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THE YUKON TRAIL
A Tale of the North
by
WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE
Author of
Wyoming, Bucky O'Connor, Etc.
With Illustrations by George Ellis Wolfe
[Illustration: NOW HE CAUGHT HER BY THE SHOULDERS (_See page 108_)]
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1917, by William MacLeod Raine
All Rights Reserved
Published May 1917
TO
MY BROTHER
EDGAR C. RAINE
who knew the Lights of Dawson when they were a magnet to the feet
of those answering the call of Adventure, who mushed the Yukon Trail
from its headwaters to Bering Sea, who still finds in the Frozen
North the Romance of the Last Frontier.
Contents
I. Going "In" 1
II. Enter a Man 10
III. The Girl from Drogheda 23
IV. The Crevasse 34
V. Across the Traverse 49
VI. Sheba sings--and Two Men listen 58
VII. Wally gets Orders 71
VIII. The End of the Passage 82
IX. Gid Holt goes prospecting 93
X. The Rah-Rah Boy functions 109
XI. Gordon invites himself to Dinner--and does not enjoy it 125
XII. Sheba says "Perhaps" 137
XIII. Diane and Gordon differ 144
XIV. Genevieve Mallory takes a Hand 156
XV. Gordon buys a Revolver 170
XVI. Ambushed 181
XVII. "God save you kindly" 193
XVIII. Gordon spends a Busy Evening 201
XIX. Sheba does not think so 210
XX. Gordon finds himself Unpopular 217
XXI. A New Way of leaving a House 227
XXII. Gid Holt comes to Kusiak 232
XXIII. In the Dead of Night 241
XXIV. Macdonald follows a Clue 247
XXV. In the Blizzard 256
XXVI. Hard Mushing 268
XXVII. Two on the Trail 275
XXVIII. A Message from the Dead 286
XXIX. "Don't touch him! Don't you dare touch him!" 292
XXX. Holt frees his Mind 301
XXXI. Sheba digs 308
XXXII. Diane changes her Mind 318
Illustrations
Now he caught her by the shoulders _Frontispiece_
"So you think I'm a 'fraid-cat, Mr. Elliot?" 44
The situation was piquant, even though it was at her expense 236
For him the beauty of the night lay largely in her presence 322
The Yukon Trail
CHAPTER I
GOING "IN"
The midnight sun had set, but in a crotch between two snow-peaks it
had kindled a vast caldron from which rose a mist of jewels, garnet
and turquoise, topaz and amethyst and opal, all swimming in a sea of
molten gold. The glow of it still clung to the face of the broad Yukon,
as a flush does to the soft, wrinkled cheek of a girl just roused from
deep sleep.
Except for a faint murkiness in the air it was still day. There was
light enough for the four men playing pinochle on the upper deck, though
the women of their party, gossiping in chairs grouped near at hand, had
at last put aside their embroidery. The girl who sat by herself at a
little distance held a magazine still open on her lap. If she were not
reading, her attitude suggested it was less because of the dusk than
that she had surrendered herself to the spell of the mysterious beauty
which for this hour at least had transfigured the North to a land all
light and atmosphere and color.
Gordon Elliot had taken the boat at Pierre's Portage, fifty miles
farther down the river. He had come direct from the creeks, and his
impressions of the motley pioneer life at the gold-diggings were so
vivid that he had found an isolated corner of the deck where he could
scribble them in a notebook while still fresh.
But he had not been too busy to see that the girl in the wicker chair
was as much of an outsider as he was. Plainly this was her first trip
in. Gordon was a stranger in the Yukon country, one not likely to be
over-welcome when it became known what his mission was. It may have been
because he was out of the picture himself that he resented a little the
exclusion of the young woman with the magazine. Certainly she herself
gave no evidence of feeling about it. Her long-lashed eyes looked
dreamily across the river to the glowing hills beyond. Not once did they
turn with any show of interest to the lively party under the awning.
From where he was leaning against the deckhouse Elliot could see only
a fine, chiseled profile shading into a mass of crisp, black hair, but
some quality in the detachment of her personality stimulated gently his
imagination. He wondered who she could be. His work had taken him to
frontier camps before, but he could not place her as a type. The best
he could do was to guess that she might be the daughter of some
territorial official on her way in to join him.
A short, thick-set man who had ridden down on the stage with Elliot to
Pierre's Portage drifted along the deck toward him. He wore the careless
garb of a mining man in a country which looks first to comfort.
"Bound for Kusiak?" he asked, by way of opening conversation.
"Yes," answered Gordon.
The miner nodded toward the group under the awning. "That bunch lives
at Kusiak. They've got on at different places the last two or three
days--except Selfridge and his wife, they've been out. Guess you can
tell that from hearing her talk--the little woman in red with the snappy
black eyes. She's spillin' over with talk about the styles in New York
and the cabarets and the new shows. That pot-bellied little fellow in
the checked suit is Selfridge. He is Colby Macdonald's man Friday."
Elliot took in with a quickened interest the group bound for Kusiak. He
had noticed that they monopolized as a matter of course the best places
on the deck and in the dining-room. They were civil enough to outsiders,
but their manner had the unconscious selfishness that often regulates
social activities. It excluded from their gayety everybody that did not
belong to the proper set.
"That sort of thing gets my goat," the miner went on sourly. "Those
women over there have elected themselves Society with a capital S. They
put on all the airs the Four Hundred do in New York. And who the hell
are they anyhow?--wives to a bunch of grafting politicians mostly."
From the casual talk that had floated to him, with its many little
allusions punctuating the jolly give-and-take of their repartee, Elliot
guessed that their lives had the same background of tennis, dinners,
hops, official gossip, and business. They evidently knew one another
with the intimacy that comes only to the segment of a small community
shut off largely from the world and forced into close social relations.
No doubt they had loaned each other money occasionally, stood by in
trouble, and gossiped back and forth about their shortcomings and family
skeletons even as society on the outside does.
"That's the way of the world, isn't it? Our civilization is built on the
group system," suggested Elliot.
"Maybeso," grumbled the miner. "But I hate to see Alaska come to it.
Me, I saw this country first in '97--packed an outfit in over the Pass.
Every man stood on his own hind legs then. He got there if he was
strong--mebbe; he bogged down on the trail good and plenty if he was
weak. We didn't have any of the artificial stuff then. A man had to have
the guts to stand the gaff."
"I suppose it was a wild country, Mr. Strong."
The little miner's eyes gleamed. "Best country in the world. We
didn't stand for anything that wasn't on the level. It was a poor
man's country--wages fifteen dollars a day and plenty of work. Everybody
had a chance. Anybody could stake a claim and gamble on his luck. Now
the big corporations have slipped in and grabbed the best. It ain't
a prospector's proposition any more. Instead of faro banks we've got
savings banks. The wide-open dance hall has quit business in favor
of moving pictures. And, as I said before, we've got Society."
"All frontier countries have to come to it."
"Hmp! In the days I'm telling you about that crowd there couldn't 'a'
hustled meat to fill their bellies three meals. Parasites, that's what
they are. They're living off that bunch of roughnecks down there and
folks like 'em."
With a wave of his hand Strong pointed to a group of miners who had
boarded the boat with them at Pierre's Portage. There were about a dozen
of the men, for the most part husky, heavy-set foreigners. They had been
drinking, and were in a sullen humor. Elliot gathered from their talk
that they had lost their jobs because they had tried to organize an
incipient strike in the Frozen Gulch district.
"Roughnecks and booze-fighters--that's all they are. But they earn their
way. Not that I blame Macdonald for firing them, mind you," continued
the miner.
"Were they working for Macdonald?"
"Yep. His superintendent up there was too soft. These here Swedes got
gay. Mac hit the trail for Frozen Gulch. He hammered his big fist
into the bread-basket of the ringleader and said, 'Git!' That fellow's
running yet, I'll bet. Then Mac called the men together and read the
riot act to them. He fired this bunch on the boat and was out of the
camp before you could bat an eye. It was the cleanest hurry-up job I
ever did see."
"From what I've heard about him he must be a remarkable man."
"He's the biggest man in Alaska, bar none."
This was a subject that interested Gordon Elliot very much. Colby
Macdonald and his activities had brought him to the country.
"Do you mean personally--or because he represents the big corporations?"
"Both. His word comes pretty near being law up here, not only because
he stands for the Consolidated, but because he's one man from the ground
up. I ain't any too strong for that New York bunch of capitalists back
of Mac, but I've got to give it to him that he's all there without
leaning on anybody."
"I've heard that he's a domineering man--rides roughshod over others.
Is that right, Mr. Strong?"
"He's a bear for getting his own way," grinned the little miner. "If you
won't get out of his road he peels your hide off and hangs it up to dry.
But I can't help liking him. He's big every way you take him. He'll
stand the acid, Mac will."
"Do you mean that he's square--honest?"
"You've said two things, my friend," answered Strong dryly. "He's
square. If he tells you anything, don't worry because he ain't put down
his John Hancock before a notary. He'll see it through to a finish--to
a fighting finish if he has to. Don't waste any time looking for fat or
yellow streaks in Mac. They ain't there. Nobody ever heard him squeal
yet and what's more nobody ever will."
"No wonder men like him."
"But when you say honest--Hell, no! Not the way you define honesty
down in the States. He's a grabber, Mac is. Better not leave anything
valuable around unless you've got it spiked to the floor. He takes what
he wants."
"What does he look like?" asked Gordon.
"Oh, I don't know." Strong hesitated, while he searched for words to
show the picture in his mind. "Big as a house--steps out like a buck
in the spring--blue-gray eyes that bore right through you."
"How old?"
"Search me. You never think of age when you're looking at him.
Forty-five, mebbe--or fifty--I don't know."
"Married?"
"No-o." Hanford Strong nodded in the direction of the Kusiak circle.
"They say he's going to marry Mrs. Mallory. She's the one with the red
hair."
It struck young Elliot that the miner was dismissing Mrs. Mallory in too
cavalier a fashion. She was the sort of woman at whom men look twice,
and then continue to look while she appears magnificently unaware of it.
Her hair was not red, but of a lustrous bronze, amazingly abundant,
and dressed in waves with the careful skill of a coiffeur. Half-shut,
smouldering eyes had met his for an instant at dinner across the table
and had told him she was a woman subtle and complex. Slightest shades
of meaning she could convey with a lift of the eyebrow or an intonation
of the musical voice. If she was already fencing with the encroaching
years there was little evidence of it in her opulent good looks. She had
manifestly specialized in graceful idleness and was prepared to meet
with superb confidence the competition of débutantes. The elusive shadow
of lost illusions, of knowledge born of experience, was the only
betrayal of vanished youth in her equipment.