IN THE CABIN OF THE _BELVA LOU_
For two weeks Brent and Snowdrift were together each day from dawn until
dark. Leaving Joe Pete to work the claim on the Coppermine, they burned
into the gravel on a creek that gave promise, and while their fire
slowly thawed out the muck, they hunted. When at a depth of four feet
they had not struck a color, Brent gave it up.
"No use," he said, one day as he tossed the worthless pebbles from his
pan. "If there was anything here, we'd have found at least a trace. I'm
going to hit down the river and have a look at the Copper Mountains."
"Take me with you!" cried the girl, eagerly, "How long will you be
gone?"
"I wish I could," smiled Brent, "But Joe Pete and I will be gone two
weeks--a month--maybe longer. It depends on what we find. If we were
only married, what a great trip it would be! But, never mind,
sweetheart, we've got a good many trips coming--years and years of
them."
"But that isn't now," objected the girl, "What will I do all the while
you are gone? Each morning I hurry here as fast as I can, and each
evening I am sorry when the darkness comes and I must leave you."
The man drew her close, "Yes, darling," he whispered, "I understand. The
hours I spend away from you are long hours, and I count them one by one.
I do not want to go away from you, but it is for you that I must make a
strike."
"I would rather have you with me than have all the strikes in the
world!"
"I know--but we don't want to spend all our days in this God-forgotten
wilderness, fighting famine, and the strong cold. We want to go far away
from all this, where there is music, and books, and life! You've got it
coming, little girl--but first we must make a strike."
"And, we will not be married until you make your strike?" The dark eyes
looked wistfully into his, and Brent smiled:
"Strike or no strike, we will be married in the spring!" he cried, "and
if the strike has not been made, we'll make it together."
"Will we be married at the mission?"
"No--at Dawson."
"Dawson!" cried the girl, "And I shall really see Dawson? But, isn't it
very far?"
Brent laughed: "Yes, you will really see Dawson--and you won't see much
when you see it, in comparison with what you will see when we quit the
North and go back to the States. In the spring you and Wananebish, and
Joe Pete and I will take a month's vacation--and when we come back,
darling, we will have each other always."
"But, if you do not make a strike?" questioned the girl, "What then?
Would you be happy here in the North--with me?"
"Sweetheart," answered Brent, "If I knew to a certainty that I should
never make a strike--that I should always live in these barrens, I would
marry you anyway--and call the barrens blessed. But, I will make a
strike! It is for you--and I cannot fail! Oh, if I hadn't been such a
fool!"
The girl smiled into his eyes: "If you hadn't been such a--a fool, you
would never have come to the barrens. And I--I would always have been
just an Indian--hating the white man, hating the world, living my life
here and there, upon the lakes and the rivers, in cabins and tepees,
with just enough education to long for the better things, and with my
heart bursting with pain and bitterness in the realization that those
things were not for me."
"It is strange how everything works out for the best," mused Brent, "The
whys and the wherefores of life are beyond my philosophy. Sordid, and
twisted, and wrong as they were, my Dawson days, and the days of the
years that preceded them were all but the workings of destiny--to bring
you and me together up here on the rim of the Arctic.
"It was a great scheme, little girl," he smiled, suddenly breaking into
a lighter mood, "And the beauty of it is--it worked. But what I was
getting at is this: it don't seem reasonable that after going to all
that trouble to bring us together, and taking such liberties with my
reputation, Old Man Destiny is going to make us fill out the rest of the
time punching holes in gravel, and snaring rabbits, and hunting
caribou."
That evening they said good bye upon the edge of the clearing that
surrounded the Indian encampment, and as Brent turned to go he drew a
heavy bag from his pocket and handed it to the girl, "Keep this till I
come back," he said, "It's gold."
"Oh, it is heavy!" cried the girl in surprise.
Brent smiled, "Weighs up pretty big now. But when we make our strike it
won't be a shoestring. But come--one more good bye and I must be going.
I've got to pack my outfit for an early start."
One day a week later Brent stood with Joe Pete on the northernmost ridge
of the Copper Mountains and gazed toward the coast of the Arctic Ocean.
Almost at their feet, buried beneath snow and ice were the Bloody Falls
of the Coppermine and to the northward, only snow. Brent was surprised,
for he knew that the ridge upon which he was standing could not be more
than ten or twelve miles from the coast, but he also knew that he could
see for twenty miles or more, and that the only thing that met the eye
was a gently undulating plain of snow, unbroken by even so much as a
twig or a bush, or a hillock worthy the name. Never, he thought, as his
glance swept the barren, treeless waste, had eyes of mortal man beheld
its equal for absolute bleak desolation.
A cry from Joe Pete cause him to concentrate his gaze upon a spot toward
which the Indian pointed, where, dimly discernible, a dark object
appeared against the unbroken surface of the snow. The steel blue
haze--the "cold fog" of the North, obfuscated its outlines, as it
destroyed perspective so that the object may have been five miles away,
or twenty. It may have been the size of a dog, or the size of a
skyscraper. In vain the two strained their eyes in an endeavor to make
it out. In the first gloom of the early darkness it disappeared
altogether, and the two made their way to the frozen surface of the
river where, in the shelter of a perpendicular wall of rock, they made
their camp and kindled a tiny fire of twigs they had collected the day
before from the last timber on the Coppermine, at a creek that runs in
from the eastward.
For two days, holding to the surface of the river, the two had threaded
the transverse ridges that form the Copper Mountains. It was Brent's
idea to mush straight to the northernmost ridge and work back slowly,
stopping wherever practicable to prospect among the outcropping ledges.
He had planned, also, to burn into the gravel at intervals, but he had
not foreseen the fact that the mountains lay north of the timber line,
so the burning had to be abandoned.
At daylight they again climbed the ridge. The cold fog had disappeared
and as Joe Pete, who was in the lead, reached the summit, he gave voice
to a loud cry of surprise. For in place of the indiscernible object of
the day before, apparently only ten or twelve miles distant, and right
in the centre of the vast plain of snow was a ship--each mast and spar
standing out clean-cut as a cameo against its dazzling background. Brent
even fancied he could see men walking about her deck, and other men
walking to and fro among a group of snow mounds that clustered close
about the hulk.
"A whaler!" he exclaimed, "One of those that Johnnie Claw said wintered
up here."
For a long time Brent watched the ship, and covertly Joe Pete watched
Brent. At length the white man spoke. "Reckon we'll just mush over there
and call on 'em. Neighbors aren't so damned common up here that we can
afford to pass them by when we're in sight of 'em."
"Dat better, mebbe-so, we don' go w'ere we ain' got no business.
Mebbe-so dat Godam Johnnie Claw, she giv' you som' mor' hooch, eh? Dat
breed gal she dam' fine 'oman--she ain' lak dat."
Brent laughed, a trifle nervously: "I don't reckon there's any danger of
that," he answered, shortly. "Come on, we'll harness the dogs and pull
out there. I'd like to see what kind of an outfit they've got, and as
long as we're this near it would be too bad not to go to the very top of
the continent."
Joe Pete shrugged and followed Brent down to the river where they broke
camp, harnessed the dogs, and struck out over the plain. The wind-packed
snow afforded good footing and the outfit pushed rapidly northward.
Brent was surprised at the absence of a pressure ridge at the shore
line, but so flat was the snow-buried beach that it was with difficulty
that he determined where the land left off and the sea-ice began. The
whaler he judged to be frozen in at a distance of three or four miles
from shore.
The figures of men could be plainly seen, now, and soon it became
evident that their own presence had been noted, for three or four
figures were seen to range themselves along the rail, evidently studying
them through a glass.
While still a mile or two distant, the figures at the rail disappeared
below deck, but others moved about among the snow mounds in the shelter
of the vessel's hull.
Upon arriving at the mounds, which proved to be snow igloos such as are
used by the Eskimos, Brent halted the dogs, and advanced to where two
men, apparently oblivious to his presence, were cutting up blubber.
"Hello," he greeted, "Where's the captain?"
One of the men did not even look up. The other, presenting a villainous
hairy face, nodded surlily toward an ice-coated ladder.
"Wait here," said Brent, turning to Joe Pete, "Till I find out whether
this whole crew is as cordial to strangers as these two specimens."
At the words, the man who had directed Brent to the ladder, raised his
head and opened his lips as if to speak, but evidently thinking better
of it, he uttered a sneering laugh, and went on with his cutting of
blubber.
Brent climbed the ladder, and made his way across the snow-buried deck,
guided by a well packed path that led to a door upon which he knocked
loudly. While waiting for a response he noticed the name _Belva Lou_
painted upon the stern of a small boat that lay bottomside up upon the
deck. Knocking again, he called loudly, and receiving no reply, opened
the door and found himself upon a steep flight of stairs. Stepping from
the dazzling whiteness of the outside, the interior of the whaler was
black as a pocket, and he paused upon the stairs to accustom his eyes to
the change. As the foul air from below filled his lungs it seemed to
Brent that he could not go on. The stench nauseated him--the vile
atmosphere reeked of rancid blubber, drying furs, and the fumes of dead
cookery. A tiny lamp that flared in a wall pocket at the foot of the
stairs gave forth a stink of its own. Gradually, as his eyes accorded to
the gloom, Brent took cognizance of the dim interior. The steep short
flight of steps terminated in a narrow passage that led toward the
stern whence came the muffled sound of voices. Descending, he glanced
along the passage toward a point where, a few feet distant, another lamp
flared dimly. Just beyond this lamp was a door, and from beyond the door
came the sound of voices.
He groped his way to the door and knocked. There was a sudden hush, a
few gruffly mumbled words, and then a deep voice snarled: "Who's there?"
"Just a visitor," announced Brent, stifling a desire to turn and rush
from that fetid hole out into the clean air--but it was too late.
The voice beyond the door commanded thickly: "Come in, an' we'll look ye
over!"
For just an instant Brent hesitated, then his hand fumbled for the knob,
turned it, and the narrow door swung inward. He stepped into the
box-like apartment, and for a moment stood speechless as his eyes strove
to take in the details of the horrid scene.
The stinking air of the dank passage was purest ozone in comparison with
the poisonous fog of the overheated, unventilated room. He felt suddenly
sick and dizzy as he sucked the evil effluvia into his lungs--the thick,
heavy smoke of cheap tobacco, the stench of unbathed humans, the
overpowering reek of spilled liquor, the spent breath from rum-soaked
bodies, the gaseous fumes of a soft coal stove, and the odor from an
oil lamp that had smoked one side of its chimney black.
"Shut the door! Coal costs money. What the hell ye tryin' to do, heat
the hull Ar'tic? Who be ye, anyhow? An' wot d'ye want?"
Mechanically Brent closed the door behind him, as he glanced into the
leering eyes of the speaker, who sat, with two other men, and a
partially clad Eskimo woman, at a table upon which were set out a bottle
and several glasses.
Before Brent could reply, the man across the table from the speaker
leaped to his feet and thrust out his hand. Through the grey haze of
smoke, Brent recognized Johnnie Claw.
"Well, if it ain't my ol' friend Ace-In-The-Hole!" cried the hooch
runner. "'S all right Cap! Best sport on the Yukon!" Ignoring the fact
that Brent had refused the proffered hand, Claw leered into his face:
"Ace-In-The-Hole let me make you 'quainted with Cap Jinkins, Cap'n of
the _Belva Lou_--damn good sport, too--an' Asa Scroggs, mate. Both damn
good sports, _Belva Lou_ fetches out more oil an' bone 'n any of
'em--an' Cap ain't 'fraid to spend his money. Glad you come long.
Welcome to stay long as you like--ain't he Cap?"
The Captain lowered a glass from his lips, and cleansed his overhanging
mustache upon the back of a hairy hand: "Sure," he growled, surlily,
"Didn't know he was friend o' yourn. S'down." The room contained only
four chairs, and as he spoke, the man, with a sweep of his hand, struck
the klooch from her chair, and kicked it toward Brent, who sank into it
heavily, and stared dully at the klooch who crawled to a corner and
returned the stare with a drunken, loose-lipped grin upon her fat face.
Brent shifted his glance, and upon a bunk beyond the table he saw
another klooch, lying in a drunken stupor, her only garment, a grimy
wrapper of faded calico, was crumpled about her, exposing one brown leg
to the hip.
Schooled as he had been to sights of debauchery by his service with
Cuter Malone, Brent was appalled--sickened by the sottish degeneracy of
his surroundings.
With unsteady hand the mate slopped some liquor into a glass and shoved
it toward him: "Swaller that," he advised, with a grin, "Yer gittin'
white 'round the gills. Comin' right in out of the air, it might seem a
leetle close in here, at first."
The fumes arising from the freshly spilled liquor smelled _clean_--the
only hint of cleanliness in the whole poisoned atmosphere of the cabin.
He breathed them deeply into his lungs, and for an instant the dizziness
and sickness at his stomach seemed less acute. Maybe one drink--one
little sip would revive him--counteract the poison of the noisome air,
and stimulate him against the dull apathy that was creeping upon him.
Slowly, his hand stole toward the glass, his fingers closed about it,
and he raised it to his lips. Another deep inhalation of its fragrance
and he drained it at a gulp.
"Didn't know we had no neighbors," ventured the Captain, filling his own
glass. "What ye doin' up here?"
"Prospecting," answered Brent, "The Copper Mountains. I saw your vessel
from the ridge, and thought I would come over and see what a whaler
looks like." The strong liquor was taking hold. A warm glow gripped his
belly and diffused itself slowly through his veins. The nausea left him,
and the olid atmosphere seemed suddenly purged of its reek.
"Well," grinned the captain, "The _Belva Lou_ hain't what ye'd call no
floatin' palace, but she's ahead o' most whalers. An' after Johnnie gits
through hornin' round 'mongst the Husky villages an' fixes us up with a
wife apiece, we manage to winter through right comfortable. Me an' Asa
stays on board, an' the rest of the crew, builds 'em igloos. But, here's
me runnin' off at the head--an' you might spill it all to the Mounted."
"Not him," laughed Claw. "Him an' I ain't always pulled, what you might
say, together--but he's square--kill you in a minute, if he took a
notion--but he'd go to hell before he'd snitch. Have another drink,
Ace-In-The-Hole, 'twon't hurt you none--only rum--an' water-weak."
Before he knew it the glass was in his hand, and again Brent drank.
After that he took them as they came. The bottle was emptied and tossed
into the corner where the drunken klooch recovered it and holding it to
her lips, greedily sucked the few drops that remained in the bottom.
Another bottle was produced, and Brent, his brain fired by the raw
liquor, measured glasses, drink for drink, never noticing that the same
liquor served, in the glasses of the other three, for round after round
of libations.
"Wher's yer camp?" asked Claw, as he refilled the glasses.
"Bloody Falls," answered Brent, waxing loquacious. "Bloody Falls of the
Coppermine, where old Samuel Hearne's Indians butchered the Eskimos."
"Butchered the Eskimos!" exclaimed Claw, "What d'you mean--butchered? I
ain't heard 'bout no Huskies bein' killed, an' who in hell's Sam Hearne?
I be'n round here, off an' on, fer long while, an' I ain't never run
acrost no Sam Hearne. What be you handin' us? You ort to start a
noospaper."
Brent laughed uproariously: "No, Claw, I reckon you never ran across
him. This happened over a hundred years ago--1771--July 13th, to be
exact."
Asa Scroggs grinned knowingly: "Man kin lap up a hell of a lot of idees
out of a bottle of hooch," he opined, "Mostly it runs to ph'los'fy, er
fightin', er po'try, er singin', er religion, er women, er sad
mem'ries--but this here stale news idee is a new one. But, g'wan,
Ace-In-The-Hole, did the Mounted git Sam fer his murdersome massacres?"
"That was a hundred years before the Mounted was thought of," answered
Brent, eying Scroggs truculently, as his inflamed brain sought hidden
insult in the words.
"I always know'd I was born too late," laughed Claw, who, noting the
signs of approaching trouble, sought peace. "This here'd be a hell of a
fine country, if it wasn't fer the Mounted. But, say, Ace-In-The-Hole,
you doin' any good? Struck any color?"
Brent forgot Scroggs and turned to Claw: "No, not to speak of. Just
about made wages."
"Well," continued the hooch runner, "You had a pretty fair sack of dust
when you come in. What d'you say we start a little game of stud--jest
the four of us?"
"Nothing doing," answered Brent, shortly. "I'm off of stud."
"Off of stud!" exclaimed the other, "How in hell d'you ever expect to
git even? Stud owes you more dust than you kin pile on a sled!"
Brent drank a glass of rum: "The game can keep what it owes me. And
besides I left my dust in camp--except a couple of ounces, or so."
"Yer finger bet goes with me," assured Claw, "Everybody's wouldn't, by a
damn sight--but yourn does. What d'you say?"
"My word is good in a game, is it?" asked Brent.
"Good as the dust--in one, or out of one," promptly assured Claw.
"Well, then listen to this: I gave my word in the presence of the man
who staked me for this trip, that I would never gamble again. So I
reckon you know how much stud I'll play from now on."
"Gawd A'mighty!" breathed Claw, incredulously, "An' the game owin' you
millions. Well, have a drink on it, anyway."
Claw refilled Brent's glass, and thrust it into his hand, with a wink at
the captain, for he had been quick to note that the liquor and the hot
fetid air of the room was making Brent drowsy. His eyes had become dull
and heavy lidded, and his chin rested heavily upon the throat of his
parka. "Ain't happened to run onto a little bunch of Injuns, up the
river, have you?" asked the man, as Brent gagged at the liquor.
"No," answered Brent, drowsily, "No Injuns in Copper Mountains--nothing
in the mountains--nothing but snow." Gradually his eyes closed, and his
head rolled heavily to one side. The drunken klooch rose to her knees,
and with a maudlin giggle, seized Brent's half empty glass and drained
it.
With a curse, the captain kicked her into her corner, and turned to Claw
with a suggestive motion: "Slit his gullet, an' we'll slip him down a
seal hole with some scrap iron on his legs. He's prob'bly lyin' 'bout
leavin' the dust in camp."
Claw shook his head: "Not him," he opined, "Search him first."
The Captain and the mate subjected the unconscious man to a thorough
search, at the conclusion of which Scroggs tossed a small lean gold sack
upon the table. "Prob'ly all he's got left, anyhow," he growled in
disgust. "Le's jest weight him an' slip him through the ice the way he
is. 'Tain't so messy."
"Not by a damn sight!" objected Claw. "It's jest like I told you, when
we was watchin' him through the glass. He's got anyways clost to a
hundred ounces. I seen it, when he paid me fer the hooch, like I was
tellin' you."
"Well, we kin back-track him to his camp, an' if we can't find it we kin
put the hot irons to the Injun's feet till he squeals."
"The Injun don't know where it's at," argued Claw contemptuously, "He's
too damn smart to trust a Siwash. An' you bet he's got it _cached_ where
we couldn't find it. He wouldn't leave it round where the first bunch of
Huskies that come along could lift it, would he?"
"Well," growled the Captain, "Yer so damn smart, what's yer big idee?"
"We got to let him go. Put back his little two ounces, so he won't
suspicion nothin'. Then, when he wakes up, I'll slip him a bottle of
hooch fer a present, an' he'll hit fer camp and start in on it. It won't
last long, an' then you an' me an' Scroggs will happen along with more
hooch to sell him. When he digs up the dust to pay fer it, I'll tend to
him. You two git the Injun--but _he's_ mine. I've got a long score to
settle with him--an' I know'd if I waited long enough, my time would
come."