THE KILLING
For four days the _Santa Maria_ felt blindly through the white fields,
drifting north with the spring tide that sets through Behring Strait,
till, on the morning of the fifth, open water showed to the east.
Creeping through, she broke out into the last stage of the long race,
amid the cheers of her weary passengers; and the dull jar of her engines
made welcome music to the girl in the deck state-room.
Soon they picked up a mountainous coast which rose steadily into
majestic, barren ranges, still white with the melting snows; and at ten
in the evening under a golden sunset, amid screaming whistles, they
anchored in the roadstead of Nome. Before the rumble of her chains had
ceased or the echo from the fleet’s salute had died from the shoreward
hills, the ship was surrounded by a swarm of tiny craft clamoring about
her iron sides, while an officer in cap and gilt climbed the bridge and
greeted Captain Stephens. Tugs with trailing lighters circled discreetly
about, awaiting the completion of certain formalities. These over, the
uniformed gentleman dropped back into his skiff and rowed away.
“A clean bill of health, captain,” he shouted, saluting the commander.
“Thank ye, sir,” roared the sailor, and with that the row-boats swarmed
inward pirate-like, boarding the steamer from all quarters.
As the master turned, he looked down from his bridge to the deck below,
full into the face of Dextry, who had been an intent witness of the
meeting. With unbending dignity, Captain Stephens let his left eyelid
droop slowly, while a boyish grin spread widely over his face.
Simultaneously, orders rang sharp and fast from the bridge, the crew
broke into feverish life, the creak of booms and the clank of
donkey-hoists arose.
“We’re here, Miss Stowaway,” said Glenister, entering the girl’s cabin.
“The inspector passed us and it’s time for you to see the magic city.
Come, it’s a wonderful sight.”
This was the first time they had been alone since the scene on the
after-deck, for, besides ignoring Glenister, she had managed that he
should not even see her except in Dextry’s presence. Although he had
ever since been courteous and considerate, she felt the leaping emotions
that were hidden within him and longed to leave the ship, to fly from
the spell of his personality. Thoughts of him made her writhe, and yet
when he was near she could not hate him as she willed--he overpowered
her, he would not be hated, he paid no heed to her slights. This very
quality reminded her how willingly and unquestioningly he had fought off
the sailors from the _Ohio_ at a word from her. She knew he would do so
again, and more, and it is hard to be bitter to one who would lay down
his life for you, even though he has offended--particularly when he has
the magnetism that sweeps you away from your moorings.
“There’s no danger of being seen,” he continued. “The crowd’s crazy,
and, besides, we’ll go ashore right away. You must be mad with the
confinement--it’s on my nerves, too.”
As they stepped outside, the door of an adjacent cabin opened, framing
an angular, sharp-featured woman, who, catching sight of the girl
emerging from Glenister’s state-room, paused with shrewdly narrowed
eyes, flashing quick, malicious glances from one to the other. They came
later to remember with regret this chance encounter, for it was fraught
with grave results for them both.
“Good-evening, Mr. Glenister,” the lady said with acid cordiality.
“Howdy, Mrs. Champian?” He moved away.
She followed a step, staring at Helen.
“Are you going ashore to-night or wait for morning?”
“Don’t know yet, I’m sure.” Then aside to the girl he muttered, “Shake
her, she’s spying on us.”
“Who is she?” asked Miss Chester, a moment later.
“Her husband manages one of the big companies. She’s an old cat.”
Gaining her first view of the land, the girl cried out, sharply. They
rode on an oily sea, tinted like burnished copper, while on all sides,
amid the faint rattle and rumble of machinery, scores of ships were
belching cargoes out upon living swarms of scows, tugs, stern-wheelers,
and dories. Here and there Eskimo oomiaks, fat, walrus-hide boats, slid
about like huge, many-legged water-bugs. An endless, ant-like stream of
tenders, piled high with freight, plied to and from the shore. A mile
distant lay the city, stretched like a white ribbon between the gold of
the ocean sand and the dun of the moss-covered tundra. It was like no
other in the world. At first glance it seemed all made of new white
canvas. In a week its population had swelled from three to thirty
thousand. It now wandered in a slender, sinuous line along the coast for
miles, because only the beach afforded dry camping ground. Mounting to
the bank behind, one sank knee-deep in moss and water, and, treading
twice in the same tracks, found a bog of oozing, icy mud. Therefore, as
the town doubled daily in size, it grew endwise like a string of
dominoes, till the shore from Cape Nome to Penny River was a long reach
of white, glinting in the low rays of the arctic sunset like foamy
breakers on a tropic island.
“That’s Anvil Creek up yonder,” said Glenister. “There’s where the Midas
lies. See!” He indicated a gap in the buttress of mountains rolling back
from the coast. “It’s the greatest creek in the world. You’ll see gold
by the mule-load, and hillocks of nuggets. Oh, I’m glad to get back.
_This_ is life. That stretch of beach is full of gold. These hills are
seamed with quartz. The bed-rock of that creek is yellow. There’s gold,
gold, gold, everywhere--more than ever was in old Solomon’s mines--and
there’s mystery and peril and things unknown.”
“Let us make haste,” said the girl. “I have something I must do
to-night. After that, I can learn to know these things.”
Securing a small boat, they were rowed ashore, the partners plying their
ferryman with eager questions. Having arrived five days before, he was
exploding with information and volunteered the fruits of his ripe
experience till Dextry stated that they were “sourdoughs” themselves,
and owned the Midas, whereupon Miss Chester marvelled at the awe which
sat upon the man and the wondering stare with which he devoured the
partners, to her own utter exclusion.
“Sufferin’ cats! Look at the freight!” ejaculated Dextry. “If a storm
come up it would bust the community!”
The beach they neared was walled and crowded to the high-tide mark with
ramparts of merchandise, while every incoming craft deposited its quota
upon whatever vacant foot was close at hand, till bales, boxes, boilers,
and baggage of all kinds were confusedly intermixed in the narrow space.
Singing longshoremen trundled burdens from the lighters and piled them
on the heap, while yelling, cursing crowds fought over it all,
selecting, sorting, loading.
There was no room for more, yet hourly they added to the mass. Teams
splashed through the lapping surf or stuck in the deep sand between
hillocks of goods. All was noise, profanity, congestion, and feverish
hurry. This burning haste rang in the voice of the multitude, showed in
its violence of gesture and redness of face, permeated the atmosphere
with a magnetic, electrifying energy.
“It’s somethin’ fierce ashore,” said the oarsman. “I been up fer three
days an’ nights steady--there ain’t no room, nor time, nor darkness to
sleep in. Ham an’ eggs is a dollar an’ a half, an’ whiskey’s four bits a
throw.” He wailed the last, sadly, as a complaint unspeakable.
“Any trouble doin’?” inquired the old man.
“You _know_ it!” the other cried, colloquially. “There was a massacree
in the Northern last night.”
“Gamblin’ row?”
“Yep. Tin-horn called ‘Missou’ done it.”
“Sho!” said Dextry. “I know him. He’s a bad actor.” All three men nodded
sagely, and the girl wished for further light, but they volunteered no
explanation.
Leaving the skiff, they plunged into turmoil. Dodging through the
tangle, they came out into fenced lots where tents stood wall to wall
and every inch was occupied. Here and there was a vacant spot guarded
jealously by its owner, who gazed sourly upon all men with the
forbidding eye of suspicion. Finding an eddy in the confusion, the men
stopped.
“Where do you want to go?” they asked Miss Chester.
There was no longer in Glenister’s glance that freedom with which he had
come to regard the women of the North. He had come to realize dully that
here was a girl driven by some strong purpose into a position repellent
to her. In a man of his type, her independence awoke only admiration and
her coldness served but to inflame him the more. Delicacy, in Glenister,
was lost in a remarkable singleness of purpose. He could laugh at her
loathing, smile under her abuse, and remain utterly ignorant that
anything more than his action in seizing her that night lay at the
bottom of her dislike. He did not dream that he possessed
characteristics abhorrent to her; and he felt a keen reluctance at
parting.
She extended both hands.
“I can never thank you enough for what you have done--you two; but I
shall try. Good-bye!”
Dextry gazed doubtfully at his own hand, rough and gnarly, then taking
hers as he would have handled a robin’s egg, waggled it limply.
“We ain’t goin’ to turn you adrift this-a-way. Whatever your destination
is, we’ll see you to it.”
“I can find my friends,” she assured him.
“This is the wrong latitude in which to dispute a lady, but knowin’ this
camp from soup to nuts, as I do, I su’gests a male escort.”
“Very well! I wish to find Mr. Struve, of Dunham & Struve, lawyers.”
“I’ll take you to their offices,” said Glenister. “You see to the
baggage, Dex. Meet me at the Second Class in half an hour and we’ll run
out to the Midas.” They pushed through the tangle of tents, past piles
of lumber, and emerged upon the main thoroughfare, which ran parallel to
the shore.
Nome consisted of one narrow street, twisted between solid rows of
canvas and half-erected frame buildings, its every other door that of a
saloon. There were fair-looking blocks which aspired to the dizzy height
of three stories, some sheathed in corrugated iron, others gleaming and
galvanized. Lawyers’ signs, doctors’, surveyors’, were in the upper
windows. The street was thronged with men from every land--Helen Chester
heard more dialects than she could count. Laplanders in quaint,
three-cornered, padded caps idled past. Men with the tan of the tropics
rubbed elbows with yellow-haired Norsemen, and near her a carefully
groomed Frenchman with riding-breeches and monocle was in pantomime with
a skin-clad Eskimo. To her left was the sparkling sea, alive with ships
of every class. To her right towered timberless mountains, unpeopled,
unexplored, forbidding, and desolate--their hollows inlaid with snow.
On one hand were the life and the world she knew; on the other, silence,
mystery, possible adventure.
The roadway where she stood was a crush of sundry vehicles from bicycles
to dog-hauled water-carts, and on all sides men were laboring busily,
the echo of hammers mingling with the cries of teamsters and the tinkle
of music within the saloons.
“And this is midnight!” exclaimed Helen, breathlessly. “Do they ever
rest?”
“There isn’t time--this is a gold stampede. You haven’t caught the
spirit of it yet.”
They climbed the stairs in a huge, iron-sheeted building to the office
of Dunham & Struve, and in answer to their knock, a red-faced,
white-haired, tousled man, in shirt-sleeves and stocking-feet, opened
the door.
“What d’ye wan’?” he bawled, his legs wavering uncertainly. His eyes
were heavy and bloodshot, his lips loose, and his whole person exhaled
alcoholic fumes like a gust from a still-house. Hanging to the knob, he
strove vainly to solve the mystery of his suspenders--hiccoughing
intermittently.
“Humph! Been drunk ever since I left?” questioned Glenister.
“Somebody mus’ have tol’ you,” the lawyer replied. There was neither
curiosity, recognition, nor resentment in his voice. In fact, his head
drooped so that he paid no attention to the girl, who had shrunk back at
sight of him. He was a young man, with marks of brilliancy showing
through the dissipation betrayed by his silvery hair and coarsened
features.
“Oh, I don’t know what to do,” lamented the girl.
“Anybody else here besides you?” asked her escort of the lawyer.
“No. I’m runnin’ the law business unassisted. Don’t need any help.
Dunham’s in Wash’n’ton, D. C, the lan’ of the home, the free of the
brave. What can I do for you?”
He made to cross the threshold hospitably, but tripped, plunged forward,
and would have rolled down the stairs had not Glenister gathered him up
and borne him back into the office, where he tossed him upon a bed in a
rear room.
“Now what, Miss Chester?” asked the young man, returning.
“Isn’t that dreadful?” she shuddered. “Oh, and I must see him to-night!”
She stamped impatiently. “I must see him alone.”
“No, you mustn’t,” said Glenister, with equal decision. “In the first
place, he wouldn’t know what you were talking about, and in the second
place--I know Struve. He’s too drunk to talk business and too sober
to--well, to see you alone.”
“But I _must_ see him,” she insisted. “It’s what brought me here. You
don’t understand.”
“I understand more than he could. He’s in no condition to act on any
important matter. You come around to-morrow when he’s sober.”
“It means so much,” breathed the girl. “The beast!”
Glenister noted that she had not wrung her hands nor even hinted at
tears, though plainly her disappointment and anxiety were consuming her.
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to wait, but I don’t know where to go--some
hotel, I suppose.”
“There aren’t any. They’re building two, but to-night you couldn’t hire
a room in Nome for money. I was about to say ‘love or money.’ Have you
no other friends here--no women? Then you must let me find a place for
you. I have a friend whose wife will take you in.”
She rebelled at this. Was she never to have done with this man’s favors?
She thought of returning to the ship, but dismissed that. She undertook
to decline his aid, but he was half-way down the stairs and paid no
attention to her beginning--so she followed him.
It was then that Helen Chester witnessed her first tragedy of the
frontier, and through it came to know better the man whom she disliked
and with whom she had been thrown so fatefully. Already she had thrilled
at the spell of this country, but she had not learned that strength and
license carry blood and violence as corollaries.
Emerging from the doorway at the foot of the stairs, they drifted slowly
along the walk, watching the crowd. Besides the universal tension, there
were laughter and hope and exhilaration in the faces. The enthusiasm of
this boyish multitude warmed one. The girl wished to get into this
spirit--to be one of them. Then suddenly from the babble at their elbows
came a discordant note, not long nor loud, only a few words, penetrating
and harsh with the metallic quality lent by passion.
Helen glanced over her shoulder to find that the smiles of the throng
were gone and that its eyes were bent on some scene in the street, with
an eager interest she had never seen mirrored before. Simultaneously
Glenister spoke:
“Come away from here.”
With the quickened eye of experience he foresaw trouble and tried to
drag her on, but she shook off his grasp impatiently, and, turning,
gazed absorbed at the spectacle which unfolded itself before her.
Although not comprehending the play of events, she felt vaguely the
quick approach of some crisis, yet was unprepared for the swiftness with
which it came.
Her eyes had leaped to the figures of two men in the street from whom
the rest had separated like oil from water. One was slim and well
dressed; the other bulky, mackinawed, and lowering of feature. It was
the smaller who spoke, and for a moment she misjudged his bloodshot eyes
and swaying carriage to be the result of alcohol, until she saw that he
was racked with fury.
“Make good, I tell you, quick! Give me that bill of sale, you ----.”
The unkempt man swung on his heel with a growl and walked away, his
course leading him towards Glenister and the girl. With two strides he
was abreast of them; then, detecting the flashing movement of the other,
he whirled like a wild animal. His voice had the snarl of a beast in it.
“Ye had to have it, didn’t ye? Well, there!”
The actions of both men were quick as light, yet to the girl’s taut
senses they seemed theatrical and deliberate. Into her mind was seared
forever the memory of that second, as though the shutter of a camera had
snapped, impressing upon her brain the scene, sharp, clear-cut, and
vivid. The shaggy back of the large man almost brushing her, the
rage-drunken, white-shirted man in the derby hat, the crowd sweeping
backward like rushes before a blast, men with arms flexed and feet
raised in flight, the glaring yellow sign of the “Gold Belt Dance Hall”
across the way--these were stamped upon her retina, and then she was
jerked violently backward, two strong arms crushed her down upon her
knees against the wall, and she was smothered in the arms of Roy
Glenister.
“My God! Don’t move! We’re in line!”
He crouched over her, his cheek against her hair, his weight forcing her
down into the smallest compass, his arms about her, his body forming a
living shield against the flying bullets. Over them the big man stood,
and the sustained roar of his gun was deafening. In an instant they
heard the thud and felt the jar of lead in the thin boards against which
they huddled. Again the report echoed above their heads, and they saw
the slender man in the street drop his weapon and spin half round as
though hit with some heavy hand. He uttered a cry and, stooping for his
gun, plunged forward, burying his face in the sand.
The man by Glenister’s side shouted curses thickly, and walked towards
his prostrate enemy, firing at every step. The wounded man rolled to his
side, and, raising himself on his elbow, shot twice, so rapidly that the
reports blended--but without checking his antagonist’s approach. Four
more times the relentless assailant fired deliberately, his last missile
sent as he stood over the body which twitched and shuddered at his feet,
its garments muddy and smeared. Then he turned and retraced his steps.
Back within arm’s-length of the two who pressed against the building he
came, and as he went by they saw his coarse and sullen features drawn
and working pallidly, while the breath whistled through his teeth. He
held his course to the door they had just quitted, then as he turned he
coughed bestially, spitting out a mouthful of blood. His knees wavered.
He vanished within the portals and, in the sickly silence that fell,
they heard his hob-nailed boots clumping slowly up the stairs.
Noise awoke and rioted down the thoroughfare. Men rushed forth from
every quarter, and the ghastly object in the dirt was hidden by a
seething mass of miners.
Glenister raised the girl, but her head rolled limply, and she would
have slipped to her knees again had he not placed his arm about her
waist. Her eyes were staring and horror-filled.
“Don’t be frightened,” said he, smiling at her reassuringly; but his own
lips shook and the sweat stood out like dew on him; for they had both
been close to death. There came a surge and swirl through the crowd, and
Dextry swooped upon them like a hawk.
“Be ye hurt? Holy Mackinaw! When I see ’em blaze away I yells at ye fit
to bust my throat. I shore thought you was gone. Although I can’t say
but this killin’ was a sight for sore eyes--so neat an’ genteel--still,
as a rule, in these street brawls it’s the innocuous bystander that has
flowers sent around to his house afterwards.”
“Look at this,” said Glenister. Breast-high in the wall against which
they had crouched, not three feet apart, were bullet holes.
“Them’s the first two he unhitched,” Dextry remarked, jerking his head
towards the object in the street. “Must have been a new gun an’ pulled
hard--throwed him to the right. See!”
Even to the girl it was patent that, had she not been snatched as she
was, the bullet would have found her.
“Come away quick,” she panted, and they led her into a near-by store,
where she sank upon a seat and trembled until Dextry brought her a glass
of whiskey.
“Here, Miss,” he said. “Pretty tough go for a ‘cheechako.’ I’m afraid
you ain’t gettin’ enamoured of this here country a whole lot.”
For half an hour he talked to her, in his whimsical way, of foreign
things, till she was quieted. Then the partners arose to go. Although
Glenister had arranged for her to stop with the wife of the merchant for
the rest of the night, she would not.
“I can’t go to bed. Please don’t leave me! I’m too nervous. I’ll go
_mad_ if you do. The strain of the last week has been too much for me.
If I sleep I’ll see the faces of those men again.”
Dextry talked with his companion, then made a purchase which he laid at
the lady’s feet.
“Here’s a pair of half-grown gum boots. You put ’em on an’ come with us.
We’ll take your mind off of things complete. An’ as fer sweet dreams,
when you get back you’ll make the slumbers of the just seem as restless
as a riot, or the antics of a mountain-goat which nimbly leaps from crag
to crag, and--well, that’s restless enough. Come on!”
As the sun slanted up out of Behring Sea, they marched back towards the
hills, their feet ankle-deep in the soft fresh moss, while the air
tasted like a cool draught and a myriad of earthy odors rose up and
encircled them. Snipe and reed birds were noisy in the hollows and from
the misty tundra lakes came the honking of brant. After their weary
weeks on shipboard, the dewy freshness livened them magically,
cleansing from their memories the recent tragedy, so that the girl
became herself again.
“Where are we going?” she asked, at the end of an hour, pausing for
breath.
“Why, to the Midas, of course,” they said; and one of them vowed
recklessly, as he drank in the beauty of her clear eyes and the grace of
her slender, panting form, that he would gladly give his share of all
its riches to undo what he had done one night on the _Santa Maria_.