Fortune La Pearle crushed his way through the snow, sobbing, straining,
cursing his luck, Alaska, Nome, the cards, and the man who had felt his
knife. The hot blood was freezing on his hands, and the scene yet bright
in his eyes,--the man, clutching the table and sinking slowly to the
floor; the rolling counters and the scattered deck; the swift shiver
throughout the room, and the pause; the game-keepers no longer calling,
and the clatter of the chips dying away; the startled faces; the infinite
instant of silence; and then the great blood-roar and the tide of
vengeance which lapped his heels and turned the town mad behind him.
"All hell's broke loose," he sneered, turning aside in the darkness and
heading for the beach. Lights were flashing from open doors, and tent,
cabin, and dance-hall let slip their denizens upon the chase. The clamor
of men and howling of dogs smote his ears and quickened his feet. He ran
on and on. The sounds grew dim, and the pursuit dissipated itself in
vain rage and aimless groping. But a flitting shadow clung to him. Head
thrust over shoulder, he caught glimpses of it, now taking vague shape on
an open expanse of snow, how merging into the deeper shadows of some
darkened cabin or beach-listed craft.
Fortune La Pearle swore like a woman, weakly, with the hint of tears that
comes of exhaustion, and plunged deeper into the maze of heaped ice,
tents, and prospect holes. He stumbled over taut hawsers and piles of
dunnage, tripped on crazy guy-ropes and insanely planted pegs, and fell
again and again upon frozen dumps and mounds of hoarded driftwood. At
times, when he deemed he had drawn clear, his head dizzy with the painful
pounding of his heart and the suffocating intake of his breath, he
slackened down; and ever the shadow leaped out of the gloom and forced
him on in heart-breaking flight. A swift intuition lashed upon him,
leaving in its trail the cold chill of superstition. The persistence of
the shadow he invested with his gambler's symbolism. Silent, inexorable,
not to be shaken off, he took it as the fate which waited at the last
turn when chips were cashed in and gains and losses counted up. Fortune
La Pearle believed in those rare, illuminating moments, when the
intelligence flung from it time and space, to rise naked through eternity
and read the facts of life from the open book of chance. That this was
such a moment he had no doubt; and when he turned inland and sped across
the snow-covered tundra he was not startled because the shadow took upon
it greater definiteness and drew in closer. Oppressed with his own
impotence, he halted in the midst of the white waste and whirled about.
His right hand slipped from its mitten, and a revolver, at level,
glistened in the pale light of the stars.
"Don't shoot. I haven't a gun."
The shadow had assumed tangible shape, and at the sound of its human
voice a trepidation affected Fortune La Pearle's knees, and his stomach
was stricken with the qualms of sudden relief.
Perhaps things fell out differently because Uri Bram had no gun that
night when he sat on the hard benches of the El Dorado and saw murder
done. To that fact also might be attributed the trip on the Long Trail
which he took subsequently with a most unlikely comrade. But be it as it
may, he repeated a second time, "Don't shoot. Can't you see I haven't a
gun?"
"Then what the flaming hell did you take after me for?" demanded the
gambler, lowering his revolver.
Uri Bram shrugged his shoulders. "It don't matter much, anyhow. I want
you to come with me."
"Where?"
"To my shack, over on the edge of the camp."
But Fortune La Pearle drove the heel of his moccasin into the snow and
attested by his various deities to the madness of Uri Bram. "Who are
you," he perorated, "and what am I, that I should put my neck into the
rope at your bidding?"
"I am Uri Bram," the other said simply, "and my shack is over there on
the edge of camp. I don't know who you are, but you've thrust the soul
from a living man's body,--there's the blood red on your sleeve,--and,
like a second Cain, the hand of all mankind is against you, and there is
no place you may lay your head. Now, I have a shack--"
"For the love of your mother, hold your say, man," interrupted Fortune La
Pearle, "or I'll make you a second Abel for the joy of it. So help me, I
will! With a thousand men to lay me by the heels, looking high and low,
what do I want with your shack? I want to get out of here--away! away!
away! Cursed swine! I've half a mind to go back and run amuck, and
settle for a few of them, the pigs! One gorgeous, glorious fight, and
end the whole damn business! It's a skin game, that's what life is, and
I'm sick of it!"
He stopped, appalled, crushed by his great desolation, and Uri Bram
seized the moment. He was not given to speech, this man, and that which
followed was the longest in his life, save one long afterward in another
place.
"That's why I told you about my shack. I can stow you there so they'll
never find you, and I've got grub in plenty. Elsewise you can't get
away. No dogs, no nothing, the sea closed, St. Michael the nearest post,
runners to carry the news before you, the same over the portage to
Anvik--not a chance in the world for you! Now wait with me till it blows
over. They'll forget all about you in a month or less, what of
stampeding to York and what not, and you can hit the trail under their
noses and they won't bother. I've got my own ideas of justice. When I
ran after you, out of the El Dorado and along the beach, it wasn't to
catch you or give you up. My ideas are my own, and that's not one of
them."
He ceased as the murderer drew a prayer-book from his pocket. With the
aurora borealis glimmering yellow in the northeast, heads bared to the
frost and naked hands grasping the sacred book, Fortune La Pearle swore
him to the words he had spoken--an oath which Uri Bram never intended
breaking, and never broke.
At the door of the shack the gambler hesitated for an instant, marvelling
at the strangeness of this man who had befriended him, and doubting. But
by the candlelight he found the cabin comfortable and without occupants,
and he was quickly rolling a cigarette while the other man made coffee.
His muscles relaxed in the warmth and he lay back with half-assumed
indolence, intently studying Uri's face through the curling wisps of
smoke. It was a powerful face, but its strength was of that peculiar
sort which stands girt in and unrelated. The seams were deep-graven,
more like scars, while the stern features were in no way softened by
hints of sympathy or humor. Under prominent bushy brows the eyes shone
cold and gray. The cheekbones, high and forbidding, were undermined by
deep hollows. The chin and jaw displayed a steadiness of purpose which
the narrow forehead advertised as single, and, if needs be, pitiless.
Everything was harsh, the nose, the lips, the voice, the lines about the
mouth. It was the face of one who communed much with himself, unused to
seeking counsel from the world; the face of one who wrestled oft of
nights with angels, and rose to face the day with shut lips that no man
might know. He was narrow but deep; and Fortune, his own humanity broad
and shallow, could make nothing of him. Did Uri sing when merry and sigh
when sad, he could have understood; but as it was, the cryptic features
were undecipherable; he could not measure the soul they concealed.
"Lend a hand, Mister Man," Uri ordered when the cups had been emptied.
"We've got to fix up for visitors."
Fortune purred his name for the other's benefit, and assisted
understandingly. The bunk was built against a side and end of the cabin.
It was a rude affair, the bottom being composed of drift-wood logs
overlaid with moss. At the foot the rough ends of these timbers
projected in an uneven row. From the side next the wall Uri ripped back
the moss and removed three of the logs. The jagged ends he sawed off and
replaced so that the projecting row remained unbroken. Fortune carried
in sacks of flour from the cache and piled them on the floor beneath the
aperture. On these Uri laid a pair of long sea-bags, and over all spread
several thicknesses of moss and blankets. Upon this Fortune could lie,
with the sleeping furs stretching over him from one side of the bunk to
the other, and all men could look upon it and declare it empty.
In the weeks which followed, several domiciliary visits were paid, not a
shack or tent in Nome escaping, but Fortune lay in his cranny
undisturbed. In fact, little attention was given to Uri Bram's cabin;
for it was the last place under the sun to expect to find the murderer of
John Randolph. Except during such interruptions, Fortune lolled about
the cabin, playing long games of solitaire and smoking endless
cigarettes. Though his volatile nature loved geniality and play of words
and laughter, he quickly accommodated himself to Uri's taciturnity.
Beyond the actions and plans of his pursuers, the state of the trails,
and the price of dogs, they never talked; and these things were only
discussed at rare intervals and briefly. But Fortune fell to working out
a system, and hour after hour, and day after day, he shuffled and dealt,
shuffled and dealt, noted the combinations of the cards in long columns,
and shuffled and dealt again. Toward the end even this absorption failed
him, and, head bowed upon the table, he visioned the lively all-night
houses of Nome, where the gamekeepers and lookouts worked in shifts and
the clattering roulette ball never slept. At such times his loneliness
and bankruptcy stunned him till he sat for hours in the same unblinking,
unchanging position. At other times, his long-pent bitterness found
voice in passionate outbursts; for he had rubbed the world the wrong way
and did not like the feel of it.
"Life's a skin-game," he was fond of repeating, and on this one note he
rang the changes. "I never had half a chance," he complained. "I was
faked in my birth and flim-flammed with my mother's milk. The dice were
loaded when she tossed the box, and I was born to prove the loss. But
that was no reason she should blame me for it, and look on me as a cold
deck; but she did--ay, she did. Why didn't she give me a show? Why
didn't the world? Why did I go broke in Seattle? Why did I take the
steerage, and live like a hog to Nome? Why did I go to the El Dorado? I
was heading for Big Pete's and only went for matches. Why didn't I have
matches? Why did I want to smoke? Don't you see? All worked out, every
bit of it, all parts fitting snug. Before I was born, like as not. I'll
put the sack I never hope to get on it, before I was born. That's why!
That's why John Randolph passed the word and his checks in at the same
time. Damn him! It served him well right! Why didn't he keep his
tongue between his teeth and give me a chance? He knew I was next to
broke. Why didn't I hold my hand? Oh, why? Why? Why?"
And Fortune La Pearle would roll upon the floor, vainly interrogating the
scheme of things. At such outbreaks Uri said no word, gave no sign, save
that his grey eyes seemed to turn dull and muddy, as though from lack of
interest. There was nothing in common between these two men, and this
fact Fortune grasped sufficiently to wonder sometimes why Uri had stood
by him.
But the time of waiting came to an end. Even a community's blood lust
cannot stand before its gold lust. The murder of John Randolph had
already passed into the annals of the camp, and there it rested. Had the
murderer appeared, the men of Nome would certainly have stopped
stampeding long enough to see justice done, whereas the whereabouts of
Fortune La Pearle was no longer an insistent problem. There was gold in
the creek beds and ruby beaches, and when the sea opened, the men with
healthy sacks would sail away to where the good things of life were sold
absurdly cheap.
So, one night, Fortune helped Uri Bram harness the dogs and lash the
sled, and the twain took the winter trail south on the ice. But it was
not all south; for they left the sea east from St. Michael's, crossed the
divide, and struck the Yukon at Anvik, many hundred miles from its mouth.
Then on, into the northeast, past Koyokuk, Tanana, and Minook, till they
rounded the Great Curve at Fort Yukon, crossed and recrossed the Arctic
Circle, and headed south through the Flats. It was a weary journey, and
Fortune would have wondered why the man went with him, had not Uri told
him that he owned claims and had men working at Eagle. Eagle lay on the
edge of the line; a few miles farther on, the British flag waved over the
barracks at Fort Cudahy. Then came Dawson, Pelly, the Five Fingers,
Windy Arm, Caribou Crossing, Linderman, the Chilcoot and Dyea.
On the morning after passing Eagle, they rose early. This was their last
camp, and they were now to part. Fortune's heart was light. There was a
promise of spring in the land, and the days were growing longer. The way
was passing into Canadian territory. Liberty was at hand, the sun was
returning, and each day saw him nearer to the Great Outside. The world
was big, and he could once again paint his future in royal red. He
whistled about the breakfast and hummed snatches of light song while Uri
put the dogs in harness and packed up. But when all was ready, Fortune's
feet itching to be off, Uri pulled an unused back-log to the fire and sat
down.
"Ever hear of the Dead Horse Trail?"
He glanced up meditatively and Fortune shook his head, inwardly chafing
at the delay.
"Sometimes there are meetings under circumstances which make men
remember," Uri continued, speaking in a low voice and very slowly, "and I
met a man under such circumstances on the Dead Horse Trail. Freighting
an outfit over the White Pass in '97 broke many a man's heart, for there
was a world of reason when they gave that trail its name. The horses
died like mosquitoes in the first frost, and from Skaguay to Bennett they
rotted in heaps. They died at the Rocks, they were poisoned at the
Summit, and they starved at the Lakes; they fell off the trail, what
there was of it, or they went through it; in the river they drowned under
their loads, or were smashed to pieces against the boulders; they snapped
their legs in the crevices and broke their backs falling backwards with
their packs; in the sloughs they sank from sight or smothered in the
slime, and they were disembowelled in the bogs where the corduroy logs
turned end up in the mud; men shot them, worked them to death, and when
they were gone, went back to the beach and bought more. Some did not
bother to shoot them,--stripping the saddles off and the shoes and
leaving them where they fell. Their hearts turned to stone--those which
did not break--and they became beasts, the men on Dead Horse Trail.
"It was there I met a man with the heart of a Christ and the patience.
And he was honest. When he rested at midday he took the packs from the
horses so that they, too, might rest. He paid $50 a hundred-weight for
their fodder, and more. He used his own bed to blanket their backs when
they rubbed raw. Other men let the saddles eat holes the size of water-
buckets. Other men, when the shoes gave out, let them wear their hoofs
down to the bleeding stumps. He spent his last dollar for horseshoe
nails. I know this because we slept in the one bed and ate from the one
pot, and became blood brothers where men lost their grip of things and
died blaspheming God. He was never too tired to ease a strap or tighten
a cinch, and often there were tears in his eyes when he looked on all
that waste of misery. At a passage in the rocks, where the brutes
upreared hindlegged and stretched their forelegs upward like cats to
clear the wall, the way was piled with carcasses where they had toppled
back. And here he stood, in the stench of hell, with a cheery word and a
hand on the rump at the right time, till the string passed by. And when
one bogged he blocked the trail till it was clear again; nor did the man
live who crowded him at such time.
"At the end of the trail a man who had killed fifty horses wanted to buy,
but we looked at him and at our own,--mountain cayuses from eastern
Oregon. Five thousand he offered, and we were broke, but we remembered
the poison grass of the Summit and the passage in the Rocks, and the man
who was my brother spoke no word, but divided the cayuses into two
bunches,--his in the one and mine in the other,--and he looked at me and
we understood each other. So he drove mine to the one side and I drove
his to the other, and we took with us our rifles and shot them to the
last one, while the man who had killed fifty horses cursed us till his
throat cracked. But that man, with whom I welded blood-brothership on
the Dead Horse Trail--"
"Why, that man was John Randolph," Fortune, sneering the while, completed
the climax for him.