"Take your hand off that gun, Barclay."
"What's the matter with you?" the younger man questioned.
Mrs. McGill's eyes were wide with terror, her frame racked by apprehension, when her husband turned upon her and asked:
"Is it true? Do you love—him?" He jerked his head in Barclay's direction. "Answer me!" he rumbled, savagely, as she hesitated.
Her lips moved, and she nodded without removing her gaze from him.
"How long have you loved him?"
When she still could not master herself, he softened his voice: "You needn't be scared, Alice. I couldn't hurt you."
"A long—time," she said, finally.
McGill leveled a look at the other man.
"That's right," Barclay agreed. "You might as well know."
"They tell me that you and her had—" McGill ground his teeth, and his little eyes blazed—"that she didn't have no right to marry without—telling me something about you."
The former answered through white lips: "Well? Everybody knew it except you, and you could have found out. I'd have married her sometime, myself, if you hadn't come along."
McGill's fingers opened slowly, at which the woman burst forth:
"No, no! Don't—do that. You can't blame him, Dan. I did it. Don't you understand? I'm the one. I loved him in 'Frisco, long before I saw you, and I've loved him ever since. Take it out on me, if you want to, but don't hurt him."
"I don't reckon I'd have minded it much if I'd known the truth at the start," said McGill. "Most women have made mistakes at one time or another, at least most of those I've known have. No, it ain't that, but you married me knowing that you loved him all the time."
"I tried to quit," cried the wife. "I tried to, but I couldn't."
"And what's the rottenest of all"—McGill's voice was ugly again—"you made him best man at the wedding, or just the same. He stood up with us. Didn't you, Barclay?"
The wife flung herself into the breach once more with a self-sacrifice that wrenched her husband's heart. "He didn't want to, but I made him. I thought you had money, and I was mad at him for letting me go, so I tried to hurt him. I wanted him to marry me, but he wouldn't, and I took you. When it was over and I saw the kind of man you are I tried to love you—honestly I did, but I couldn't. You're so—I—I couldn't do it, that's all." She broke into a torrent of tears, holding herself on her feet by an effort. Her wretched sobbing was the only sound in the cabin for a time, then Barclay inquired:
"Well, what are you going to do?"
McGill turned to his wife, ignoring Barclay. "I guess I understand things pretty well now, and I'm beginning to see your side. Of course I never aimed to hurt you, Alice—I couldn't; but I aimed to kill this man, and I will if he stays here." Over his shoulder he flung out, quickly: "Oh, the gun won't help you none. You've got to go, Barclay."
"I'll go with him," cried Mrs. McGill, desperately. "If he goes, I'll go, too."
"That's exactly what you've got to do. You can't stay here now, neither of you. If he ain't able to take care of you, why, I will as long as I live, but you've both got to go."
"It's the best course under the circumstances," Barclay agreed, with relief. "We'll take the first boat—"
"You'll go to-day, now," said the husband, grimly, "before I have time to think it over."
"But where?"
"To hell! That's where you're headed."
"We can't go afoot," the woman cried in a panic.
"I've got dogs! And don't argue or I'll weaken. I'm letting him go because you seem to need him, Alice. Only remember one thing, both of you—there ain't no town big enough to hold all three of us. Now go, quick, before I change my mind, for if the sun ever goes down on Barclay and me together, so help me God! it won't rise on both of us. There ain't no place in the world that's big enough for him and me, no place in the world."
McGill stood on the river-bank and watched them vanish into the ghostly curtain that sifted slowly down from the heavens, and when they were finally lost to view he turned back to his empty cabin. Before entering he paused as usual to note the weather—it was a habit. He saw that the sky was strangely leaden and low, and in spite of the fact that the "quick" was falling rapidly, the air was lifeless and close. If McGill was any judge, that squall had been but a warning, and foretold more to follow. He sighed miserably at the thought of the night his wife would have to face.
He cooked his supper mechanically, then sat for hours staring at it. The wind rattling at his door finally roused him to the knowledge that his fire was out and the room chilly. Being unable longer to bear the silence and the mute evidences of her occupation that looked at him from every side, he slipped into his parka and went down to Hopper's place, where there were life and human voices at least.
The night was yelling with a million voices when he stepped out. The bitter wind snapped his fur garment as if to rend it to ribbons, the whirling particles of snow rasped his face like the dry grains from a sand-blast. Boreas had loosed his demons, and they were lashing the night into chaos. McGill felt a sudden tender concern for the woman, a concern so great as almost to destroy his bitterness, but he reflected that he had seen to loading the sled himself, and among the other paraphernalia had included a tent and a stove. Unless Barclay was a fool, therefore, Alice was perfectly safe. There was wood aplenty, and the spruce forests offered shelter from the gale. The thought awakened a memory of those night camps he had made on that dreamlike wedding-journey and brought forth a groan. How old and spiritless he had become; he could scarcely stand against the wind!
Of course the story had gone broadcast, hours before, for other eyes than his had watched the man and woman take the outbound trail that afternoon, so when he came stumbling into Hopper's place a sudden silence fell. He went directly to the bar and called for straight "hootch," to drive the cold from his bones, but, although it warmed his flesh, his soul remained numb and frozen. Inside him was a great aching emptiness that even Hopper's kindly words could not reach.
"Looks like the worst night we've had this year," said the proprietor. "Better have a drink with me."
McGill's teeth rattled on the glass when he put it to his lips. "She's gone!" he whispered, staring across the bar, "and I didn't kill him. I couldn't—on her account."
Hopper nodded. "I'm awful sorry it came out this way, Dan."
McGill shivered and drew his head down between his gaunt shoulders. "Talk to me, will you?" he begged. "I'm hit hard."
His friend did as he was directed, but a few minutes later in the midst of his words the big man interrupted:
"There wasn't room for all of us here," he declared, fiercely. "I told her that, but she wanted him worse than her own life, so I had to give in."
They were still talking at midnight, after all but a few loiterers had gone home, when they heard a man's voice calling from outside. An instant later the front door burst open and a figure appeared; it was Cochrane, the trader from down-river.
"Here! Give me a hand!" he bellowed through his ice-burdened beard, then plunged back into the hurricane to reappear with a woman in his arms.
"I thought I'd never make it," he declared. "There's a man in the sled, too. Get some 'hootch' and send for a doctor, quick."
McGill uttered a cry, while the hand with which he gripped the bar went white at his pressure. "Where did you get them?" he questioned.
"Ten miles below," said Cochrane. "I was camped for the night when their dogs picked up my scent. They were half dead when they got to me, and he was in mighty bad shape, so I came through. I've been five hours on the road."
Two men brought in Barclay, at which McGill flung out a long arm and cried in a loud voice, "Is that man dead?"
No one answered, so he strode forward, only to have the weakened traveler raise his head and say:
"No, I'm not dead, McGill. But we had to come back."
The wife was calling to her husband, wretchedly: "Don't do it, Dan. We couldn't help it. We'll go to-morrow. We'll go. Please don't! We'll go."
The onlookers, knowing something of the tragedy, drew back, watching McGill, who still stared into the face of the man who had robbed him of everything.
"Do you remember what I told you?" he questioned, inflexibly.
Barclay nodded, and the woman shrilled again:
"Don't let him do it, men. Don't!"
"There ain't room for us here," went on McGill.
"Only to-night," supplicated his wife, the frost-bitten spots in her cheeks no more pallid than the rest of her countenance. "He can't go. Don't you see he isn't able? Wait, Dan; I'll go if you want me to"—she struggled forward. "I'll go, but he'll die if you send him out."
"It's always him, ain't it?" said the miner, slowly. "You seem to want him pretty bad, Alice. Well, you can have him. And you can stay, both of you." He drew his cap down over his grizzled hair and turned toward the door, but Hopper saw the light in his eye and intercepted him.
"I'll go home with you, Dan," said he.
"I ain't going home."
"You mean—"
"There ain't room enough in Ophir for Barclay and me and the woman."
"My God, man, listen to that blizzard! It's suicide!"
But McGill only repeated, dully: "There ain't room, Hopper. There ain't room!" and with the gait of an old man shambled to the door. When he opened it the storm shrieked in glee and rushed in, wrapping him up to the middle in its embrace. He closed the door behind him, then went stumbling off into the night, and as he crept blindly forth upon the frozen bosom of the river the bellowing wind wiped out his footprints an arm's-length at his back.
THE BRAND
I
The valley was very still. No breath of wind had stirred it for many days. It was smothered so heavily in snow that the firs were bent; even the bare birch limbs carried precarious burdens, and when gravity relieved some sagging branch the mass beneath welcomed the avalanche so softly that the only sound was a whisper as the bough returned to its position. The brooding cold had cleared the air of sound as it had of moisture. No birds piped, there was no murmur of running water, no evidence of animal life except an occasional wavering line etched into the white by the feet of some tiny rodent.
The rolling hills were sparsely timbered, against an empty north sky a jumble of saw-toothed peaks were limned like carvings, and everywhere was the same unending hush of winter. The desolation was complete.
Yet there was life here, for spaced at regular intervals across the gulch were mounds of white, each forming the lips of a rectangular cavity resembling an open grave. They were perfectly aligned and separated from each other by precisely thirty paces; surrounding each was a clearing out of which freshly cut stumps protruded bearing snow caps fashioned like the chapeau of a drum-major. There were six of these holes, and a seventh was in process of digging. Over the last one a crude windlass straddled and the heap of debris at its feet showed raw and dirty against the snow. Out of the aperture a thin vapor rose lazily, coating the drum and rope with rime; from the clearing a narrow trail wound to a cabin beside the creek-bank.
McGill came out into the morning and with him came his three giant malamutes, wolf-gray, shaggy, and silent like their master. He eyed the drooping, white-robed forest and the desolate ridges that shut him in, then said, in a voice harsh from disuse:
"Hello, people! Anything happened yet?"
He made it a practice to speak aloud whenever he thought of it, for the hush of an arctic winter plays pranks with a person's mind, and there is a certain effect of sanity in spoken words, senseless though they be.
After a moment he repeated his greeting: "Good morning, I said. Can't you answer?" Then his cheeks flamed above his heavy beard and he yelled, loudly, "Good morning, you ——! Can't you say anything?" He glared reproachfully at a giant spruce from the lower limbs of which depended the quarters of several caribou. "Tom, you ain't gone back on me? Say hello. You and me are friends. Speak up!" After a time he shook his head, murmuring: "It's no use. I've got to make all the noise there is. If it would only blow—or something. I'd like to hear the wind."
He strode toward the prospect hole, the dogs following sedately, their feet making no sound in the snow. They, too, felt the weight of isolation and never left his side. Arriving at the dump, McGill stood motionless beside the windlass for a long time, staring into nothingness with eyes that were strained and miserable. When the cold bit him he roused himself and addressed the steam-filled opening dispiritedly:
"So, you didn't freeze up on me. That's good. I'll get bed-rock to-day and show you up for a dirty cheat. Pay! Bah! there ain't none!"
He descended a ladder at one end of the shaft, gathered the charred logs, tied them into a bundle with the end of the windlass rope, then, mounting the ladder, hoisted them to the surface. Next, hooking on the ungainly wooden bucket, he lowered it, after which he descended for a second time.
There began a long and monotonous series of ascents and descents, for every bucket of gravel meant two journeys the full depth of the pit. It was a tedious and primitive process, involving a tremendous waste of effort, but he was methodical, and each time the tub rose it carried a burden sufficient to tax the strength of two men. He handled it easily, however, and by midday had removed the thawed ground and scraped a sample from close to frost. He laid a light fire, then took the heaping gold-pan under his arm and set off for his cabin, accompanied by the malamutes.
When he had prepared and eaten his lunch he seated himself before his panning-tub, a square box half filled with water melted from the creek ice, and began the process of testing his prospect.
Having worked down the gravel and sediment to a half-handful, he spread it with a movement of his wrists, leaving stranded at the tail of the black sand a few specks of yellow. These he eyed for a moment before washing them away.
"Too light—as usual," he said, aloud. The dogs stirred and raised their heads. "Always pretty near, but not quite. But it's here, somewhere, and I'll get it if I can last out this damned silence. That rim-rock didn't lie. And old Pitka didn't lie, either. Nobody lies except—women." He scowled at some remembrance, his whole face retreated behind a bristling mask of ferocity. He sat motionless over the tub of muddy water until the fire died out of the stove and the chill warned him that it was time to resume work.
For many weeks—how many McGill neither knew nor cared—he had pursued the routine of his search. He had penetrated this valley alone, unseen, in the late autumn, and every day since then he had labored steadily, mechanically, almost without physical sensation, for all feeling was centered in his memory, which never gave him time to consider his surroundings. Spring was coming now—the sun was already peeping over the southern hills in the middle of its daily journey—and during this time there had been but two interruptions which had roused him from his apathy. One had occurred when, in quest of fresh meat, he had discovered that he had neighbors ten miles to the west. He had seen their camp from the divide, then had turned and slunk away, cursing them for intruding upon his privacy. The other was when a herd of caribou had crossed. At that time he had given brief rein to his desire to kill, seeing ahead of his sights the face of the man who had sent him into the wilderness. He could have bagged half the herd, but checked himself in time, realizing that it was not Barclay at whom he leveled his rifle, but defenseless animals, the carcasses of which were useless.
Barclay! The name maddened McGill. He wondered dully why he continued to work so steadily when Barclay had robbed him of the need for gold. The answer to this, he supposed, was easier than the answer to those other questions that forever troubled him—he had to do something or die of his thoughts, and he knew no other work than this. Even in his busiest hours memories of Barclay and the woman obtruded themselves.
It was after dark when he had fired the hole a second time and returned to his cabin. He had not reached bed-rock and this fact irritated him—he was growing very irritable, it seemed. Lighting his pipe of rank "sheep-dip" tobacco when the supper-dishes were finally cleaned and the dogs fed, he once more prepared for the profitless process of panning. But he noticed that this sample of gravel was different to any he had yet found, being of a peculiar ashen color. He felt it with practised fingers and discovered it to be gritty and full of sediment.
"Feels good," he said, aloud, "but I'll bet it's barren."
He had panned so many samples that all eagerness, all curiosity as to the outcome, had long since disappeared, therefore his movements were purely perfunctory as he dissolved the clay lumps and washed the gravels down. He paused half-way through the operation to dry his hands and relight his pipe, then fell to thinking of Barclay and the woman once more, and remained so for a long time. When he resumed his task it was with glazed, unseeing eyes. He was about to dump the last dregs carelessly when something just slipping over the edge of the pan caught his eye and caused him to tilt the receptacle abruptly.
The breath whistling in his throat roused the dogs. McGill closed his eyes for an instant, then reached unsteadily for the candle. A movement of his wrist ran the water across the pan bottom and spread the black sand thinly. Instantly there leaped out against the black metal a heap of bright, clean, yellow particles which lay as if glued together.
"Coarse gold! Coarse gold!" he whispered, then cursed in the weak, meaningless manner of men under great excitement. Not trusting himself to hold the pan, he set it upon the table, but without removing his eyes from it. When his nerves had steadied he ran the prospect down, all the time muttering in his beard. He dried it over the fire, blew the iron sand free with his breath, then pushed the particles into a heap, striving to estimate their value.
"There's half an ounce," he said, finally. "Eight dollars a pan! God! that's big! Big! It's another Klondike." He rose and ran bareheaded out into the night, followed by the dogs, then stood staring at the smoke as it ascended vertically above his shaft, like a giant night-growing plant of some kind. He was tempted to descend the ladder and tear the crackling logs apart, but thought better of it. Swinging his eyes along the valley rim that stood out black against the aurora, he lifted his long arms. "It's mine, all mine! Understand?" He cried the words loudly, wildly, as if challenging the silence. "It's no good to me, but it's mine, and, by God, I'll keep it!"
McGill reached bed-rock the next evening and spent most of the night panning the pile of scrapings he had collected from the bottom of the pit. If the top of the streak had been rich, the lower concentration was amazing. Every seam in the shattered limestone, which stood on end like sluice riffles, contained little flattened pumpkin-seeds of gold; they lay embedded in the clay stringers like plums in a pudding or as if some lavish hand had inserted them there, as coins are slipped into the slot of a child's savings-bank. He could see them before the dirt was half washed, but took a supreme pleasure, nevertheless, in watching the yellow pile grow as the sediment disappeared. A baking-powder can was half filled when he had finished; it told him unmistakably the magnitude of his riches. He was a wealthy man, wealthier than he had ever dreamed of being there was more where this came from and the gulch lay unappropriated from end to end. Fortune had come in a day, and he would never want so long as he lived. His thoughts were wild and chaotic, for he was half mad from the silence.
But what use to make of his discovery he hardly knew, since he had slunk away from the world, ablaze with hatred for his fellow-men, intending to live alone for the rest of his days. His grudge was as bitter now as then, and he determined, therefore, to keep his find a secret. That would be a grim, if unsatisfactory, sort of revenge, he reflected. He would take what he wished, and let other men wear out their lives searching unsuccessfully. Those strangers to the westward, for instance, would toil and suffer through the long winter, then leave discouraged. There was money here for them and for hundreds—thousands—like them, but he decided to guard his secret and to let it die with him.
McGill pictured the result of this news if he gave it out; the stampede, the headlong rush that would bring men from every corner of the North. He saw this silent valley bared of its brooding forest and filled with people; he saw a log city in the flats down by the river; he heard the bass blasts of steamboats, the shrilling of saw-mills, the sound of music from dance-halls, the click of checks and roulette-balls, the noise of revelry—
"No! No! No!" He rose and shouted into the empty silence of his cabin. "I won't do it! I won't! I won't!"
But the voices called to him all through the night.
He rose early, for they would not let him rest, and during the darkness a terrible hunger had grown upon him. It was the hunger for companionship, for speech. His secret was too great for imprisonment, it threatened to burst the confines of the valley by its own tremendous force; he knew he could never sleep with it, for it would smother him; vampire-like, it would suck the life from his veins and the reason from his brain.
When he had eaten he pocketed the baking-powder tin, slipped into his snow-shoes and, crossing the gulch, climbed the westward hills that hid his neighbors. The dogs went with him.
II
News of the John Daniels strike reached Ophir in July, when a ragged, unkempt man arrived in a poling-boat. He was one of the party that had camped west of McGill, and he ate a raw potato with the ravenous appetite of an animal while waiting for his first meal at the Miner's Rest. Between mouthfuls he gave the word that set the town ablaze.
When he had bought a ton of grub at the A. C. store and weighed out payment in bright pumpkin-seed gold he went to Hopper's saloon and handed the proprietor a folded paper.
Hopper read it uncomprehendingly.
"This is a location notice, recorded in my name," the latter said, turning the document uncomprehendingly as if to see if it contained a message on the reverse side.
The stranger nodded. "Number Four Above, on John Daniels Creek. John staked for you, and told me to tell you to come. We've struck it rich."
Hopper's hand shook; he stared at the speaker in bewilderment. "John Daniels? I don't seem to remember him."
"He's a big slab-sided man with a deep voice and eyes like ice."
The listener started. "Is he—skookum?"
"Stronger 'n any two men—"
"God! It's—McGill!"
"I thought so, but I never saw him only once—that was in Circle. He's changed now—got a beard. He said you done him a favor once. You're his friend, ain't you?"
"I am."
"What's the trouble with him?" There was a pause. "You can tell me. He put me and my five pardners in on his strike. I'm taking grub to him and the others."
"Oh, it was about a woman, of course. It always is. Everybody here knows the story. She was no good, except to look at. Feller named Barclay brought her into the country, but Dan didn't know it, so he up and marries her. She thought he had money, and when she found he was broke like the rest of us she and Barclay began cuttin' up again. It was rotten. I came near putting Barclay away, but figgered Dan wouldn't like nobody to do his work, so I told him. He went out to clean the slate, but found his wife was crazy about the skunk and always had been, so he sent 'em away together. He done it for her sake, but he warned 'em to stay off his trail, because no camp was big enough to hold all three of 'em. It was blizzardy, and what did the blame' fools do but get caught ten miles below here. Cochrane brought 'em back that night on his sled. McGill was here, right where you're standing, when they were lugged in. When he seen Barclay he went after him again, figgerin', I suppose, that God was disgusted with his proposition and had sent the feller back to be finished."
"Good!" said the stranger. "And he got him, eh?"
"No! Barclay wasn't more 'n half dead, and the woman fell to beggin' for his life again. She appealed to all of us. McGill must have loved her more 'n we give him credit for, because when he saw that neither one of 'em was able to leave, he left instead. He walked right out of that door into the wickedest storm we had that season, and we never seen him again. Everybody thought he froze or the wolves got him. That was a year ago last winter."
