I
It was for two reasons that Montana Kid discarded his "chaps" and Mexican
spurs, and shook the dust of the Idaho ranges from his feet. In the
first place, the encroachments of a steady, sober, and sternly moral
civilization had destroyed the primeval status of the western cattle
ranges, and refined society turned the cold eye of disfavor upon him and
his ilk. In the second place, in one of its cyclopean moments the race
had arisen and shoved back its frontier several thousand miles. Thus,
with unconscious foresight, did mature society make room for its
adolescent members. True, the new territory was mostly barren; but its
several hundred thousand square miles of frigidity at least gave
breathing space to those who else would have suffocated at home.
Montana Kid was such a one. Heading for the sea-coast, with a haste
several sheriff's posses might possibly have explained, and with more
nerve than coin of the realm, he succeeded in shipping from a Puget Sound
port, and managed to survive the contingent miseries of steerage
sea-sickness and steerage grub. He was rather sallow and drawn, but
still his own indomitable self, when he landed on the Dyea beach one day
in the spring of the year. Between the cost of dogs, grub, and outfits,
and the customs exactions of the two clashing governments, it speedily
penetrated to his understanding that the Northland was anything save a
poor man's Mecca. So he cast about him in search of quick harvests.
Between the beach and the passes were scattered many thousands of
passionate pilgrims. These pilgrims Montana Kid proceeded to farm. At
first he dealt faro in a pine-board gambling shack; but disagreeable
necessity forced him to drop a sudden period into a man's life, and to
move on up trail. Then he effected a corner in horseshoe nails, and they
circulated at par with legal tender, four to the dollar, till an
unexpected consignment of a hundred barrels or so broke the market and
forced him to disgorge his stock at a loss. After that he located at
Sheep Camp, organized the professional packers, and jumped the freight
ten cents a pound in a single day. In token of their gratitude, the
packers patronized his faro and roulette layouts and were mulcted
cheerfully of their earnings. But his commercialism was of too lusty a
growth to be long endured; so they rushed him one night, burned his
shanty, divided the bank, and headed him up the trail with empty pockets.
Ill-luck was his running mate. He engaged with responsible parties to
run whisky across the line by way of precarious and unknown trails, lost
his Indian guides, and had the very first outfit confiscated by the
Mounted Police. Numerous other misfortunes tended to make him bitter of
heart and wanton of action, and he celebrated his arrival at Lake Bennett
by terrorizing the camp for twenty straight hours. Then a miners'
meeting took him in hand, and commanded him to make himself scarce. He
had a wholesome respect for such assemblages, and he obeyed in such haste
that he inadvertently removed himself at the tail-end of another man's
dog team. This was equivalent to horse-stealing in a more mellow clime,
so he hit only the high places across Bennett and down Tagish, and made
his first camp a full hundred miles to the north.
Now it happened that the break of spring was at hand, and many of the
principal citizens of Dawson were travelling south on the last ice. These
he met and talked with, noted their names and possessions, and passed on.
He had a good memory, also a fair imagination; nor was veracity one of
his virtues.