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The Trail of '98: A Northland Romance, a novel by Robert W. Service |
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Book 3. The Camp - Chapter 6 |
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_ BOOK III. THE CAMP CHAPTER VI "Let me introduce you," said the Prodigal, "to my friend the 'Pote.'" "Glad to meet you," said the Pote cheerfully, extending a damp hand. "Just been having a dishwashing bee. Excuse my dishybeel." He wore a pale-blue undershirt, white flannel trousers girt round the waist with a red silk handkerchief, very gaudy moccasins, and a rakish Panama hat with a band of chocolate and gold. "Take a seat, won't you?" Through his gold-rimmed spectacles his eyes shone benevolently as he indicated an easy-looking chair. I took it. It promptly collapsed under me. "Ah, excuse me," he said; "you're not onto the combination of that chair. I'll fix it." He performed some operation on it which made it less unstable, and I sat down gingerly. I was in a little log-cabin on the hill overlooking the town. Through the bottle window the light came dimly. The walls showed the bark of logs and tufts of intersecting moss. In the corner was a bunk over which lay a bearskin robe, and on the little oblong stove a pot of beans was simmering. The Pote finished his dishwashing and joined us, pulling on an old Tuxedo jacket. "Whew! Glad that job's over. You know, I guess I'm fastidious, but I can't bear to use a plate for more than three meals without passing a wet rag over it. That's the worst of having refined ideas, they make life so complex. However, I mustn't complain. There's a monastic simplicity about this joint that endears it to me. And now, having immolated myself on the altar of cleanliness, I will solace my soul with a little music." He took down a banjo from the wall and, striking a few chords, began to sing. His songs seemed to be original, even improvisations, and he sang them with a certain quaintness and point that made them very piquant. I remember one of the choruses. It went like this:
"You've never heard of the blue snow, Cheechako? The rabbits have blue fur, and the ptarmigans' feathers are a bright azure. You've never had an ice-worm cocktail? We must remedy that. Great dope. Nothing like ice-worm oil for salads. Oh, I forgot, didn't give you my card." I took it. It was engraved thus:
Turning it over, I read:
I stared at him curiously. He was smoking a cigarette and watching me with shrewd, observant eyes. He was a blond, blue-eyed, cherubic youth, with a whimsical mouth that seemed to alternate between seriousness and fun. He laughed merrily at my look of dismay. "Oh, you think it's a josh, but it's not. I've been a 'ghost' ever since I could push a pen. You know Will Wilderbush, the famous novelist? Well, Bill died six years ago from over-assiduous cultivation of John Barleycorn, and they hushed it up. But every year there's a new novel comes from his pen. It's 'ghosts.' I was Bill number three. Isn't it rummy?" I expressed my surprise. "Yes, it's a great joke this book-faking. Wouldn't Thackeray have lambasted the best sellers? A fancy picture of a girl on the cover, something doing all the time, and a happy ending--that's the recipe. Or else be as voluptuous as velvet. Wait till my novel, 'Three Minutes,' comes out. Order in advance." "Indeed I will," I said. He suddenly became grave. "If I only could take the literary game seriously I might make good. But I'm too much of a 'farceur.' Well, one day we'll see. Maybe the North will inspire me. Maybe I'll yet become the Spokesman of the Frozen Silence, the Avatar of the Great White Land." He strutted up and down, inflating his chest. "Have you framed up any dope lately?" asked the Prodigal. "Why, yes; only this morning, while I was eating my beans and bacon, I dashed off a few lines. I always write best when I'm eating. Want to hear them?" He drew from his pocket an old envelope. "They were written to the order of Stillwater Willie. He wants to present them to one of the Labelle Sisters. You know--that fat lymphatic blonde, Birdie Labelle. It is short and sweet. He wants to have it engraved on a gold-backed hand-mirror he's giving her.
"Do you get much work?" I asked. "No, it's dull. Poetry's rather a drug on the market up here. It's just a side-line. For a living I clean shoes at the 'Elight' Barbershop--I, who have lingered on the sunny slopes of Parnassus, and quenched my soul-thirst at the Heliconian spring--gents' tans a specialty." "Did you ever publish a book?" I asked. "Sure! Did you never read my 'Rhymes of a Rustler'? One reviewer would say I was the clear dope, the genuine eighteen-carat, jewelled-movement article; the next would aver I was the rankest dub that ever came down the pike. They said I'd imitated people, people I'd never read, people I'd never heard of, people I never dreamt existed. I was accused of imitating over twenty different writers. Then the pedants got after me, said I didn't conform to academic formulas, advised me to steep myself in tradition. They talked about form, about classic style and so on. As if it matters so long as you get down the thing itself so that folks can see it, and feel it go right home to their hearts. I can write in all the artificial verse forms, but they're mouldy with age, back numbers. Forget them. Quit studying that old Greek dope: study life, modern life, palpitating with colour, crying for expression. Life! Life! The sunshine of it was in my heart, and I just naturally tried to be its singer." "I say," said the Prodigal from the bunk where he was lounging, in a haze of cigarette smoke, "read us that thing you did the other day, 'The Last Supper.'" The Pote's eyes twinkled with pleasure. "All right," he said. Then, in a clear voice, he repeated the following lines: Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, Drinking your wine with dainty sips, Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, 'Tis a prison wine that your palate sips, Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, You and I in the grave's eclipse,
"The Yukon Yorick." "Hello," chuckled the newcomer, "how's the bunch? Don't let me stampede you. How d'ye do, Horace! Glad to meet you." (He called everybody Horace.) "Just come away from a meeting of my creditors. What's that? Have a slab of booze? Hardly that, old fellow, hardly that. Don't tempt me, Horace, don't tempt me. Remember I'm only a poor working-girl." He seemed brimming over with jovial acceptance of life in all its phases. He lit a cigar. "Say, boys, you know old Dingbats the lawyer. Ha, yes. Well, met him on Front Street just now. Says I: 'Horace, that was a pretty nifty spiel you gave us last night at the Zero Club.' He looked at me all tickled up the spine. Ha, yes. He was pleased as Punch. 'Say, Horace,' I says, 'I'm on, but I won't give you away. I've got a book in my room with every word of that speech in it.' He looked flabbergasted. So I have--ha, yes, the dictionary." He rolled his cigar unctuously in his mouth, with many chuckles and a histrionic eye. "No, don't tempt me, Horace. Remember, I'm only a poor working-girl. Thanks, I'll just sit down on this soap-box. Knew a man once, Jobcroft was his name, Charles Alfred Jobcroft, sat down on a custard pie at a pink tea; was so embarrassed he wouldn't get up. Just sat on till every one else was gone. Every one was wondering why he wouldn't budge: just sat tight." "I guess he cussed hard," ventured the Prodigal. "Oh, Horace, spare me that! Remember I'm only a poor working-girl. Hardly that, old fellow. Say, hit me with a slab of booze quick. Make things sparkle, boys, make things sparkle." He drank urbanely of the diluted alcohol that passed for whisky. "Hit me easy, boys, hit me easy," he said, as they refilled his glass. "I can't hold my hootch so well as I could a few summers ago--and many hard Falls. Talking about holding your 'hooch,' the best I ever saw was a man called Podstreak, Arthur Frederick Podstreak. You couldn't get that man going. The way he could lap up the booze was a caution. He would drink one bunch of boys under the table, then leave them and go on to another. He would start in early in the morning and keep on going till the last thing at night. And he never got hilarious even; it didn't seem to phase him; he was as sober after the twentieth drink as when he started. Gee! but he was a wonder." The others nodded their heads appreciatively. "He was a fine, healthy-looking chap, too; the booze didn't seem to hurt him. Never saw such a constitution. I often watched him, for I suspected him of 'sluffing,' but no! He always had a bigger drink than every one else, always drank whisky, always drank it neat, and always had a chaser of water after. I said to myself: 'What's your system?' and I got to studying him hard. Then, one day, I found him out." "What was it?" "Well, one day I noticed something. I noticed he always held his glass in a particular way when he drank, and at the same time he pressed his stomach in the region of the 'solar plexus.' So that night I took him aside. "'Look here, Podstreak,' I said, 'I'm next to you.' I really wasn't, but the bluff worked. He grew white. "'For Heaven's sake, don't give me away,' he cried; 'the boys'll lynch me.' "'All right,' I said; 'if you'll promise to quit.' "Then he made a full confession, and showed me how he did it. He had an elastic rubber bag under his shirt, and a tube going up his arm and down his sleeve, ending in a white nozzle inside his cuff. When he went to empty his glass of whisky he simply pressed some air out of the rubber bag, put the nozzle in the glass, and let it suck up all the whisky. At night he used to empty all the liquor out of the bag and sell it to a saloon-keeper. Oh, he was a phoney piece of work. "'I've been a total abstainer (in private) for seven years,' he told me. 'Yes,' I said, 'and you'll become one in public for another seven.' And he did." Several men had dropped in to swell this Bohemian circle. Some had brought bottles. There was a painter who had been "hung," a Mus Bac., an ex-champion amateur pugilist, a silver-tongued orator, a man who had "suped" for Mansfield, and half a dozen others. The little cabin was crowded, the air hazy with smoke, the conversation animated. But mostly it was a monologue by the inimitable Yorick. Suddenly the conversation turned to the immorality of the town. "Now, I have a theory," said the Pote, "that the regeneration of Dawson is at hand. You know Good is the daughter of Evil, Virtue the offspring of Vice. You know how virtuous a man feels after a jag. You've got to sin to feel really good. Consequently, Sin must be good to be the means of good, to be the raw material of good, to be virtue in the making, mustn't it? The dance-halls are a good foil to the gospel-halls. If we were all virtuous, there would be no virtue in virtue, and if we were all bad no one would be bad. And because there's so much bad in this old burg of ours, it makes the good seem unnaturally good." The Pote had the floor. "A friend of mine had a beautiful pond of water-lilies. They painted the water exultantly and were a triumphant challenge to the soul. Folks came from far and near to see them. Then, one winter, my friend thought he would clean out his pond, so he had all the nasty, slimy mud scraped away till you could see the silver gravel glimmering on the bottom. But the lilies, with all their haunting loveliness, never came back." "Well, what are you driving at, you old dreamer?" "Oh, just this: in the nasty mud and slime of Dawson I saw a lily-girl. She lives in a cabin by the Slide along with a Jewish couple. I only caught a glimpse of her twice. They are unspeakable, but she is fair and sweet and pure. I would stake my life on her goodness. She looks like a young Madonna----" He was interrupted by a shout of cynical laughter. "Oh, get off your foot! A Madonna in Dawson--Ra! Ra!" He shut up abashed, but I had my clue. I waited until the last noisy roisterer had gone. "In the cabin by the Slide?" I asked. He started, looked at me searchingly: "You know her?" "She means a good deal to me." "Oh, I understand. Yes, that long, queer cabin highest up the hill." "Thanks, old chap." "All right, good luck." He accompanied me to the door, staring at the marvel of the glamorous Northern midnight. "Oh, for a medium to express it all! Your pedantic poetry isn't big enough; prose isn't big enough. What we want is something between the two, something that will interpret life, and stir the great heart of the people. Good-night." _ |
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