A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
Another week, and Jim had recovered all his old strength. With the spring in close proximity, and the food supply running dangerously short, he spared neither himself nor the dogs in his last feverish endeavor to achieve success.
Angela’s attitude puzzled him not a little. Since that fierce passage of words in the shack she had made no single reference to the future. She carried on the housekeeping with increased zest. Never again were the breakfast plates found unwashed at the next meal. She began to take a pride in making the cabin as comfortable as circumstances would allow, even going to the trouble of seeking berried evergreens in the woods and transforming these into table decoration.
Occasionally she went out to meet the disappointed 246 Jim coming back from his fruitless expeditions, and mushed the dogs while he sat on the sled. It seemed that she had succeeded in reconciling the situation—in making the best of a bad job.
One morning Jim announced his intention of exploring a small creek not a great distance from the shack. He started off with shovel and pick and the eternal washing-pan under a leaden sky. It was then an idea came to Angela. On her journey back from her abortive flight she had noticed a creek which displayed all the characteristics of those rich, shallow claims of which the Klondyke yields so many examples. Why not undertake a prospecting trip on her own account? There was a spare shovel, pick, and pan, and she had bored holes in frozen gravel before. She decided to harness up the sled and put her plan into execution.
At noon she started off with her team on the eight-mile journey. A close study of the map had convinced her that by taking the overland route she would save at least two miles either way. But her knowledge of maps was not great, and she entirely neglected to take into consideration 247 the contour markings, which would immediately have warned any experienced traveler against such a passage.
The trail led up over a big hill and down a ravine, and for a mile or two was good “going.” Coming out of the ravine the configuration changed. A jumbled mass of precipitous hills and canyons confronted her. She drove the dogs to an elevated point and looked before her. The great serpentine river came to view, clearly outlined by its wooded banks, and no more than two miles distant. On the near side of the river ran the creek she sought.
She gave a sigh of relief and urged the dogs on. The road narrowed and ascended again. The mountain-side fell away, and she found herself on a narrow ledge with a vast chasm beneath. She thought of turning back, but there was no room to turn the dogs round. Catching her breath, she went carefully forward. A few small flakes of snow on her shoulders, and then the inky sky began to empty itself. It came down in a great mass, obliterating everything. A cold terror began to possess her. In the blinding snow she could not discern the path for more than a 248 yard or two ahead, and by the side of her yawned that dreadful chasm!
She edged in close to the perpendicular wall, peering into the whirling mass of snow. The dogs stopped, and she urged them on again, knowing that the pass must soon descend to the river.
Suddenly there was a fierce uproar among the dogs. The sled jerked forward, and commenced to move at tremendous speed. A slight wind created a funnel-like opening in the dense white cloud before her. She gave one long shriek of horror at the sight which met her eyes. The sled was on the very brink of a precipice! It hovered there for a moment—just long enough for her to fling herself sideways against the wall; then it, and the team, vanished over the side, taking a mass of snow down, down into the bottomless depths.
She crouched against the wall, petrified by what had happened. A thundering noise came up from the black hole, reverberating through the pass and over the mountains as sled and dogs were hurled to their doom. She put her fingers in her ears to keep out the dreadful sound. 249
It ceased, and the great silence came again. Faint and sick, she realized that her left shoulder was aching with intense pain through contact with the rock wall.
There was nothing to be done but go back and confess the catastrophe to Jim. She stood up and commenced creeping along the dreadful path. Her left arm was hanging in useless fashion, setting up acute pain at the shoulder.
The full significance of her folly came to her. She had driven a team of dogs worth at least a thousand dollars to oblivion. Their chief means of travel was gone, and hundreds of miles lay between them and civilization. How could she confess the loss to Jim? What would he say?
For an hour she plodded on through the deep snow, her mind ranging over the past. Whatever might be said of this wild husband of hers, he had played the game as he saw it. She had to admit this. Culture and breeding were very desirable things, but had he not some other natural quality which, at the least computation, balanced these attributes? Could any man of her own set have acted with greater respect for her womanhood than he? 250
Until recently she had been no companion to him—nothing but a continual drag on the wheel. She had hurt him in speech and action. She had deliberately set her mind on making clear to him his cultural and moral inferiority. In return for this he had given her to feel a complete sense of safety. Sleeping within a few feet of him she had never, for a moment, felt the slightest possibility of molestation or intrusion on his part. It had been easy to take this all for granted—because he was a wild man and she was a cultured woman. She had come to see that “wild men” did not show such a refinement of consideration, even though they might conceivably acknowledge their social inferiority. She knew of no other man with whom she could have entrusted herself as she did with this one. Moreover, he was her husband....
She was glad she was making things a little more pleasant for him. She saw that his natural gayety and joie de vivre, long subdued, were again welling up within him. But yesterday she had heard him singing, coming back from his day’s unfruitful task. She knew herself to be the 251 cause of that song. It was rather pleasant to reflect upon.
Now she must tell him of the loss of the dog-team, brought about by her impetuosity and disregard for his position as leader of the expedition.
She came upon the cabin and entered it, to find him still away. She took off her snow-covered garments with great difficulty, for her injured arm hurt her at the least movement. She was putting the kettle on the stove when he entered.
“Gee! but I thought we’d done with snow,” he ejaculated. “But I guess this is the last drop.”
He shook off his muklucks and flung the bearskin parkha into a corner. With his usual quick introspection he noticed that something was amiss.
“Anythin’ wrong?” he queried.
He touched her on the injured arm and she winced with pain.
“Hello, you ain’t hurt your arm?”
“Jim, I’ve done an awful thing. I’ve lost the dog-team.”
She saw him start, and realized the full extent of the loss. To her surprise his furrowed brows relaxed and he smiled whimsically.
“Things do sure happen at the wrong time. But how did you manage that?”
She told him in low, self-reproachful tones, and winced again as a movement of the injured arm brought agony.
“Say, that’s bad.”
“Yes. I know. Without the dogs——”
“Oh, darn the dogs! I meant your arm. It’s hurting you a heap. Ain’t you had a look at it?”
“Not yet. It’s rather a job getting my dress undone.”
He promptly walked across the room, and in a few seconds came back with two huge red handkerchiefs.
“Sit you down,” he ordered. “We’ll start on this right now. How do you manage this arrangement?”
“It—it unbuttons at the back,” she stammered.
She felt his big inexperienced hand at work on the buttons, and soon her dress was slipped over 253 the injured shoulder. A little hiss escaped him as the round white arm came to view, with a hideous black bruise around the shoulder-joint. She stole one look at his face, and saw his perturbed countenance surveying the injury.
“Move your arm a little—that way.”
She did so with a groan.
“Good—there ain’t nothin’ broke.”
He soaked the handkerchief in cold water and tied up the arm with astonishing skill. Then he fashioned a sling with the other handkerchief, and carefully bent her arm and tucked it inside the latter.
“How’s that?”
She smiled gratefully.
“It seems much easier.”
“Sure! It’ll be fine in a day or two. You sit down here and I’ll git some tea.”
Without waiting to see this order obeyed, he ran to the stove and poked the fire into a blaze. The singing kettle began to boil, and a few minutes later they were having tea.
She watched him carefully, and knew that the loss of the dogs was worrying him. Yet he had 254 made so light of that, and so much of her comparatively trivial injury!
“About them dawgs, Angela?”
“Yes.”
“It’s kinder unfortunate, because grub’s low and it’s a hell of a way to Dawson. I guess we’ll have to pack up to-morrow and git going. We can do a bit o’ digging on the way back.”
Her eyes shone strangely.
“It was all my fault, Jim.”
“Bound to happen at times,” he said. “Dawgs is the silliest things. See here, you’re worrying some over that, ain’t you now?”
“I—I know what it means—to you.”
“It don’t mean nothin’ so long as you didn’t go over that cliff with ’em. We’ll make Dawson all right. I’ve bin up against bigger trouble than this.”
He jumped up and commenced vigorously to wash up the cups and saucers, talking rapidly all the while and refusing to allow her to lend a hand.
“I done this for years, back there in Medicine Bow,” he said. “Gee, them were times! There wasn’t water enough to make tea with in the 255 summer. Me and my two chums used to buy a pail of water for twenty dollars. It had to serve the three of us a whole day. We washed in it, and then drank it——”
“Ugh!”
“Wal, if we’d drank it first we couldn’t have washed in it after. I guess them chaps had logic. When we did strike a spring, gold wasn’t in it for excitement. It was like finding heaven. Hookey swore he’d never touch whisky again, and he didn’t until we hit the next saloon.”
She laughed merrily as he turned and dried his wet hands.
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” he said. “If you’d only laugh sometimes, Angela, I wouldn’t care a damn about short rations. I seen men laugh on the plains when the chances were that two hours later their scalps would be hanging at the belts of Injuns. I was only a kid then ... but laughing is a fine thing. You can’t beat a man who laughs.”
“You used to laugh then?”
“Sure!”
“But not now!”
He stared out through the window. 256
“Maybe that’s why I’m being beaten,” he said.
She stood up and touched him on the arm.
“I don’t think you’ll ever be beaten,” she said.
He shook his head, almost fearful of meeting those clear, beautiful eyes of hers.
“Only one thing in the world can beat me,” he said. “And that is the thing which above all others I’m mad to get; and it ain’t gold.”
He spent the evening packing up the gear and the food that remained, ready for the journey down the river. The home-made sled was again requisitioned, after undergoing sundry repairs. Late in the evening Angela, from the inner room, called him. Nervously he went inside, to find her with her wonderful hair flowing over her shoulders and her dress half undone.
“I—I can’t get it off,” she complained.
He attended to the stubborn buttons and pulled the top down over her shoulders. On the threshold of the door he called back.
“Good-night, Angela.”
She stood surveying him intently, and then came towards him.
“Whatever lies before us, don’t think me ungrateful. I’ll try to be a good comrade in the 257 future if you’ll let me. You’ve suffered so much.... It was never my wish that you should suffer. Even a bought wife has—a soul.”
He saw the swell of her bosom below the pure white shoulders. All her intoxicating beauty seemed to be pleading to him. Her lips, made for kissing, were like alluring blossoms of spring. For a moment he stood drunk with passionate desire. Then he touched her fingers lightly and went outside.