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The Trail of '98: A Northland Romance, a novel by Robert W. Service |
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Book 4. The Vortex - Chapter 1 |
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_ BOOK IV. THE VORTEX CHAPTER I He burned a hole in the frozen muck; He burned a hole in the Decalogue, And lo! it was but a year all told, --"The Yukoner."
"No, it isn't all right. It's very far from all right, my boy; and this is where you and your little uncle here are going to have a real heart to heart talk." It was in the big cabin on Gold Hill, and the Prodigal was addressing me. He went on: "Now, look here, kid, when it comes to expressing my feelings I'm in the kindergarten class; when it comes to handing out the high-toned dope I drop my cue every time; but when I'm needed to do the solid pardner stunt then you don't need to holler for me--I'm there. Well, I'm giving you a straight line of talk. Ever since the start I've taken a strong notion to you. You've always been ace-high with me, and there never will come the day when you can't eat on my meal-ticket. We tackled the Trail of Trouble together. You were always wanting to lift the heavy end of the log, and when the God of Cussedness was doing his best to rasp a man down to his yellow streak, you showed up white all through. Say, kid, we've been in tight places together; we've been stacked up against hard times together: and now I'll be gol-darned if I'm going to stand by and see you go downhill, while the devil oils the bearings." "Oh, I'm all right," I protested. "Yes, you're all right," he echoed grimly. "In an impersonation of an 'all-right' man it's the hook for yours. I've seen 'all-right' men like you hitting the hurry trail for the boneyard before now. You're 'all right'! Why, for the last two hours you've been sitting with that 'just-break-the-news-to mother' expression of yours, and paying no more heed to my cheerful brand of conversation than if I had been a measly four-flusher. You don't eat more than a sick sparrow, and often you don't bat an eye all night. You're looking worse than the devil in a gale of wind. You've lost your grip, my boy. You don't care whether school keeps or not. In fact, if it wasn't for your folks, you'd as lief take a short cut across the Great Divide." "You're going it a little strong, old man." "Oh no, I'm not. You know you're sick of everything. Feel as if life's a sort of penitentiary, and you've just got to do time. You don't expect to get any more fun out of it. Look at me. Every day's my sunshine day. If the sky's blue I like it; if it's grey I like it just as well. I never worry. What's the use? Yesterday's a dead one; to-morrow's always to-morrow. All we've got's the 'now,' and it's up to us to live it for all we're worth. You can use up more human steam to the square inch in worrying than you can to the square yard in hard work. Eliminate worry and you've got the only system." "It's all very well for you to preach," I said, "you forget I've been a pretty sick man." "That's no nursemaid's dream. You almost cashed in. Typhoid's a serious proposition at the best; but when you take a crazy streak on top of it, make a midnight getaway from the sick-ward and land up on the Slide looking as if you'd been run through a threshing machine, well, you're sure letting death get a short option on you. And you gave up. You didn't want to fight. You shirked, but your youth and constitution fought for you. They healed your wounds, they soothed your ravings, they cooled your fever. They were a great team, and they pulled you through. Seems as if they'd pulled you through a knot-hole, but they were on to their job. And you weren't one bit grateful--seemed to think they had no business to butt in." "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 them--oh, 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 happy--then 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 humanity--the 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. _ |
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