Two months after Smoke Bellew and Shorty went after moose for a
grub-stake, they were back in the Elkhorn saloon at Dawson. The hunting
was done, the meat hauled in and sold for two dollars and a half a
pound, and between them they possessed three thousand dollars in gold
dust and a good team of dogs. They had played in luck. Despite the fact
that the gold-rush had driven the game a hundred miles or more into the
mountains, they had, within half that distance, bagged four moose in a
narrow canyon.
The mystery of the strayed animals was no greater than the luck of their
killers, for within the day four famished Indian families, reporting no
game in three days' journey back, camped beside them. Meat was traded
for starving dogs, and after a week of feeding, Smoke and Shorty
harnessed the animals and began freighting the meat to the eager Dawson
market.
The problem of the two men now was to turn their gold-dust into food.
The current price for flour and beans was a dollar and a half a pound,
but the difficulty was to find a seller. Dawson was in the throes of
famine. Hundreds of men, with money but no food, had been compelled to
leave the country. Many had gone down the river on the last water, and
many more, with barely enough food to last, had walked the six hundred
miles over the ice to Dyea.
Smoke met Shorty in the warm saloon, and found the latter jubilant.
“Life ain't no punkins without whiskey an' sweetenin',” was Shorty's
greeting, as he pulled lumps of ice from his thawing moustache and flung
them rattling on the floor. “An' I sure just got eighteen pounds of that
same sweetenin'. The geezer only charged three dollars a pound for it.
What luck did you have?”
“I, too, have not been idle,” Smoke answered with pride. “I bought fifty
pounds of flour. And there's a man up on Adam Creek who says he'll let
me have fifty pounds more to-morrow.”
“Great! We'll sure live till the river opens. Say, Smoke, them dogs of
ourn is the goods. A dog-buyer offered me two hundred apiece for the
five of them. I told him nothin' doin'. They sure took on class when
they got meat to get outside of; but it goes against the grain, feedin'
dog-critters on grub that's worth two an' a half a pound. Come on
an' have a drink. I just got to celebrate them eighteen pounds of
sweetenin'.”
Several minutes later, as he weighed in on the gold-scales for the
drinks, he gave a start of recollection.
“I plum forgot that man I was to meet in the Tivoli. He's got some
spoiled bacon he'll sell for a dollar an' a half a pound. We can feed it
to the dogs an' save a dollar a day on each's board-bill. So long.”
“So long,” said Smoke. “I'm goin' to the cabin an' turn in.”
Hardly had Shorty left the place, when a fur-clad man entered through
the double storm-doors. His face lighted at sight of Smoke, who
recognized him as Breck, the man whose boat they had run through the Box
Canyon and White Horse Rapids.
“I heard you were in town,” Breck said hurriedly, as they shook hands.
“Been looking for you for half an hour. Come outside, I want to talk
with you.”
Smoke looked regretfully at the roaring, red-hot stove.
“Won't this do?”
“No; it's important. Come outside.”
As they emerged, Smoke drew off one mitten, lighted a match, and glanced
at the thermometer that hung beside the door. He remittened his naked
hand hastily as if the frost had burned him. Overhead arched the flaming
aurora borealis, while from all Dawson arose the mournful howling of
thousands of wolf-dogs.
“What did it say?” Breck asked.
“Sixty below.” Kit spat experimentally, and the spittle crackled in the
air. “And the thermometer is certainly working. It's falling all the
time. An hour ago it was only fifty-two. Don't tell me it's a stampede.”
“It is,” Breck whispered back cautiously, casting anxious eyes about in
fear of some other listener. “You know Squaw Creek?--empties in on the
other side of the Yukon thirty miles up?”
“Nothing doing there,” was Smoke's judgment. “It was prospected years
ago.”
“So were all the other rich creeks. Listen! It's big. Only eight to
twenty feet to bedrock. There won't be a claim that don't run to half a
million. It's a dead secret. Two or three of my close friends let me in
on it. I told my wife right away that I was going to find you before
I started. Now, so long. My pack's hidden down the bank. In fact, when
they told me, they made me promise not to pull out until Dawson was
asleep. You know what it means if you're seen with a stampeding outfit.
Get your partner and follow. You ought to stake fourth or fifth claim
from Discovery. Don't forget--Squaw Creek. It's the third after you pass
Swede Creek.”
When Smoke entered the little cabin on the hillside back of Dawson, he
heard a heavy familiar breathing.
“Aw, go to bed,” Shorty mumbled, as Smoke shook his shoulder. “I'm not
on the night shift,” was his next remark, as the rousing hand became
more vigorous. “Tell your troubles to the barkeeper.”
“Kick into your clothes,” Smoke said. “We've got to stake a couple of
claims.”
Shorty sat up and started to explode, but Smoke's hand covered his
mouth.
“Ssh!” Smoke warned. “It's a big strike. Don't wake the neighborhood.
Dawson's asleep.”
“Huh! You got to show me. Nobody tells anybody about a strike, of course
not. But ain't it plum amazin' the way everybody hits the trail just the
same?”
“Squaw Creek,” Smoke whispered. “It's right. Breck gave me the tip.
Shallow bedrock. Gold from the grass-roots down. Come on. We'll sling a
couple of light packs together and pull out.”
Shorty's eyes closed as he lapsed back into sleep. The next moment his
blankets were swept off him.
“If you don't want them, I do,” Smoke explained.
Shorty followed the blankets and began to dress.
“Goin' to take the dogs?” he asked.
“No. The trail up the creek is sure to be unbroken, and we can make
better time without them.”
“Then I'll throw 'em a meal, which'll have to last 'em till we get back.
Be sure you take some birch-bark and a candle.”
Shorty opened the door, felt the bite of the cold, and shrank back to
pull down his ear-flaps and mitten his hands.
Five minutes later he returned, sharply rubbing his nose.
“Smoke, I'm sure opposed to makin' this stampede. It's colder than
the hinges of hell a thousand years before the first fire was lighted.
Besides, it's Friday the thirteenth, an' we're goin' to trouble as the
sparks fly upward.”
With small stampeding-packs on their backs, they closed the door behind
them and started down the hill. The display of the aurora borealis
had ceased, and only the stars leaped in the great cold and by their
uncertain light made traps for the feet. Shorty floundered off a turn of
the trail into deep snow, and raised his voice in blessing of the date
of the week and month and year.
“Can't you keep still?” Smoke chided. “Leave the almanac alone. You'll
have all Dawson awake and after us.”
“Huh! See the light in that cabin? An' in that one over there? An' hear
that door slam? Oh, sure Dawson's asleep. Them lights? Just buryin'
their dead. They ain't stampedin', betcher life they ain't.”
By the time they reached the foot of the hill and were fairly in Dawson,
lights were springing up in the cabins, doors were slamming, and from
behind came the sound of many moccasins on the hard-packed snow. Again
Shorty delivered himself.
“But it beats hell the amount of mourners there is.”
They passed a man who stood by the path and was calling anxiously in a
low voice: “Oh, Charley; get a move on.”
“See that pack on his back, Smoke? The graveyard's sure a long ways off
when the mourners got to pack their blankets.”
By the time they reached the main street a hundred men were in line
behind them, and while they sought in the deceptive starlight for the
trail that dipped down the bank to the river, more men could be heard
arriving. Shorty slipped and shot down the thirty-foot chute into the
soft snow. Smoke followed, knocking him over as he was rising to his
feet.
“I found it first,” he gurgled, taking off his mittens to shake the snow
out of the gauntlets.
The next moment they were scrambling wildly out of the way of the
hurtling bodies of those that followed. At the time of the freeze-up,
a jam had occurred at this point, and cakes of ice were up-ended in
snow-covered confusion. After several hard falls, Smoke drew out his
candle and lighted it. Those in the rear hailed it with acclaim. In the
windless air it burned easily, and he led the way more quickly.
“It's a sure stampede,” Shorty decided. “Or might all them be
sleep-walkers?”
“We're at the head of the procession at any rate,” was Smoke's answer.
“Oh, I don't know. Mebbe that's a firefly ahead there. Mebbe they're all
fireflies--that one, an' that one. Look at 'em! Believe me, they is a
whole string of processions ahead.”
It was a mile across the jams to the west bank of the Yukon, and candles
flickered the full length of the twisting trail. Behind them, clear to
the top of the bank they had descended, were more candles.
“Say, Smoke, this ain't no stampede. It's a exode-us. They must be a
thousand men ahead of us an' ten thousand behind. Now, you listen to
your uncle. My medicine's good. When I get a hunch it's sure right. An'
we're in wrong on this stampede. Let's turn back an' hit the sleep.”
“You'd better save your breath if you intend to keep up,” Smoke retorted
gruffly.
“Huh! My legs is short, but I slog along slack at the knees an' don't
worry my muscles none, an' I can sure walk every piker here off the
ice.”
And Smoke knew he was right, for he had long since learned his comrade's
phenomenal walking powers.
“I've been holding back to give you a chance,” Smoke jeered.
“An' I'm plum troddin' on your heels. If you can't do better, let me go
ahead and set pace.”
Smoke quickened, and was soon at the rear of the nearest bunch of
stampeders.
“Hike along, you, Smoke,” the other urged. “Walk over them unburied
dead. This ain't no funeral. Hit the frost like you was goin'
somewheres.”
Smoke counted eight men and two women in this party, and before the
way across the jam-ice was won, he and Shorty had passed another party
twenty strong. Within a few feet of the west bank, the trail swerved to
the south, emerging from the jam upon smooth ice. The ice, however, was
buried under several feet of fine snow. Through this the sled-trail ran,
a narrow ribbon of packed footing barely two feet in width. On either
side one sank to his knees and deeper in the snow. The stampeders they
overtook were reluctant to give way, and often Smoke and Shorty had to
plunge into the deep snow and by supreme efforts flounder past.
Shorty was irrepressible and pessimistic. When the stampeders resented
being passed, he retorted in kind.
“What's your hurry?” one of them asked.
“What's yours?” he answered. “A stampede come down from Indian River
yesterday afternoon an' beat you to it. They ain't no claims left.”
“That being so, I repeat, what's your hurry?”
“WHO? Me? I ain't no stampeder. I'm workin' for the government. I'm on
official business. I'm just traipsin' along to take the census of Squaw
Creek.”
To another, who hailed him with: “Where away, little one? Do you really
expect to stake a claim?” Shorty answered:
“Me? I'm the discoverer of Squaw Creek. I'm just comin' back from
recordin' so as to see no blamed chechako jumps my claim.”
The average pace of the stampeders on the smooth going was three miles
and a half an hour. Smoke and Shorty were doing four and a half, though
sometimes they broke into short runs and went faster.
“I'm going to travel your feet clean off, Shorty,” Smoke challenged.
“Huh! I can hike along on the stumps an' wear the heels off your
moccasins. Though it ain't no use. I've been figgerin'. Creek claims
is five hundred feet. Call 'em ten to the mile. They's a thousand
stampeders ahead of us, an' that creek ain't no hundred miles long.
Somebody's goin' to get left, an' it makes a noise like you an' me.”
Before replying, Smoke let out an unexpected link that threw Shorty half
a dozen feet in the rear. “If you saved your breath and kept up, we'd
cut down a few of that thousand,” he chided.
“Who? Me? If you'd get outa the way I'd show you a pace what is.”
Smoke laughed, and let out another link. The whole aspect of the
adventure had changed. Through his brain was running a phrase of the
mad philosopher--“the transvaluation of values.” In truth, he was less
interested in staking a fortune than in beating Shorty. After all, he
concluded, it wasn't the reward of the game but the playing of it that
counted. Mind, and muscle, and stamina, and soul, were challenged in a
contest with this Shorty, a man who had never opened the books, and who
did not know grand opera from rag-time, nor an epic from a chilblain.
“Shorty, I've got you skinned to death. I've reconstructed every cell
in my body since I hit the beach at Dyea. My flesh is as stringy as
whipcords, and as bitter and mean as the bite of a rattlesnake. A few
months ago I'd have patted myself on the back to write such words, but
I couldn't have written them. I had to live them first, and now that
I'm living them there's no need to write them. I'm the real, bitter,
stinging goods, and no scrub of a mountaineer can put anything over on
me without getting it back compound. Now, you go ahead and set pace for
half an hour. Do your worst, and when you're all in I'll go ahead and
give you half an hour of the real worst.”
“Huh!” Shorty sneered genially. “An' him not dry behind the ears yet.
Get outa the way an' let your father show you some goin'.”
Half-hour by half-hour they alternated in setting pace. Nor did they
talk much. Their exertions kept them warm, though their breath froze on
their faces from lips to chin. So intense was the cold that they almost
continually rubbed their noses and cheeks with their mittens. A few
minutes' cessation from this allowed the flesh to grow numb, and then
most vigorous rubbing was required to produce the burning prickle of
returning circulation.
Often they thought they had reached the lead, but always they overtook
more stampeders who had started before them. Occasionally, groups of
men attempted to swing in behind to their pace, but invariably they were
discouraged after a mile or two and disappeared in the darkness to the
rear.
“We've been out on trail all winter,” was Shorty's comment. “An' them
geezers, soft from layin' around their cabins, has the nerve to think
they can keep our stride. Now, if they was real sour-doughs it'd be
different. If there's one thing a sour-dough can do it's sure walk.”
Once, Smoke lighted a match and glanced at his watch. He never repeated
it, for so quick was the bite of the frost on his bared hands that half
an hour passed before they were again comfortable.
“Four o'clock,” he said, as he pulled on his mittens, “and we've already
passed three hundred.”
“Three hundred and thirty-eight,” Shorty corrected. “I been keepin'
count. Get outa the way, stranger. Let somebody stampede that knows how
to stampede.”
The latter was addressed to a man, evidently exhausted, who could no
more than stumble along and who blocked the trail. This, and one other,
were the only played-out men they encountered, for they were very near
to the head of the stampede. Nor did they learn till afterwards the
horrors of that night. Exhausted men sat down to rest by the way and
failed to get up again. Seven were frozen to death, while scores of
amputations of toes, feet, and fingers were performed in the Dawson
hospitals on the survivors. For the stampede to Squaw Creek occurred on
the coldest night of the year. Before morning, the spirit thermometers
at Dawson registered seventy degrees below zero. The men composing the
stampede, with few exceptions, were new-comers in the country who did
not know the way of the cold.
The other played-out man they found a few minutes later, revealed by a
streamer of aurora borealis that shot like a searchlight from horizon to
zenith. He was sitting on a piece of ice beside the trail.
“Hop along, sister Mary,” Shorty gaily greeted him. “Keep movin'. If you
sit there you'll freeze stiff.”
The man made no response, and they stopped to investigate.
“Stiff as a poker,” was Shorty's verdict. “If you tumbled him over he'd
break.”
“See if he's breathing,” Smoke said, as, with bared hand, he sought
through furs and woollens for the man's heart.
Shorty lifted one ear-flap and bent to the iced lips. “Nary breathe,” he
reported.
“Nor heart-beat,” said Smoke.
He mittened his hand and beat it violently for a minute before exposing
it to the frost to strike a match. It was an old man, incontestably
dead. In the moment of illumination, they saw a long grey beard, massed
with ice to the nose, cheeks that were white with frost, and closed eyes
with frost-rimmed lashes frozen together. Then the match went out.
“Come on,” Shorty said, rubbing his ear. “We can't do nothin' for the
old geezer. An' I've sure frosted my ear. Now all the blamed skin'll
peel off, and it'll be sore for a week.”
A few minutes later, when a flaming ribbon spilled pulsating fire over
the heavens, they saw on the ice a quarter of a mile ahead two forms.
Beyond, for a mile, nothing moved.
“They're leading the procession,” Smoke said, as darkness fell again.
“Come on, let's get them.”
At the end of half an hour, not yet having overtaken the two in front,
Shorty broke into a run.
“If we catch 'em we'll never pass 'em,” he panted. “Lord, what a pace
they're hittin'. Dollars to doughnuts they're no chechakos. They're the
real sour-dough variety, you can stack on that.”
Smoke was leading when they finally caught up, and he was glad to ease
to a walk at their heels. Almost immediately he got the impression that
the one nearer him was a woman. How this impression came, he could not
tell. Hooded and furred, the dark form was as any form; yet there was a
haunting sense of familiarity about it. He waited for the next flame of
the aurora, and by its light saw the smallness of the moccasined feet.
But he saw more--the walk, and knew it for the unmistakable walk he had
once resolved never to forget.
“She's a sure goer,” Shorty confided hoarsely. “I'll bet it's an
Indian.”
“How do you do, Miss Gastell?” Smoke addressed her.
“How do you do,” she answered, with a turn of the head and a quick
glance. “It's too dark to see. Who are you?”
“Smoke.”
She laughed in the frost, and he was certain it was the prettiest
laughter he had ever heard. “And have you married and raised all those
children you were telling me about?” Before he could retort, she went
on. “How many chechakos are there behind?”
“Several thousand, I imagine. We passed over three hundred. And they
weren't wasting any time.”
“It's the old story,” she said bitterly. “The new-comers get in on the
rich creeks, and the old-timers, who dared and suffered and made this
country, get nothing. Old-timers made this discovery on Squaw Creek--how
it leaked out is the mystery--and they sent word up to all the
old-timers on Sea Lion. But it's ten miles farther than Dawson, and when
they arrive they'll find the creek staked to the skyline by the Dawson
chechakos. It isn't right, it isn't fair, such perversity of luck.”
“It is too bad,” Smoke sympathized. “But I'm hanged if I know what
you're going to do about it. First come, first served, you know.”
“I wish I could do something,” she flashed back at him. “I'd like to
see them all freeze on the trail, or have everything terrible happen to
them, so long as the Sea Lion stampede arrived first.”
“You've certainly got it in for us hard,” he laughed.
“It isn't that,” she said quickly. “Man by man, I know the crowd from
Sea Lion, and they are men. They starved in this country in the old
days, and they worked like giants to develop it. I went through the hard
times on the Koyukuk with them when I was a little girl. And I was with
them in the Birch Creek famine, and in the Forty Mile famine. They are
heroes, and they deserve some reward, and yet here are thousands of
green softlings who haven't earned the right to stake anything, miles
and miles ahead of them. And now, if you'll forgive my tirade, I'll save
my breath, for I don't know when you and all the rest may try to pass
dad and me.”
No further talk passed between Joy and Smoke for an hour or so, though
he noticed that for a time she and her father talked in low tones.
“I know 'em now,” Shorty told Smoke. “He's old Louis Gastell, an' the
real goods. That must be his kid. He come into this country so long ago
they ain't nobody can recollect, an' he brought the girl with him, she
only a baby. Him an' Beetles was tradin' partners an' they ran the first
dinkey little steamboat up the Koyukuk.”
“I don't think we'll try to pass them,” Smoke said. “We're at the head
of the stampede, and there are only four of us.”
Shorty agreed, and another hour of silence followed, during which they
swung steadily along. At seven o'clock, the blackness was broken by a
last display of the aurora borealis, which showed to the west a broad
opening between snow-clad mountains.
“Squaw Creek!” Joy exclaimed.
“Goin' some,” Shorty exulted. “We oughtn't to been there for another
half hour to the least, accordin' to my reckonin'. I must 'a' been
spreadin' my legs.”
It was at this point that the Dyea trail, baffled by ice-jams, swerved
abruptly across the Yukon to the east bank. And here they must leave
the hard-packed, main-travelled trail, mount the jams, and follow a dim
trail, but slightly packed, that hovered the west bank.
Louis Gastell, leading, slipped in the darkness on the rough ice, and
sat up, holding his ankle in both his hands. He struggled to his feet
and went on, but at a slower pace and with a perceptible limp. After a
few minutes he abruptly halted.
“It's no use,” he said to his daughter. “I've sprained a tendon. You go
ahead and stake for me as well as yourself.”
“Can't we do something?” Smoke asked solicitously.
Louis Gastell shook his head. “She can stake two claims as well as one.
I'll crawl over to the bank, start a fire, and bandage my ankle. I'll be
all right. Go on, Joy. Stake ours above the Discovery claim; it's richer
higher up.”
“Here's some birch bark,” Smoke said, dividing his supply equally.
“We'll take care of your daughter.”
Louis Gastell laughed harshly. “Thank you just the same,” he said. “But
she can take care of herself. Follow her and watch her.”
“Do you mind if I lead?” she asked Smoke, as she headed on. “I know this
country better than you.”
“Lead on,” Smoke answered gallantly, “though I agree with you it's a
darned shame all us chechakos are going to beat that Sea Lion bunch to
it. Isn't there some way to shake them?”
She shook her head. “We can't hide our trail, and they'll follow it like
sheep.”
After a quarter of a mile, she turned sharply to the west. Smoke noticed
that they were going through unpacked snow, but neither he nor Shorty
observed that the dim trail they had been on still led south. Had they
witnessed the subsequent procedure of Louis Gastell, the history of the
Klondike would have been written differently; for they would have seen
that old-timer, no longer limping, running with his nose to the trail
like a hound, following them. Also, they would have seen him trample
and widen the turn to the fresh trail they had made to the west. And,
finally, they would have seen him keep on the old dim trail that still
led south.
A trail did run up the creek, but so slight was it that they continually
lost it in the darkness. After a quarter of an hour, Joy Gastell was
willing to drop into the rear and let the two men take turns in breaking
a way through the snow. This slowness of the leaders enabled the whole
stampede to catch up, and when daylight came, at nine o'clock, as far
back as they could see was an unbroken line of men. Joy's dark eyes
sparkled at the sight.
“How long since we started up the creek?” she asked.
“Fully two hours,” Smoke answered.
“And two hours back make four,” she laughed. “The stampede from Sea Lion
is saved.”
A faint suspicion crossed Smoke's mind, and he stopped and confronted
her.
“I don't understand,” he said.
“You don't? Then I'll tell you. This is Norway Creek. Squaw Creek is the
next to the south.”
Smoke was for the moment, speechless.
“You did it on purpose?” Shorty demanded.
“I did it to give the old-timers a chance.” She laughed mockingly. The
men grinned at each other and finally joined her. “I'd lay you across
my knee an' give you a wallopin', if women folk wasn't so scarce in this
country,” Shorty assured her.
“Your father didn't sprain a tendon, but waited till we were out of
sight and then went on?” Smoke asked.
She nodded.
“And you were the decoy?”
Again she nodded, and this time Smoke's laughter rang out clear and
true. It was the spontaneous laughter of a frankly beaten man.
“Why don't you get angry with me?” she queried ruefully. “Or--or wallop
me?”
“Well, we might as well be starting back,” Shorty urged. “My feet's
gettin' cold standin' here.”
Smoke shook his head. “That would mean four hours lost. We must be eight
miles up this creek now, and from the look ahead Norway is making a long
swing south. We'll follow it, then cross over the divide somehow, and
tap Squaw Creek somewhere above Discovery.” He looked at Joy. “Won't you
come along with us? I told your father we'd look after you.”
“I--” She hesitated. “I think I shall, if you don't mind.” She was
looking straight at him, and her face was no longer defiant and mocking.
“Really, Mr. Smoke, you make me almost sorry for what I have done. But
somebody had to save the old-timers.”
“It strikes me that stampeding is at best a sporting proposition.”
“And it strikes me you two are very game about it,” she went on, then
added with the shadow of a sigh: “What a pity you are not old-timers!”
For two hours more they kept to the frozen creek-bed of Norway, then
turned into a narrow and rugged tributary that flowed from the south. At
midday they began the ascent of the divide itself. Behind them, looking
down and back, they could see the long line of stampeders breaking up.
Here and there, in scores of places, thin smoke-columns advertised the
making of camps.
As for themselves, the going was hard. They wallowed through snow to
their waists, and were compelled to stop every few yards to breathe.
Shorty was the first to call a halt.
“We been hittin' the trail for over twelve hours,” he said. “Smoke, I'm
plum willin' to say I'm good an' tired. An' so are you. An' I'm free to
shout that I can sure hang on to this here pasear like a starvin' Indian
to a hunk of bear-meat. But this poor girl here can't keep her legs no
time if she don't get something in her stomach. Here's where we build a
fire. What d'ye say?”
So quickly, so deftly and methodically, did they go about making a
temporary camp, that Joy, watching with jealous eyes, admitted to
herself that the old-timers could not do it better. Spruce boughs,
with a spread blanket on top, gave a foundation for rest and cooking
operations. But they kept away from the heat of the fire until noses and
cheeks had been rubbed cruelly.
Smoke spat in the air, and the resultant crackle was so immediate and
loud that he shook his head. “I give it up,” he said. “I've never seen
cold like this.”
“One winter on the Koyukuk it went to eighty-six below,” Joy answered.
“It's at least seventy or seventy-five right now, and I know I've
frosted my cheeks. They're burning like fire.”
On the steep slope of the divide there was no ice, so snow, as fine and
hard and crystalline as granulated sugar, was poured into the gold-pan
by the bushel until enough water was melted for the coffee. Smoke fried
bacon and thawed biscuits. Shorty kept the fuel supplied and tended the
fire, and Joy set the simple table composed of two plates, two cups, two
spoons, a tin of mixed salt and pepper, and a tin of sugar. When it came
to eating, she and Smoke shared one set between them. They ate out of
the same plate and drank from the same cup.
It was nearly two in the afternoon when they cleared the crest of the
divide and began dropping down a feeder of Squaw Creek. Earlier in the
winter some moose-hunter had made a trail up the canyon--that is, in
going up and down he had stepped always in his previous tracks. As a
result, in the midst of soft snow, and veiled under later snow falls,
was a line of irregular hummocks. If one's foot missed a hummock, he
plunged down through unpacked snow and usually to a fall. Also, the
moose-hunter had been an exceptionally long-legged individual. Joy, who
was eager now that the two men should stake, and fearing that they were
slackening their pace on account of her evident weariness, insisted
on taking her turn in the lead. The speed and manner in which she
negotiated the precarious footing called out Shorty's unqualified
approval.
“Look at her!” he cried. “She's the real goods an' the red meat. Look at
them moccasins swing along. No high-heels there. She uses the legs God
gave her. She's the right squaw for any bear-hunter.”
She flashed back a smile of acknowledgment that included Smoke. He
caught a feeling of chumminess, though at the same time he was bitingly
aware that it was very much of a woman who embraced him in that
comradely smile.
Looking back, as they came to the bank of Squaw Creek, they could see
the stampede, strung out irregularly, struggling along the descent of
the divide.
They slipped down the bank to the creek bed. The stream, frozen solidly
to bottom, was from twenty to thirty feet wide and ran between six- and
eight-foot earth banks of alluvial wash. No recent feet had disturbed
the snow that lay upon its ice, and they knew they were above the
Discovery claim and the last stakes of the Sea Lion stampeders.
“Look out for springs,” Joy warned, as Smoke led the way down the creek.
“At seventy below you'll lose your feet if you break through.”
These springs, common to most Klondike streams, never cease at the
lowest temperatures. The water flows out from the banks and lies in
pools which are cuddled from the cold by later surface-freezings and
snow falls. Thus, a man, stepping on dry snow, might break through half
an inch of ice-skin and find himself up to the knees in water. In five
minutes, unless able to remove the wet gear, the loss of one's foot was
the penalty.
Though only three in the afternoon, the long grey twilight of the Arctic
had settled down. They watched for a blazed tree on either bank, which
would show the center-stake of the last claim located. Joy, impulsively
eager, was the first to find it. She darted ahead of Smoke, crying:
“Somebody's been here! See the snow! Look for the blaze! There it is!
See that spruce!”
She sank suddenly to her waist in the snow.
“Now I've done it,” she said woefully. Then she cried: “Don't come near
me! I'll wade out.”
Step by step, each time breaking through the thin skin of ice concealed
under the dry snow, she forced her way to solid footing. Smoke did not
wait, but sprang to the bank, where dry and seasoned twigs and sticks,
lodged amongst the brush by spring freshets, waited the match. By the
time she reached his side, the first flames and flickers of an assured
fire were rising.
“Sit down!” he commanded.
She obediently sat down in the snow. He slipped his pack from his back,
and spread a blanket for her feet.
From above came the voices of the stampeders who followed them.
“Let Shorty stake,” she urged.
“Go on, Shorty,” Smoke said, as he attacked her moccasins, already stiff
with ice. “Pace off a thousand feet and place the two center-stakes. We
can fix the corner-stakes afterwards.”
With his knife Smoke cut away the lacings and leather of the moccasins.
So stiff were they with ice that they snapped and crackled under the
hacking and sawing. The Siwash socks and heavy woollen stockings
were sheaths of ice. It was as if her feet and calves were encased in
corrugated iron.
“How are your feet?” he asked, as he worked.
“Pretty numb. I can't move nor feel my toes. But it will be all right.
The fire is burning beautifully. Watch out you don't freeze your own
hands. They must be numb now from the way you're fumbling.”
He slipped his mittens on, and for nearly a minute smashed the open
hands savagely against his sides. When he felt the blood-prickles, he
pulled off the mittens and ripped and tore and sawed and hacked at the
frozen garments. The white skin of one foot appeared, then that of the
other, to be exposed to the bite of seventy below zero, which is the
equivalent of one hundred and two below freezing.
Then came the rubbing with snow, carried on with an intensity of
cruel fierceness, till she squirmed and shrank and moved her toes, and
joyously complained of the hurt.
He half-dragged her, and she half-lifted herself, nearer to the fire. He
placed her feet on the blanket close to the flesh-saving flames.
“You'll have to take care of them for a while,” he said.
She could now safely remove her mittens and manipulate her own feet,
with the wisdom of the initiated, being watchful that the heat of the
fire was absorbed slowly. While she did this, he attacked his hands.
The snow did not melt nor moisten. Its light crystals were like so much
sand. Slowly the stings and pangs of circulation came back into the
chilled flesh. Then he tended the fire, unstrapped the light pack from
her back, and got out a complete change of foot-gear.
Shorty returned along the creek bed and climbed the bank to them. “I
sure staked a full thousan' feet,” he proclaimed. “Number twenty-seven
an' number twenty-eight, though I'd only got the upper stake of
twenty-seven, when I met the first geezer of the bunch behind. He just
straight declared I wasn't goin' to stake twenty-eight. An' I told
him--”
“Yes, yes,” Joy cried. “What did you tell him?”
“Well, I told him straight that if he didn't back up plum five hundred
feet I'd sure punch his frozen nose into ice-cream an' chocolate
eclaires. He backed up, an' I've got in the center-stakes of two full
an' honest five-hundred-foot creek claims. He staked next, and I guess
by now the bunch has Squaw Creek located to head-waters an' down the
other side. Ourn is safe. It's too dark to see now, but we can put out
the corner-stakes in the mornin'.”
When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the night.
So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual blankets,
estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below. The cold snap
had broken. On top of their blankets lay six inches of frost crystals.
“Good morning! how are your feet?” was Smoke's greeting across the ashes
of the fire to where Joy Gastell, carefully shaking aside the snow, was
sitting up in her sleeping-furs.
Shorty built the fire and quarried ice from the creek, while Smoke
cooked breakfast. Daylight came on as they finished the meal.
“You go an' fix them corner-stakes, Smoke,” Shorty said. “There's gravel
under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an' I'm goin' to melt water
and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck.”
Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes. Starting from the
down-stream center-stake of 'twenty-seven,' he headed at right angles
across the narrow valley towards its rim. He proceeded methodically,
almost automatically, for his mind was alive with recollections of
the night before. He felt, somehow, that he had won to empery over the
delicate lines and firm muscles of those feet and ankles he had rubbed
with snow, and this empery seemed to extend to the rest and all of
this woman of his kind. In dim and fiery ways a feeling of possession
mastered him. It seemed that all that was necessary was for him to walk
up to this Joy Gastell, take her hand in his, and say “Come.”
It was in this mood that he discovered something that made him forget
empery over the white feet of woman. At the valley rim he blazed no
corner-stake. He did not reach the valley rim, but, instead, he found
himself confronted by another stream. He lined up with his eye a blasted
willow tree and a big and recognizable spruce. He returned to the stream
where were the center-stakes. He followed the bed of the creek around a
wide horseshoe bend through the flat and found that the two creeks were
the same creek. Next, he floundered twice through the snow from valley
rim to valley rim, running the first line from the lower stake of
'twenty-seven,' the second from the upper stake of 'twenty-eight,' and
he found that THE UPPER STAKE OF THE LATTER WAS LOWER THAN THE LOWER
STAKE OF THE FORMER. In the gray twilight and half-darkness Shorty had
located their two claims on the horseshoe.
Smoke plodded back to the little camp. Shorty, at the end of washing a
pan of gravel, exploded at sight of him.
“We got it!” Shorty cried, holding out the pan. “Look at it! A nasty
mess of gold. Two hundred right there if it's a cent. She runs rich
from the top of the wash-gravel. I've churned around placers some, but I
never got butter like what's in this pan.”
Smoke cast an incurious glance at the coarse gold, poured himself a
cup of coffee at the fire, and sat down. Joy sensed something wrong
and looked at him with eagerly solicitous eyes. Shorty, however, was
disgruntled by his partner's lack of delight in the discovery.
“Why don't you kick in an' get excited?” he demanded. “We got our pile
right here, unless you're stickin' up your nose at two-hundred-dollar
pans.”
Smoke took a swallow of coffee before replying. “Shorty, why are our two
claims here like the Panama Canal?”
“What's the answer?”
“Well, the eastern entrance of the Panama Canal is west of the western
entrance, that's all.”
“Go on,” Shorty said. “I ain't seen the joke yet.”
“In short, Shorty, you staked our two claims on a big horseshoe bend.”
Shorty set the gold pan down in the snow and stood up. “Go on,” he
repeated.
“The upper stake of 'twenty-eight' is ten feet below the lower stake of
'twenty-seven.'”
“You mean we ain't got nothin', Smoke?”
“Worse than that; we've got ten feet less than nothing.”
Shorty departed down the bank on the run. Five minutes later he
returned. In response to Joy's look, he nodded. Without speech, he went
over to a log and sat down to gaze steadily at the snow in front of his
moccasins.
“We might as well break camp and start back for Dawson,” Smoke said,
beginning to fold the blankets.
“I am sorry, Smoke,” Joy said. “It's all my fault.”
“It's all right,” he answered. “All in the day's work, you know.”
“But it's my fault, wholly mine,” she persisted. “Dad's staked for me
down near Discovery, I know. I'll give you my claim.”
He shook his head.
“Shorty,” she pleaded.
Shorty shook his head and began to laugh. It was a colossal laugh.
Chuckles and muffled explosions yielded to hearty roars.
“It ain't hysterics,” he explained. “I sure get powerful amused at
times, an' this is one of them.”
His gaze chanced to fall on the gold-pan. He walked over and gravely
kicked it, scattering the gold over the landscape.
“It ain't ourn,” he said. “It belongs to the geezer I backed up five
hundred feet last night. An' what gets me is four hundred an' ninety
of them feet was to the good--his good. Come on, Smoke. Let's start the
hike to Dawson. Though if you're hankerin' to kill me I won't lift a
finger to prevent.”