A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
Another week, and Jim had recovered all his old strength. With the spring
in close proximity, and the food supply running dangerously short, he
spared neither himself nor the dogs in his last feverish endeavor to
achieve success.
Angela's attitude puzzled him not a little. Since that fierce passage of
words in the shack she had made no single reference to the future. She
carried on the housekeeping with increased zest. Never again were the
breakfast plates found unwashed at the next meal. She began to take a
pride in making the cabin as comfortable as circumstances would allow,
even going to the trouble of seeking berried evergreens in the woods and
transforming these into table decoration.
Occasionally she went out to meet the disappointed Jim coming back from
his fruitless expeditions, and mushed the dogs while he sat on the sled.
It seemed that she had succeeded in reconciling the situation--in making
the best of a bad job.
One morning Jim announced his intention of exploring a small creek not a
great distance from the shack. He started off with shovel and pick and the
eternal washing-pan under a leaden sky. It was then an idea came to
Angela. On her journey back from her abortive flight she had noticed a
creek which displayed all the characteristics of those rich, shallow
claims of which the Klondyke yields so many examples. Why not undertake a
prospecting trip on her own account? There was a spare shovel, pick, and
pan, and she had bored holes in frozen gravel before. She decided to
harness up the sled and put her plan into execution.
At noon she started off with her team on the eight-mile journey. A close
study of the map had convinced her that by taking the overland route she
would save at least two miles either way. But her knowledge of maps was
not great, and she entirely neglected to take into consideration the
contour markings, which would immediately have warned any experienced
traveler against such a passage.
The trail led up over a big hill and down a ravine, and for a mile or two
was good "going." Coming out of the ravine the configuration changed. A
jumbled mass of precipitous hills and canyons confronted her. She drove
the dogs to an elevated point and looked before her. The great serpentine
river came to view, clearly outlined by its wooded banks, and no more than
two miles distant. On the near side of the river ran the creek she
sought.
She gave a sigh of relief and urged the dogs on. The road narrowed and
ascended again. The mountain-side fell away, and she found herself on a
narrow ledge with a vast chasm beneath. She thought of turning back, but
there was no room to turn the dogs round. Catching her breath, she went
carefully forward. A few small flakes of snow on her shoulders, and then
the inky sky began to empty itself. It came down in a great mass,
obliterating everything. A cold terror began to possess her. In the
blinding snow she could not discern the path for more than a yard or two
ahead, and by the side of her yawned that dreadful chasm!
She edged in close to the perpendicular wall, peering into the whirling
mass of snow. The dogs stopped, and she urged them on again, knowing that
the pass must soon descend to the river.
Suddenly there was a fierce uproar among the dogs. The sled jerked
forward, and commenced to move at tremendous speed. A slight wind created
a funnel-like opening in the dense white cloud before her. She gave one
long shriek of horror at the sight which met her eyes. The sled was on the
very brink of a precipice! It hovered there for a moment--just long enough
for her to fling herself sideways against the wall; then it, and the team,
vanished over the side, taking a mass of snow down, down into the
bottomless depths.
She crouched against the wall, petrified by what had happened. A
thundering noise came up from the black hole, reverberating through the
pass and over the mountains as sled and dogs were hurled to their doom.
She put her fingers in her ears to keep out the dreadful sound.
It ceased, and the great silence came again. Faint and sick, she realized
that her left shoulder was aching with intense pain through contact with
the rock wall.
There was nothing to be done but go back and confess the catastrophe to
Jim. She stood up and commenced creeping along the dreadful path. Her left
arm was hanging in useless fashion, setting up acute pain at the
shoulder.
The full significance of her folly came to her. She had driven a team of
dogs worth at least a thousand dollars to oblivion. Their chief means of
travel was gone, and hundreds of miles lay between them and civilization.
How could she confess the loss to Jim? What would he say?
For an hour she plodded on through the deep snow, her mind ranging over
the past. Whatever might be said of this wild husband of hers, he had
played the game as he saw it. She had to admit this. Culture and breeding
were very desirable things, but had he not some other natural quality
which, at the least computation, balanced these attributes? Could any man
of her own set have acted with greater respect for her womanhood than he?
Until recently she had been no companion to him--nothing but a continual
drag on the wheel. She had hurt him in speech and action. She had
deliberately set her mind on making clear to him his cultural and moral
inferiority. In return for this he had given her to feel a complete sense
of safety. Sleeping within a few feet of him she had never, for a moment,
felt the slightest possibility of molestation or intrusion on his part. It
had been easy to take this all for granted--because he was a wild man and
she was a cultured woman. She had come to see that "wild men" did not show
such a refinement of consideration, even though they might conceivably
acknowledge their social inferiority. She knew of no other man with whom
she could have entrusted herself as she did with this one. Moreover, he
was her husband....
She was glad she was making things a little more pleasant for him. She saw
that his natural gayety and _joie de vivre_, long subdued, were again
welling up within him. But yesterday she had heard him singing, coming
back from his day's unfruitful task. She knew herself to be the cause of
that song. It was rather pleasant to reflect upon.
Now she must tell him of the loss of the dog-team, brought about by her
impetuosity and disregard for his position as leader of the expedition.
She came upon the cabin and entered it, to find him still away. She took
off her snow-covered garments with great difficulty, for her injured arm
hurt her at the least movement. She was putting the kettle on the stove
when he entered.
"Gee! but I thought we'd done with snow," he ejaculated. "But I guess this
is the last drop."
He shook off his muklucks and flung the bearskin parkha into a corner.
With his usual quick introspection he noticed that something was amiss.
"Anythin' wrong?" he queried.
He touched her on the injured arm and she winced with pain.
"Hello, you ain't hurt your arm?"
She nodded.
"Jim, I've done an awful thing. I've lost the dog-team."
She saw him start, and realized the full extent of the loss. To her
surprise his furrowed brows relaxed and he smiled whimsically.
"Things do sure happen at the wrong time. But how did you manage that?"
She told him in low, self-reproachful tones, and winced again as a
movement of the injured arm brought agony.
"Say, that's bad."
"Yes. I know. Without the dogs----"
"Oh, darn the dogs! I meant your arm. It's hurting you a heap. Ain't you
had a look at it?"
"Not yet. It's rather a job getting my dress undone."
He promptly walked across the room, and in a few seconds came back with
two huge red handkerchiefs.
"Sit you down," he ordered. "We'll start on this right now. How do you
manage this arrangement?"
"It--it unbuttons at the back," she stammered.
She felt his big inexperienced hand at work on the buttons, and soon her
dress was slipped over the injured shoulder. A little hiss escaped him as
the round white arm came to view, with a hideous black bruise around the
shoulder-joint. She stole one look at his face, and saw his perturbed
countenance surveying the injury.
"Move your arm a little--that way."
She did so with a groan.
"Good--there ain't nothin' broke."
He soaked the handkerchief in cold water and tied up the arm with
astonishing skill. Then he fashioned a sling with the other handkerchief,
and carefully bent her arm and tucked it inside the latter.
"How's that?"
She smiled gratefully.
"It seems much easier."
"Sure! It'll be fine in a day or two. You sit down here and I'll git some
tea."
Without waiting to see this order obeyed, he ran to the stove and poked
the fire into a blaze. The singing kettle began to boil, and a few minutes
later they were having tea.
She watched him carefully, and knew that the loss of the dogs was worrying
him. Yet he had made so light of that, and so much of her comparatively
trivial injury!
"About them dawgs, Angela?"
"Yes."
"It's kinder unfortunate, because grub's low and it's a hell of a way to
Dawson. I guess we'll have to pack up to-morrow and git going. We can do a
bit o' digging on the way back."
Her eyes shone strangely.
"It was all my fault, Jim."
"Bound to happen at times," he said. "Dawgs is the silliest things. See
here, you're worrying some over that, ain't you now?"
"I--I know what it means--to you."
"It don't mean nothin' so long as you didn't go over that cliff with 'em.
We'll make Dawson all right. I've bin up against bigger trouble than
this."
He jumped up and commenced vigorously to wash up the cups and saucers,
talking rapidly all the while and refusing to allow her to lend a hand.
"I done this for years, back there in Medicine Bow," he said. "Gee, them
were times! There wasn't water enough to make tea with in the summer. Me
and my two chums used to buy a pail of water for twenty dollars. It had to
serve the three of us a whole day. We washed in it, and then drank
it----"
"Ugh!"
"Wal, if we'd drank it first we couldn't have washed in it after. I guess
them chaps had logic. When we _did_ strike a spring, gold wasn't in it for
excitement. It was like finding heaven. Hookey swore he'd never touch
whisky again, and he didn't until we hit the next saloon."
She laughed merrily as he turned and dried his wet hands.
"It's good to hear you laugh," he said. "If you'd only laugh sometimes,
Angela, I wouldn't care a damn about short rations. I seen men laugh on
the plains when the chances were that two hours later their scalps would
be hanging at the belts of Injuns. I was only a kid then ... but laughing
is a fine thing. You can't beat a man who laughs."
"You used to laugh then?"
"Sure!"
"But not now!"
He stared out through the window.
"Maybe that's why I'm being beaten," he said.
She stood up and touched him on the arm.
"I don't think you'll ever be beaten," she said.
He shook his head, almost fearful of meeting those clear, beautiful eyes
of hers.
"Only one thing in the world can beat me," he said. "And that is the thing
which above all others I'm mad to get; and it ain't gold."
He spent the evening packing up the gear and the food that remained, ready
for the journey down the river. The home-made sled was again
requisitioned, after undergoing sundry repairs. Late in the evening
Angela, from the inner room, called him. Nervously he went inside, to find
her with her wonderful hair flowing over her shoulders and her dress half
undone.
"I--I can't get it off," she complained.
He attended to the stubborn buttons and pulled the top down over her
shoulders. On the threshold of the door he called back.
"Good-night, Angela."
She stood surveying him intently, and then came towards him.
"Whatever lies before us, don't think me ungrateful. I'll try to be a good
comrade in the future if you'll let me. You've suffered so much.... It
was never my wish that you should suffer. Even a bought wife has--a
soul."
He saw the swell of her bosom below the pure white shoulders. All her
intoxicating beauty seemed to be pleading to him. Her lips, made for
kissing, were like alluring blossoms of spring. For a moment he stood
drunk with passionate desire. Then he touched her fingers lightly and went
outside.