Once when the northland was very young, the social and civic virtues
were remarkably alike for their paucity and their simplicity. When the
burden of domestic duties grew grievous, and the fireside mood expanded
to a constant protest against its bleak loneliness, the adventurers
from the Southland, in lieu of better, paid the stipulated prices and
took unto themselves native wives. It was a foretaste of Paradise to
the women, for it must be confessed that the white rovers gave far
better care and treatment of them than did their Indian copartners. Of
course, the white men themselves were satisfied with such deals, as
were also the Indian men for that matter. Having sold their daughters
and sisters for cotton blankets and obsolete rifles and traded their
warm furs for flimsy calico and bad whisky, the sons of the soil
promptly and cheerfully succumbed to quick consumption and other swift
diseases correlated with the blessings of a superior civilization.
It was in these days of Arcadian simplicity that Cal Galbraith
journeyed through the land and fell sick on the Lower River. It was a
refreshing advent in the lives of the good Sisters of the Holy Cross,
who gave him shelter and medicine; though they little dreamed of the
hot elixir infused into his veins by the touch of their soft hands and
their gentle ministrations. Cal Galbraith, became troubled with strange
thoughts which clamored for attention till he laid eyes on the Mission
girl, Madeline. Yet he gave no sign, biding his time patiently. He
strengthened with the coming spring, and when the sun rode the heavens
in a golden circle, and the joy and throb of life was in all the land,
he gathered his still weak body together and departed.
Now, Madeline, the Mission girl, was an orphan. Her white father had
failed to give a bald-faced grizzly the trail one day, and had died
quickly. Then her Indian mother, having no man to fill the winter
cache, had tried the hazardous experiment of waiting till the
salmon-run on fifty pounds of flour and half as many of bacon. After
that, the baby, Chook-ra, went to live with the good Sisters, and to be
thenceforth known by another name.
But Madeline still had kinsfolk, the nearest being a dissolute uncle
who outraged his vitals with inordinate quantities of the white man's
whisky. He strove daily to walk with the gods, and incidentally, his
feet sought shorter trails to the grave. When sober he suffered
exquisite torture. He had no conscience. To this ancient vagabond Cal
Galbraith duly presented himself, and they consumed many words and much
tobacco in the conversation that followed. Promises were also made; and
in the end the old heathen took a few pounds of dried salmon and his
birch-bark canoe, and paddled away to the Mission of the Holy Cross.
It is not given the world to know what promises he made and what lies
he told--the Sisters never gossip; but when he returned, upon his
swarthy chest there was a brass crucifix, and in his canoe his niece
Madeline. That night there was a grand wedding and a potlach; so that
for two days to follow there was no fishing done by the village. But in
the morning Madeline shook the dust of the Lower River from her
moccasins, and with her husband, in a poling-boat, went to live on the
Upper River in a place known as the Lower Country. And in the years
which followed she was a good wife, sharing her husband's hardships and
cooking his food. And she kept him in straight trails, till he learned
to save his dust and to work mightily. In the end, he struck it rich
and built a cabin in Circle City; and his happiness was such that men
who came to visit him in his home-circle became restless at the sight
of it and envied him greatly.
But the Northland began to mature and social amenities to make their
appearance.
Hitherto, the Southland had sent forth its sons; but it now belched
forth a new exodus--this time of its daughters. Sisters and wives they
were not; but they did not fail to put new ideas in the heads of the
men, and to elevate the tone of things in ways peculiarly their own. No
more did the squaws gather at the dances, go roaring down the center in
the good, old Virginia reels, or make merry with jolly 'Dan Tucker.'
They fell back on their natural stoicism and uncomplainingly watched
the rule of their white sisters from their cabins.
Then another exodus came over the mountains from the prolific Southland.
This time it was of women that became mighty in the land. Their word
was law; their law was steel. They frowned upon the Indian wives, while
the other women became mild and walked humbly. There were cowards who
became ashamed of their ancient covenants with the daughters of the
soil, who looked with a new distaste upon their dark-skinned children;
but there were also others--men--who remained true and proud of their
aboriginal vows. When it became the fashion to divorce the native
wives. Cal Galbraith retained his manhood, and in so doing felt the
heavy hand of the women who had come last, knew least, but who ruled
the land.
One day, the Upper Country, which lies far above Circle City, was
pronounced rich. Dog-teams carried the news to Salt Water; golden
argosies freighted the lure across the North Pacific; wires and cables
sang with the tidings; and the world heard for the first time of the
Klondike River and the Yukon Country. Cal Galbraith had lived the years
quietly. He had been a good husband to Madeline, and she had blessed
him. But somehow discontent fell upon him; he felt vague yearnings for
his own kind, for the life he had been shut out from--a general sort of
desire, which men sometimes feel, to break out and taste the prime of
living. Besides, there drifted down the river wild rumors of the
wonderful El Dorado, glowing descriptions of the city of logs and
tents, and ludicrous accounts of the che-cha-quas who had rushed in and
were stampeding the whole country.
Circle City was dead. The world had moved on up river and become a new
and most marvelous world.
Cal Galbraith grew restless on the edge of things, and wished to see
with his own eyes.
So, after the wash-up, he weighed in a couple of hundred pounds of dust
on the Company's big scales, and took a draft for the same on Dawson.
Then he put Tom Dixon in charge of his mines, kissed Madeline good-by,
promised to be back before the first mush-ice ran, and took passage on
an up-river steamer.
Madeline waited, waited through all the three months of daylight. She
fed the dogs, gave much of her time to Young Cal, watched the short
summer fade away and the sun begin its long journey to the south. And
she prayed much in the manner of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. The
fall came, and with it there was mush-ice on the Yukon, and Circle City
kings returning to the winter's work at their mines, but no Cal
Galbraith. Tom Dixon received a letter, however, for his men sledded up
her winter's supply of dry pine. The Company received a letter for its
dogteams filled her cache with their best provisions, and she was told
that her credit was limitless.
Through all the ages man has been held the chief instigator of the woes
of woman; but in this case the men held their tongues and swore harshly
at one of their number who was away, while the women failed utterly to
emulate them. So, without needless delay, Madeline heard strange tales
of Cal Galbraith's doings; also, of a certain Greek dancer who played
with men as children did with bubbles. Now Madeline was an Indian
woman, and further, she had no woman friend to whom to go for wise
counsel. She prayed and planned by turns, and that night, being quick
of resolve and action, she harnessed the dogs, and with Young Cal
securely lashed to the sled, stole away.
Though the Yukon still ran free, the eddy-ice was growing, and each day
saw the river dwindling to a slushy thread. Save him who has done the
like, no man may know what she endured in traveling a hundred miles on
the rim-ice; nor may they understand the toil and hardship of breaking
the two hundred miles of packed ice which remained after the river
froze for good. But Madeline was an Indian woman, so she did these
things, and one night there came a knock at Malemute Kid's door.
Thereat he fed a team of starving dogs, put a healthy youngster to bed,
and turned his attention to an exhausted woman. He removed her icebound
moccasins while he listened to her tale, and stuck the point of his
knife into her feet that he might see how far they were frozen.
Despite his tremendous virility, Malemute Kid was possessed of a
softer, womanly element, which could win the confidence of a snarling
wolf-dog or draw confessions from the most wintry heart. Nor did he
seek them. Hearts opened to him as spontaneously as flowers to the sun.
Even the priest, Father Roubeau, had been known to confess to him,
while the men and women of the Northland were ever knocking at his
door--a door from which the latch-string hung always out. To Madeline,
he could do no wrong, make no mistake. She had known him from the time
she first cast her lot among the people of her father's race; and to
her half-barbaric mind it seemed that in him was centered the wisdom of
the ages, that between his vision and the future there could be no
intervening veil.
There were false ideals in the land. The social strictures of Dawson
were not synonymous with those of the previous era, and the swift
maturity of the Northland involved much wrong. Malemute Kid was aware
of this, and he had Cal Galbraith's measure accurately.
He knew a hasty word was the father of much evil; besides, he was
minded to teach a great lesson and bring shame upon the man. So Stanley
Prince, the young mining expert, was called into the conference the
following night as was also Lucky Jack Harrington and his violin. That
same night, Bettles, who owed a great debt to Malemute Kid, harnessed
up Cal Galbraith's dogs, lashed Cal Galbraith, Junior, to the sled, and
slipped away in the dark for Stuart River.