________________________________________________
_ It was Daylight's night. He was the centre and the head of the
revel, unquenchably joyous, a contagion of fun. He multiplied
himself, and in so doing multiplied the excitement. No prank he
suggested was too wild for his followers, and all followed save
those that developed into singing imbeciles and fell warbling by
the wayside. Yet never did trouble intrude. It was known on the
Yukon that when Burning Daylight made a night of it, wrath and
evil were forbidden. On his nights men dared not quarrel. In
the younger days such things had happened, and then men had known
what real wrath was, and been man-handled as only Burning
Daylight could man-handle. On his nights men must laugh and be
happy or go home. Daylight was inexhaustible. In between dances
he paid over to Kearns the twenty thousand in dust and
transferred to him his Moosehide claim. Likewise he arranged the
taking over of Billy Rawlins' mail contract, and made his
preparations for the start. He despatched a messenger to rout
out Kama, his dog-driver--a Tananaw Indian, far-wandered from his
tribal home in the service of the invading whites. Kama entered
the Tivoli, tall, lean, muscular, and fur-clad, the pick of his
barbaric race and barbaric still, unshaken and unabashed by the
revellers that rioted about him while Daylight gave his orders.
"Um," said Kama, tabling his instructions on his fingers. "Get
um letters from Rawlins. Load um on sled. Grub for Selkirk--you
think um plenty dog-grub stop Selkirk?"
"Plenty dog-grub, Kama."
"Um, bring sled this place nine um clock. Bring um snowshoes.
No bring um tent. Mebbe bring um fly? um little fly?"
"No fly," Daylight answered decisively.
"Um much cold."
"We travel light--savvee? We carry plenty letters out, plenty
letters back. You are strong man. Plenty cold, plenty travel,
all right."
"Sure all right," Kama muttered, with resignation.
"Much cold, no care a damn. Um ready nine um clock."
He turned on his moccasined heel and walked out, imperturbable,
sphinx-like, neither giving nor receiving greetings nor looking
to right or left. The Virgin led Daylight away into a corner.
"Look here, Daylight," she said, in a low voice, "you're busted."
"Higher'n a kite."
"I've eight thousand in Mac's safe--" she began.
But Daylight interrupted. The apron-string loomed near and he
shied like an unbroken colt.
"It don't matter," he said. "Busted I came into the world,
busted I go out, and I've been busted most of the time since I
arrived. Come on; let's waltz."
"But listen," she urged. "My money's doing nothing. I could
lend it to you--a grub-stake," she added hurriedly, at sight of
the alarm in his face.
"Nobody grub-stakes me," was the answer. "I stake myself, and
when I make a killing it's sure all mine. No thank you, old
girl. Much obliged. I'll get my stake by running the mail out
and in."
"Daylight," she murmured, in tender protest.
But with a sudden well-assumed ebullition of spirits he drew her
toward the dancing-floor, and as they swung around and around in
a waltz she pondered on the iron heart of the man who held her in
his arms and resisted all her wiles.
At six the next morning, scorching with whiskey, yet ever
himself, he stood at the bar putting every man's hand down. The
way of it was that two men faced each other across a corner,
their right elbows resting on the bar, their right hands gripped
together, while each strove to press the other's hand down. Man
after man came against him, but no man put his hand down, even
Olaf Henderson and French Louis failing despite their hugeness.
When they contended it was a trick, a trained muscular knack, he
challenged them to another test.
"Look here, you-all" he cried. "I'm going to do two things:
first, weigh my sack; and second, bet it that after you-all have
lifted clean from the floor all the sacks of flour you-all are
able, I'll put on two more sacks and lift the whole caboodle
clean."
"By Gar! Ah take dat!" French Louis rumbled above the cheers.
"Hold on!" Olaf Henderson cried. "I ban yust as good as you,
Louis. I yump half that bet."
Put on the scales, Daylight's sack was found to balance an even
four hundred dollars, and Louis and Olaf divided the bet between
them. Fifty-pound sacks of flour were brought in from
MacDonald's cache. Other men tested their strength first. They
straddled on two chairs, the flour sacks beneath them on the
floor and held together by rope-lashings. Many of the men were
able, in this manner, to lift four or five hundred pounds, while
some succeeded with as high as six hundred. Then the two giants
took a hand, tying at seven hundred. French Louis then added
another sack, and swung seven hundred and fifty clear. Olaf
duplicated the performance, whereupon both failed to clear eight
hundred. Again and again they strove, their foreheads beaded
with sweat, their frames crackling with the effort. Both were
able to shift the weight and to bump it, but clear the floor with
it they could not.
"By Gar! Daylight, dis tam you mek one beeg meestake," French
Louis said, straightening up and stepping down from the chairs.
"Only one damn iron man can do dat. One hundred pun' more--my
frien', not ten poun' more." The sacks were unlashed, but when
two sacks were added, Kearns interfered. "Only one sack more."
"Two!" some one cried. "Two was the bet."
"They didn't lift that last sack," Kearns protested.
"They only lifted seven hundred and fifty."
But Daylight grandly brushed aside the confusion.
"What's the good of you-all botherin' around that way? What's
one more sack? If I can't lift three more, I sure can't lift
two. Put 'em in."
He stood upon the chairs, squatted, and bent his shoulders down
till his hands closed on the rope. He shifted his feet slightly,
tautened his muscles with a tentative pull, then relaxed again,
questing for a perfect adjustment of all the levers of his body.
French Louis, looking on sceptically, cried out,
"Pool lak hell, Daylight! Pool lak hell!"
Daylight's muscles tautened a second time, and this time in
earnest, until steadily all the energy of his splendid body was
applied, and quite imperceptibly, without jerk or strain, the
bulky nine hundred pounds rose from the door and swung back and
forth, pendulum like, between his legs.
Olaf Henderson sighed a vast audible sigh. The Virgin, who had
tensed unconsciously till her muscles hurt her, relaxed. While
French Louis murmured reverently:-
"M'sieu Daylight, salut! Ay am one beeg baby. You are one beeg
man."
Daylight dropped his burden, leaped to the floor, and headed for
the bar.
"Weigh in!" he cried, tossing his sack to the weigher, who
transferred to it four hundred dollars from the sacks of the two
losers.
"Surge up, everybody!" Daylight went on. "Name your
snake-juice! The winner pays!"
"This is my night! " he was shouting, ten minutes later. "I'm
the lone he-wolf, and I've seen thirty winters. This is my
birthday, my one day in the year, and I can put any man on his
back. Come on, you-all! I'm going to put you-all in the snow.
Come on, you chechaquos [1] and sourdoughs[2], and get your
baptism!"
[1] Tenderfeet. [2] Old-timers.
The rout streamed out of doors, all save the barkeepers and the
singing Bacchuses. Some fleeting thought of saving his own
dignity entered MacDonald's head, for he approached Daylight with
outstretched hand.
"What? You first?" Daylight laughed, clasping the other's hand
as if in greeting.
"No, no," the other hurriedly disclaimed. "Just congratulations
on your birthday. Of course you can put me in the snow. What
chance have I against a man that lifts nine hundred pounds?"
MacDonald weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, and Daylight had
him gripped solely by his hand; yet, by a sheer abrupt jerk, he
took the saloon-keeper off his feet and flung him face downward
in the snow. In quick succession, seizing the men nearest him,
he threw half a dozen more. Resistance was useless. They flew
helter-skelter out of his grips, landing in all manner of
attitudes, grotesquely and harmlessly, in the soft snow. It soon
became difficult, in the dim starlight, to distinguish between
those thrown and those waiting their turn, and he began feeling
their backs and shoulders, determining their status by whether or
not he found them powdered with snow.
"Baptized yet?" became his stereotyped question, as he reached
out his terrible hands.
Several score lay down in the snow in a long row, while many
others knelt in mock humility, scooping snow upon their heads and
claiming the rite accomplished. But a group of five stood
upright, backwoodsmen and frontiersmen, they, eager to contest
any
man's birthday.
Graduates of the hardest of man-handling schools, veterans of
multitudes of rough-and-tumble battles, men of blood and sweat
and endurance, they nevertheless lacked one thing that Daylight
possessed in high degree--namely, an almost perfect brain and
muscular coordination. It was simple, in its way, and no virtue
of his. He had been born with this endowment. His nerves
carried messages more quickly than theirs; his mental processes,
culminating in acts of will, were quicker than theirs; his
muscles themselves, by some immediacy of chemistry, obeyed the
messages of his will quicker than theirs. He was so made, his
muscles were high-power explosives. The levers of his body
snapped into play like the jaws of steel traps. And in addition
to all this, his was that super-strength that is the dower of but
one human in millions--a strength depending not on size but on
degree, a supreme organic excellence residing in the stuff of the
muscles themselves. Thus, so swiftly could he apply a stress,
that, before an opponent could become aware and resist, the aim
of the stress had been accomplished. In turn, so swiftly did he
become aware of a stress applied to him, that he saved himself by
resistance or by delivering a lightning counter-stress.
"It ain't no use you-all standing there," Daylight addressed the
waiting group. "You-all might as well get right down and take
your baptizing. You-all might down me any other day in the year,
but on my birthday I want you-all to know I'm the best man. Is
that Pat Hanrahan's mug looking hungry and willing? Come on,
Pat." Pat Hanrahan, ex-bare-knuckle-prize fighter and
roughhouse-expert, stepped forth. The two men came against each
other in grips, and almost before he had exerted himself the
Irishman found himself in the merciless vise of a half-Nelson
that buried him head and shoulders in the snow. Joe Hines,
ex-lumber-jack, came down with an impact equal to a fall from a
two-story building--his overthrow accomplished by a
cross-buttock,
delivered, he claimed, before he was ready.
There was nothing exhausting in all this to Daylight. He did
not heave and strain through long minutes. No time, practically,
was occupied. His body exploded abruptly and terrifically in one
instant, and on the next instant was relaxed. Thus, Doc Watson,
the gray-bearded, iron bodied man without a past, a fighting
terror himself, was overthrown in the fraction of a second
preceding his own onslaught. As he was in the act of gathering
himself for a spring, Daylight was upon him, and with such
fearful suddenness as to crush him backward and down. Olaf
Henderson, receiving his cue from this, attempted to take
Daylight unaware, rushing upon him from one side as he stooped
with extended hand to help Doc Watson up. Daylight dropped on
his hands and knees, receiving in his side Olaf's knees. Olaf's
momentum carried him clear over the obstruction in a long, flying
fall. Before he could rise, Daylight had whirled him over on his
back and was rubbing his face and ears with snow and shoving
handfuls down his neck. "Ay ban yust as good a man as you ban,
Daylight," Olaf spluttered, as he pulled himself to his feet;
"but
by Yupiter, I ban navver see a grip like that." French Louis was
the last of the five, and he had seen enough to make him
cautious. He circled and baffled for a full minute before coming
to grips; and for another full minute they strained and reeled
without either winning the advantage. And then, just as the
contest was becoming interesting, Daylight effected one of his
lightning shifts, changing all stresses and leverages and at the
same time delivering one of his muscular explosions. French
Louis resisted till his huge frame crackled, and then, slowly,
was forced over and under and downward.
"The winner pays!" Daylight cried; as he sprang to his feet and
led the way back into the Tivoli. "Surge along you-all! This way
to the snake-room!"
They lined up against the long bar, in places two or three deep,
stamping the frost from their moccasined feet, for outside the
temperature was sixty below. Bettles, himself one of the gamest
of the old-timers in deeds and daring ceased from his drunken lay
of the "Sassafras Root," and titubated over to congratulate
Daylight. But in the midst of it he felt impelled to make a
speech, and raised his voice oratorically.
"I tell you fellers I'm plum proud to call Daylight my friend.
We've hit the trail together afore now, and he's eighteen carat
from his moccasins up, damn his mangy old hide, anyway. He was a
shaver when he first hit this country. When you fellers was his
age, you wa'n't dry behind the ears yet. He never was no kid.
He was born a full-grown man. An' I tell you a man had to be a
man in them days. This wa'n't no effete civilization like it's
come to be now." Bettles paused long enough to put his arm in
a proper bear-hug around Daylight's neck. "When you an' me
mushed into the Yukon in the good ole days, it didn't rain
soup and they wa'n't no free-lunch joints. Our camp fires was
lit where we killed our game, and most of the time we lived on
salmon-tracks and rabbit-bellies--ain't I right?"
But at the roar of laughter that greeted his inversion, Bettles
released the bear-hug and turned fiercely on them. "Laugh, you
mangy short-horns, laugh! But I tell you plain and simple, the
best of you ain't knee-high fit to tie Daylight's moccasin
strings.
Ain't I right, Campbell? Ain't I right, Mac? Daylight's one of
the old guard, one of the real sour-doughs. And in them days
they
wa'n't ary a steamboat or ary a trading-post, and we cusses had
to
live offen salmon-bellies and rabbit-tracks."
He gazed triumphantly around, and in the applause that followed
arose cries for a speech from Daylight. He signified his
consent. A chair was brought, and he was helped to stand upon
it. He was no more sober than the crowd above which he now
towered--a wild crowd, uncouthly garmented, every foot moccasined
or muc-lucked[3], with mittens dangling from necks and with furry
ear-flaps raised so that they took on the seeming of the winged
helmets of the Norsemen. Daylight's black eyes were flashing,
and the flush of strong drink flooded darkly under the bronze of
his cheeks. He was greeted with round on round of affectionate
cheers, which brought a suspicious moisture to his eyes, albeit
many of the voices were inarticulate and inebriate. And yet, men
have so behaved since the world began, feasting, fighting, and
carousing, whether in the dark cave-mouth or by the fire of the
squatting-place, in the palaces of imperial Rome and the rock
strongholds of robber barons, or in the sky-aspiring hotels of
modern times and in the boozing-kens of sailor-town. Just so
were these men, empire-builders in the Arctic Light, boastful and
drunken and clamorous, winning surcease for a few wild moments
from the grim reality of their heroic toil. Modern heroes they,
and in nowise different from the heroes of old time. "Well,
fellows, I don't know what to say to you-all," Daylight began
lamely, striving still to control his whirling brain. "I think
I'll tell you-all a story. I had a pardner wunst, down in
Juneau. He come from North Caroliney, and he used to tell this
same story to me. It was down in the mountains in his country,
and it was a wedding. There they was, the family and all the
friends. The parson was just puttin' on the last touches, and he
says, 'They as the Lord have joined let no man put asunder.'
[3] Muc-luc: a water-tight, Eskimo boot, made from walrus-hide
and trimmed with fur.
"'Parson,' says the bridegroom, 'I rises to question your
grammar in that there sentence. I want this weddin' done right.'
"When the smoke clears away, the bride she looks around and sees
a dead parson, a dead bridegroom, a dead brother, two dead
uncles, and five dead wedding-guests.
"So she heaves a mighty strong sigh and says, 'Them new-fangled,
self-cocking revolvers sure has played hell with my prospects.'
"And so I say to you-all," Daylight added, as the roar of
laughter died down, "that them four kings of Jack Kearns sure has
played hell with my prospects. I'm busted higher'n a kite, and
I'm hittin' the trail for Dyea--"
"Goin' out?" some one called. A spasm of anger wrought on his
face for a flashing instant, but in the next his good-humor was
back again.
"I know you-all are only pokin' fun asking such a question," he
said, with a smile. "Of course I ain't going out."
"Take the oath again, Daylight," the same voice cried.
"I sure will. I first come over Chilcoot in '83. I went out
over the Pass in a fall blizzard, with a rag of a shirt and a cup
of raw flour. I got my grub-stake in Juneau that winter, and in
the spring I went over the Pass once more. And once more the
famine drew me out. Next spring I went in again, and I swore
then that I'd never come out till I made my stake. Well, I ain't
made it, and here I am. And I ain't going out now. I get the
mail and I come right back. I won't stop the night at Dyea.
I'll hit up Chilcoot soon as I change the dogs and get the mail
and grub. And so I swear once more, by the mill-tails of hell
and the head of John the Baptist, I'll never hit for the Outside
till I make my pile. And I tell you-all, here and now, it's got
to be an almighty big pile."
"How much might you call a pile?" Bettles demanded from beneath,
his arms clutched lovingly around Daylight's legs.
"Yes, how much? What do you call a pile?" others cried.
Daylight steadied himself for a moment and debated. "Four or
five millions," he said slowly, and held up his hand for silence
as his statement was received with derisive yells. "I'll be real
conservative, and put the bottom notch at a million. And for not
an ounce less'n that will I go out of the country."
Again his statement was received with an outburst of derision.
Not only had the total gold output of the Yukon up to date been
below five millions, but no man had ever made a strike of a
hundred thousand, much less of a million.
"You-all listen to me. You seen Jack Kearns get a hunch
to-night. We had him sure beat before the draw. His ornery
three kings was no good. But he just knew there was another king
coming--that was his hunch--and he got it. And I tell you-all I
got a hunch. There's a big strike coming on the Yukon, and it's
just about due. I don't mean no ornery Moosehide, Birch-Creek
kind of a strike. I mean a real rip-snorter hair-raiser. I tell
you-all she's in the air and hell-bent for election. Nothing can
stop her, and she'll come up river. There's where you-all track
my moccasins in the near future if you-all want to find
me--somewhere in the country around Stewart River, Indian River,
and Klondike River. When I get back with the mail, I'll head
that way so fast you-all won't see my trail for smoke. She's
a-coming, fellows, gold from the grass roots down, a hundred
dollars to the pan, and a stampede in from the Outside fifty
thousand strong. You-all'll think all hell's busted loose when
that strike is made."
He raised his glass to his lips. "Here's kindness, and hoping
you-all will be in on it."
He drank and stepped down from the chair, falling into another
one of Bettles' bear-hugs.
"If I was you, Daylight, I wouldn't mush to-day," Joe Hines
counselled, coming in from consulting the spirit thermometer
outside the door. "We're in for a good cold snap. It's
sixty-two below now, and still goin' down. Better wait till she
breaks."
Daylight laughed, and the old sour-doughs around him laughed.
"Just like you short-horns," Bettles cried, "afeard of a little
frost. And blamed little you know Daylight, if you think frost
kin stop 'm."
"Freeze his lungs if he travels in it," was the reply.
"Freeze pap and lollypop! Look here, Hines, you only ben in this
here country three years. You ain't seasoned yet. I've seen
Daylight do fifty miles up on the Koyokuk on a day when the
thermometer busted at seventy-two."
Hines shook his head dolefully.
"Them's the kind that does freeze their lungs," he lamented. "If
Daylight pulls out before this snap breaks, he'll never get
through--an' him travelin' without tent or fly."
"It's a thousand miles to Dyea," Bettles announced, climbing on
the chair and supporting his swaying body by an arm passed around
Daylight's neck. "It's a thousand miles, I'm sayin' an' most of
the trail unbroke, but I bet any chechaquo--anything he
wants--that
Daylight makes Dyea in thirty days."
"That's an average of over thirty-three miles a day," Doc Watson
warned, "and I've travelled some myself. A blizzard on Chilcoot
would tie him up for a week."
"Yep," Bettles retorted, "an' Daylight'll do the second thousand
back again on end in thirty days more, and I got five hundred
dollars that says so, and damn the blizzards."
To emphasize his remarks, he pulled out a gold-sack the size of a
bologna sausage and thumped it down on the bar. Doc Watson
thumped his own sack alongside.
"Hold on!" Daylight cried. "Bettles's right, and I want in on
this. I bet five hundred that sixty days from now I pull up at
the Tivoli door with the Dyea mail."
A sceptical roar went up, and a dozen men pulled out their sacks.
Jack Kearns crowded in close and caught Daylight's attention.
"I take you,Daylight," he cried. "Two to one you don't--not in
seventy-five days."
"No charity, Jack," was the reply. "The bettin's even, and the
time is sixty days."
"Seventy-five days, and two to one you don't," Kearns insisted.
"Fifty Mile'll be wide open and the rim-ice rotten."
"What you win from me is yours," Daylight went on. "And, by
thunder, Jack, you can't give it back that way. I won't bet with
you. You're trying to give me money. But I tell you-all one
thing, Jack, I got another hunch. I'm goin' to win it back some
one of these days. You-all just wait till the big strike up
river. Then you and me'll take the roof off and sit in a game
that'll be full man's size. Is it a go?"
They shook hands.
"Of course he'll make it," Kearns whispered in Bettles' ear.
"And there's five hundred Daylight's back in sixty days," he
added aloud.
Billy Rawlins closed with the wager, and Bettles hugged Kearns
ecstatically.
"By Yupiter, I ban take that bet," Olaf Henderson said, dragging
Daylight away from Bettles and Kearns.
"Winner pays!" Daylight shouted, closing the wager.
"And I'm sure going to win, and sixty days is a long time between
drinks, so I pay now. Name your brand, you hoochinoos! Name
your
brand!"
Bettles, a glass of whiskey in hand, climbed back on his chair,
and swaying back and forth, sang the one song he knew:-
"O, it's Henry Ward Beecher
And Sunday-school teachers
All sing of the sassafras-root;
But you bet all the same,
If it had its right name
It's the juice of the forbidden fruit."
The crowd roared out the chorus:-
"But you bet all the same
If it had its right name
It's the juice of the forbidden fruit."
Somebody opened the outer door. A vague gray light filtered in.
"Burning daylight, burning daylight," some one called warningly.
Daylight paused for nothing, heading for the door and pulling
down his ear-flaps. Kama stood outside by the sled, a long,
narrow affair, sixteen inches wide and seven and a half feet in
length, its slatted bottom raised six inches above the steel-shod
runners. On it, lashed with thongs of moose-hide, were the light
canvas bags that contained the mail, and the food and gear for
dogs and men. In front of it, in a single line, lay curled five
frost-rimed dogs. They were huskies, matched in size and color,
all unusually large and all gray. From their cruel jaws to their
bushy tails they were as like as peas in their likeness to
timber-wolves. Wolves they were, domesticated, it was true, but
wolves in appearance and in all their characteristics. On top
the sled load, thrust under the lashings and ready for immediate
use, were two pairs of snowshoes.
Bettles pointed to a robe of Arctic hare skins, the end of which
showed in the mouth of a bag.
"That's his bed," he said. "Six pounds of rabbit skins. Warmest
thing he ever slept under, but I'm damned if it could keep me
warm, and I can go some myself. Daylight's a hell-fire furnace,
that's what he is."
"I'd hate to be that Indian," Doc Watson remarked.
"He'll kill'm, he'll kill'm sure," Bettles chanted exultantly.
"I know. I've ben with Daylight on trail. That man ain't never
ben tired in his life. Don't know what it means. I seen him
travel all day with wet socks at forty five below. There ain't
another man living can do that."
While this talk went on, Daylight was saying good-by to those
that clustered around him. The Virgin wanted to kiss him, and,
fuddled slightly though he was with the whiskey, he saw his way
out without compromising with the apron-string. He kissed the
Virgin, but he kissed the other three women with equal
partiality. He pulled on his long mittens, roused the dogs to
their feet, and took his Place at the gee pole.[4]
[4] A gee-pole: stout pole projecting forward from one side of
the front end of the sled, by which the sled is steered.
"Mush, you beauties!" he cried.
The animals threw their weights against their breastbands on the
instant, crouching low to the snow, and digging in their claws.
They whined eagerly, and before the sled had gone half a dozen
lengths both Daylight and Kama (in the rear) were running to keep
up. And so, running, man and dogs dipped over the bank and down
to the frozen bed of the Yukon, and in the gray light were gone. _
Read next: PART I: CHAPTER IV
Read previous: PART I: CHAPTER II
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