"I want to run away," he quavered. "But I'm afraid to."
When we got in at last we met men coming out, and in some faces we saw
the marks of tragedy. Others smiled, and these put heart into us.
Old man Tomlinson had four little girls back in Idaho. He got two
letters. One was a six-months-old tax-receipt, the other a laundry bill.
That meant three months more of silence.
When my turn came and I saw the writing of the little woman something
gripped me by the throat, while I saw my hands shake as if they belonged
to somebody else. My news was good, though, and I read it slowly--some
parts twice--then at last when I looked up I found McGill near me.
Unconsciously we had both sought a quiet corner, but he had sunk on to a
box. Now, as I glanced at him I saw what made me shiver. The Fear was
there again--naked and ugly--for he held one lonesome letter, and its
inscription was in no woman's hand. He had crouched there by my side all
this time, staring, staring, staring at it, afraid to read--afraid to
open it. Some men smile in their agony, shifting their pitiful masks to
the last, others curse, and no two will take their blows alike.
McGill was plucking feebly at the end of his envelope, tearing off tiny
bits, dropping the fragments at his feet. Now and then he stopped, and
when he did he shuddered.
"Buck up, old pal," I said.
Then, recognizing me, he thrust the missive into my hand.
"Tell me--for God's sake--tell me quick. I can't--No, no--wait! Not yet.
Don't tell me. I'll know from your face. They said she couldn't live--"
But she had, and he watched me so fiercely that when the light came into
my face he snatched the letter from me like a madman.
"Ah-h! Give it to me! Give it to me! I _knew_ it! I told you they
couldn't fool me. No, sir. I felt all the time she'd make it. Why, I
knew it in my marrow!"
"What's the date?" I inquired.
"September thirtieth," he said. Then, as he realized how old it was, he
began to worry again.
"Why didn't they write later? They must know I'll eat my heart out.
Suppose she's had a relapse. That's it. They wrote too soon, and now
they don't dare tell me. She--got worse--died--months ago, and they're
afraid to let me know."
"Stop it," I said, and reasoned sanity back into him.
Monty had taken his mail and run off like a puppy to feast in quiet, so
I went over to Eckert's and had a drink.
Sam winked at me as I came in. A man was reading from a letter.
"Go on. I'm interested," said the proprietor.
The fellow was getting full pretty fast and was down to the garrulous
stage, but he began again:
"DEAR HUSBAND,--I am sorry to hear that you have been so
unfortunate, but don't get discouraged. I know you will make a good
miner if you stick to it long enough. Don't worry about me. I have
rented the front room to a very nice man for fifteen dollars a
week. The papers here are full of a gold strike in Siberia, just
across Bering Sea from where you are. If you don't find something
during the next two years, why not try it over there for a couple?"
"That's what I call a persevering woman," said Eckert, solemnly.
"She's a business woman, too," said the husband. "All I ever got for
that room was seven-fifty a week."
It seems I'd missed Montague at the store, but when the crowd came out
Ollie Marceau found him away in at the back, having gone there to be
alone with his letters. She saw the utter abandon and grief in his pose,
and the tears came to her eyes. Impulsively she went up and laid her
hand on his bowed head. She had followed the frontier enough to know the
signs.
"Oh, Mr. Prosser," she said, "I'm so sorry! Is it the little mother?"
"Yes," he answered, without moving.
"Not--not--" she hesitated.
"I don't know. The letters are up to the middle of December, and she was
very sick."
Then, with the quick sentiment of her kind, the girl spoke to him,
forgetting herself, her life, his prejudice, everything except the
lonely little gray woman off there who had waited and longed just as
such another had waited and longed for her, and, inasmuch as Ollie had
suffered before as this boy suffered now, in her words there was a sweet
sympathy and a perfect understanding.
It was very fine, I think, coming so from her, and when the first shock
had passed over he felt that here, among all these rugged men, there was
no one to give him the comfort he craved except this child of the
dance-halls. Compassion and sympathy he could get from any of us, but he
was a boy and this was his first grief, so he yearned for something
more, something subtler, perhaps the delicate comprehension of a woman.
At any rate, he wouldn't let her leave him, and the tender-hearted lass
poured out all the best her warm nature afforded.
In a few days he braced up, however, and stood his sorrow like the rest
of us. It made him more of a man in many ways. For one thing, he never
scoffed now at any of the nine women, which, taken as an indication, was
good. In fact, I saw him several times with the Marceau girl, for he
found her always ready and responsive, and came to confide in her rather
than in Martin or me, which was quite natural. Martin spoke about it
first.
"I hate to see 'em together so much," said he. "One of 'em is going to
fall in love, sure, and it won't be reciprocated none. It would serve
him right to get it hard, but if _she's_ hit--it'll be too dam' pitiful.
You an' I will have to combine forces and beat him up, I reckon."
The days were growing long and warm, the hills were coming bare on the
heights, while the snow packed wet at midday when we went into town to
sled out grub for the clean-up. We found everybody else there for the
same purpose, so the sap began to run through the camp. We were loading
at the trading-post the next day when I heard the name of Ollie Marceau.
It was a big-limbed fellow from Alder Creek talking, and, as he showed
no liquor in his face, what he said sounded all the worse. I have heard
as bad many a time without offense, for there is no code of loyalty
concerning these girls, but Ollie had got my sympathy, somehow, and I
resented the remarks, particularly the laughter. So did Prosser, the
Puritan. He looked up from his work, white and dangerous.
"Don't talk that way about a girl," said he to the stranger, and it made
a sensation among the crowd.
I never knew a man before with courage enough to kick in public on such
subjects. As it was, the man said something so much worse that right
there the front busted out of the tiger-cage and for a few brief moments
we were given over to chaos.
I had seen Whitewater walloped and I knew how full of parlor tricks the
kid was, but this time he went insane. He knocked that man off the
counter at the first pass and climbed him with his hobnails as he lay on
the floor. A fight is a fight, and a good thing for spectators and
participants, for it does more to keep down scurvy than anything I know
of, but the thud of those heavy boots into that helpless flesh sickened
me, and we rushed Prosser out of there while he struggled like a maniac.
I never saw such a complete reversal of form. Somewhere, away back
yonder, that boy's forefathers were pirates or cannibals or butchers.
When the fog had cleared out of his brain the reaction was just as
powerful. I took him out alone while the others worked over the Alder
Creek party, and all at once my man fell apart like wet sawdust.
"What made me do it--what made me do it?" he cried. "I'm crazy. Why, I
tried to kill him! And yet what he said is true--that's the worst of
it--it's true. Think of it, and I fought for her. What am I coming to?"
After the clean-up we came to camp, waiting for the river to break and
the first boat to follow. It was then that the suspense began to tell on
our partner. He read and reread his letters, but there was little hope
in them, and now, with no work to do, he grew nervous. Added to
everything else, our food ran short, and we lived on scraps of whatever
was left over from our winter grub-stake. Just out of cussedness the
break-up was ten days late, the ten longest days I ever put in, but
eventually it came, and a week later also came the mail. We needed food
and clothes, we needed whisky, we needed news of the great, distant
world--but all we thought of was our mail.
The boy had decided to go home. We were sorry to see him leave, too, for
he had the makings of a real man in him even if he shaved three times a
week, but no sooner was the steamer tied than he came plunging into my
tent like a moose, laughing and dancing in his first gladness. The
mother was well again.
Later I went aboard to give him the last lonesome good wishes of the
fellow who stays behind and fights along for another year. The big
freighter, with her neat staterooms and long, glass-burdened tables,
awoke a perfect panic in me to be going with him, to shake this cruel
country and drift back to the home and the wife and the pies like mother
made.
I found him on the top deck with the Marceau girl, who was saying
good-by to him. There was a look about her I had never seen before, and
all at once the understanding and the bitter irony of it struck me. This
poor waif hadn't had enough to stand, so Love had come to her, just as
Kink had predicted--a hopeless love which she would have to fight the
way she fought the whole world. It made me bitter and cynical, but I
admired her nerve--she was dressed for the sacrifice, trim and
well-curried as a thousand-dollar pony. Back of her smile, though, I saw
the waiting tears, and my heart bled. Spring is a fierce time for
romance, anyhow.
There wasn't time to say much, so I squeezed Monty's hand like a
cider-press.
"God bless you, lad! You must come back to us," I said, but he shook his
head, and I heard the girl's breath catch. I continued, "Come on, Ollie;
I'll help you ashore."
We stood on the bank there together and watched the last of him, tall
and clear-cut against the white of the wheel-house, and it seemed to me
when he had gone that something bright and vital and young had passed
out of me, leaving in its stead discouragement and darkness and age.
"Would you mind walking with me up to my cabin?" Ollie asked.
"Of course not," I said, and we went down the long street, past the
theater, the trading-post, and the saloons, till we came to the hill
where her little nest was perched. Every one spoke and smiled to her and
she answered in the same way, though I knew she was on parade and
holding herself with firm hands. As we came near to the end and her pace
quickened, however, and I guessed the panic that was on her to be alone
where she could drop her mask and become a woman--a poor, weak,
grief-stricken woman. But when we were inside at last her manner
astounded me. She didn't throw herself on her couch nor go to pieces, as
I had dreaded, but turned on me with burning eyes and her hands tight
clenched, while her voice was throaty and hoarse. The words came
tumbling out in confusion.
"I've let him go," she said. "Yes, and you helped me. Only for you I'd
have broken down; but I want you to know I've done one good thing at
last in my miserable life. I've held in. He never knew--he never knew. O
God! what fools men are!"
"Yes," I said, "you did mighty well. He's a sensitive chap, and if you'd
broken down he'd have felt awful bad."
"What!"
She grasped me by the coat lapels and shook me. Yes! That weak little
woman shook me, while her face went perfectly livid.
"'He'd have felt badly,' eh? Man! Man! Didn't you _see_! Are you blind?
Why, he asked me to go with him. He asked me to marry him. Think of
it--that great, wonderful man asked me to be his wife--me--Olive
Marceau, the dancer! Oh, oh! Isn't it funny? Why don't you laugh?"
I didn't laugh. I stood there, picking pieces of fur out of my cap and
wondering if ever I should see another woman like this one. She paced
about over the skin rugs, tearing at the throat of her dress as if it
choked her. There were no tears in her eyes, but her whole frame shook
and shuddered as if from great cold, deep set in her bones.
"Why didn't you go?" I asked, stupidly. "You love him, don't you?"
"You know why I didn't go," she cried, fiercely. "I couldn't. How could
I go back and meet his mother? Some day she'd find me out and it would
spoil his life. No, no! If only she hadn't recovered--No, I don't mean
that, either. I'm not his kind, that's all. Ah, God! I let him go--I let
him go, and he never knew!"
She was writhing now on her bed in a perfect frenzy, calling to him
brokenly, stretching out her arms while great, dry, coughing sobs
wrenched her.
"Little one," I said, unsteadily, and my throat ached so that I couldn't
trust myself, "you're a brave--girl, and you're his kind or anybody's
kind."
With that the rain came, and so I left her alone with her comforting
misery. When I told Kink he sputtered like a pinwheel, and every evening
thereafter we two went up to her house and sat with her. We could do
this because she'd quit the theater the day the boat took Prosser away,
and she wouldn't heed Eckert's offers to go back.
"I'm through with it for good," she told us, "though I don't know what
else I'm good for. You see, I don't know anything useful, but I suppose
I can learn."
"Now, if I wasn't married already--" I said.
"Humph!" snorted Kink. "I ain't so young as neither one of my pardners,
miss, but I'm possessed of rare intellectual treasures."
She laughed at both of us.
When a week had passed after the first boat went down with Prosser, we
began to look daily for the first up-river steamer, bringing word direct
from the outside world. It came one midnight, and as we were getting
dressed to go to the landing our tent was torn open and Montague tumbled
in upon us.
"What brought you back?" we questioned when we'd finished mauling him.
It was June, and the nights were as light as day in this latitude, so we
could see his face plainly.
"Why--er--" He hesitated for an instant, then threw back his head,
squared his great young shoulders, and looked us in the eyes, while all
his embarrassment fled. "I came back to marry Olive Marceau," said he.
"I came to take her back home to the little mother."
He stared out wistfully at the distant southern mountains, effulgent and
glorified by the midnight sun which lay so close behind their crests,
and I winked at Martin.
"She's left--"
"What!" He whirled quickly.
"--the theater, and I don't suppose you can see her until to-morrow."
Disappointment darkened his face.
"Besides," Kink added, gloomily, "when you quit her like a dog I slicked
myself up some, and I ain't anyways sure she'll care to see you
now--only jest as a friend of mine. Notice I've cut my whiskers, don't
you?"
We made Monty pay for that instant's hesitation, the last he ever had,
and then I said:
"You walk up the river trail for a quarter of a mile and wait. If I can
persuade her to come out at this hour I'll send her to you. No, you
couldn't find her. She's moved since you left."
"I wouldn't gamble none on her meetin' you," Martin said,
discouragingly, and combed out his new-mown beard with ostentation.
She was up the moment I knocked, and when I said that a man needed help
I heard her murmur sympathetically as she dressed. When we came to our
tent I stopped her.
"He's up yonder a piece," said I. "You run along while I fetch Kink and
the medicine-kit. We'll overtake you."
"Is it anything serious?"
"Yes, it's apt to be unless you hurry. He seems to think he needs you
pretty badly."
And so she went up the river trail to where he was waiting, her way
golden with the beams of the sun whose rim peeped at her over the
far-off hills. And there, in the free, still air, among the virgin
spruce, with the clean, sweet moss beneath their feet, they met. The
good sun smiled broadly at them now, and the grim Yukon hurried past,
chuckling under its banks and swiggering among the roots, while the song
it sang was of spring and of long, bright days that had no night.