"The one with the red sweater?"
"Yes."
"Miss Andrews. Her first name is Alice."
"Alice!" McGill spoke it softly. "I--I s'pose she's married, of course?"
"No, _Miss_ Andrews."
McGill started. "I thought she was the wife of that nice-looking feller,
Barclay."
The captain grunted, and then after a moment added, "She's an actor of
some kind."
McGill opened his eyes in genuine astonishment. He opened his mouth
also, but changed his mind and fell to studying the flames once more.
"She's plumb beautiful," he said at length.
"All actors is beautiful," the captain remarked, wisely.
McGill slept badly that night, which was unusual for him, but when he
went to feed his dogs on the following morning he found Miss Andrews
ahead of him.
"What splendid creatures!" she said, petting them.
"Do you like dogs?" he queried.
"I love them. You know, these are the first I have ever seen of this
kind."
"Then you never rode behind a team?"
"No. I have only read about such things."
McGill summoned his courage and said, "Mebbe you'd like me to--give you
a ride?"
"_Would_ you? Oh, Mr. McGill!" She clapped her hands, and her eyes
widened at the prospect.
He noted how the brisk air had brought the blood to her cheeks, but
broke off the dangerous contemplation of her charms and fell to
harnessing the team, his fingers stiff with embarrassment. He helped her
into the basket-sled and then, at her request, tucked in the folds of
her coat. It was a novel sensation and one he had never dreamed of
having, for he would not have dared touch any woman without a command.
It was not much of a ride, for the trails were poor, but the girl seemed
to enjoy it, and to McGill it was wonderful. He felt that he was making
an awful spectacle of himself, however, and hoped no one had seen them
leave; he was so big and so ungainly to be playing squire, and, above
all, he was so old.
He could think of nothing to say on the excursion, but when she thanked
him upon their return he was more than paid for his misery. As they
drove up, Barclay was watching them from the high bank, and Miss Andrews
waved a mitten at him. Later, when McGill had left for a moment, the
young man began, sourly:
"Making a play for the old party, eh?"
"He isn't old," said Miss Andrews, carelessly.
"What's the idea?"
"I don't know that I have any idea. Why?"
"Humph! I'm interested--naturally."
"You needn't be. It's every one for himself up here, and you don't seem
to be getting ahead very fast."
"I see. McGill's due to be a millionaire, and I'm down and out," Barclay
sneered. "Well, we're neither of us children. If you can land him, more
power to you."
"I wouldn't stand in your way," said Miss Andrews, coldly, "and I don't
intend that you shall stand in mine."
"Is that the only way you look at it?" Barclay wore an ugly frown that
seemed genuine. She met it with a mere shrug, causing him to exclaim,
hotly, "If you don't care any more than that, I won't interfere." He
turned and walked away.
Those were wonderful days for McGill. Instead of hurrying back to his
work he loitered. With a splendid disregard of convention he followed
the girl about hourly and was too drunk with her smiles to hear the
comment his actions evoked. He had moments of despair when he saw
himself as a great, awkward bear, more aptly designed to frighten than
to woo a woman, but these periods of depression gave way to the keenest
delight at some word of encouragement from Alice Andrews. He did not
fully realize that he had asked her to marry him until it was all over,
but she seemed to understand so fully what was in his heart that she had
drawn it from him before he really knew what he was saying. And then the
joy of her acceptance! It stunned him. When he had finally torn himself
away from her side he went out and stood bareheaded under the northern
lights to let it sink in. There were no words in his vocabulary, no
thoughts in his mind, capable of expressing the marvel of it. The
gorgeous colors that leaped from horizon to zenith were no more glorious
than the riot that flamed within his soul. She loved him, Dan McGill,
and she was a white woman! When he thought how beautiful and young she
was his heart overflowed with a gentle tenderness which rivaled that of
any mother.
Still in a dream, he related the miracle to the steamboat captain, who
took the announcement in silence. This old man had wintered inside the
circle and knew something of the woman-hunger that comes to strong men
in solitude. He was observant, moreover, and had seen good girls made
bad by the fires of the frontier, as well as bad women made good by
marriage.
There being no priest nearer than Nulato, it was, perforce, a contract
marriage. A lawyer in the party attended to the papers, and it pleased
the woman to have Barclay sign as a witness. Then she and McGill set out
for Ophir, a trip he never forgot. The sled was laden with things to
make a bride comfortable, so they were forced to walk, but they might
have been flying, for all he knew. Alice was very ignorant of northern
ways, childishly so, and it afforded him the keenest delight to initiate
her into the mysteries of trail life. And when night drew near and they
made camp, what joy it was to hear her exclamations of wonder at his
adeptness! She loved to see his ax sink to the eye in the frozen fir
trunks and to join his shout when the tree fell crashing in a great
upheaval of white. Then when their tiny tent, nestling in some sheltered
grove, was glowing from the candle-light, and the red-hot stove had
routed the cold, he would make her lie back on the fragrant springy
couch of boughs while he smoked and did the dishes and told her shyly of
the happiness that had come upon him. He waited upon her hand and foot;
he stood between her and every peril of the wilds.
And while it was all delightfully bewildering to him, it was likewise
very strange and exciting to his bride. The deathly silence of the
bitter nights, illumined only by the awesome aurora borealis; the
terrific immensity of the solitudes, with their white-burdened forests
of fir that ran up and over the mountains and away to the ends of the
world; the wild wolf-dogs that feared nothing except the voice of their
master, and yet fawned upon him with a passion that approached
ferocity--it all played upon the woman's fancy strangely. For the first
time in her tempestuous career she was nearly happy. It was worth some
sacrifice to possess the devotion of a man like McGill; it was worth
even more to know that her years of uncertainty and strife were over.
His gentleness annoyed her at times, but, on the other hand, she was
grateful for the shyness that handicapped him as a lover. On the whole,
however, it was a good bargain, and she was fairly well content.
As for McGill, he expanded, he effloresced, if such a nature as his
could be said to bloom. He explored the hindermost recesses of his
being, and brought forth his secrets for her to share. He told her all
about himself, without the slightest reservation, and when he was done
she knew him clear to his last, least thought. It was an unwise thing to
do, but McGill was not a wise man, and the stories seemed to please her.
Above all, she took an interest in his business affairs, which was
gratifying. Time and again she questioned him shrewdly about his mining
properties, which made him think that here was a woman who would prove a
helpmate.
Their arrival at Ophir was the occasion for a rough, spontaneous welcome
that further turned her head. McGill was loved, and, once his townsmen
had recovered from their amazement, they did their best to show his wife
courtesies, which all went to strengthen her belief in his importance
and to add to her complacence.
McGill was ashamed of his cabin at first, but she surprised him with the
business-like manner in which she went about fixing it up. Before his
admiring eyes she transformed it by a few deft touches into what seemed
to him a paradise. Heretofore he had witnessed women's handiwork only
from a distance, and had never possessed a real home, so this was
another wonder that it took time to appreciate. Eventually he pulled
himself together and settled down to his affairs, but in the midst of
his tasks it would sometimes come over him with a blinding rush that he
was married, that he had a wife who was no squaw, but a white woman,
more beautiful than any dream-creature, and so young that he might have
been her father. The amazing strangeness of it never left him.
But the adolescence of Ophir was short. It quickly outgrew its age of
fictitious values, and its rapturous delusions vanished as hole after
hole was put to bed-rock and betrayed no pay. Entire valleys that were
formerly considered rich were abandoned, and the driving snows erased
the signs of human effort. Men came in out of the hills cursing the luck
that had brought them there. The gold-bearing area narrowed to a proved
creek or two where the ground was taken and where there were ten men for
every job; the saloons began to fill with idlers who talked much, but
spent nothing. One day the camp awakened to the fact that it was a
failure. There is nothing more ghastly than a broken mining-town, for in
place of the first feverish exhilaration there is naught but the wreck
of hopes and the ruin of ambitions.
McGill's wife was not the last to appreciate the truth; she saw it
coming even earlier than the rest. Once she had lost the first glamour
and fully attuned herself to the new life she was sufficiently
perceptive to realize her great mistake. But McGill did not notice the
change and saw nothing to worry about in the town's affairs. He had been
poor most of his life, and his rare periods of opulence had ended
briefly, therefore this failure meant merely another trial. Ophir had
given him his prize, greater than all the riches of its namesake, and
who could be other than happy with a wife like his? His very optimism,
combined with her own fierce disappointment, drove the woman nearly
frantic. She felt abused, she reasoned that McGill had betrayed her, and
at last owned to the hunger she had been striving vainly to stifle for
months past. Now that there was nothing to gain, why blind herself to
the truth? She hated McGill, and she loved another! There had never been
an instant when her heart had not called.
And then, to make matters worse, Barclay came. He had spent most of the
long winter at the steamboat landing, being too angry to show himself in
Ophir, but the woman-hunger had grown upon him, as upon all men in the
North, and it finally drew him to her with a strength that would have
snapped iron chains. Hearing, shortly after his arrival, that McGill was
out on the creeks and never returned until dark, he went to the cabin.
Alice opened the door at his knock, then fell back with a cry. He shut
out the cold air behind him and stood looking at her until she gasped:
"Why have you come here?"
"Why? Because I couldn't stay away. You knew I'd have to come, didn't
you?"
"McGill!" she whispered, and cast a frightened look over her shoulder.
"Does he know?"
She shook her head.
"I hear he's broke--like the rest." Barclay laughed mockingly, and she
nodded. "Have you had enough?"
"Yes, yes! Oh yes!" she wailed, suddenly. "Take me away, Bob. Oh, take
me away!"
She was in his arms with the words, her breast to his, her arms about
his neck, her hot tears starting. She clutched him wildly, while he
covered her face with kisses.
"Don't scold me," she sobbed. "Don't! I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You'll take
me away, won't you?"
"Hush!" he commanded. "I can't take you away; there's no place to go to.
That's the worst of this damned country. He'd follow--and he'd get us."
"You must, Bob! You _must_! I'll die here with him. I've stood it as
long as I can--"
"Don't be a fool. You'll have to go through with it now until spring.
Once the river is open--"
"No, no, no!" she cried, passionately.
"Do you want us to get killed?"
Mrs. McGill shivered as if some wintry blast had searched out her
marrow, then freed herself from his embrace and said, slowly: "You're
right, Bob. We must be very careful. I--I don't know what he might do."
That evening she met McGill with a smile, the first she had worn for
some time, and she was particularly affectionate.
Instead of returning down-river, Barclay found lodgings and remained in
Ophir. He was not the most industrious of men, and before long became a
familiar figure around the few public places. McGill met him frequently,
seeing which Barclay's fellow-passengers from below raised their
eyebrows and muttered meaningless commonplaces; then, when the younger
man took to spending more and more of his time at the miner's cabin,
they ceased making any comment whatever. These are things that wise men
avoid, and a loose tongue often leads to an early grave when fellows
like McGill are about. Some of the old-timers who had wintered with the
miner in the "upper country" shook their heads and acknowledged that
young Barclay was a braver man than they gave him credit for being.
Of course McGill was the last to hear of it, for he was of the simple
sort who have faith in God and women and such things, and he might have
gone on indefinitely in ignorance but for Hopper, who did not care much
for the Barclay person. The saloon-man, being himself uneducated and
rough, like McGill, cherished certain illusions regarding virtue, and
let drop a hint his friend could not help but heed. The husband paid for
his drink, then went back to the rear of the room, where he sat for an
hour or more. When he went home he was more gentle to his wife than
ever. He brooded for a number of days, trying to down his suspicion, but
the poison was sown, and he finally spoke to her.
"Barclay was here again this afternoon, wasn't he?"