CHAPTER XII
The Fates, in weaving the intricate web of human lives, smile grimly oftentimes over the curious intermingling of the threads. Often, too, the incomplete design might well move them to a cruel mirth, but that they see beyond the seeming tangle of events to the perfecting of their pattern at the last. So, perhaps, they are content of their task, though we mortals, with short-sighted eyes, seeing dimly, look on the happenings of our lives as the blessed or the baneful work of chance. Thus, now, the Fates had brought here, beneath the flickering of the Northern Lights, all the actors in the drama of the years agone, when the happiness of a home had been shattered by a villain's ruthless passion. Their presence within a short radius of miles had every appearance of purest chance. Nevertheless, the Fates had brought them within reach of one another, that thus the seeming snarl in the threads of these lives might be shown as in fact untangled and woven into a design just and harmonious and beautiful.
Dan McGrew moved sociably among the men of the village, as they celebrated the wedding with many jovial libations. He was hail-fellow-well-met with each and all, for it had come to be a matter of professional necessity with him to attain a fair measure of popularity whithersoever he went. He had deteriorated much with the passage of the years. He had sunk to be a common gambler, and on occasion had not scrupled at worse methods in pursuit of ill-gotten gains. To-day his keen eyes were speedily drawn to one of the men, who was especially lavish in hospitality.
"Who is he?" Dan asked of the bar-tender. "Seems flush, all right."
"That's Sam Ward," was the answer. "He's got a hole somewhere up in the hills, which nobody don't know nothin' about—'cept it's cussed rich. Sam blows a pokeful o' dust ev'ry time he hits town."
Dan eyed the fortunate prospector greedily, and his predatory instinct brought him to a quick decision. He went to Lou, who was sitting, drearily enough, alone at a table in a corner of the room. He spoke to her softly, that none might overhear, though of this there was little danger amid the noise of rollicking gayety.
"There's a chap here I mean to chum up with a bit," Dangerous Dan explained. "I'll introduce him, and you must be nice enough to him to make him talk."
The woman nodded assent. For it had come to such a pass. Often, she had stooped to play decoy for the man in his schemes against his fellows.
Dan McGrew had persistently lied to this woman. By his arts he had ruined her life. But Lou had still no inkling of the truth. One great fact was impressed upon her as time passed: This man loved her—and he was loyal to her. Since she had lost everything dear, it seemed her duty to give the worthless remnant of her life to the one who thus esteemed it something precious.
When Lou returned to consciousness, after the fever and delirium that seized her the dreadful night of the flight from home, her first question was concerning the drowned child.
The man at the bedside met her imploring gaze steadfastly, and spoke his falsehoods so convincingly that she had never a doubt. The river had been searched with every care, he declared. The body had not been found. The bereaved mother had been denied the last pitiful solace of grief—a place of burial wherein to mourn over the lost.
After the final deprivation, Lou was apathetic. The light had gone out of her life. She was numb with misery. Her most distinct emotion was a sort of passive gratitude toward the man who had so frightfully wronged her. It was in obedience to the promptings of this feeling that Lou meekly accepted his every suggestion. She did so with the more readiness because these suggestions were so skillfully contrived as to seem the epitome of unselfishness.
Thus, for example, there was the matter of divorce. Dan learned that the kindly woman into whose house he had brought Lou suffered from nostalgia. She had come out into the West with an eager, improvident husband, who had died and left her with this tiny home, on which the mortgage of a few hundreds rested as a burden beyond her strength to remove. She was sick with longing to go back among the home-folk. Dan's sympathetic voice and candid, honest eyes won confidence from the lonely old woman. And, too, she quickly grew fond of the invalid in her house. Therefore, she had no hesitation in acceding to the proposal made to her by Dan McGrew: that she should travel to the East with Lou, as nurse and companion. The money offered to her by Dan McGrew for these services was enough to ease her declining years. Moreover, there was the added inducement that, in this manner, she would be able to return to the place for which she longed.
Lou made no objection to the arrangement. She liked the old woman, and the instinct of flight was still upon her.... She was only grateful to the man who was at such pains in her behalf.
In due time, the three were duly established in the East. Dangerous Dan, in the course of his daily visits to Lou from a lodging he had taken close at hand, guided her thoughts so craftily that, with no suspicion of having been influenced, the heart-broken woman decided that she should get a divorce. Dan had chosen a location in a State where desertion was a sufficient cause. Lou brought suit, and the issue was expedited in the courts. She believed that thus she gave to her husband an opportunity to marry the woman with whom he had become infatuated, and thus, too, an opportunity to restore in some degree his self-respect.... She could not guess that, owing to the treachery of the man on whose advice she relied, her husband had no knowledge whatsoever of these proceedings. The newspapers, with their formal advertisements to the defendant in the action instituted in the courts, were never posted to the address of the ranch-owner.... Dan McGrew saw to that.
Eventually, there came a decree nisi. In due time, the divorce was made absolute. Throughout this interval of delay, the man demonstrated the firmness of his purpose by the patience with which he waited for the attainment of his ends.
It was not until a year after her flight from home that Lou became the wife of Dangerous Dan McGrew.... Why should she not give herself to him who had so befriended her?
The late dawn of the morning after the wedding came on clear, with a soft wind blowing from the south. Under its gentleness, the sun was able to thaw the surface of the snow. Then the wind swung to the north. Within an hour, the crust on the snow, as the Arctic air blew over it, was strong enough to support a horse. And Dan McGrew and many another took advantage of the fact. There were a few meagerly fed horses in the town, remnants from the discontinued Lodestar Mine, which had failed to pay a profit, after elaborate installation of equipment. They knew that at the first change of the weather their mounts would become worse than useless. In the meantime, however, there was a luxury in this form of travel that appealed. And there were hangers-on in the town, too poor for a grub-stake, who for a pittance would run on foot with the train, and afterward take back the horses to the village, when a softer snow should make them a hindrance rather than a help.
Nell used the voice of wifely authority:
"Why, the idea! Of course I shall go too!" She was all eagerness. For years she had lived with those who were informed with the spirit of the frontiers. Her husband, thus far in his battling with the Northland, had been successful. He had found claims of value. Some of them he had sold; some of them he had worked. From most of them he had won a deserved profit. So, when the news of the strike on Forgotten Creek came—even though it was his wedding-day—Jack Reeves was all agog with anxiety to be off to this region whither fortune beckoned.... And Nell would not be left behind. She would follow her husband where fate led. She would not be denied.
Thus it came about that the bridal pair were among the crowd that surged in the village street before the Dyea Hotel on the morning after their wedding. Jack had a team of dogs, the best within hundreds of miles. They were strong enough to make play of hauling the long sled, laden with provisions, on which Nell was seated with ease, well-wrapped in furs, and sheltered beneath a drapery of white—the skin of a polar bear, which Jack had brought back with him as a trophy of experiences beneath the Arctic night.
There were in the throng men who had no dogs. They carried on their backs the small allowance of bacon, beans, flour, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco. The adventurers were of all sorts. Some went well supplied. Others joined in the stampede recklessly. They might starve, or freeze, out there in the mountains. But they were caught and drawn on by the lust for riches. Somewhere out there in the cold and the distance gold was lying. In the sands of the creeks, in the ledges of the mountains, were the golden flakes, the riches for which each and every one craved....
THE ADVENTURERS WERE OF ALL SORTS. THEY WERE DRAWN ON BY THE LUST FOR RICHES.
The huskies yelped and snarled in fierce rivalry. Harry, the Dog-Man, snapped his whip with a vicious crack like the report of a gun. The dogs strained against the breast-straps in their fierce lunge forward. Along the line was everywhere impetuous, eager movement. The stampede had begun.
Dangerous Dan McGrew, who rode beside his wife, spoke to her softly, so that his question would not be overheard by Sam Ward, who rode on her other side:
"What does he say?"
Lou answered in a whisper:
"He'll leave to-night, when the camp's quiet, for his own claim."