CHRISTMAS
"Himlen morkner, mens Jordens Trakt
Straaler lys som i Stjernedragt.
Himlen er bleven Jordens Gjaest
Snart er det Julens sode Fest."
It had been moved, seconded, and carried by acclamation that they
should celebrate Christmas, not so much by a feast of reason as by a
flow of soul and a bang-up dinner, to be followed by speeches and some
sort of cheerful entertainment.
"We're goin' to lay ourselves out on this entertainment," said the Boy,
with painful misgivings as to the "bang-up dinner."
Every time the banquet was mentioned somebody was sure to say, "Well,
anyhow, there's Potts's cake," and that reflection never failed to
raise the tone of expectation, for Potts's cake was a beauty, evidently
very rich and fruity, and fitted by Nature to play the noble part of
plum-pudding. But, in making out the bill of fare, facts had to be
faced. "We've got our everyday little rations of beans and bacon, and
we've got Potts's cake, and we've got one skinny ptarmigan to make a
banquet for six hungry people!"
"But we'll have a high old time, and if the bill o' fare is a little
... restricted, there's nothin' to prevent our programme of toasts,
songs, and miscellaneous contributions from bein' rich and varied."
"And one thing we can get, even up here"--the Colonel was looking at
Kaviak--"and that's a little Christmas-tree."
"Y-yes," said Potts, "you can get a little tree, but you can't get the
smallest kind of a little thing to hang on it."
"Sh!" said the Boy, "it must be a surprise."
And he took steps that it should be, for he began stealing away
Kaviak's few cherished possessions--his amulet, his top from under the
bunk, his boats from out the water-bucket, wherewith to mitigate the
barrenness of the Yukon tree, and to provide a pleasant surprise for
the Esquimer who mourned his playthings as gone for ever. Of an evening
now, after sleep had settled on Kaviak's watchful eyes, the Boy worked
at a pair of little snow-shoes, helped out by a ball of sinew he had
got from Nicholas. Mac bethought him of the valuable combination of
zoological and biblical instruction that might be conveyed by means of
a Noah's Ark. He sat up late the last nights before the 25th,
whittling, chipping, pegging in legs, sharpening beaks, and inking
eyes, that the more important animals might be ready for the Deluge by
Christmas.
The Colonel made the ark, and O'Flynn took up a collection to defray
the expense of the little new mucklucks he had ordered from Nicholas.
They were to come "_sure_ by Christmas Eve," and O'Flynn was in what he
called "a froightful fanteeg" as the short day of the 24th wore towards
night, and never a sign of the one-eyed Pymeut. Half a dozen times
O'Flynn had gone beyond the stockade to find out if he wasn't in sight,
and finally came back looking intensely disgusted, bringing a couple of
white travellers who had arrived from the opposite direction; very
cold, one of them deaf, and with frost-bitten feet, and both so tired
they could hardly speak. Of course, they were made as comfortable as
was possible, the frozen one rubbed with snow and bandaged, and both
given bacon and corn-bread and hot tea.
"You oughtn't to let yourself get into a state like this," said Mac,
thinking ruefully of these strangers' obvious inability to travel for a
day or two, and of the Christmas dinner, to which Benham alone had been
bidden, by a great stretch of hospitality.
"That's all very well," said the stranger, who shouted when he talked
at all, "but how's a man to know his feet are going to freeze?"
"Ye see, sorr," O'Flynn explained absent-mindedly, "Misther MacCann
didn't know yer pardner was deaf."
This point of view seemed to thaw some of the frost out of the two
wayfarers. They confided that they were Salmon P. Hardy and Bill
Schiff, fellow-passengers in the _Merwin_, "locked in the ice down
below," and they'd mined side by side back in the States at Cripple
Creek. "Yes, sir, and sailed for the Klondyke from Seattle last July."
And now at Christmas they were hoping that, with luck, they might reach
the new Minóok Diggings, seven hundred miles this side of the Klondyke,
before the spring rush. During this recital O'Flynn kept rolling his
eyes absently.
"Theyse a quare noise without."
"It's the wind knockin' down yer chimbly," says Mr. Hardy
encouragingly.
"It don't sound like Nich'las, annyhow. May the divil burrn him in
tarment and ile fur disappoyntin' th' kid."
A rattle at the latch, and the Pymeut opened the door.
"Lorrd love ye! ye're a jool, Nich'las!" screamed O'Flynn; and the
mucklucks passed from one to the other so surreptitiously that for all
Kaviak's wide-eyed watchfulness he detected nothing.
Nicholas supped with his white friends, and seemed bent on passing the
night with them. He had to be bribed with tobacco and a new half-dollar
to go home and keep Christmas in the bosom of his family. And still, at
the door, he hesitated, drew back, and laid the silver coin on the
table.
"No. It nights."
"But it isn't really dark."
"Pretty soon heap dark."
"Why, I thought you natives could find your way day or night?"
"Yes. Find way."
"Then what's the matter?"
"Pymeut no like dark;" and it was not until Mac put on his own
snow-shoes and offered to go part of the way with him that Nicholas was
at last induced to return home.
The moment Kaviak was ascertained to be asleep, O'Flynn displayed the
mucklucks. No mistake, they were dandies! The Boy hung one of them up,
by its long leg, near the child's head at the side of the bunk, and
then conferred with O'Flynn.
"The Colonel's made some little kind o' sweet-cake things for the tree.
I could spare you one or two."
"Divil a doubt Kaviak'll take it kindly, but furr mesilf I'm thinkin' a
pitaty's a dale tastier."
There was just one left in camp. It had rolled behind the flour-sack,
and O'Flynn had seized on it with rapture. Where everybody was in such
need of vegetable food, nobody under-estimated the magnificence of
O'Flynn's offering, as he pushed the pitaty down into the toe of the
muckluck.
"Sure, the little haythen'll have a foine Christian Christmas wid that
same to roast in the coals, begorra!" and they all went to bed save
Mac, who had not returned, and the Boy, who put on his furs, and went
up the hill to the place where he kept the Christmas-tree lodged in a
cotton-wood.
He shook the snow off its branches, brought it down to the cabin,
decorated it, and carried it back.
* * * * *
Mac, Salmon P. Hardy, and the frost-bitten Schiff were waked, bright
and early Christmas morning, by the Boy's screaming with laughter.
The Colonel looked down over the bunk's side, and the men on the
buffalo-skin looked up, and they all saw Kaviak sitting in bed, holding
in one hand an empty muckluck by the toe, and in the other a half-eaten
raw potato.
"Keep the rest of it to roast, anyhow, or O'Flynn's heart will be
broken."
So they deprived Kaviak of the gnawed fragment, and consoled him by
helping him to put on his new boots.
When the Little Cabin contingent came in to breakfast, "Hello! what you
got up on the roof?" says Potts.
"Foot of earth and three feet o' snow!"
"But what's in the bundle!"
"Bundle?" echoes the Boy.
"If you put a bundle on the roof, I s'pose you know what's in it," says
the Colonel severely.
The occupants of the two cabins eyed each other with good-humoured
suspicion.
"Thank you," says the Boy, "but we're not takin' any bundles to-day."
"Call next door," advised the Colonel.
"You think we're tryin' to jolly you, but just go out and see for
yourself--"
"No, sir, you've waked the wrong passenger!"
"They're tryin' it on _us_," said Potts, and subsided into his place at
the breakfast-table.
During the later morning, while the Colonel wrestled with the dinner
problem, the Boy went through the thick-falling snow to see if the tree
was all right, and the dogs had not appropriated the presents. Half-way
up to the cotton-wood, he glanced back to make sure Kaviak wasn't
following, and there, sure enough, just as the Little Cabin men had
said--there below him on the broad-eaved roof was a bundle packed round
and nearly covered over with snow. He went back eyeing it suspiciously.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be done up in sacking, for a bit stuck
out at the corner where the wind struck keen. The Boy walked round the
cabin looking, listening. Nobody had followed him, or nothing would
have induced him to risk the derision of the camp. As it was, he would
climb up very softly and lightly, and nobody but himself would be the
wiser even if it was a josh. He brushed away the snow, touching the
thing with a mittened hand and a creepy feeling at his spine. It was
precious heavy, and hard as iron. He tugged at the sacking. "Jee! if I
don't b'lieve it's meat." The lid of an old cardboard box was bound
round the frozen mass with a string, and on the cardboard was written:
"Moose and Christmas Greeting from Kaviak's friends at Holy Cross to
Kaviak's friends by the Big Chimney."
"H'ray! h'ray! Come out, you fellas! Hip! hip! hurrah!" and the Boy
danced a breakdown on the roof till the others had come out, and then
he hurled the moose-meat down over the stockade, and sent the placard
flying after. They all gathered round Mac and read it.
"Be the Siven!"
"Well, I swan!"
"Don't forget, Boy, you're not takin' any."
"Just remember, if it hadn't been for me it might have stayed up there
till spring."
"You run in, Kaviak, or you'll have no ears."
But that gentleman pulled up his hood and stood his ground.
"How did it get on the roof, in the name o' the nation?" asked the
Colonel, stamping his feet.
"Never hear of Santa Claus? Didn't I tell you, Kaviak, he drove his
reindeer team over the roofs?"
"Did you hear any dogs go by in the night?"
"I didn't; Nicholas brought it, I s'pose, and was told to cache it up
there. Maybe that's why he came late to give us a surprise."
"Don't believe it; we'd have heard him. Somebody from the mission came
by in the night and didn't want to wake us, and saw there were dogs--"
"It's froze too hard to cut," interrupted Salmon P. Hardy, who had been
trying his jack-knife on one end; "it's too big to go in any mortal
pot."
"And it'll take a month to thaw!"
They tried chopping it, but you could more easily chop a bolt of linen
sheeting. The axe laboriously chewed out little bits and scattered
shreds.
"Stop! We'll lose a lot that way."
While they were lamenting this fact, and wondering what to do, the dogs
set up a racket, and were answered by some others. Benham was coming
along at a rattling pace, his dogs very angry to find other dogs there,
putting on airs of possession.
"We got all this moose-meat," says Potts, when Benham arrived on the
scene, "but we can't cut it."
"Of course not. Where's your hand-saw?"
The Boy brought it, and Mr. Benham triumphantly sawed off two fine
large steaks. Kaviak scraped up the meat saw-dust and ate it with grave
satisfaction. With a huge steak in each hand, the Colonel, beaming, led
the procession back to the cabin. The Boy and Mac cached the rest of
the moose on the roof and followed.
"Fine team, that one o' yours," said Salmon P. Hardy to the trader.
"_You'll_ get to Minóok, anyhow."
"Not me."
"Hey?"
"I'm not going that way."
"Mean to skip the country? Got cold feet?"
"No. I'm satisfied enough with the country," said the trader quietly,
and acknowledged the introduction to Mr. Schiff, sitting in bandages by
the fire.
Benham turned back and called out something to his guide.
"I thought maybe you'd like some oysters for your Christmas dinner," he
said to the Colonel when he came in again, "so I got a couple o' cans
from the A. C. man down below;" and a mighty whoop went up.
The great rapture of that moment did not, however, prevent O'Flynn's
saying under his breath:
"Did ye be chanct, now, think of bringin' a dtrop o'--hey?"
"No," says Benham a little shortly.
"Huh! Ye say that like's if ye wuz a taytotlerr?"
"Not me. But I find it no good to drink whiskey on the trail."
"Ah!" says Salmon P. with interest, "you prefer brandy?"
"No," says Benham, "I prefer tea."
"Lorrd, now! look at that!"
"Drink spirit, and it's all very fine and reviving for a few minutes;
but a man can't work on it."
"It's the wan thing, sorr," says O'Flynn with solemnity--"it's the wan
thing on the top o' God's futstool that makes me feel I cud wurruk."
"Not in this climate; and you're safe to take cold in the reaction."
"Cowld is ut? Faith, ye'll be tellin' us Mr. Schiff got his toes froze
wid settin' too clost be the foire."
"You don't seriously mean you go on the trail without any alcohol?"
asks the Colonel.
"No, I don't go without, but I keep it on the outside of me, unless I
have an accident."
Salmon P. studied the trader with curiosity. A man with seven
magnificent dogs and a native servant, and the finest furs he'd ever
seen--here was either a capitalist from the outside or a man who had
struck it rich "on the inside."
"Been in long?"
"Crossed the Chilcoot in June, '85."
"What! twelve year ago?"
Benham nodded.
"Gosh! then you've been in the Klondyke?"
"Not since the gold was found."
"And got a team like that 'n outside, and not even goin' to Minóok?"
"Guess not!"
What made the feller so damn satisfied? Only one explanation was
possible: he'd found a mine without going even as far as Minóok. He was
a man to keep your eye on.
A goodly aroma of steaming oysters and of grilling moose arose in the
air. The Boy set up the amended bill of fare, lit the Christmas
candles--one at the top, one at the bottom of the board--and the
Colonel announced the first course, though it wasn't one o'clock, and
they usually dined at four.
The soup was too absorbingly delicious to admit of conversation. The
moose-steaks had vanished like the "snaw-wreath in the thaw" before
anything much was said, save:
"Nothin' th' matter with moose, hey?"
"Nop! Bet your life."
The "Salmi of ptarmigan" appeared as a great wash of gravy in which
portions of the much cut-up bird swam in vain for their lives. But the
high flat rim of the dish was plentifully garnished by fingers of
corn-bread, and the gravy was "galoppshus," so Potts said.
Salmon P., having appeased the pangs of hunger, returned to his
perplexed study of Benham.
"Did I understand you to say you came into this country to _prospect_?"
"Came down the Never-Know-What and prospected a whole summer at Forty
Mile."
"What river did you come by?"
"Same as you go by--the Yukon. Indians up yonder call it the
Never-Know-What, and the more you find out about it, the better you
think the name."
"Did you do any good at Forty Mile?"
"Not enough to turn my head, so I tried the Koyukuk--and other diggins
too."
"Hear that, Schiff?" he roared at his bandaged friend. "Never say die!
This gen'l'man's been at it twelve years--tried more 'n one camp, but
now--well, he's so well fixed he don't care a cuss about the Klondyke."
Schiff lit up and pulled hard at the cutty.
O'Flynn had taken Kaviak to the fire, and was showing him how to roast
half a petaty in wood ashes; but he was listening to the story and
putting in "Be the Siven!" at appropriate moments.
Schiff poured out a cloud of rank smoke.
"Gen'lemen," he said, "the best Klondyke claims'll be potted. Minóok's
the camp o' the future. You'd better come along with us."
"Got no dogs," sighed the Boy; but the two strangers looked hard at the
man who hadn't that excuse.
Benham sat and idly watched preparations for the next course.
"Say, a nabob like you might give us a tip. How did you do the trick?"
"Well, I'd been playing your game for three years, and no galley slave
ever worked half as hard--"
"That's it! work like the devil for a couple o' years and then live
like a lord for ever after."
"Yes; well, when the time came for me to go into the Lord business I
had just forty-two dollars and sixty cents to set up on."
"What had you done with the rest?"
"I'd spent the five thousand dollars my father left me, and I'd cleaned
up just forty-two dollars sixty cents in my three years' mining."
The announcement fell chill on the company.
"I was dead broke and I had no credit. I went home."
"But"--Mac roused himself--"you didn't stay--"
"No, you don't stay--as a rule;"--Mac remembered Caribou--"get used to
this kind o' thing, and miss it. Miss it so you--"
"You came back," says Salmon P., impatient of generalities.
"And won this time," whispered Schiff.
For that is how every story must end. The popular taste in fiction is
universal.
"A friend at home grub-staked me, and I came in again--came down on the
high water in June. Prospected as long as my stuff lasted, and
then--well, I didn't care about starving, I became an A. C. Trader."
A long pause. This was no climax; everybody waited.
"And now I'm on my own. I often make more money in a day trading with
the Indians in furs, fish, and cord-wood, than I made in my whole
experience as a prospector and miner."
A frost had fallen on the genial company.
"But even if _you_ hadn't any luck," the Boy suggested, "you must have
seen others--"
"Oh, I saw some washing gravel that kept body and soul together, and I
saw some ... that didn't."
In the pause he added, remorseless:
"I helped to bury some of them."
"Your experience was unusual, or why do men come back year after year?"
"Did you ever hear of a thing called Hope?"
They moved uneasily on their stools, and some rubbed stubbly chins with
perplexed, uncertain fingers, and they all glowered at the speaker. He
was uncomfortable, this fellow.
"Well, there mayn't be as much gold up here as men think, but there's
more hope than anywhere on earth."
"To hell with hope; give me certainty," says Salmon P.
"Exactly. So you shuffle the cards, and laugh down the five-cent limit.
You'll play one last big game, and it'll be for life this time as well
as fortune."
"Cheerful cuss, ain't he?" whispered Schiff.
"They say we're a nation of gamblers. Well, sir, the biggest game we
play is the game that goes on near the Arctic Circle."
"What's the matter with Wall Street?"
"'Tisn't such a pretty game, and they don't play for their lives. I
tell you it's love of gambling brings men here, and it's the splendid
stiff game they find going on that keeps them. There's nothing like it
on earth."
His belated enthusiasm deceived nobody.
"It don't seem to have excited you much," said Mac.
"Oh, I've had my turn at it. And just by luck I found I could play
another--a safer game, and not bad fun either." He sat up straight and
shot his hands down deep in the pockets of his mackinaws. "I've got a
good thing, and I'm willing to stay with it."
The company looked at him coldly.
"Well," drawled Potts, "you can look after the fur trade; give me a
modest little claim in the Klondyke."
"Oh, Klondyke! Klondyke!" Benham got up and stepped over Kaviak on his
way to the fire. He lit a short briarwood with a flaming stick and
turned about. "Shall I tell you fellows a little secret about the
Klondyke?" He held up the burning brand in the dim room with telling
emphasis. The smoke and flame blew black and orange across his face as
he said:
"_Every dollar that's taken out of the Klondyke in gold-dust will cost
three dollars in coin_."
A sense of distinct dislike to Benham had spread through the company--a
fellow who called American enterprise love of gambling, for whom
heroism was foolhardy, and hope insane. Where was a pioneer so bold he
could get up now and toast the Klondyke? Who, now, without grim
misgiving, could forecast a rosy future for each man at the board? And
that, in brief, had been the programme.
"Oh, help the puddin', Colonel," said the Boy like one who starts up
from an evil dream.
But they sat chilled and moody, eating plum-pudding as if it had been
so much beans and bacon. Mac felt Robert Bruce's expensive education
slipping out of reach. Potts saw his girl, tired of waiting, taking up
with another fellow. The Boy's Orange Grove was farther off than
Florida. Schiff and Hardy wondered, for a moment, who was the gainer
for all their killing hardship? Not they, at present, although there
was the prospect--the hope--oh, damn the Trader!
The Colonel made the punch. O'Flynn drained his cup without waiting for
the mockery of that first toast--_To our Enterprise_--although no one
had taken more interest in the programme than O'Flynn. Benham talked
about the Anvik saw-mill, and the money made in wood camps along the
river. Nobody listened, though everyone else sat silent, smoking and
sulkily drinking his punch.
Kaviak's demand for some of the beverage reminded the Boy of the
Christmas-tree. It had been intended as a climax to wind up the
entertainment, but to produce it now might save the situation. He got
up and pulled on his parki.
"Back 'n a minute." But he was gone a long time.
Benham looked down the toast-list and smiled inwardly, for it was
Klondyked from top to bottom. The others, too, stole uneasy glances at
that programme, staring them in the face, unabashed, covertly
ironic--nay, openly jeering. They actually hadn't noticed the fact
before, but every blessed speech was aimed straight at the wonderful
gold camp across the line--not the Klondyke of Benham's croaking, but
the Klondyke of their dreams.
Even the death's head at the feast regretted the long postponement of
so spirited a programme, interspersed, as it promised to be, with
songs, dances, and "tricks," and winding up with an original poem, "He
won't be happy till he gets it."
Benham's Indian had got up and gone out. Kaviak had tried to go too,
but the door was slammed in his face. He stood there with his nose to
the crack exactly as a dog does. Suddenly he ran back to Mac and tugged
at his arm. Even the dull white men could hear an ominous snarling
among the Mahlemeuts.
Out of the distance a faint answering howl of derision from some enemy,
advancing or at bay. It was often like this when two teams put up at
the Big Chimney Camp.
"Reckon our dogs are gettin' into trouble," said Salmon P. anxiously to
his deaf and crippled partner.
"It's nothing," says the Trader. "A Siwash dog of any spirit is always
trailing his coat"; and Salmon P. subsided.
Not so Kaviak. Back to the door, head up, he listened. They had
observed the oddity before. The melancholy note of the Mahlemeut never
yet had failed to stir his sombre little soul. He was standing now
looking up at the latch, high, and made for white men, eager, breathing
fast, listening to that dismal sound that is like nothing else in
nature--listening as might an exiled Scot to the skirl of bagpipes;
listening as a Tyrolese who hears yodelling on foreign hills, or as the
dweller in a distant land to the sound of the dear home speech.
The noise outside grew louder, the air was rent with howls of rage and
defiance.
"Sounds as if there's 'bout a million mad dogs on your front stoop,"
says Schiff, knowing there must be a great deal going on if any of it
reached his ears.
"You set still." His pardner pushed him down on his stool. "Mr. Benham
and I'll see what's up."
The Trader leisurely opened the door, Salmon P. keeping modestly
behind, while Kaviak darted forward only to be caught back by Mac. An
avalanche of sound swept in--a mighty howling and snarling and cracking
of whips, and underneath the higher clamour, human voices--and in
dashes the Boy, powdered with snow, laughing and balancing carefully in
his mittened hands a little Yukon spruce, every needle diamond-pointed,
every sturdy branch white with frost crystals and soft woolly snow, and
bearing its little harvest of curious fruit--sweet-cake rings and stars
and two gingerbread men hanging by pack-thread from the white and green
branches, the Noah's Ark lodged in one crotch, the very amateur
snow-shoes in another, and the lost toys wrapped up, transfigured in
tobacco-foil, dangling merrily before Kaviak's incredulous eyes.
"There's your Christmas-tree!" and the bringer, who had carried the
tree so that no little puff of snow or delicate crystal should fall
off, having made a successful entrance and dazzled the child, gave way
to the strong excitement that shot light out of his eyes and brought
scarlet into his cheeks. "Here, take it!" He dashed the tree down in
front of Kaviak, and a sudden storm agitated its sturdy branches; it
snowed about the floor, and the strange fruit whirled and spun in the
blast. Kaviak clutched it, far too dazed to do more than stare. The Boy
stamped the snow off his mucklucks on the threshold, and dashed his cap
against the lintel, calling out:
"Come in! come in! let the dogs fight it out." Behind him, between the
snow-walls at the entrance, had appeared two faces--weather-beaten men,
crowding in the narrow space, craning to see the reception of the
Christmas-tree and the inside of the famous Big Chimney Cabin.
"These gentlemen," says the Boy, shaking with excitement as he ushered
them in, "are Mr. John Dillon and General Lighter. They've just done
the six hundred and twenty-five miles from Minóok with dogs over the
ice! They've been forty days on the trail, and they're as fit as
fiddles. An' no yonder, for Little Minóok has made big millionaires o'
both o' them!"
Millionaires or not, they'll never, either of them, create a greater
sensation than they did that Christmas Day, in the Big Chimney Cabin,
on the bleak hillside, up above the Never-Know-What. Here was Certainty
at last! Here was Justification!
Precious symbols of success, they were taken by both hands, they were
shaken and wildly welcomed, "peeled," set down by the fire, given
punch, asked ten thousand questions all in a breath, rejoiced over, and
looked up to as glorious dispellers of doubt, blessed saviours from
despair.
Schiff had tottered forward on bandaged feet, hand round ear, mouth
open, as if to swallow whole whatever he couldn't hear. The Colonel
kept on bowing magnificently at intervals and pressing refreshment,
O'Flynn slapping his thigh and reiterating, "Be the Siven!" Potts not
only widened his mouth from ear to ear, but, as O'Flynn said after,
"stretched it clane round his head and tyed it up furr jy in a nate
knot behind." Benham took a back seat, and when anybody remembered him
for the next hour it was openly to gloat over his discomfiture.
John Dillon was one of those frontiersmen rightly called typically
American. You see him again and again--as a cowboy in Texas, as a miner
or herdsman all through the Far West; you see him cutting lumber along
the Columbia, or throwing the diamond hitch as he goes from camp to
camp for gold and freedom. He takes risks cheerfully, and he never
works for wages when he can go "on his own."
John Dillon was like the majority, tall, lean, muscular, not an ounce
of superfluous flesh on his bones, a face almost gaunt in its clearness
of cut, a thin straight nose, chin not heavy but well curved out, the
eye orbit arched and deep, a frown fixed between thick eyebrows, and
few words in his firm, rather grim-looking mouth. He was perhaps
thirty-six, had been "in" ten years, and had mined before that in
Idaho. Under his striped parki he was dressed in spotted deer-skin,
wore white deer-skin mucklucks, Arctic cap, and moose mittens. Pinned
on his inner shirt was the badge of the Yukon Order of Pioneers--a
footrule bent like the letter A above a scroll of leaves, and in the
angle two linked O's over Y. P.
It was the other man--the western towns are full of General
Lighters--who did the talking. An attorney from Seattle, he had come up
in the July rush with very little but boundless assurance, fell in with
an old miner who had been grubstaked by Captain Rainey out of the
_Oklahoma's_ supplies, and got to Minóok before the river went to
sleep.
"No, we're not pardners exactly," he said, glancing good-humouredly at
Dillon; "we've worked separate, but we're going home two by two like
animals into the Ark. We've got this in common. We've both 'struck
ile'--haven't we, Dillon?"
Dillon nodded.
"Little Minóok's as rich a camp as Dawson, and the gold's of higher
grade--isn't it, Dillon?"
"That's right."
"One of the many great advantages of Minóok is that it's the _nearest_
place on the river where they've struck pay dirt." says the General.
"And another great advantage is that it's on the American side of the
line."
"What advantage is that?" Mac grated out.
"Just the advantage of not having all your hard earnings taken away by
an iniquitous tax."
"Look out! this fella's a Britisher--"
"Don't care if he is, and no disrespect to you, sir. The Canadians in
the Klondyke are the first to say the tax is nothing short of highway
robbery. You'll see! The minute they hear of gold across the line
there'll be a stampede out of Dawson. I can put you in the way of
getting a claim for eight thousand dollars that you can take eighty
thousand out of next August, with no inspector coming round to check
your clean-up, and no Government grabbing at your royalties."
"Why aren't you taking out that eighty thousand yourself?" asked Mac
bluntly.
"Got more 'n one man can handle," answered the General. "Reckon we've
earned a holiday."
Dillon backed him up.
"Then it isn't shortage in provisions that takes you outside," said the
Boy.
"Not much."
"Plenty of food at Rampart City; that's the name o' the town where the
Little Minóok meets the Yukon."
"Food at gold-craze prices, I suppose."
"No. Just about the same they quote you in Seattle."
"How is that possible when it's been carried four thousand miles?"
"Because the A. C. and N. A. T. and T. boats got frozen in this side of
Dawson. They know by the time they get there in June a lot of stuff
will have come in by the short route through the lakes, and the town
will be overstocked. So there's flour and bacon to burn when you get up
as far as Minóok. It's only along the Lower River there's any real
scarcity."
The Big Chimney men exchanged significant looks.
"And there are more supply-boats wintering up at Fort Yukon and at
Circle City," the General went on. "I tell you on the Upper River
there's food to burn."
Again the Big Chimney men looked at one another. The General kept
helping himself to punch, and as he tossed it off he would say,
"Minóok's the camp for me!" When he had given vent to this conviction
three times, Benham, who hadn't spoken since their entrance, said
quietly:
"And you're going away from it as hard as you can pelt."
The General turned moist eyes upon him.
"Are you a man of family, sir?"
"No."
"Then I cannot expect you to understand." His eyes brimmed at some
thought too fine and moving for public utterance.
Each member of the camp sat deeply cogitating. Not only gold at Minóok,
but food! In the inner vision of every eye was a ship-load of
provisions "frozen in" hard by a placer claim; in every heart a fervid
prayer for a dog-team.
The Boy jumped up, and ran his fingers through his long wild hair. He
panted softly like a hound straining at a leash. Then, with an obvious
effort to throw off the magic of Minóok, he turned suddenly about, and
"Poor old Kaviak!" says he, looking round and speaking in quite an
everyday sort of voice.
The child was leaning against the door clasping the forgotten
Christmas-tree so tight against the musk-rat coat that the branches hid
his face. From time to time with reverent finger he touched silver boat
and red-foil top, and watched, fascinated, how they swung. A white
child in a tenth of the time would have eaten the cakes, torn off the
transfiguring tinfoil, tired of the tree, and forgotten it. The Boy
felt some compunction at the sight of Kaviak's steadfast fidelity.
"Look here, we'll set the tree up where you can see it better." He put
an empty bucket on the table, and with Mac's help, wedged the spruce in
it firmly, between some blocks of wood and books of the law.
The cabin was very crowded. Little Mr. Schiff was sitting on the
cricket. Kaviak retired to his old seat on Elephas beyond the bunks,
where he still had a good view of the wonderful tree, agreeably lit by
what was left of the two candles.
"Those things are good to eat, you know," said the Colonel kindly.
Mac cut down a gingerbread man and gave it into the tiny hands.
"What wind blew that thing into your cabin?" asked the General,
squinting up his snow-blinded eyes at the dim corner where Kaviak sat.
There wasn't a man in the camp who didn't resent the millionaire's
tone.
"This is a great friend of ours--ain't you, Kaviak?" said the Boy.
"He's got a soul above gold-mines, haven't you? He sees other fellas
helping themselves to his cricket and his high chair--too polite to
object--just goes and sits like a philosopher on the bones of dead
devils and looks on. Other fellas sittin' in his place talkin' about
gold and drinkin' punch--never offerin' him a drop--"
Several cups were held out, but Mac motioned them back.
"I don't think," says John Dillon slyly--"don't think _this_ punch will
hurt the gentleman."
And a roar went up at the Colonel's expense. General Lighter pulled
himself to his feet, saying there was a little good Old Rye left
outside, and he could stock up again when he got to the _Oklahoma_.
"Oh, and it's yersilf that don't shoy off from a dthrop o' the craythur
whin yer thravellin' the thrail."
Everybody looked at Benham. He got up and began to put on his furs; his
dog-driver, squatting by the door, took the hint, and went out to see
after the team.
"Oh, well," said the General to O'Flynn, "it's Christmas, you know";
and he picked his way among the closely-packed company to the door.
"We ought to be movin', too," said Dillon, straightening up. The
General halted, depressed at the reminder. "You know we swore we
wouldn't stop again unless--"
"Look here, didn't you hear me saying it was Christmas?"
"You been sayin' that for twenty-four hours. Been keepin' Christmas
right straight along since yesterday mornin." But the General had gone
out to unpack the whisky. "He knocked up the mission folks, bright and
early yesterday, to tell 'em about the Glad News Tiding's--Diggin's, I
mean."
"What did they say?"
"Weren't as good an audience as the General's used to; that's why we
pushed on. We'd heard about your camp, and the General felt a call to
preach the Gospel accordin' to Minóok down this way."
"He don't seem to be standin' the racket as well as you," said Schiff.
"Well, sir, this is the first time I've found him wantin' to hang round
after he's thoroughly rubbed in the news."
Dillon moved away from the fire; the crowded cabin was getting hot.
Nevertheless the Colonel put on more wood, explaining to Salmon P. and
the others, who also moved back, that it was for illuminating
purposes--those two candles burning down low, each between three nails
in a little slab of wood--those two had been kept for Christmas, and
were the last they had.
In the general movement from the fire, Benham, putting on his cap and
gloves, had got next to Dillon.
"Look here," said the Trader, under cover of the talk about candles,
"what sort of a trip have you had?"
The Yukon pioneer looked at him a moment, and then took his pipe out of
his mouth to say:
"Rank."
"No fun, hey?"
"That's right." He restored the pipe, and drew gently.
"And yet to hear the General chirp--"
"He's got plenty o' grit, the General has."
"Has he got gold?"
Dillon nodded. "Or will have."
"Out of Minóok?"
"Out of Minóok."
"In a sort of a kind of a way. I think I understand." Benham wagged his
head. "He's talkin' for a market."
Dillon smoked.
"Goin' out to stir up a boom, and sell his claim to some sucker."
The General reappeared with the whisky, stamping the snow off his feet
before he joined the group at the table, where the Christmas-tree was
seasonably cheek by jowl with the punch-bowl between the low-burnt
candles. Mixing the new brew did not interrupt the General's ecstatic
references to Minóok.
"Look here!" he shouted across to Mac, "I'll give you a lay on my best
claim for two thousand down and a small royalty."
Mac stuck out his jaw.
"I'd like to take a look at the country before I deal."
"Well, see here. When will you go?"
"We got no dogs."
"_We_ have!" exclaimed Salmon P. and Scruff with one voice.
"Well, I _can_ offer you fellows--"
"How many miles did you travel a day?"
"Sixty," said the General promptly.
"Oh Lord!" ejaculated Benham, and hurriedly he made his good-byes.
"What's the matter with _you?_" demanded the General with dignity.
"I'm only surprised to hear Minóok's twenty-four hundred miles away."
"More like six hundred," says the Colonel.
"And you've been forty days coming, and you cover sixty miles a
day--Good-bye," he laughed, and was gone.
"Well--a--" The General looked round.
"Travelin' depends on the weather." Dillon helped him out.
"Exactly. Depends on the weather," echoed the General. "You don't get
an old Sour-dough like Dillon to travel at forty degrees."
"How are you to know?" whispered Schiff.
"Tie a little bottle o' quick to your sled," answered Dillon.
"Bottle o' what?" asked the Boy.
"Quicksilver--mercury," interpreted the General.
"No dog-puncher who knows what he's about travels when his quick goes
dead."
"If the stuff's like lead in your bottle--" The General stopped to
sample the new brew. In the pause, from the far side of the cabin
Dillon spat straight and clean into the heart of the coals.
"Well, what do you do when the mercury freezes?" asked the Boy.
"Camp," said Dillon impassively, resuming his pipe.
"I suppose," the Boy went on wistfully--"I suppose you met men all the
way making straight for Minóok?"
"Only on this last lap."
"They don't get far, most of 'em."
"But... but it's worth trying!" the Boy hurried to bridge the chasm.
The General lifted his right arm in the attitude of the orator about to
make a telling hit, but he was hampered by having a mug at his lips. In
the pause, as he stood commanding attention, at the same time that he
swallowed half a pint of liquor, he gave Dillon time leisurely to get
up, knock the ashes out of his pipe stick it in his belt, put a slow
hand behind him towards his pistol pocket, and bring out his buckskin
gold sack. Now, only Mac of the other men had ever seen a miner's purse
before, but every one of the four cheechalkos knew instinctively what
it was that Dillon held so carelessly. In that long, narrow bag, like
the leg of a child's stocking, was the stuff they had all come seeking.
The General smacked his lips, and set down the granite cup.
"_That's_ the argument," he said. "Got a noospaper?"
The Colonel looked about in a flustered way for the tattered San
Francisco _Examiner_; Potts and the Boy hustled the punch-bowl on to
the bucket board, recklessly spilling some of the precious contents.
O'Flynn and Salmon P. whisked the Christmas tree into the corner, and
not even the Boy remonstrated when a gingerbread man broke his neck,
and was trampled under foot.
"Quick! the candles are going out!" shouted the Boy, and in truth each
wick lay languishing in a little island of grease, now flaring bravely,
now flickering to dusk. It took some time to find in the San Francisco
_Examiner_ of August 7 a foot square space that was whole. But as
quickly as possible the best bit was spread in the middle of the table.
Dillon, in the breathless silence having slowly untied the thongs, held
his sack aslant between the two lights, and poured out a stream-nuggets
and coarse bright gold.
The crowd about the table drew audible breath. Nobody actually spoke at
first, except O'Flynn, who said reverently: "Be--the Siven! Howly
Pipers!--that danced at me--gran'-mother's weddin'--when the
divvle--called the chune!" Even the swimming wicks flared up, and
seemed to reach out, each a hungry tongue of flame to touch and taste
the glittering heap, before they went into the dark. Low exclamations,
hands thrust out to feel, and drawn back in a sort of superstitious
awe.
Here it was, this wonderful stuff they'd come for! Each one knew by the
wild excitement in his own breast, how in secret he had been brought to
doubt its being here. But here it was lying in a heap on the Big Cabin
table! and--now it was gone.
The right candle had given out, and O'Flynn, blowing with impatience
like a walrus, had simultaneously extinguished the other.
For an instant a group of men with strained and dazzled eyes still bent
above the blackness on the boards.
"Stir the fire," called the Colonel, and flew to do it himself.
"I'll light a piece of fat pine," shouted the Boy, catching up a stick,
and thrusting it into the coals.
"Where's your bitch?" said Dillon calmly.
"Bitch?"
"Haven't you got a condensed milk can with some bacon grease in it, and
a rag wick? Makes a good enough light."
But the fire had been poked up, and the cabin was full of dancing
lights and shadows. Besides that, the Boy was holding a resinous stick
alight over the table, and they all bent down as before.
"It was passin' a bank in 'Frisco wid a windy full o' that stuff that
brought me up here," said O'Flynn.
"It was hearin' about that winder brought _me_" added Potts.
Everyone longed to touch and feel about in the glittering pile, but no
one as yet had dared to lay a finger on the smallest grain in the
hoard. An electrical shock flashed through the company when the General
picked up one of the biggest nuggets and threw it down with a rich,
full-bodied thud. "That one is four ounces."
He took up another.
"This is worth about sixty dollars."
"More like forty," said Dillon.
They were of every conceivable shape and shapelessness, most of them
flattened; some of them, the greenhorn would swear, were fashioned by
man into roughly embossed hearts, or shells, or polished discs like
rude, defaced coins. One was a perfect staple, another the letter "L,"
another like an axe-head, and one like a peasant's sabot. Some were
almost black with iron stains, and some were set with "jewels" of
quartz, but for the most part they were formless fragments of a rich
and brassy yellow.
"Lots of the little fellas are like melon-seeds"; and the Boy pointed a
shaking finger, longing and still not daring to touch the treasure.
Each man had a dim feeling in the back of his head that, after all, the
hillock of gold was an illusion, and his own hand upon the dazzling
pile would clutch the empty air.
"Where's your dust?" asked the Boy.
Dillon stared.
"Why, here."
"This is all nuggets and grains."
"Well, what more do you want?"
"Oh, it'd do well enough for me, but it ain't dust."
"It's what we call dust."
"As coarse as this?"
The Sour-dough nodded, and Lighter laughed.
"There's a fox's mask," said the Colonel at the bottom of the table,
pointing a triangular bit out.
"Let me look at it a minute," begged the Boy.
"Hand it round," whispered Schiff.
It was real. It was gold. Their fingers tingled under the first
contact. This was the beginning.
The rude bit of metal bred a glorious confidence. Under the magic of
its touch Robert Bruce's expensive education became a simple certainty.
In Potts's hand the nugget gave birth to a mighty progeny. He saw
himself pouring out sackfuls before his enraptured girl.
The Boy lifted his flaring torch with a victorious sense of having just
bought back the Orange Grove; and Salmon P. passed the nugget to his
partner with a blissful sigh.
"Well, I'm glad we didn't get cold feet," says he.
"Yes," whispered Schiff; "it looks like we goin' to the right place."
The sheen of the heap of yellow treasure was trying even to the nerves
of the Colonel.
"Put it away," he said quite solemnly, laying the nugget on the
paper--"put it all away before the firelight dies down."
Dillon leisurely gathered it up and dropped the nuggets, with an
absent-minded air, into the pouch which Lighter held.
But the San Francisco _Examiner_ had been worn to the softness of an
old rag and the thinness of tissue. Under Dillon's sinewy fingers
pinching up the gold the paper gave way.
"Oh!" exclaimed more than one voice, as at some grave mishap.
Dillon improvised a scoop out of a dirty envelope. Nobody spoke and
everybody watched, and when, finally, with his hand, he brushed the
remaining grains off the torn paper into the envelope, poured them into
the gaping sack-mouth, and lazily pulled at the buckskin draw-string,
everybody sat wondering how much, if any, of the precious metal had
escaped through the tear, and how soon Dillon would come out of his
brown study, remember, and recover the loss. But a spell seemed to have
fallen on the company. No one spoke, till Dillon, with that lazy
motion, hoisting one square shoulder and half turning his body round,
was in the act of returning the sack to his hip-pocket.
"Wait!" said Mac, with the explosiveness of a firearm, and O'Flynn
jumped.
"You ain't got it all," whispered Schiff hurriedly.
"Oh, I'm leavin' the fox-face for luck," Dillon nodded at the Colonel.
But Schiff pointed reverently at the tear in the paper, as Dillon only
went on pushing his sack deep down in his pocket, while Mac lifted the
_Examiner_. All but the two millionaires bent forward and scrutinised
the table. O'Flynn impulsively ran one lone hand over the place where
the gold-heap had lain, his other hand held ready at the table's edge
to catch any sweepings. None! But the result of O'Flynn's action was
that those particles of gold that that fallen through the paper were
driven into the cracks and inequalities of the board.
"There! See?"
"Now look what you've done!"
Mac pointed out a rough knot-hole, too, that slyly held back a pinch of
gold.
"Oh, that!"
Dillon slapped his hip, and settled into his place. But the men nearest
the crack and the knot-hole fell to digging out the renegade grains,
and piously offering them to their lawful owner.
"That ain't worth botherin' about," laughed Dillon; "you always reckon
to lose a little each time, even if you got a China soup-plate."
"Plenty more where that came from," said the General, easily.
Such indifference was felt to be magnificent indeed. The little
incident said more for the richness of Minóok than all the General's
blowing; they forgot that what was lost would amount to less than fifty
cents. The fact that it was gold--Minóok gold--gave it a symbolic value
not to be computed in coin.
"How do you go?" asked the Colonel, as the two millionaires began
putting on their things.
"We cut across to Kuskoquim. Take on an Indian guide there to Nushagak,
and from there with dogs across the ocean ice to Kadiak."
"Oh! the way the letters go out."
"When they _do_," smiled Dillon. "Yes, it's the old Russian Post Trail,
I believe. South of Kadiak Island the sea is said to be open as early
as the first of March. We'll get a steamer to Sitka, and from Sitka, of
course, the boats run regular."
"Seattle by the middle of March!" says the General. "Come along,
Dillon; the sooner you get to Seattle, and blow in a couple o' hundred
thousand, the sooner you'll get back to Minóok."
Dillon went out and roused up the dogs, asleep in the snow, with their
bushy tails sheltering their sharp noses.
"See you later?"
"Yes, 'outside.'"
"Outside? No, sir! _Inside_."
Dillon swore a blood-curdling string of curses and cracked his whip
over the leader.
"Why, you comin' back?"
"Bet your life!"
And nobody who looked at the face of the Yukon pioneer could doubt he
meant what he said.
They went indoors. The cabin wore an unwonted and a rakish air. The
stools seemed to have tried to dance the lancers and have fallen out
about the figure. Two were overturned. The unwashed dishes were tossed
helter-skelter. A tipsy Christmas tree leaned in drunken fashion
against the wall, and under its boughs lay a forgotten child asleep. On
the other side of the cabin an empty whisky bottle caught a ray of
light from the fire, and glinted feebly back. Among the ashes on the
hearth was a screw of paper, charred at one end, and thrown there after
lighting someone's pipe. The Boy opened it. The famous programme of the
Yukon Symposium!
"It's been a different sort of Christmas from what we planned,"
observed the Colonel, not quite as gaily as you might expect.
"Begob!" says O'Flynn, stretching out his interminable legs; "ye can't
say we haven't hearrd Glad Tidings of gr-reat j'y--"
"Colonel," interrupts the Boy, throwing the Programme in the fire,
"let's look at your nugget again."
And they all took turns. Except Potts. He was busy digging the
remaining gold-grains out of the crack and the knothole.