III

With Circle City in prospect and the last ice crumbling under his

runners, Montana Kid took advantage of the lengthening days and travelled

his dogs late and early. Further, he had but little doubt that the owner

of the dogs in question had taken his trail, and he wished to make

American territory before the river broke. But by the afternoon of the

third day it became evident that he had lost in his race with spring. The

Yukon was growling and straining at its fetters. Long detours became

necessary, for the trail had begun to fall through into the swift current

beneath, while the ice, in constant unrest, was thundering apart in great

gaping fissures. Through these and through countless airholes, the water

began to sweep across the surface of the ice, and by the time he pulled

into a woodchopper's cabin on the point of an island, the dogs were being

rushed off their feet and were swimming more often than not. He was

greeted sourly by the two residents, but he unharnessed and proceeded to

cook up.

Donald and Davy were fair specimens of frontier inefficients. Canadian-

born, city-bred Scots, in a foolish moment they had resigned their

counting-house desks, drawn upon their savings, and gone Klondiking. And

now they were feeling the rough edge of the country. Grubless,

spiritless, with a lust for home in their hearts, they had been staked by

the P. C. Company to cut wood for its steamers, with the promise at the

end of a passage home. Disregarding the possibilities of the ice-run,

they had fittingly demonstrated their inefficiency by their choice of the

island on which they located. Montana Kid, though possessing little

knowledge of the break-up of a great river, looked about him dubiously,

and cast yearning glances at the distant bank where the towering bluffs

promised immunity from all the ice of the Northland.

After feeding himself and dogs, he lighted his pipe and strolled out to

get a better idea of the situation. The island, like all its river

brethren, stood higher at the upper end, and it was here that Donald and

Davy had built their cabin and piled many cords of wood. The far shore

was a full mile away, while between the island and the near shore lay a

back-channel perhaps a hundred yards across. At first sight of this,

Montana Kid was tempted to take his dogs and escape to the mainland, but

on closer inspection he discovered a rapid current flooding on top.

Below, the river twisted sharply to the west, and in this turn its breast

was studded by a maze of tiny islands.

"That's where she'll jam," he remarked to himself.

Half a dozen sleds, evidently bound up-stream to Dawson, were splashing

through the chill water to the tail of the island. Travel on the river

was passing from the precarious to the impossible, and it was nip and

tuck with them till they gained the island and came up the path of the

wood-choppers toward the cabin. One of them, snow-blind, towed

helplessly at the rear of a sled. Husky young fellows they were, rough-

garmented and trail-worn, yet Montana Kid had met the breed before and

knew at once that it was not his kind.

"Hello! How's things up Dawson-way?" queried the foremost, passing his

eye over Donald and Davy and settling it upon the Kid.

A first meeting in the wilderness is not characterized by formality. The

talk quickly became general, and the news of the Upper and Lower

Countries was swapped equitably back and forth. But the little the

newcomers had was soon over with, for they had wintered at Minook, a

thousand miles below, where nothing was doing. Montana Kid, however, was

fresh from Salt Water, and they annexed him while they pitched camp,

swamping him with questions concerning the outside, from which they had

been cut off for a twelvemonth.

A shrieking split, suddenly lifting itself above the general uproar on

the river, drew everybody to the bank. The surface water had increased

in depth, and the ice, assailed from above and below, was struggling to

tear itself from the grip of the shores. Fissures reverberated into life

before their eyes, and the air was filled with multitudinous crackling,

crisp and sharp, like the sound that goes up on a clear day from the

firing line.

From up the river two men were racing a dog team toward them on an

uncovered stretch of ice. But even as they looked, the pair struck the

water and began to flounder through. Behind, where their feet had sped

the moment before, the ice broke up and turned turtle. Through this

opening the river rushed out upon them to their waists, burying the sled

and swinging the dogs off at right angles in a drowning tangle. But the

men stopped their flight to give the animals a fighting chance, and they

groped hurriedly in the cold confusion, slashing at the detaining traces

with their sheath-knives. Then they fought their way to the bank through

swirling water and grinding ice, where, foremost in leaping to the rescue

among the jarring fragments, was the Kid.

"Why, blime me, if it ain't Montana Kid!" exclaimed one of the men whom

the Kid was just placing upon his feet at the top of the bank. He wore

the scarlet tunic of the Mounted Police and jocularly raised his right

hand in salute.

"Got a warrant for you, Kid," he continued, drawing a bedraggled paper

from his breast pocket, "an' I 'ope as you'll come along peaceable."

Montana Kid looked at the chaotic river and shrugged his shoulders, and

the policeman, following his glance, smiled.

"Where are the dogs?" his companion asked.

"Gentlemen," interrupted the policeman, "this 'ere mate o' mine is Jack

Sutherland, owner of Twenty-Two Eldorado--"

"Not Sutherland of '92?" broke in the snow-blinded Minook man, groping

feebly toward him.

"The same." Sutherland gripped his hand.

"And you?"

"Oh, I'm after your time, but I remember you in my freshman year,--you

were doing P. G. work then. Boys," he called, turning half about, "this

is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland, erstwhile full-back on the 'Varsity. Come

up, you gold-chasers, and fall upon him! Sutherland, this is

Greenwich,--played quarter two seasons back."

"Yes, I read of the game," Sutherland said, shaking hands. "And I

remember that big run of yours for the first touchdown."

Greenwich flushed darkly under his tanned skin and awkwardly made room

for another.

"And here's Matthews,--Berkeley man. And we've got some Eastern cracks

knocking about, too. Come up, you Princeton men! Come up! This is

Sutherland, Jack Sutherland!"

Then they fell upon him heavily, carried him into camp, and supplied him

with dry clothes and numerous mugs of black tea.

Donald and Davy, overlooked, had retired to their nightly game of crib.

Montana Kid followed them with the policeman.

"Here, get into some dry togs," he said, pulling them from out his scanty

kit. "Guess you'll have to bunk with me, too."

"Well, I say, you're a good 'un," the policeman remarked as he pulled on

the other man's socks. "Sorry I've got to take you back to Dawson, but I

only 'ope they won't be 'ard on you."

"Not so fast." The Kid smiled curiously. "We ain't under way yet. When

I go I'm going down river, and I guess the chances are you'll go along."

"Not if I know myself--"

"Come on outside, and I'll show you, then. These damn fools," thrusting

a thumb over his shoulder at the two Scots, "played smash when they

located here. Fill your pipe, first--this is pretty good plug--and enjoy

yourself while you can. You haven't many smokes before you."

The policeman went with him wonderingly, while Donald and Davy dropped

their cards and followed. The Minook men noticed Montana Kid pointing

now up the river, now down, and came over.

"What's up?" Sutherland demanded.

"Nothing much." Nonchalance sat well upon the Kid. "Just a case of

raising hell and putting a chunk under. See that bend down there? That's

where she'll jam millions of tons of ice. Then she'll jam in the bends

up above, millions of tons. Upper jam breaks first, lower jam holds,

pouf!" He dramatically swept the island with his hand. "Millions of

tons," he added reflectively.

"And what of the woodpiles?" Davy questioned.

The Kid repeated his sweeping gestures and Davy wailed, "The labor of

months! It canna be! Na, na, lad, it canna be. I doot not it's a jowk.

Ay, say that it is," he appealed.

But when the Kid laughed harshly and turned on his heel, Davy flung

himself upon the piles and began frantically to toss the cordwood back

from the bank.

"Lend a hand, Donald!" he cried. "Can ye no lend a hand? 'T is the

labor of months and the passage home!"

Donald caught him by the arm and shook him, but he tore free. "Did ye no

hear, man? Millions of tons, and the island shall be sweepit clean."

"Straighten yersel' up, man," said Donald. "It's a bit fashed ye are."

But Davy fell upon the cordwood. Donald stalked back to the cabin,

buckled on his money belt and Davy's, and went out to the point of the

island where the ground was highest and where a huge pine towered above

its fellows.

The men before the cabin heard the ringing of his axe and smiled.

Greenwich returned from across the island with the word that they were

penned in. It was impossible to cross the back-channel. The blind

Minook man began to sing, and the rest joined in with--

"Wonder if it's true?

Does it seem so to you?

Seems to me he's lying--

Oh, I wonder if it's true?"

"It's ay sinfu'," Davy moaned, lifting his head and watching them dance

in the slanting rays of the sun. "And my guid wood a' going to waste."

"Oh, I wonder if it's true,"

was flaunted back.

The noise of the river ceased suddenly. A strange calm wrapped about

them. The ice had ripped from the shores and was floating higher on the

surface of the river, which was rising. Up it came, swift and silent,

for twenty feet, till the huge cakes rubbed softly against the crest of

the bank. The tail of the island, being lower, was overrun. Then,

without effort, the white flood started down-stream. But the sound

increased with the momentum, and soon the whole island was shaking and

quivering with the shock of the grinding bergs. Under pressure, the

mighty cakes, weighing hundreds of tons, were shot into the air like

peas. The frigid anarchy increased its riot, and the men had to shout

into one another's ears to be heard. Occasionally the racket from the

back channel could be heard above the tumult. The island shuddered with

the impact of an enormous cake which drove in squarely upon its point. It

ripped a score of pines out by the roots, then swinging around and over,

lifted its muddy base from the bottom of the river and bore down upon the

cabin, slicing the bank and trees away like a gigantic knife. It seemed

barely to graze the corner of the cabin, but the cribbed logs tilted up

like matches, and the structure, like a toy house, fell backward in ruin.

"The labor of months! The labor of months, and the passage home!" Davy

wailed, while Montana Kid and the policeman dragged him backward from the

woodpiles.

"You'll 'ave plenty o' hoppertunity all in good time for yer passage

'ome," the policeman growled, clouting him alongside the head and sending

him flying into safety.

Donald, from the top of the pine, saw the devastating berg sweep away the

cordwood and disappear down-stream. As though satisfied with this

damage, the ice-flood quickly dropped to its old level and began to

slacken its pace. The noise likewise eased down, and the others could

hear Donald shouting from his eyrie to look down-stream. As forecast,

the jam had come among the islands in the bend, and the ice was piling up

in a great barrier which stretched from shore to shore. The river came

to a standstill, and the water finding no outlet began to rise. It

rushed up till the island was awash, the men splashing around up to their

knees, and the dogs swimming to the ruins of the cabin. At this stage it

abruptly became stationary, with no perceptible rise or fall.

Montana Kid shook his head. "It's jammed above, and no more's coming

down."

"And the gamble is, which jam will break first," Sutherland added.

"Exactly," the Kid affirmed. "If the upper jam breaks first, we haven't

a chance. Nothing will stand before it."

The Minook men turned away in silence, but soon "Rumsky Ho" floated upon

the quiet air, followed by "The Orange and the Black." Room was made in

the circle for Montana Kid and the policeman, and they quickly caught the

ringing rhythm of the choruses as they drifted on from song to song.

"Oh, Donald, will ye no lend a hand?" Davy sobbed at the foot of the tree

into which his comrade had climbed. "Oh, Donald, man, will ye no lend a

hand?" he sobbed again, his hands bleeding from vain attempts to scale

the slippery trunk.

But Donald had fixed his gaze up river, and now his voice rang out,

vibrant with fear:--

"God Almichty, here she comes!"

Standing knee-deep in the icy water, the Minook men, with Montana Kid and

the policeman, gripped hands and raised their voices in the terrible,

"Battle Hymn of the Republic." But the words were drowned in the

advancing roar.

And to Donald was vouchsafed a sight such as no man may see and live. A

great wall of white flung itself upon the island. Trees, dogs, men, were

blotted out, as though the hand of God had wiped the face of nature

clean. This much he saw, then swayed an instant longer in his lofty

perch and hurtled far out into the frozen hell.