I
The valley was very still. No breath of wind had stirred it for many
days. It was smothered so heavily in snow that the firs were bent; even
the bare birch limbs carried precarious burdens, and when gravity
relieved some sagging branch the mass beneath welcomed the avalanche so
softly that the only sound was a whisper as the bough returned to its
position. The brooding cold had cleared the air of sound as it had of
moisture. No birds piped, there was no murmur of running water, no
evidence of animal life except an occasional wavering line etched into
the white by the feet of some tiny rodent.
The rolling hills were sparsely timbered, against an empty north sky a
jumble of saw-toothed peaks were limned like carvings, and everywhere
was the same unending hush of winter. The desolation was complete.
Yet there was life here, for spaced at regular intervals across the
gulch were mounds of white, each forming the lips of a rectangular
cavity resembling an open grave. They were perfectly aligned and
separated from each other by precisely thirty paces; surrounding each
was a clearing out of which freshly cut stumps protruded bearing snow
caps fashioned like the chapeau of a drum-major. There were six of these
holes, and a seventh was in process of digging. Over the last one a
crude windlass straddled and the heap of debris at its feet showed raw
and dirty against the snow. Out of the aperture a thin vapor rose
lazily, coating the drum and rope with rime; from the clearing a narrow
trail wound to a cabin beside the creek-bank.
McGill came out into the morning and with him came his three giant
malamutes, wolf-gray, shaggy, and silent like their master. He eyed the
drooping, white-robed forest and the desolate ridges that shut him in,
then said, in a voice harsh from disuse:
"Hello, people! Anything happened yet?"
He made it a practice to speak aloud whenever he thought of it, for the
hush of an arctic winter plays pranks with a person's mind, and there is
a certain effect of sanity in spoken words, senseless though they be.
After a moment he repeated his greeting: "Good morning, I said. Can't
you answer?" Then his cheeks flamed above his heavy beard and he yelled,
loudly, "_Good morning_, you ----! Can't you say anything?" He glared
reproachfully at a giant spruce from the lower limbs of which depended
the quarters of several caribou. "Tom, you ain't gone back on me? Say
hello. You and me are friends. Speak up!" After a time he shook his
head, murmuring: "It's no use. I've got to make all the noise there is.
If it would only blow--or something. I'd like to hear the wind."
He strode toward the prospect hole, the dogs following sedately, their
feet making no sound in the snow. They, too, felt the weight of
isolation and never left his side. Arriving at the dump, McGill stood
motionless beside the windlass for a long time, staring into nothingness
with eyes that were strained and miserable. When the cold bit him he
roused himself and addressed the steam-filled opening dispiritedly:
"So, you didn't freeze up on me. That's good. I'll get bed-rock to-day
and show you up for a dirty cheat. Pay! Bah! there ain't none!"
He descended a ladder at one end of the shaft, gathered the charred
logs, tied them into a bundle with the end of the windlass rope, then,
mounting the ladder, hoisted them to the surface. Next, hooking on the
ungainly wooden bucket, he lowered it, after which he descended for a
second time.
There began a long and monotonous series of ascents and descents, for
every bucket of gravel meant two journeys the full depth of the pit. It
was a tedious and primitive process, involving a tremendous waste of
effort, but he was methodical, and each time the tub rose it carried a
burden sufficient to tax the strength of two men. He handled it easily,
however, and by midday had removed the thawed ground and scraped a
sample from close to frost. He laid a light fire, then took the heaping
gold-pan under his arm and set off for his cabin, accompanied by the
malamutes.
When he had prepared and eaten his lunch he seated himself before his
panning-tub, a square box half filled with water melted from the creek
ice, and began the process of testing his prospect.
Having worked down the gravel and sediment to a half-handful, he spread
it with a movement of his wrists, leaving stranded at the tail of the
black sand a few specks of yellow. These he eyed for a moment before
washing them away.
"Too light--as usual," he said, aloud. The dogs stirred and raised their
heads. "Always pretty near, but not quite. But it's here, somewhere, and
I'll get it if I can last out this damned silence. That rim-rock didn't
lie. And old Pitka didn't lie, either. Nobody lies except--women." He
scowled at some remembrance, his whole face retreated behind a bristling
mask of ferocity. He sat motionless over the tub of muddy water until
the fire died out of the stove and the chill warned him that it was time
to resume work.
For many weeks--how many McGill neither knew nor cared--he had pursued
the routine of his search. He had penetrated this valley alone, unseen,
in the late autumn, and every day since then he had labored steadily,
mechanically, almost without physical sensation, for all feeling was
centered in his memory, which never gave him time to consider his
surroundings. Spring was coming now--the sun was already peeping over
the southern hills in the middle of its daily journey--and during this
time there had been but two interruptions which had roused him from his
apathy. One had occurred when, in quest of fresh meat, he had discovered
that he had neighbors ten miles to the west. He had seen their camp from
the divide, then had turned and slunk away, cursing them for intruding
upon his privacy. The other was when a herd of caribou had crossed. At
that time he had given brief rein to his desire to kill, seeing ahead of
his sights the face of the man who had sent him into the wilderness. He
could have bagged half the herd, but checked himself in time, realizing
that it was not Barclay at whom he leveled his rifle, but defenseless
animals, the carcasses of which were useless.
Barclay! The name maddened McGill. He wondered dully why he continued to
work so steadily when Barclay had robbed him of the need for gold. The
answer to this, he supposed, was easier than the answer to those other
questions that forever troubled him--he had to do something or die of
his thoughts, and he knew no other work than this. Even in his busiest
hours memories of Barclay and the woman obtruded themselves.
It was after dark when he had fired the hole a second time and returned
to his cabin. He had not reached bed-rock and this fact irritated
him--he was growing very irritable, it seemed. Lighting his pipe of rank
"sheep-dip" tobacco when the supper-dishes were finally cleaned and the
dogs fed, he once more prepared for the profitless process of panning.
But he noticed that this sample of gravel was different to any he had
yet found, being of a peculiar ashen color. He felt it with practised
fingers and discovered it to be gritty and full of sediment.
"Feels good," he said, aloud, "but I'll bet it's barren."
He had panned so many samples that all eagerness, all curiosity as to
the outcome, had long since disappeared, therefore his movements were
purely perfunctory as he dissolved the clay lumps and washed the gravels
down. He paused half-way through the operation to dry his hands and
relight his pipe, then fell to thinking of Barclay and the woman once
more, and remained so for a long time. When he resumed his task it was
with glazed, unseeing eyes. He was about to dump the last dregs
carelessly when something just slipping over the edge of the pan caught
his eye and caused him to tilt the receptacle abruptly.
The breath whistling in his throat roused the dogs. McGill closed his
eyes for an instant, then reached unsteadily for the candle. A movement
of his wrist ran the water across the pan bottom and spread the black
sand thinly. Instantly there leaped out against the black metal a heap
of bright, clean, yellow particles which lay as if glued together.
"Coarse gold! Coarse gold!" he whispered, then cursed in the weak,
meaningless manner of men under great excitement. Not trusting himself
to hold the pan, he set it upon the table, but without removing his eyes
from it. When his nerves had steadied he ran the prospect down, all the
time muttering in his beard. He dried it over the fire, blew the iron
sand free with his breath, then pushed the particles into a heap,
striving to estimate their value.
"There's half an ounce," he said, finally. "Eight dollars a pan! God!
that's big! Big! It's another Klondike." He rose and ran bareheaded out
into the night, followed by the dogs, then stood staring at the smoke as
it ascended vertically above his shaft, like a giant night-growing plant
of some kind. He was tempted to descend the ladder and tear the
crackling logs apart, but thought better of it. Swinging his eyes along
the valley rim that stood out black against the aurora, he lifted his
long arms. "It's mine, all mine! Understand?" He cried the words loudly,
wildly, as if challenging the silence. "It's no good to me, but it's
mine, and, by God, I'll keep it!"
McGill reached bed-rock the next evening and spent most of the night
panning the pile of scrapings he had collected from the bottom of the
pit. If the top of the streak had been rich, the lower concentration was
amazing. Every seam in the shattered limestone, which stood on end like
sluice riffles, contained little flattened pumpkin-seeds of gold; they
lay embedded in the clay stringers like plums in a pudding or as if some
lavish hand had inserted them there, as coins are slipped into the slot
of a child's savings-bank. He could see them before the dirt was half
washed, but took a supreme pleasure, nevertheless, in watching the
yellow pile grow as the sediment disappeared. A baking-powder can was
half filled when he had finished; it told him unmistakably the magnitude
of his riches. He was a wealthy man, wealthier than he had ever dreamed
of being. There was more where this came from and the gulch lay
unappropriated from end to end. Fortune had come in a day, and he would
never want so long as he lived. His thoughts were wild and chaotic, for
he was half mad from the silence.
But what use to make of his discovery he hardly knew, since he had slunk
away from the world, ablaze with hatred for his fellow-men, intending to
live alone for the rest of his days. His grudge was as bitter now as
then, and he determined, therefore, to keep his find a secret. That
would be a grim, if unsatisfactory, sort of revenge, he reflected. He
would take what he wished, and let other men wear out their lives
searching unsuccessfully. Those strangers to the westward, for instance,
would toil and suffer through the long winter, then leave discouraged.
There was money here for them and for hundreds--thousands--like them,
but he decided to guard his secret and to let it die with him.
McGill pictured the result of this news if he gave it out; the stampede,
the headlong rush that would bring men from every corner of the North.
He saw this silent valley bared of its brooding forest and filled with
people; he saw a log city in the flats down by the river; he heard the
bass blasts of steamboats, the shrilling of saw-mills, the sound of
music from dance-halls, the click of checks and roulette-balls, the
noise of revelry--
"No! No! _No!_" He rose and shouted into the empty silence of his cabin.
"I won't do it! I won't! I won't!"
But the voices called to him all through the night.
He rose early, for they would not let him rest, and during the darkness
a terrible hunger had grown upon him. It was the hunger for
companionship, for speech. His secret was too great for imprisonment, it
threatened to burst the confines of the valley by its own tremendous
force; he knew he could never sleep with it, for it would smother him;
vampire-like, it would suck the life from his veins and the reason from
his brain.
When he had eaten he pocketed the baking-powder tin, slipped into his
snow-shoes and, crossing the gulch, climbed the westward hills that hid
his neighbors. The dogs went with him.