THE ICE GOES OUT
"I am apart of all that I have seen."
It had been thawing and freezing, freezing and thawing, for so long
that men lost account of the advance of a summer coming, with such
balked, uncertain steps. Indeed, the weather variations had for several
weeks been so great that no journey, not the smallest, could be
calculated with any assurance. The last men to reach Minoók were two
who had made a hunting and prospecting trip to an outlying district.
They had gone there in six days, and were nineteen in returning.
The slush was waist-deep in the gulches. On the benches, in the snow,
holes appeared, as though red-hot stones had been thrown upon the
surface. The little settlement by the mouth of the Minoók sat
insecurely on the boggy hillside, and its inhabitants waded knee-deep
in soaking tundra moss and mire.
And now, down on the Never-Know-What, water was beginning to run on the
marginal ice. Up on the mountains the drifted snow was honey-combed.
Whole fields of it gave way and sunk a foot under any adventurous shoe.
But although these changes had been wrought slowly, with backsets of
bitter nights, when everything was frozen hard as flint, the illusion
was general that summer came in with a bound. On the 9th of May, Minoók
went to bed in winter, and woke to find the snow almost gone under the
last nineteen hours of hot, unwinking sunshine, and the first geese
winging their way up the valley--sight to stir men's hearts. Stranger
still, the eight months' Arctic silence broken suddenly by a thousand
voices. Under every snow-bank a summer murmur, very faint at first, but
hourly louder--the sound of falling water softly singing over all the
land.
As silence had been the distinguishing feature of the winter, so was
noise the sign of the spring. No ear so dull but now was full of it.
All the brooks on all the hills, tinkling, tumbling, babbling of some
great and universal joy, all the streams of all the gulches joining
with every little rill to find the old way, or to carve a new, back to
the Father of Waters.
And the strange thing had happened on the Yukon. The shore-edges of the
ice seemed sunken, and the water ran yet deeper there. But of a
certainty the middle part had risen! The cheechalkos thought it an
optical illusion. But old Brandt from Forty-Mile had seen the ice go
out for two-and-twenty years, and he said it went out always so--"humps
his back, an' gits up gits, and when he's a gitten', jest look out!"
Those who, in spite of warning, ventured in hip-boots down on the
Never-Know-What, found that, in places, the under side of the ice was
worn nearly through. If you bent your head and listened, you could
plainly hear that greater music of the river running underneath, low as
yet, but deep, and strangely stirring--dominating in the hearer's ears
all the clear, high clamour from gulch and hill.
In some men's hearts the ice "went out" at the sound, and the melting
welled up in their eyes. Summer and liberty were very near.
"Oh, hurry, Yukon Inua; let the ice go out and let the boats come in."
But the next few days hung heavily. The river-ice humped its back still
higher, but showed no disposition to "git." The wonder was it did not
crack under the strain; but Northern ice ahs the air of being strangely
flexile. Several feet in depth, the water ran now along the margin.
More geese and ducks appeared, and flocks of little birds--Canada jays,
robins, joined the swelling chorus of the waters.
Oh, hurry, hurry Inua, and open the great highway! Not at Minóok alone:
at every wood camp, mining town and mission, at every white post and
Indian village, all along the Yukon, groups were gathered waiting the
great moment of the year. No one had ever heard of the ice breaking up
before the 11th of May or later than the 28th. And yet men had begun to
keep a hopeful eye on the river from the 10th of April, when a white
ptarmigan was reported wearing a collar of dark-brown feathers, and his
wings tipped brown. That was a month ago, and the great moment could
not possibly be far now.
The first thing everybody did on getting up, and the last thing
everybody did on going to bed, was to look at the river. It was not
easy to go to bed; and even if you got so far it was not easy to sleep.
The sun poured into the cabins by night as well as by day, and there
was nothing to divide one part of the twenty-four hours from another.
You slept when you were too tired to watch the river. You breakfasted,
like as not, at six in the evening; you dined at midnight. Through all
your waking hours you kept an eye on the window overlooking the river.
In your bed you listened for that ancient Yukon cry, "The ice is going
out!"
For ages it had meant to the timid: Beware the fury of the shattered
ice-fields; beware the caprice of the flood. Watch! lest many lives go
out with the ice as aforetime. And for ages to the stout-hearted it had
meant: Make ready the kyaks and the birch canoes; see that tackle and
traps are strong--for plenty or famine wait upon the hour. As the white
men waited for boats to-day, the men of the older time had waited for
the salmon--for those first impatient adventurers that would force
their way under the very ice-jam, tenderest and best of the season's
catch, as eager to prosecute that journey from the ocean to the
Klondyke as if they had been men marching after the gold boom.
No one could settle to anything. It was by fits and starts that the
steadier hands indulged even in target practice, with a feverish
subconsciousness that events were on the way that might make it
inconvenient to have lost the art of sending a bullet straight. After a
diminutive tin can, hung on a tree, had been made to jump at a hundred
paces, the marksman would glance at the river and forget to fire. It
was by fits and starts that they even drank deeper or played for higher
stakes.
The Wheel of Fortune, in the Gold Nugget, was in special demand. It was
a means of trying your luck with satisfactory despatch "between drinks"
or between long bouts of staring at the river. Men stood in
shirt-sleeves at their cabin doors in the unwinking sunshine, looking
up the valley or down, betting that the "first boat in" would be one of
those nearest neighbours, May West or Muckluck, coming up from
Woodworth; others as ready to back heavily their opinion that the first
blast of the steam whistle would come down on the flood from Circle or
from Dawson.
The Colonel had bought and donned a new suit of "store clothes," and
urged on his companion the necessity of at least a whole pair of
breeches in honour of his entrance into the Klondyke. But the Boy's
funds were low and his vanity chastened. Besides, he had other business
on his mind.
After sending several requests for the immediate return of his dog,
requests that received no attention, the Boy went out to the gulch to
recover him. Nig's new master paid up all arrears of wages readily
enough, but declined to surrender the dog. "Oh, no, the ice wasn't
thinkin' o' goin' out yit."
"I want my dog."
"You'll git him sure."
"I'm glad you understand that much."
"I'll bring him up to Rampart in time for the first boat."
"Where's my dog?"
No answer. The Boy whistled. No Nig. Dread masked itself in choler. He
jumped on the fellow, forced him down, and hammered him till he cried
for mercy.
"Where's my dog, then?"
"He--he's up to Idyho Bar," whimpered the prostrate one. And there the
Boy found him, staggering under a pair of saddle-bags, hired out to
Mike O'Reilly for a dollar and a half a day. Together they returned to
Rampart to watch for the boat.
Certainly the ice was very late breaking up this year. The men of
Rampart stood about in groups in the small hours of the morning of the
16th of May; as usual, smoking, yarning, speculating, inventing
elaborate joshes. Somebody remembered that certain cheechalkos had gone
to bed at midnight. Now this was unprecedented, even impertinent. If
the river is not open by the middle of May, your Sour-dough may go to
bed--only he doesn't. Still, he may do as he lists. But your
cheechalko--why, this is the hour of his initiation. It was as if a man
should yawn at his marriage or refuse to sleep at his funeral. The
offenders were some of those Woodworth fellows, who, with a dozen or so
others, had built shacks below "the street" yet well above the river.
At two in the morning Sour-dough Saunders knocked them up.
"The ice is goin' out!"
In a flash the sleepers stood at the door.
"Only a josh." One showed fight.
"Well, it's true what I'm tellin' yer," persisted Saunders seriously:
"the ice is goin' out, and it's goin' soon, and when you're washed out
o' yer bunks ye needn't blame me, fur I warned yer."
"You don't mean the flood'll come up here?"
"Mebbe you've arranged so she won't this year."
The cheechalkos consulted. In the end, four of them occupied the next
two hours (to the infinite but masked amusement of the town) in
floundering about in the mud, setting up tents in the boggy wood above
the settlement, and with much pains transporting thither as many of
their possessions as they did not lose in the bottomless pit of the
mire.
When the business was ended, Minóok self-control gave way. The
cheechalkos found themselves the laughing-stock of the town. The
others, who had dared to build down on the bank, but who "hadn't scared
worth a cent," sauntered up to the Gold Nugget to enjoy the increased
esteem of the Sour-doughs, and the humiliation of the men who had
thought "the Yukon was goin' over the Ramparts this year--haw, haw!"
It surprises the average mind to discover that one of civilization's
most delicate weapons is in such use and is so potently dreaded among
the roughest frontier spirits. No fine gentleman in a drawing-room, no
sensitive girl, shrinks more from what Meredith calls "the comic
laugh," none feels irony more keenly than your ordinary American
pioneer. The men who had moved up into the soaking wood saw they had
run a risk as great to them as the fabled danger of the river--the risk
of the josher's irony, the dire humiliation of the laugh. If a man up
here does you an injury, and you kill him, you haven't after all taken
the ultimate revenge. You might have "got the laugh on him," and let
him live to hear it.
While all Minóok was "jollying" the Woodworth men, Maudie made one of
her sudden raids out of the Gold Nugget. She stood nearly up to the
knees of her high rubber boots in the bog of "Main Street," talking
earnestly with the Colonel. Keith and the Boy, sitting on a store box
outside of the saloon, had looked on at the fun over the timid
cheechalkos, and looked on now at Maudie and the Colonel. It crossed
the Boy's mind that they'd be putting up a josh on his pardner pretty
soon, and at the thought he frowned.
Keith had been saying that the old miners had nearly all got "squawed."
He had spoken almost superstitiously of the queer, lasting effect of
the supposedly temporary arrangement.
"No, they don't leave their wives as often as you'd expect, but in most
cases it seems to kill the pride of the man. He gives up all idea of
ever going home, and even if he makes a fortune, they say, he stays on
here. And year by year he sinks lower and lower, till he's farther down
in the scale of things human than his savage wife."
"Yes, it's awful to think how the life up here can take the stiffening
out of a fella."
He looked darkly at the two out there in the mud. Keith nodded.
"Strong men have lain down on the trail this winter and cried." But it
wasn't that sort of thing the other meant. Keith followed his new
friend's glowering looks.
"Yes. That's just the kind of man that gets taken in."
"What?" said the Boy brusquely.
"Just the sort that goes and marries some flighty creature."
"Well," said his pardner haughtily, "he could afford to marry 'a
flighty creature.' The Colonel's got both feet on the ground." And
Keith felt properly snubbed. But what Maudie was saying to the Colonel
was:
"You're goin' up in the first boat, I s'pose?"
"Yes."
"Looks like I'll be the only person left in Minóok."
"I don't imagine you'll be quite alone."
"No? Why, there's only between five and six hundred expectin' to board
a boat that'll be crowded before she gets here."
"Does everybody want to go to Dawson?"
"Everybody except a few boomers who mean to stay long enough to play
off their misery on someone else before they move on."
The Colonel looked a trifle anxious.
"I hadn't thought of that. I suppose there will be a race for the
boat."
"There'll be a race all the way up the river for all the early boats.
Ain't half enough to carry the people. But you look to me like you'll
stand as good a chance as most, and anyhow, you're the one man I know,
I'll trust my dough to."
The Colonel stared.
"You see, I want to get some money to my kiddie, an' besides, I got
m'self kind o' scared about keepin' dust in my cabin. I want it in a
bank, so's if I should kick the bucket (there'll be some pretty high
rollin' here when there's been a few boats in, and my life's no better
than any other feller's), I'd feel a lot easier if I knew the kiddie'd
have six thousand clear, even if I did turn up my toes. See?"
"A--yes--I see. But----"
The door of the cabin next the saloon opened suddenly. A graybeard with
a young face came out rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He stared
interrogatively at the river, and then to the world in general:
"What time is it?"
"Half-past four."
"Mornin' or evenin'?" and no one thought the question strange.
Maudie lowered her voice.
"No need to mention it to pardners and people. You don't want every
feller to know you're goin' about loaded; but will you take my dust up
to Dawson and get it sent to 'Frisco on the first boat?"
"The ice! the ice! It's moving!"
"The ice is going out!"
"Look! the ice!"
From end to end of the settlement the cry was taken up. People darted
out of cabins like beavers out of their burrows. Three little
half-breed Indian boys, yelling with excitement, tore past the Gold
Nugget, crying now in their mother's Minóok, now in their father's
English, "The ice is going out!" From the depths of the store-box
whereon his master had sat, Nig darted, howling excitedly and waving a
muddy tail like a draggled banner, saying in Mahlemeut: "The ice is
going out! The fish are coming in." All the other dogs waked and gave
tongue, running in and out among the huddled rows of people gathered on
the Ramparts.
Every ear full of the rubbing, grinding noise that came up out of the
Yukon--noise not loud, but deep--an undercurrent of heavy sound. As
they stood there, wide-eyed, gaping, their solid winter world began to
move. A compact mass of ice, three-quarters of a mile wide and four
miles long, with a great grinding and crushing went down the valley.
Some distance below the town it jammed, building with incredible
quickness a barrier twenty feet high.
The people waited breathless. Again the ice-mass trembled. But the
watchers lifted their eyes to the heights above. Was that thunder in
the hills? No, the ice again; again crushing, grinding, to the low
accompaniment of thunder that seemed to come from far away.
Sections a mile long and half a mile wide were forced up, carried over
the first ice-pack, and summarily stopped below the barrier. Huge
pieces, broken off from the sides, came crunching their way angrily up
the bank, as if acting on some independent impulse. There they sat,
great fragments, glistening in the sunlight, as big as cabins. It was
something to see them come walking up the shelving bank! The
cheechalkos who laughed before are contented now with running, leaving
their goods behind. Sour-dough Saunders himself never dreamed the ice
would push its way so far.
In mid-channel a still unbroken sheet is bent yet more in the centre.
Every now and then a wide crack opens near the margin, and the water
rushes out with a roar. Once more the mass is nearly still, and now
all's silent. Not till the water, dammed and thrown back by the ice,
not until it rises many feet and comes down with a volume and momentum
irresistible, will the final conflict come.
Hour after hour the people stand there on the bank, waiting to see the
barrier go down. Unwillingly, as the time goes on, this one, that one,
hurries away for a few minutes to prepare and devour a meal, back
again, breathless, upon rumour of that preparatory trembling, that
strange thrilling of the ice. The grinding and the crushing had begun
again.
The long tension, the mysterious sounds, the sense of some great
unbridled power at work, wrought on the steadiest nerves. People did
the oddest things. Down at the lower end of the town a couple of
miners, sick of the scurvy, had painfully clambered on their
roof--whether to see the sights or be out of harm's way, no one knew.
The stingiest man in Minóok, who had refused to help them in their
cabin, carried them food on the roof. A woman made and took them the
Yukon remedy for their disease. They sat in state in sight of all men,
and drank spruce tea.
By one o'clock in the afternoon the river had risen eight feet, but the
ice barrier still held. The people, worn out, went away to sleep. All
that night the barrier held, though more ice came down and still the
water rose. Twelve feet now. The ranks of shattered ice along the shore
are claimed again as the flood widens and licks them in. The
cheechalkos' cabins are flooded to the caves. Stout fellows in
hip-boots take a boat and rescue the scurvy-stricken from the roof. And
still the barrier held.
People began to go about their usual avocations. The empty Gold Nugget
filled again. Men sat, as they had done all the winter, drinking, and
reading the news of eight months before, out of soiled and tattered
papers.
Late the following day everyone started up at a new sound. Again
miners, Indians, and dogs lined the bank, saw the piled ice masses
tremble, heard a crashing and grinding as of mountains of glass hurled
together, saw the barrier give way, and the frozen wastes move down on
the bosom of the flood. Higher yet the water rose--the current ran
eight miles an hour. And now the ice masses were less enormous, more
broken. Somewhere far below another jam. Another long bout of waiting.
Birds are singing everywhere. Between the white snowdrifts the Arctic
moss shows green and yellow, white flowers star the hills.
Half the town is packed, ready to catch the boat at five minutes'
notice. With door barred and red curtain down, Maudie is doing up her
gold-dust for the Colonel to take to Dawson. The man who had washed it
out of a Birch Creek placer, and "blowed it in fur the girl"--up on the
hillside he sleeps sound.
The two who had broken the record for winter travel on the Yukon, side
by side in the sunshine, on a plank laid across two mackerel firkins,
sit and watch the brimming flood. They speak of the Big Chimney men,
picture them, packed and waiting for the Oklahoma, wonder what they
have done with Kaviak, and what the three months have brought them.
"When we started out that day from the Big Chimney, we thought we'd be
made if only we managed to reach Minóok."
"Well, we've got what we came for--each got a claim."
"Oh, yes."
"A good claim, too."
"Guess so."
"Don't you know the gold's there?"
"Yes; but where are the miners? You and I don't propose to spend the
next ten years in gettin' that gold out."
"No; but there are plenty who would if we gave 'em the chance. All we
have to do is to give the right ones the chance."
The Colonel wore an air of reflection.
"The district will be opened up," the Boy went on cheerfully, "and
we'll have people beggin' us to let 'em get out our gold, and givin' us
the lion's share for the privilege."
"Do you altogether like the sound o' that?"
"I expect, like other people, I'll like the result."
"We ought to see some things clearer than other people. We had our
lesson on the trail," said the Colonel quietly. "Nobody ought ever to
be able to fool us about the power and the value of the individual
apart from society. Seems as if association did make value. In the
absence of men and markets a pit full of gold is worth no more than a
pit full of clay."
"Oh, yes; I admit, till the boats come in, we're poor men."
"Nobody will stop here this summer--they'll all be racing on to
Dawson."
"Dawson's 'It,' beyond a doubt."
The Colonel laughed a little ruefully.
"We used to say Minóok."
"I said Minóok, just to sound reasonable, but, of course, I meant
Dawson."
And they sat there thinking, watching the ice-blocks meet, crash, go
down in foam, and come up again on the lower reaches, the Boy idly
swinging the great Katharine's medal to and fro. In his buckskin pocket
it has worn so bright it catches at the light like a coin fresh from
the mint.
No doubt Muckluck is on the river-bank at Pymeut; the one-eyed Prince,
the story-teller Yagorsha, even Ol' Chief--no one will be indoors
to-day.
Sitting there together, they saw the last stand made by the ice, and
shared that moment when the final barrier, somewhere far below, gave
way with boom and thunder. The mighty flood ran free, tearing up trees
by their roots as it ran, detaching masses of rock, dissolving islands
into swirling sand and drift, carving new channels, making and unmaking
the land. The water began to fall. It had been a great time: it was
ended.
"Pardner," says the Colonel, "we've seen the ice go out."
"No fella can call you and me cheechalkos after to-day."
"No, sah. We've travelled the Long Trail, we've seen the ice go out,
and we're friends yet."
The Kentuckian took his pardner's brown hand with a gentle solemnity,
seemed about to say something, but stopped, and turned his bronzed face
to the flood, carried back upon some sudden tide within himself to
those black days on the trail, that he wanted most in the world to
forget. But in his heart he knew that all dear things, all things kind
and precious--his home, a woman's face--all, all would fade before he
forgot those last days on the trail. The record of that journey was
burnt into the brain of the men who had made it. On that stretch of the
Long Trail the elder had grown old, and the younger had forever lost
his youth. Not only had the roundness gone out of his face, not only
was it scarred, but such lines were graven there as commonly takes the
antique pencil half a score of years to trace.
"Something has happened," the Colonel said quite low. "We aren't the
same men who left the Big Chimney."
"Right!" said the Boy, with a laugh, unwilling as yet to accept his own
personal revelation, preferring to put a superficial interpretation on
his companion's words. He glanced at the Colonel, and his face changed
a little. But still he would not understand. Looking down at the
chaparejos that he had been so proud of, sadly abbreviated to make
boots for Nig, jagged here and there, and with fringes now not all
intentional, it suited him to pretend that the "shaps" had suffered
most.
"Yes, the ice takes the kinks out."
"Whether the thing that's happened is good or evil, I don't pretend to
say," the other went on gravely, staring at the river. "I only know
something's happened. There were possibilities--in me, anyhow--that
have been frozen to death. Yes, we're different."
The Boy roused himself, but only to persist in his misinterpretation.
"You ain't different to hurt. If I started out again tomorrow----"
"The Lord forbid!"
"Amen. But if I had to, you're the only man in Alaska--in the
world--I'd want for my pardner."
"Boy----!" he wrestled with a slight bronchial huskiness, cleared his
throat, tried again, and gave it up, contenting himself with, "Beg your
pardon for callin' you 'Boy.' You're a seasoned old-timer, sah." And
the Boy felt as if some Sovereign had dubbed him Knight.
In a day or two now, from north or south, the first boat must appear.
The willows were unfolding their silver leaves. The alder-buds were
bursting; geese and teal and mallard swarmed about the river margin.
Especially where the equisetae showed the tips of their feathery green
tails above the mud, ducks flocked and feasted. People were too
excited, "too busy," they said, looking for the boats, to do much
shooting. The shy birds waxed daring. Keith, standing by his shack,
knocked over a mallard within forty paces of his door.
It was eight days after that first cry, "The ice is going out!" four
since the final jam gave way and let the floes run free, that at one
o'clock in the afternoon the shout went up, "A boat! a boat!"
Only a lumberman's bateau, but two men were poling her down the current
with a skill that matched the speed. They swung her in. A dozen hands
caught at the painter and made fast. A young man stepped ashore and
introduced himself as Van Alen, Benham's "Upper River pardner, on the
way to Anvik."
His companion, Donovan, was from Circle City, and brought appalling
news. The boats depended on for the early summer traffic, Bella, and
three other N.A.T. and T. steamers, as well as the A.C.'s Victoria and
the St. Michael, had been lifted up by the ice "like so many feathers,"
forced clean out of the channel, and left high and dry on a sandy
ridge, with an ice wall eighty feet wide and fifteen high between them
and open water.
"All the crews hard at work with jackscrews," said Donovan; "and if
they can get skids under, and a channel blasted through the ice, they
may get the boats down here in fifteen or twenty days."
A heavy blow. But instantly everyone began to talk of the May West and
the Muckluck as though all along they had looked for succour to come
up-stream rather than down. But as the precious hours passed, a deep
dejection fastened on the camp. There had been a year when, through one
disaster after another, no boats had got to the Upper River. Not even
the arrival from Dawson of the Montana Kid, pugilist and gambler, could
raise spirits so cast down, not even though he was said to bring
strange news from outside.
There was war in the world down yonder--war had been formally declared
between America and Spain.
Windy slapped his thigh in humourous despair.
"Why hadn't he thought o' gettin' off a josh like that?"
To those who listened to the Montana Kid, to the fretted spirits of men
eight months imprisoned, the States and her foreign affairs were far
away indeed, and as for the other party to the rumoured war--Spain?
They clutched at school memories of Columbus, Americans finding through
him the way to Spain, as through him Spaniards had found the way to
America. So Spain was not merely a State historic! She was still in the
active world. But what did these things matter? Boats mattered: the
place where the Klondykers were caught, this Minóok, mattered. And so
did the place they wanted to reach--Dawson mattered most of all. By the
narrowed habit of long months, Dawson was the centre of the universe.
More little boats going down, and still nothing going up. Men said
gloomily:
"We're done for! The fellows who go by the Canadian route will get
everything. The Dawson season will be half over before we're in the
field--if we ever are!"
The 28th of May! Still no steamer had come, but the mosquitoes
had--bloodthirsty beyond any the temperate climates know. It was clear
that some catastrophe had befallen the Woodworth boats. And Nig had
been lured away by his quondam master! No, they had not gone back to
the gulch--that was too easy. The man had a mind to keep the dog, and,
since he was not allowed to buy him, he would do the other thing.
He had not been gone an hour, rumour said--had taken a scow and
provisions, and dropped down the river. Utterly desperate, the Boy
seized his new Nulato gun and somebody else's canoe. Without so much as
inquiring whose, he shot down the swift current after the dog-thief. He
roared back to the remonstrating Colonel that he didn't care if an
up-river steamer did come while he was gone--he was goin' gunnin'.
At the same time he shared the now general opinion that a Lower River
boat would reach them first, and he was only going to meet her, meting
justice by the way.
He had gone safely more than ten miles down, when suddenly, as he was
passing an island, he stood up in his boat, balanced himself, and
cocked his gun.
Down there, on the left, a man was standing knee-deep in the water,
trying to free his boat from a fallen tree; a Siwash dog watched him
from the bank.
The Boy whistled. The dog threw up his nose, yapped and whined. The man
had turned sharply, saw his enemy and the levelled gun. He jumped into
the boat, but she was filling while he bailed; the dog ran along the
island, howling fit to raise the dead. When he was a little above the
Boy's boat he plunged into the river. Nig was a good swimmer, but the
current here would tax the best. The Boy found himself so occupied with
saving Nig from a watery grave, while he kept the canoe from capsizing,
that he forgot all about the thief till a turn in the river shut him
out of sight.
The canoe was moored, and while trying to restrain Nig's dripping
caresses, his master looked up, and saw something queer off there,
above the tops of the cottonwoods. As he looked he forgot the
dog--forgot everything in earth or heaven except that narrow cloud
wavering along the sky. He sat immovable in the round-shouldered
attitude learned in pulling a hand-sled against a gale from the Pole.
If you are moderately excited you may start, but there is an excitement
that "nails you."
Nig shook his wolf's coat and sprayed the water far and wide, made
little joyful noises, and licked the face that was so still. But his
master, like a man of stone, stared at that long gray pennon in the
sky. If it isn't a steamer, what is it? Like an echo out of some lesson
he had learned and long forgot, "Up-bound boats don't run the channel:
they have to hunt for easy water." Suddenly he leaped up. The canoe
tipped, and Nig went a second time into the water. Well for him that
they were near the shore; he could jump in without help this time. No
hand held out, no eye for him. His master had dragged the painter free,
seized the oars, and, saying harshly, "Lie down, you black devil!" he
pulled back against the current with every ounce he had in him. For the
gray pennon was going round the other side of the island, and the Boy
was losing the boat to Dawson.
Nig sat perkily in the bow, never budging till his master, running into
the head of the island, caught up a handful of tough root fringes, and,
holding fast by them, waved his cap, and shouted like one possessed,
let go the fringes, caught up his gun, and fired. Then Nig, realising
that for once in a way noise seemed to be popular, pointed his nose at
the big object hugging the farther shore, and howled with a right
goodwill.
"They see! They see! Hooray!"
The Boy waved his arms, embraced Nig, then snatched up the oars. The
steamer's engines were reversed; now she was still. The Boy pulled
lustily. A crowded ship. Crew and passengers pressed to the rails. The
steamer canted, and the Captain's orders rang out clear. Several
cheechalkos laid their hands on their guns as the wild fellow in the
ragged buckskins shot round the motionless wheel, and brought his canoe
'long-side, while his savage-looking dog still kept the echoes of the
Lower Ramparts calling.
"Three cheers for the Oklahoma!"
At the sound of the Boy's voice a red face hanging over the stern broke
into a broad grin.
"Be the Siven! Air ye the little divvle himself, or air ye the divvle's
gran'fatherr?"
The apparition in the canoe was making fast and preparing to board the
ship.
"Can't take another passenger. Full up!" said the Captain. He couldn't
hear what was said in reply, but he shook his head. "Been refusin' 'em
right along." Then, as if reproached by the look in the wild young
face, "We thought you were in trouble."
"So I am if you won't----"
"I tell you we got every ounce we can carry."
"Oh, take me back to Minóok, anyway!"
He said a few words about fare to the Captain's back. As that magnate
did not distinctly say "No"--indeed, walked off making conversation
with the engineer--twenty hands helped the new passenger to get Nig and
the canoe on board.
"Well, got a gold-mine?" asked Potts.
"Yes, sir."
"Where's the Colonel?" Mac rasped out, with his square jaw set for
judgment.
"Colonel's all right--at Minóok. We've got a gold-mine apiece."
"Anny gowld in 'em?"
"Yes, sir, and no salt, neither."
"Sorry to see success has gone to your head," drawled Potts, eyeing the
Boy's long hair. "I don't see any undue signs of it elsewhere."
"Faith! I do, thin. He's turned wan o' thim hungry, grabbin'
millionaires."
"What makes you think that?" laughed the Boy, poking his brown fingers
through the knee-hole of his breeches.
"Arre ye contint wid that gowld-mine at Minóok? No, be the Siven!
What's wan gowld-mine to a millionaire? What forr wud ye be prospectin
that desert oiland, you and yer faithful man Froyday, if ye wasn't
rooned intoirely be riches?"
The Boy tore himself away from his old friends, and followed the
arbiter of his fate. The engines had started up again, and they were
going on.
"I'm told," said the Captain rather severely, "that Minóok's a busted
camp."
"Oh, is it?" returned the ragged one cheerfully. Then he remembered
that this Captain Rainey had grub-staked a man in the autumn--a man who
was reported to know where to look for the Mother Lode, the mighty
parent of the Yukon placers. "I can tell you the facts about Minóok."
He followed the Captain up on the hurricane-deck, giving him details
about the new strike, and the wonderful richness of Idaho Bar. "Nobody
would know about it to-day, but that the right man went prospecting
there." (One in the eye for whoever said Minóok was "busted," and
another for the prospector Rainey had sent to look for----) "You see,
men like Pitcairn have given up lookin' for the Mother Lode. They say
you might as well look for Mother Eve; you got to make out with her
descendants. Yukon gold, Pitcairn says, comes from an older rock series
than this"--he stood in the shower of sparks constantly spraying from
the smoke-stack to the fireproof deck, and he waved his hand airily at
the red rock of the Ramparts--"far older than any of these. The gold up
here has all come out o' rock that went out o' the rock business
millions o' years ago. Most o' that Mother Lode the miners are lookin'
for is sand now, thirteen hundred miles away in Norton Sound."
"Just my luck," said the Captain gloomily, going a little for'ard, as
though definitely giving up mining and returning to his own proper
business.
"But the rest o' the Mother Lode, the gold and magnetic iron, was too
heavy to travel. That's what's linin' the gold basins o' the
North--linin' Idaho Bar thick."
The Captain sighed.
"Twelve," a voice sang out on the lower deck.
"Twelve," repeated the Captain.
"Twelve," echoed the pilot at the wheel.
"Twelve and a half," from the man below, a tall, lean fellow, casting
the sounding-pole. With a rhythmic nonchalance he plants the long black
and white staff at the ship's side, draws it up dripping, plunges it
down again, draws it up, and sends it down hour after hour. He never
seems to tire; he never seems to see anything but the water-mark, never
to say anything but what he is chanting now, "Twelve and a half," or
some variation merely numerical. You come to think him as little human
as the calendar, only that his numbers are told off with the
significance of sound, the suggested menace of a cry. If the "sounding"
comes too near the steamer's draught, or the pilot fails to hear the
reading, the Captain repeats it. He often does so when there is no
need; it is a form of conversation, noncommittal, yet smacking of
authority.
"Ten."
"Ten," echoed the pilot, while the Captain was admitting that he had
been mining vicariously "for twenty years, and never made a cent.
Always keep thinkin' I'll soon be able to give up steamboatin' and buy
a farm."
He shook his head as one who sees his last hope fade.
But his ragged companion turned suddenly, and while the sparks fell in
a fresh shower, "Well, Captain," says he, "you've got the chance of
your life right now."
"Ten and a half."
"Just what they've all said. Wish I had the money I've wasted on
grub-stakin'."
The ragged one thrust his hands in the pockets of his chaparejos.
"I grub-staked myself, and I'm very glad I did."
"Nobody in with you?"
"No."
"Nine."
Echo, "Nine."
"Ten."
"Pitcairn says, somehow or other, there's been gold-washin' goin' on up
here pretty well ever since the world began."
"Indians?"
"No; seems to have been a bigger job than even white men could manage.
Instead o' stamp-mills, glaciers grindin' up the Mother Lode; instead
o' little sluice-boxes, rivers; instead o' riffles, gravel bottoms.
Work, work, wash, wash, day and night, every summer for a million
years. Never a clean-up since the foundation of the world. No, sir,
waitin' for us to do that--waitin' now up on Idaho Bar."
The Captain looked at him, trying to conceal the envy in his soul. They
were sounding low water, but he never heard. He looked round sharply as
the course changed.
"I've done my assessment," the ragged man went on joyously, "and I'm
going to Dawson."
This was bad navigation. He felt instantly he had struck a snag. The
Captain smiled, and passed on sounding: "Nine and a half."
"But I've got a fortune on the Bar. I'm not a boomer, but I believe in
the Bar."
"Six."
"Six. Gettin' into low water."
Again the steamer swung out, hunting a new channel.
"Pitcairn's opinion is thought a lot of. The Geologic Survey men listen
to Pitcairn. He helped them one year. He's one of those extraordinary
old miners who can tell from the look of things, without even panning.
When he saw that pyrites on Idaho Bar he stopped dead. 'This looks good
to me!' he said, and, Jee-rusalem! it was good!"
They stared at the Ramparts growing bolder, the river hurrying like a
mill-race, the steamer feeling its way slow and cautiously like a blind
man with a stick.
"Seven."
"Seven."
"Seven."
"Six and a half."
"Pitcairn says gold is always thickest on the inside of an elbow or
turn in the stream. It's in a place like that my claim is."
The steamer swerved still further out from the course indicated on the
chart. The pilot was still hunting a new channel, but still the Captain
stood and listened, and it was not to the sounding of the Yukon Bar.
"They say there's no doubt about the whole country being glaciated."
"Hey?"
"Signs of glacial erosion everywhere."
The Captain looked sharply about as if his ship might be in some new
danger.
"No doubt the gold is all concentrates."
"Oh, is that so?" He seemed relieved on the whole.
"Eight and a half," from below.
"Eight and a half," from the Captain.
"Eight and a half," from the pilot-house.
"Concentrates, eh?"
Something arresting, rich-sounding, in the news--a triple essence of
the perfume of riches.
With the incantation of technical phrase over the witch-brew of
adventure, gambling, and romance, that simmers in the mind when men
tell of finding gold in the ground, with the addition of this salt of
science comes a savour of homely virtue, an aroma promising sustenance
and strength. It confounds suspicion and sees unbelief, first weaken,
and at last do reverence. There is something hypnotic in the
terminology. Enthusiasm, even backed by fact, will scare off your
practical man, who yet will turn to listen to the theory of "the
mechanics of erosion" and one of its proofs--"up there before our eyes,
the striation of the Ramparts."
But Rainey was what he called "an old bird." His squinted pilot-eye
came back from the glacier track and fell on the outlandish figure of
his passenger. And with an inward admiration of his quality of extreme
old-birdness, the Captain struggled against the trance.
"Didn't I hear you say something about going to Dawson?"
"Y-yes. I think Dawson'll be worth seeing."
"Holy Moses, yes! There's never been anything like Dawson before."
"And I want to talk to the big business men there. I'm not a miner
myself. I mean to put my property on the market." As he said the words
it occurred to him unpleasantly how very like McGinty they sounded. But
he went on: "I didn't dream of spending so much time up here as I've
put in already. I've got to get back to the States."
"You had any proposition yet?" The Captain led the way to his private
room.
"About my claim? Not yet; but once I get it on the market----"
So full was he of a scheme of his own he failed to see that he had no
need to go to Dawson for a buyer.
The Captain set out drinks, and still the talk was of the Bar. It had
come now to seem impossible, even to an old bird, that, given those
exact conditions, gold should not be gathered thick along that Bar.
"I regard it as a sure thing. Anyhow, it's recorded, and the
assessment's done. All the district wants now is capital to develop
it."
"Districts like that all over the map," said the old bird, with a final
flutter of caution. "Even if the capital's found--if everything's ready
for work, the summer's damn short. But if it's a question of goin'
huntin' for the means of workin'----"
"There's time," returned the other quietly, "but there's none to waste.
You take me and my pardner----"
"Thought you didn't have a pardner," snapped the other, hot over such
duplicity.
"Not in ownership; he's got another claim. But you take my pardner and
me to Dawson----"
The Captain stood on his legs and roared:
"I can't, I tell you!"
"You can if you will--you will if you want that farm!"
Rainey gaped.
"Take us to Dawson, and I'll get a deed drawn up in Minóok turning over
one-third of my Idaho Bar property to John R. Rainey."
John R. Rainey gaped the more, and then finding his tongue:
"No, no. I'd just as soon come in on the Bar, but it's true what I'm
tellin' you. There simply ain't an unoccupied inch on the Oklahoma this
trip. It's been somethin' awful, the way I've been waylaid and prayed
at for a passage. People starvin' with bags o' money waitin' for 'em at
the Dawson Bank! Settlements under water--men up in trees callin' to us
to stop for the love of God--men in boats crossin' our channel, headin'
us off, thinkin' nothin' o' the risk o' bein' run down. 'Take us to
Dawson!' it's the cry for fifteen hundred miles."
"Oh, come! you stopped for me."
The Captain smiled shrewdly.
"I didn't think it necessary at the time to explain. We'd struck bottom
just then--new channel, you know; it changes a lot every time the ice
goes out and the floods come down. I reversed our engines and went up
to talk to the pilot. We backed off just after you boarded us. I must
have been rattled to take you even to Minóok."
"No. It was the best turn you've done yourself in a long while."
The Captain shook his head. It was true: the passengers of the Oklahoma
were crowded like cattle on a Kansas stock-car. He knew he ought to
unload and let a good portion wait at Minóok for that unknown quantity
the next boat. He would issue the order, but that he knew it would mean
a mutiny.
"I'll get into trouble for overloading as it is."
"You probably won't; people are too busy up here. If you do, I'm
offerin' you a good many thousand dollars for the risk."
"God bless my soul! where'd I put you? There ain't a bunk."
"I've slept by the week on the ice."
"There ain't room to lie down."
"Then we'll stand up."
Lord, Lord! what could you do with such a man? Owner of Idaho Bar, too.
"Mechanics of erosion," "Concentrates," "a third interest"--it all rang
in his head. "I've got nine fellers sleepin' in here," he said
helplessly, "in my room."
"Can we come if we find our own place, and don't trouble you?"
"Well, I won't have any pardner--but perhaps you----"
"Oh, pardner's got to come too."
Whatever the Captain said the nerve-tearing shriek of the whistle
drowned. It was promptly replied to by the most horrible howls.
"Reckon that's Nig! He's got to come too," said this dreadful ragged
man.
"God bless me, this must be Minóok!"
The harassed Captain hustled out.
"You must wait long enough here to get that deed drawn, Captain!"
called out the other, as he flew down the companionway.
Nearly six hundred people on the bank. Suddenly controlling his
eagerness, the Boy contented himself with standing back and staring
across strange shoulders at the place he knew so well. There was "the
worst-lookin' shack in the town," that had been his home, the A. C.
store looming importantly, the Gold Nugget, and hardly a face to which
he could not give a name and a history: Windy Jim and the crippled
Swede; Bonsor, cheek by jowl with his enemy, McGinty; Judge Corey
spitting straight and far; the gorgeous bartender, all checks and
diamonds, in front of a pitiful group of the scurvy-stricken (thirty of
them in the town waiting for rescue by the steamer); Butts, quite
bland, under the crooked cottonwood, with never a thought of how near
he had come, on that very spot, to missing the first boat of the year,
and all the boats of all the years to follow.
Maudie, Keith and the Colonel stood with the A. C. agent at the end of
the baggage-bordered plank-walk that led to the landing. Behind them,
at least four hundred people packed and waiting with their possessions
at their feet, ready to be put aboard the instant the Oklahoma made
fast. The Captain had called out "Howdy" to the A. C. Agent, and
several greetings were shouted back and forth. Maudie mounted a huge
pile of baggage and sat there as on a throne, the Colonel and Keith
perching on a heap of gunny-sacks at her feet. That woman almost the
only person in sight who did not expect, by means of the Oklahoma, to
leave misery behind! The Boy stood thinking "How will they bear it when
they know?"
The Oklahoma was late, but she was not only the first boat--she might
conceivably be the last.
Potts and O'Flynn had spotted the man they were looking for, and called
out "Hello! Hello!" as the big fellow on the pile of gunnies got up and
waved his hat.
Mac leaned over the rail, saying gruffly, "That you, Colonel?" trying,
as the Boss of the Big Chimney saw--"tryin' his darndest not to look
pleased," and all the while O'Flynn was waving his hat and howling with
excitement:
"How's the gowld? How's yersilf?"
The gangway began its slow swing round preparatory to lowering into
place. The mob on shore caught up boxes, bundles, bags, and pressed
forward.
"No, no! Stand back!" ordered the Captain.
"Take your time!" said people trembling with excitement. "There's no
rush."
"There's no room!" called out the purser to a friend.
"No room?" went from mouth to mouth, incredulous that the information
could concern the speaker. He was only one. There was certainly room
for him; and every man pushed the harder to be the sole exception to
the dreadful verdict.
"Stand back there! Can't take even a pound of freight. Loaded to the
guards!"
A whirlwind of protest and appeal died away in curses. Women wept, and
sick men turned away their faces. The dogs still howled, for nothing is
so lacerating to the feelings of your Siwash as a steam-whistle blast.
The memory of it troubles him long after the echo of it dies. Suddenly
above the din Maudie's shrill voice:
"I thought that was Nig!"
Before the gangway had dropped with a bang her sharp eyes had picked
out the Boy.
"Well I'll be----See who that is behind Nig? Trust him to get in on the
ground-floor. He ain't worryin' for fear his pardner'll lose the boat,"
she called to the Colonel, who was pressing forward as Rainey came down
the gangway.
"How do you do, Captain?"
The man addressed never turned his head. He was forcing his way through
the jam up to the A. C. Store.
"You may recall me, sah; I am----"
"If you are a man wantin' to go to Dawson, it doesn't matter who you
are. I can't take you."
"But, sah----" It was no use.
A dozen more were pushing their claims, every one in vain. The Oklahoma
passengers, bent on having a look at Minóok, crowded after the Captain.
Among those who first left the ship, the Boy, talking to the purser,
hard upon Rainey's heels. The Colonel stood there as they passed, the
Captain turning back to say something to the Boy, and then they
disappeared together through the door of the A. C.
Never a word for his pardner, not so much as a look. Bitterness fell
upon the Colonel's heart. Maudie called to him, and he went back to his
seat on the gunny-sacks.
"He's in with the Captain now," she said; "he's got no more use for
us."
But there was less disgust than triumph in her face.
O'Flynn was walking over people in his frantic haste to reach the
Colonel. Before he could accomplish his design he had three separate
quarrels on his hands, and was threatening with fury to "settle the
hash" of several of his dearest new friends.
Potts meanwhile was shaking the Big Chimney boss by the hand and
saying, "Awfully sorry we can't take you on with us;" adding lower: "We
had a mighty mean time after you lit out."
Then Mac thrust his hand in between the two, and gave the Colonel a
monkey-wrench grip that made the Kentuckian's eyes water.
"Kaviak? Well, I'll tell you."
He shouldered Potts out of his way, and while the talk and movement
went on all round Maudie's throne, Mac, ignoring her, set forth grimly
how, after an awful row with Potts, he had adventured with Kaviak to
Holy Cross. "An awful row, indeed," thought the Colonel, "to bring Mac
to that;" but the circumstances had little interest for him, beside the
fact that his pardner would be off to Dawson in a few minutes, leaving
him behind and caring "not a sou markee."
Mac was still at Holy Cross. He had seen a woman there--"calls herself
a nun--evidently swallows those priests whole. Kind of mad, believes it
all. Except for that, good sort of girl. The kind to keep her
word"--and she had promised to look after Kaviak, and never let him
away from her till Mac came back to fetch him.
"Fetch him?"
"Fetch him!"
"Fetch him where?"
"Home!"
"When will that be?"
"Just as soon as I've put through the job up yonder." He jerked his
head up the river, indicating the common goal.
And now O'Flynn, roaring as usual, had broken away from those who had
obstructed his progress, and had flung himself upon the Colonel. When
the excitement had calmed down a little, "Well," said the Colonel to
the three ranged in front of him, Maudie looking on from above, "what
you been doin' all these three months?"
"Doin'?"
"Well--a----"
"Oh, we done a lot."
They looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes and then
they looked away. "Since the birds came," began Mac in the tone of one
who wishes to let bygones be bygones.
"Och, yes; them burruds was foine!"
Potts pulled something out of his trousers pocket----a strange
collapsed object. He took another of the same description out of
another pocket. Mac's hands and O'Flynn's performed the same action.
Each man seemed to have his pockets full of these----
"What are they?"
"Money-bags, me bhoy! Made out o' the fut o' the 'Lasky swan, God bless
'em! Mac cahls 'em some haythen name, but everybuddy else cahls 'em
illegant money-bags!"
* * * * *
In less than twenty minutes the steamer whistle shrieked. Nig bounded
out of the A. C., frantic at the repetition of the insult; other dogs
took the quarrel up, and the Ramparts rang.
The Boy followed the Captain out of the A. C. store. All the motley
crew that had swarmed off to inspect Minóok, swarmed back upon the
Oklahoma. The Boy left the Captain this time, and came briskly over to
his friends, who were taking leave of the Colonel.
"So you're all goin' on but me!" said the Colonel very sadly.
The Colonel's pardner stopped short, and looked at the pile of baggage.
"Got your stuff all ready!" he said.
"Yes." The answer was not free from bitterness. "I'll have the pleasure
of packin' it back to the shack after you're gone."
"So you were all ready to go off and leave me," said the Boy.
The Colonel could not stoop to the obvious retort. His pardner came
round the pile and his eyes fell on their common sleeping-bag, the two
Nulato rifles, and other "traps," that meant more to him than any
objects inanimate in all the world.
"What? you were goin' to carry off my things too?" exclaimed the Boy.
"That's all you get," Maudie burst out indignantly--"all you get for
packin' his stuff down to the landin', to have it all ready for him,
and worryin' yourself into shoe-strings for fear he'd miss the boat."
Mac, O'Flynn, and Potts condoled with the Colonel, while the fire of
the old feud flamed and died.
"Yes," the Colonel admitted, "I'd give five hundred dollars for a
ticket on that steamer."
He looked in each of the three faces, and knew the vague hope behind
his words was vain. But the Boy had only laughed, and caught up the
baggage as the last whistle set the Rampart echoes flying, piping, like
a lot of frightened birds.
"Come along, then."
"Look here!" the Colonel burst out. "That's my stuff."
"It's all the same. You bring mine. I've got the tickets. You and me
and Nig's goin' to the Klondyke."