TRAPPED
For three days the Arctic blizzard raged and howled, and drifted the
snow deep over the igloos that were grouped about the hulk of the _Belva
Lou_. On the morning of the fourth day Claw and the Captain made their
way across the snow-buried deck and gazed out toward the distant ridges
of the Copper Mountains.
"Might's well git started," opined Claw, "Have 'em load a week's grub
onto my sled, an' you an' me, an' the Dog Rib'll hit out."
"Will a week's grub be enough?" growled the Captain, "It's goin' to be a
hell of a trip. Mebbe we'd ort to wait a couple o' days an' see what the
weather'll do."
"Wait--hell!" cried Claw, "What's the use waitin'? The b'rom'ter's up,
an' you know damn well we ain't in fer no more storm fer a week er two.
What we want to do is to git over to Bloody Falls before Ace-In-The-Hole
takes a notion to break camp. An' what's the use of packin' more grub?
We'll have his won't we?"
"He ain't goin' to break camp till we come along with the hooch," argued
the other, "Couple days more an' this snow will be settled an' the
goin'll be easier."
"If you don't want to go, you kin stay here," retorted Claw, "Me--I
ain't goin' to take no chances. I an' the Dog Rib kin handle them two,
if you don't want none of it. An' then we'll shove on to the Injun camp
an' git the girl, an' I'll jest slip on over to Dawson with her--a
thousan' dollars is too cheap, anyhow. If I hadn't of b'n lit up I'd
never offered her to you fer no such figger."
"A trade's a trade," interrupted the Captain. "If yer so hell-bent on
goin', I'll go along." He shouted the necessary orders to the sailors
who were clearing the snow from the doorways of the igloos, and the two
turned to the cabin.
"I'll take that five hundred now, before we start, an' you kin give me
the balance when we git back with the girl," suggested Claw.
"Ye said there'd be five hundred apiece in Ace-In-The-Hole's sack,"
reminded the Captain, "I'll pay the first installment with that."
"You will, like hell! You'll pay me now. We ain't got that sack yet.
Come acrost."
"I'll give ye an order on----"
"You'll give me an order on no one! You'll count out five hundred, cash
money--dust, er bills, right here in this cabin, 'fore we budge an inch.
You've got it--come acrost!"
After much grumbling the Captain produced a roll of bills and counting
off five hundred dollars, passed the money reluctantly across the table
to Claw, who immediately stowed it away. "Don't forget to have 'em put a
keg of rum on the sled," he reminded, "We'll need it when we get to the
Injuns. Not half water, neither. What we want this trip is the strong
stuff that'll set 'em afire."
"You got to stand your half o' the rum. We're pardners on this."
"I stand nothin'. You put up the rum, an' the grub, an' a thousan'
dollars fer the girl. My contract is to git her, an' deliver her on
board the _Belva Lou_. The only thing we're pardners on is
Ace-In-The-Hole's dust. A trade's a trade--an' you got all the best of
it, at that."
Late that afternoon Claw and the Captain, and the renegade Dog Rib
reached the Bloody Falls of the Coppermine, and searched vainly for
Brent's camp.
"Pulled out!" cried the Captain, after an hour's search along the base
of the upstanding rock ledges.
Claw shook his head: "They never got here," he amended, "The storm got
bad before they hit the ridges, an' they're lost."
"Where's the camp, then?"
Claw indicated the high piled snow: "Tent was only pegged to the snow.
Wind blew it down, and the fresh snow buried it. We'll camp an' hang
around a couple of days. If they weathered the storm, they'll be along
by that time. If they didn't--well, they won't bother us none with the
girl."
"But, how about the dust?" asked the Captain, "If they don't come, we've
got to find the camp."
Claw laughed: "You'll have a hell of a time doin' it! With the snow
piled twenty foot deep along them ledges. If they don't show up, we'll
shove on to the Injuns. It's clost to a hundred an' fifty mile to the
camp, accordin' to the Dog Rib, an' it'll take us anyways a week to make
it, with the goin' as bad as it is."
"An' if we hang around here fer a couple o' days, that'll make nine
days, with a week's grub. What ye goin' to do 'bout that? I told ye we'd
ort to take more."
"Yer head don't hurt you none--the way you work it, does it?" sneered
Claw, "I s'pose we couldn't send the Dog Rib back fer some more grub
while we was awaitin'? An' while he's gone you kin git a belly full of
rootin' up the snow to find the camp."
For two days Claw laid in the tent and laughed at the Captain's sporadic
efforts to uncover Brent's camp. "If you'd help, 'stead of layin' around
laughin', we might find it!" flared the Captain.
"I don't want to find it," jeered Claw, "I'm usin' my head--me. The main
reason I come here was to kill Ace-In-The-Hole, so he couldn't butt in
on the other business. If the storm saved me the trouble, all right."
"But, the dust!"
"Sure--the dust," mocked Claw. "If we find the camp, an' locate the
dust, I divide it up with you. If we don't--I slip up here in the
spring, when you're chasin' whales, an' with the snow melted off all I
got to do is reach down an' pick it up--an' they won't be no dividin',
neither."
"What's to hinder me from slippin' in here long about that time? Two kin
play that game."
"Help yerself," grinned Claw, "Only, the Mounted patrol will be along in
the spring, an' they'll give you a chanct to explain about winterin'
them klooches on the _Belva Lou_. You've forgot, mebbe, that such
customs is frowned on."
"Ye damn double dealin' houn'!" cried the Captain, angrily.
"Double dealin', eh? I s'pose I'd ort to be out there breakin' my back
diggin' in the snow, so I could divvy up with you dust that I could have
all to myself, by takin' it easy. I offered to share the dust with you,
cause I figgered I needed yer help in bumpin' off them two. If you don't
help, you don't git paid, an' that's all there is to it."
The Indian returned with the provisions, and in the morning of the third
day they struck out up the Coppermine, with the Indian breaking trail
ahead of the dogs.
"I didn't expect 'em to show up," grinned Claw, as he trudged along
behind the Captain. "I figgered if they didn't make camp that first
stretch, they never would make it. Full of hooch, a man ain't fit to hit
the trail even in good weather. He thinks he kin stand anything--an' he
can't stand nothin'. The cold gits him. Here's what happened. The storm
gits thick, an' they git off the course. The Siwash is lost an' he tries
to wake up Ace-In-The-Hole. He finds the bottle of hooch--and that's the
end of the Siwash. Somewheres out on the sea-ice, or in under the snow
on the flats they's two frozen corpses--an' damn good reddence, I says."
Shortly after noon of the sixth day on the trail, the Dog Rib halted
abruptly and stood staring in bewilderment at a little log cabin, half
buried in the snow, that showed between the spruce trunks upon the right
bank of the stream. Claw hastened forward, and spoke to him in jargon.
The Indian shook his head, and by means of signs and bits of jargon,
conveyed the information that the cabin did not belong to the Indian
camp, and that it had not been there at the time he fled from the camp.
He further elucidated that the camp was several miles along.
"Must be some of 'em got sore at the rest, an' moved up here an' built
the shack," opined Claw, "Anyways, we got to find out--but we better be
heeled when we do it." He looked to his revolver, and stooping, picked
up a rifle from the sled. The Captain followed his example, and Claw
ordered the Indian to proceed. No one had appeared, and at the foot of
the ascent to the cabin, Claw paused to examine a snow-covered mound.
The Captain was about to join him when, with a loud yell of terror, he
suddenly disappeared from sight, and the next moment the welkin rang
with his curses, while Claw laughing immoderately at the mishap, stood
peering into Brent's brush-covered shaft. It was but the work of a few
moments to haul the discomfited Captain from the hole. "Shaft, an' an
ore dump," explained Claw. "This here's a white man's layout, an' he's
up to date, too. They ain't be'n burnin' in, even on the Yukon, only a
year or so. Wonder who he is?"
The two followed the Indian who had halted before the cabin, and stood
looking down at the snowshoe trail that led from the door.
"Off huntin', I guess. Er over to the Injun camp. Looks like them tracks
was made yesterday. He ain't done no work in the shaft though sence the
storm. We'll go in an' make ourself to home till he gits back, anyhow. I
don't like the idee of no white man in here. 'Cordin' to who it
is--but----"
"Mebbe it ain't a white man," ventured the Captain.
"Sure it's a white man. Didn't I jest tell you that burnin' in ain't no
Injun trick?"
"Dog Rib snowshoes," suggested the Indian in jargon, pointing to the
tracks.
"That don't prove nothin'," retorted Claw, "He could of got 'em from
the Injuns, couldn't he? They's two of 'em lives here," he added, from
the interior. "Unharness the dogs, while I build up a fire."
* * * * *
From the moment of Brent's departure, Snowdrift bent all her energies
persuading the Indians to burn into the gravel for gold. At first her
efforts were unavailing. Even Wananebish refused to take any interest in
the proceeding, so the girl was forced to cut her own wood, tend her own
fire, and throw out her own gravel. When, however, at the end of a week
she panned out some yellow gold in the little cabin, as she had seen
Brent do, the old squaw was won completely over, and thereafter the two
women worked side by side, with the result that upon the test panning,
Snowdrift computed that they, too, were taking out almost an ounce a day
apiece. When the other Indians saw the gold they also began to scrape
away the snow, and to cut wood and to build their fires on the gravel.
Men and women, and even the children worked all day and took turns
tending the fire at night. Trapping and hunting were forgotten in the
new found craze for gold, and it became necessary for Snowdrift to tole
off hunters for the day, as the supply of meat shrank to an alarming
minimum.
By the end of another week interest began to flag. The particles of gold
collected in the test pannings were small in size, and few in number,
the work was hard and distasteful, and it became more and more
difficult for the girl to explain to them that these grains were not the
ultimate reward for the work, that they were only tests, and that the
real reward would not be visible until spring when they would clean up
the gravel dumps that were mounding up beside the shafts. The Indians
wanted to know how this was to be accomplished, and Snowdrift suddenly
realized that she did not know. She tried to remember what Brent had
told her of the sluicing out process, and realized that he had told very
little. Both had been content to let the details go until such time as
the sluicing should begin. Vaguely, she told the Indians of sluice boxes
and riffles, but they were quick to see that she knew not whereof she
spoke. In vain, she told them that Brent would explain it all when he
returned, but they had little use for this white man who had no hooch to
trade. At last, in desperation, she hit upon the expedient of showing
the Indians more gold. From Brent's sack she extracted quantities of
dust which she displayed with pride. The plan worked at first, but soon,
the Indians became dissatisfied with their own showing, and either
knocked off altogether, or ceased work on the shafts and began to
laboriously pan out their dumps, melting the ice for water, and carrying
the gravel, a pan at a time, to their cabins.
This too, was abandoned after a few days, and the Indians returned to
their traps, and to the snaring of rabbits. Only Snowdrift and old
Wananebish kept up to the work of cutting and hauling the wood, tending
the fires, and throwing out the gravel. Despite the grueling toil,
Snowdrift found time nearly every day to slip up and visit Brent's
cabin. Sometimes she would go only to the bend of the river and gaze at
it from a distance. Again she would enter and sit in his chair, or
moving softly about the room, handle almost reverently the things that
were his, wiping them carefully and returning them to their place. She
purloined a shirt from a nail above his bunk, and carrying it home used
it as a pattern for a wonderfully wrought shirt of buckskin and beads.
Each evening, she worked on the shirt, while Wananebish sat stolidly by,
and each night as she knelt beside her bunk she murmured a prayer for
the well-being of the big strong man who was hers.
But whether it was at the shaft, at her needle, at her devotions, or
upon her frequent trips to his cabin, her thoughts were always of Brent,
and her love for him grew with the passing of the days until her longing
for his presence amounted, at times, almost to a physical pain. One by
one, she counted the days of his absence, and mentally speculated upon
his return. After the second week had passed she never missed a day in
visiting his cabin. Always at the last bend of the river, she quickened
her steps, and always she paused, breathless, for some sign of his
return.
"Surely, he will come soon," she would mutter, when the inspection
showed only the lifeless cabin, or, "He will come tomorrow." When the
seventeenth and the eighteenth days had passed, with no sign of him, the
girl, woman like, began to conjure up all sort and manner of dire
accident that could have befallen him. He might have been drowned upon a
thinly crusted rapid. He might have become lost. Or frozen. Or, ventured
upon a snow cornice and been dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.
Every violent death known to the North she pictured for him, and as each
picture formed in her brain, she dismissed it, laughed at her fears, and
immediately pictured another.
On the nineteenth day she chopped wood until the early darkness drove
her from her tasks, then she returned to the cabin and, fastening on her
snowshoes, struck off down the river. "Surely, he will be here today,"
she murmured, "If he is not here today I will know something has
happened, and tomorrow I shall start out to find him. But, no--I am
foolish! Did he not say it would be two weeks--a month--maybe
longer--those were his very words. And it is only nineteen days, and
that is not a month. But, he will come sooner!" She flushed deeply, "He
will come to _me_--for he does love me, even as I love him. In his eyes
I have seen it--and in his voice--and in the touch of his hand."
The last bend was almost in sight and she quickened her pace. She knew
to an inch, the exact spot from which the first glimpse of the cabin was
to be had. She reached the spot and stared eagerly toward the spruce
thicket. The next instant a glad cry rang out upon the still Arctic air.
"Oh, he has come! He has come! The light is in his window! Oh, my
darling! My own, own man!"
Half laughing, half sobbing, she ran forward, urging her tired muscles
to their utmost, stumbling, recovering, hurrying on. Only a minute more
now! Up the bank from the river! And, not even pausing to remove her
snowshoes, she burst into the room with Brent's name upon her lips.
The next instant the blood rushed from her face leaving it deathly
white. She drew herself swiftly erect, and with a wild cry of terror
turned to fly from the room. But her snowshoes fouled, and she fell
heavily to the floor, just as Johnnie Claw, with a triumphant leer upon
his bearded face leaped to the door, banged it shut, and stood with his
back against it, leering and smirking down at her, while the Captain of
the _Belva Lou_ knelt over her and stared into her eyes with burning,
bestial gaze.