to hand you back his dough. Then it’ll
make things better for you. You two boys were swell triers taking
a Chink yarn for gospel. Good luck, boy, anyway. Handle that stuff
right when you get it into Beacon.”
“I’ll do the best I know, Mac. Say--That oil play of yours? It
looks like beating every other feller. It’s big. It’s big for
Beacon, an’ the folks around.”
McLagan’s smile deepened.
“Sure,” he said simply. “It means so much I can’t just see it all.
This’ll be a swell country after awhile. It’ll get oil-crazy when I
let my story go.”
“They don’t know yet?”
McLagan shook his head.
“They will when I get in this time. And I want it that way. You
know this country’s got right into my guts. I want to set the
decent citizens lying around it whooping with the things that make
life easy, and pass ’em a time that won’t leave ’em yearning to
muss themselves with the dirt lying back of human nature. What’ll
you do? Quit for the sun places?” He glanced down at the gold bags
significantly. “With that bunch a wise guy don’t need to worry
beyond this coast.”
“That’s so.”
Len was thoughtfully regarding his treasure. He looked up with a
grin.
“Maybe I’ll do what I know to get into your proposition.”
McLagan laughed.
“You’ll need to do it on the jump. In a month ther’ won’t be
money enough in the world to buy our stock. You haven’t seen a
circumstance of what’s to come later. Gee! I must get on with all
this truck.”
McLagan rose with a sigh of real weariness. He flung open the trunk
on which he had been sitting, and passed over to a pile of folded
suits. He stood for a moment contemplating them. They were clothes
he had never worn since he came to the coast. He picked some of
them up, and came back to the trunk. Len rose to aid him. He moved
over to pass him the rest of the piled clothes. He picked up some
of them, and revealed a folded white garment underneath. It caught
and held his attention. It was voluminous. And, at first glance,
appeared to be some sort of bath robe, or dressing gown. But the
top fold of it had three cut holes in it, which looked like the eye
and mouth holes of a mask.
McLagan came to his side and Len heard a deep-throated chuckle.
“Guessing, boy?” the engineer said quietly. Then he added: “I’d
forgot that, sure.”
Then he reached down and picked it up. He let it drop to its full
length, and held it out by its arms. Len deposited his garments and
gazed at it, grinning.
“Some suit,” he said.
McLagan nodded.
“Sure,” he said. And surveyed the conical, visored hood hanging
down, and the many rust stains that besmirched its otherwise
immaculate surface.
Then he, very deliberately, refolded it and looked squarely into
his companion’s eyes.
“Makes you want to laff, Len, eh?” he said. “Don’t you do it, boy.
Ther’s no feller needs to laff who sees that.”
Then his own eyes became less serious, and a twinkle of humour
looked out of them.
“It’s just one of my notions. I designed it myself. And I keep it
by me to remind me. I guess it won’t mean a thing to you, ever.
Maybe it’ll just add another guess to the things worrying you now.
Set it down a bath gown which you wear when you’re either clean or
want to be clean. But it’s another meaning, another significance.
It’s a symbol. That darn white gown tells me every time I look at
it that human nature can’t ever be run right by academic theory
or sentimental slobber. The feller that guesses to persuade human
nature by argument is only one degree better than the boy in the
bughouse. The notion that human nature is predominantly good is
plumb busted. It hands me a story of the unutterable weakness of
the modern methods by which human nature is trying to govern
itself, and warns me that the only thing to bring about better
conditions is to scare it plumb to death first, and beat it over
the head with a club after. I didn’t mean you to see that thing,
boy. But you have seen it and I don’t figure it matters any--now.
Still if you reckon you’re obliged to me, why, just forget you’ve
seen it. Let’s pack up all this darn junk. Gee! Ther’s a hell of a
lot of it.”
* * * * *
Departure from the bay was delayed longer than McLagan had
designed. It was delayed until the following morning by reason of
one of those fierce, late-summer storms of tornado-like force,
which at times descended upon the tattered coast.
It started with a rush of wind sweeping down off the hills. It
came with the force of a hurricane, and set the hut creaking and
groaning under its spasmodic pressure. For half an hour it battled
furiously, shrieking, howling, and crashing its way through forest,
and valley, and over hill-top. And then, as suddenly as it had
leapt, it abated into an ominous calm.
The respite was illusive. It was sufficiently long for the men in
the hut to interpret the conditions. The sudden darkening of the
whole of the western sky was sufficiently indicative. Then the
real storm broke. It broke in from the ocean with the rising tide,
driving in direct opposition to the land wind. An electric storm,
it came with sub-tropical intensity, and a fury of wind. The play
of lightning was blinding; the thunderous detonations were merged
into an incessant roar; and the suddenly opened heavens poured a
deluge of rain upon a darkened world.
The storm raged for hours. It raged far into the night. And deep
under the fury of it all the voice of the sea came up from below
like an angry roar of a monster lashed and goaded to savage anger.
It boomed, it thundered, its echoes playing from cliff to cliff,
magnified and terrifying.
Clad in an oilskin, at the height of the storm, McLagan sought
the open. He stood out on the plateau, and instantly his great
body seemed to become the centre of elemental attack. But he gave
no heed. He forced his way in the blinding rain as near to the
precipitous edge of the cliff as he dared approach it. Then he
stood there swaying to the buffets of the storm while he strove to
penetrate the grey pall with which the rain enveloped the world
below him. It was useless. And so, at last, he returned to shelter,
and the exercise of such patience as he could command.
Dawn saw a complete reversal, a complete transformation. A keen
crisp northwest wind had set in, and the furies of the night had
been wholly swept away. The sun rose glorious in a cloud-flecked
sky, and the world of the coast was as nearly smiling as Nature
ever permitted.
But the smile of Nature meant nothing to the men who, ready to set
out on their run into Beacon, stood gazing down upon the bay. The
wreck of the _Imperial_ was gone. Completely, utterly vanished. A
few baulks of timber had been flung high up on the rocks at the
foot of the southern cliff, but of the wreck, in its familiar
form, not a sign was to be discovered. The ebb of the tide was at
its lowest. The rocks on which she had lain were bare. The vessel
had gone as she had come, on the race of the tide. But with the
difference that her shattered hull had been carried off piecemeal
by the victorious adversary she had defied so long.
McLagan was the first to turn away. Sasa Mannik was standing by the
ponies hitched to the laden buckboard. He moved over to him and in
silence climbed into the driving seat of the ramshackle vehicle.
Then he called to Len Stern, who was still gazing down upon the
cemetery of that poor restless shadow of the man who had been his
friend and partner.