The Trail of 98 (31 page)

"My hurts are more than physical."

"Yes, I know; there was that girl. You seemed to have a notion that that was
the only girl on God's green brush-pile. As I camped there by your bedside
listening to your ravings, and getting a strangle-hold on you when you took it
into your head to get funny, you blabbed out the whole yarn. Oh, sonny, why
didn't you tell your uncle? Why didn't you put me wise? I could have given you
the right steer. Have you ever known me handle a job I couldn't make good at?
I'm a whole matrimonial bureau rolled into one. I'd have had you prancing to the
tune of the wedding
march before now. But you kept mum as a mummy. Wouldn't even
tell your old pard. Now you've lost her."

"Yes, I've lost her."

"Did you ever see her after you came out of the hospital?"

"Once, once only. It was the first day. I was as thin as a rail, as white as
the pillow from which I had just raised my head. Death's reprieve was written
all over me. I dragged along wearily, leaning on a stick. I was thinking of her,
thinking, thinking always. As I scanned the faces of the crowds that thronged
the streets, I thought only of her face. Then suddenly she was before me. She
looked like a ghost, poor little thing; and for a fluttering moment we stared at
each other, she and I, two wan, weariful ghosts."

"Yes, what did she say?"

"Say! she said nothing. She just looked at me. Her face was cold as ice. She
looked at me as if she wanted to
pity
me. Then into her eyes there came a
shadow of bitterness, of bitterness and despair such as might gloom the eyes of
a lost soul. It unnerved me. It seemed as if she was regarding me almost with
horror, as if I were a sort of a leper. As I stood there, I thought she was
going to faint. She seemed to sway a moment. Then she drew a great, gasping
breath, and turning on her heel she was gone."

"She cut you?"

"Yes, cut me dead, old fellow. And my only
thought was of love for her, eternal love. But I'll
never forget the look on her face as she turned away. It was as if I had lashed
her with a whip. My God!"

"And you've never seen her since?"

"No, never. That was enough, wasn't it? She didn't want to speak to me any
more, never wanted to set eyes on me any more. I went back to the ward; then, in
a little, I came on here. My body was living, but my heart was dead. It will
never live again."

"Oh, rot! You mustn't let the thing down you like that. It's going to kill
you in the end. Buck up! Be a man! If you don't care to live for yourself, live
for others. Anyway, it's likely all for the best. Maybe love had you locoed.
Maybe she wasn't really good. See now how she lives openly with Locasto. They
call her the Madonna; they say she looks more like a virgin-martyr than the
mistress of a dissolute man."

I rose and looked at him, conscious that my face was all twisted with the
pain of the thought.

"Look here," I said, "never did God put the breath of life into a better
girl. There's been foul play. I know that girl better than any one in the world,
and if every living being were to tell me she wasn't good I would tell them they
lied, they lied. I would burn at the stake upholding that girl."

"Then why did she turn you down so cruelly?"

"I don't know; I can't understand it. I know so little about women. I have
not wavered a moment.
To-day in my loneliness and heartbreak I care and hunger for
her more than ever. She's always here, right here in my head, and no power can
drive her out. Let them say of her what they will, I would marry her to-morrow.
It's killing me. I've aged ten years in the last few months. Oh, if I only could
forget."

He looked at me thoughtfully.

"I say, old man, do you ever hear from your old lady?"

"Every mail."

"You've often told me of your home. Say! just give us a mental frame-up of
it."

"Glengyle? Yes. I can see the old place now, as plainly as a picture: the
green, dimpling hills all speckled with sheep; the grey house nestling snugly in
a grove of birch; the wild water of the burn leaping from black pool to pool,
just mad with the joy of life; the midges dancing over the water in the still
sunshine, and the trout jumping for themoh, it's the bonny, bonny place. You
would think so too. You would like it, tramping knee-deep in the heather, to see
the moorcock rise whirring at your feet; you would like to set sail with the
fisher folk after the silver herring. It would make you feel good to see the
calm faces of the shepherds, the peace in the eyes of the women. Ay, that was
the best of it all, the Rest of it, the calm of it. I was pretty happy in those
days."

"You were happythen why not go back? That's your proper play; go back to
your Mother. She
wants
you. You're pretty well heeled now. A little money goes a long way over there.
You can count on thirty thousand. You'll be comfortable; you'll devote yourself
to the old lady; you'll be happy again. Time's a regular steam-roller when it
comes to smoothing out the rough spots in the past. You'll forget it all, this
place, this girl. It'll all seem like the after effects of a midnight Welsh
rabbit. You've got mental indigestion. I hate to see you go. I'm really sorry to
lose you; but it's your only salvation, so go, go!"

Never had I thought of it before. Home! how sweet the word seemed. Mother!
yes, Mother would comfort me as no one else could. She would understand. Mother
and Garry! A sudden craving came over me to see them again. Maybe with them I
could find relief from this awful agony of heart, this thing that I could scarce
bear to think of, yet never ceased to think of. Home! that was the solution of
it all. Ah me! I would go home.

"Yes," I said, "I can't go too soon; I'll start to-morrow."

So I rose and proceeded to gather together my few belongings. In the early
morning I would start out. No use prolonging the business of my going. I would
say good-bye to those two partners of mine, with a grip of the hand, a tear in
the eye, a husky: "Take care of yourself." That would be all. Likely I would
never see them again.

Jim came in and sat down quietly. The old man had been very silent of late.
Putting on his
spectacles, he took out his well-worn Bible and opened it.
Back in Dawson there was a man whom he hated with the hate that only death can
end, but for the peace of his soul he strove to conquer it. The hate slumbered,
yet at times it stirred, and into the old man's eyes there came the tiger-look
that had once made him a force and a fear. Woe betide his enemy if that tiger
ever woke.

"I've been a-thinkin' out a scheme," said Jim suddenly, "an' I'm a-goin' to
put all of that twenty-five thousand of mine back into the ground. You know us
old miners are gamblers to the end. It's not the gold, but the gettin' of it.
It's the excitement, the hope, the anticipation of one's luck that counts. We're
fighters, an' we've just got to keep on fightin'. We can't quit. There's the
ground, and there's the precious metals it's a-tryin' to hold back on us. It's
up to us to get them out. It's for the good of humanity. The miner an' the
farmer rob no one. They just get down to that old ground an' coax it an' beat it
an' bully it till it gives up. They're working for the good of humanitythe
farmer an' the miner." The old man paused sententiously.

"Well, I can't quit this minin' business. I've just got to go on so long's
I've got health an' strength; an' I'm a-goin' to shove all I've got once more
into the muck. I stand to make a big pile, or lose my wad."

"What's your scheme, Jim?"

"It's just this: I'm goin' to install a hydraulic plant on my Ophir Creek
claim, I've got a great notion of
that claim. It's an out-of-sight proposition for workin' with
water. There's a little stream runs down the hill, an' the hill's steep right
there. There's one hundred feet of fall, an' in Spring a mighty powerful bunch
of water comes a-tumblin' down. Well, I'm goin' to dam it up above, bring it
down a flume, hitch on a little giant, an' turn it loose to rip an' tear at that
there ground. I'm goin' to begin a new era in Klondike minin'."

"Bully for you, Jim."

"The values are there in the ground, an' I'm sick of the old slow way of
gettin' them out. This looks mighty good to me. Anyway, I'm a-goin' to give it a
trial. It's just the start of things; you'll see others will follow suit. The
individual miner's got to go; it's only a matter of time. Some day you'll see
this whole country worked over by them big power dredges they've got down in
Californy. You mark my words, boys; the old-fashioned miner's got to go."

"What are you going to do?"

"Well, I've written out for piping an' a monitor, an' next Spring I hope I'll
have the plant in workin' order. The stuff's on the way now. Hullo! Come
in!"

The visitors were Mervin and Hewson on their way to Dawson. These two men had
been successful beyond their dreams. It was just like finding money the way
fortune had pushed it in front of their noses. They were offensively prosperous;
they reeked of success.

In both of them a
great change had taken place, a change only too typical of the gold-camp. They
seemed to have thawed out; they were irrepressibly genial; yet instead of that
restraint that had formerly distinguished them, there was a grafted quality of
weakness, of flaccidity, of surrender to the enervating vices of the town.

Mervin was remarkably thin. Dark hollows circled his eyes, and a curious
nervousness twisted his mouth. He was "a terror for the women," they said. He
lavished his money on them faster than he made it. He was vastly more
companionable than formerly, but somehow you felt his virility, his fighting
force had gone.

In Hewson the change was even more marked. Those iron muscles had couched
themselves in easy flesh; his cheeks sagged; his eyes were bloodshot and untidy.
Nevertheless he was more of a good fellow, talked rather vauntingly of his
wealth, and affected a patronising manner. He was worth probably two hundred
thousand, and he drank a bottle of brandy a day.

In the case of these two men, as in the case of a thousand others in the
gold-camp, it seemed as if easy, unhoped-for affluence was to prove their
undoing. On the trail they had been supreme; in fen or forest, on peak or plain,
they were men among men, fighting with nature savagely, exultantly. But when the
fight was over their arms rested, their muscles relaxed, they yielded to
sensuous pleasures. It seemed as if to them victory really meant defeat.

As I went on with my
packing I paid but little heed to their talk. What mattered it to me now, this
babble of dumps and dust, of claims and clean-ups? I was going to thrust it all
behind me, blot it clean out of my memory, begin my life anew. It would be a
larger, more luminous life. I would live for others. Home! Mother! again how
exquisitely my heart glowed at the thought of them.

Then all at once I pricked up my ears. They were talking of the town, of the
men and women who were making it famous (or rather infamous), when suddenly they
spoke the name of Locasto.

"He's gone off," Mervin was saying; "gone off on a big stampede. He got
pretty thick with some of the Peel River Indians, and found they knew of a ledge
of high-grade, free-milling quartz somewhere out there in the Land Back of
Beyond. He had a sample of it, and you could just see the gold shining all
through it. It was great stuff. Jack Locasto's the last man to turn down a
chance like that. He's the worst gambler in the Northland, and no amount of
wealth will ever satisfy him. So he's off with an Indian and one companion, that
little Irish satellite of his, Pat Doogan. They have six months' grub. They'll
be away all winter."

"What's become of that girl of his?" asked Hewson, "the last one he's been
living with? You remember she came in on the boat with us. Poor little kid!
Blast that man anyway. He's not content with women of his own kind, he's got to
get his clutches on the best of them. That was a good little
girl before he got after her. If she
was a friend of mine I'd put a bullet in his ugly heart."

Hewson growled like a wrathful bear, but Mervin smiled his cynical smile.

"Oh, you mean the Madonna," he said; "why, she's gone on the
dance-halls."

They continued to talk of other things, but I did not hear them any more. I
was in a trance, and I only aroused when they rose to go.

"Better say good-bye to the kid here," said the Prodigal; "he's going to the
old country to-morrow."

"No, I'm not," I answered sullenly; "I'm just going as far as Dawson."

He stared and expostulated, but my mind was made up. I would fight, fight to
the last.

Berna on the dance-hallswords cannot convey all that this simple phrase
meant to me. For two months I had been living in a dull apathy of pain, but this
news galvanised me into immediate action.

For although there were many degrees of dance-hall depravity, at the best it
meant a brand of ineffaceable shame. She had lived with Locasto, had been
recognised as his mistressthat was bad enough; but the otherto be at the mercy
of all, to be classed with the harpies that preyed on the Man with the Poke, the
vampires of the gold-camp. Berna Oh, it was unspeakable! The thought maddened
me. The needle-point of suffering that for weeks had been boring into my brain
seemed to have pierced its core at last.

When the Prodigal expostulated with me I laugheda bitter, mirthless
laugh.

"I'm going to Dawson," I said, "and if it was hell itself, I'd go there for
that girl. I don't care what any one thinks. Home, society, honour itself, let
them all go; they don't matter now. I was a fool to think I could ever give her
up, a fool. Now I know that as long as there's life and strength in my body,
I'll fight for her. Oh, I'm not the sentimentalist I was six months ago. I've
lived since then. I can hold my own now. I can meet men on
their own level. I can fight, I can
win. I don't care any more, after what I've gone through. I don't set any
particular value on my life. I'll throw it away as recklessly as the best of
them. I'm going to have a fierce fight for that girl, and if I lose there'll be
no more 'me' left to fight. Don't try to reason with me. Reason be damned! I'm
going to Dawson, and a hundred men couldn't hold me."