I
The great spring rush down the Black Elk River to the gold-fields of Discovery had begun.
From the town of Nugget, where they had passed the winter, a great host of fortune-seekers, lured thither by the call of Greed from the four corners of the earth, was now on the move. The surface of the river was white with their sails, black with their hulls. Hector, commanding the Mounted Police in Black Elk Territory, sat on a hill above Nugget and watched the fleet set out. Like Moses, he meditated over his innumerable flock of tenderfeet as they passed in review below him.
The backbone, veins, arteries, in fact the whole organism of the Territory centred in the Black Elk River. Rising at Lake Nugget, near the city of that name, the Black Elk ran into Lake Fortune, a fair day's sail to the north, bumped down a half-dozen dangerous rapids, swept through several sword-cut canyons, eased to a jog-trot, broadening comfortably the while and so, becoming ever more placid, ever more imposing, tumbled itself at last into Northern seas, a thousand miles away. Four hundred miles from Nugget, Discovery Creek contributed its quota of waters to the majestic river and at the mouth of the creek stood Discovery City. A chain of gigantic mountains, cleft on the coast side only by a single entrance, Hopeful Pass, walled in the Black Elk country from the Western sea and threw almost insuperable obstacles in the way of any attempt to reach the Territory by land from the civilized Canada to the south, while the country between the mountains and the coast, wherein lay the town of Prospect, on the sea-board, belonged to the United States. So Hector was isolated in the Black Elk country; with Hopeful Pass as his Thermopylae.
Two classes of people inhabited this tremendous Territory: the original prospectors or pioneers, and the fortune-hunters or newcomers. The pioneers were a mere handful, long established, grown old and seared in the service of the North, some firmly settled in the new gold area, the rest working claims or seeking strikes in ones and twos all over the Territory. The newcomers, the tenderfeet, outnumbering the old hands by hundreds, the adventurers now on their way to the gold-fields or struggling up through Hopeful Pass In the rear-guard of the advance—these were the people with whom Hector had most to deal.
Only a strong, stern, sane administration could guide and govern such a crowd as this. It represented every nationality, creed and race on earth. When the Archangel blows his trumpet to summon all men to judgment on the Last Day, he will simply reproduce, on a larger scale, the gathering then in progress in Black Elk Territory. There was in this gigantic mob no harmony, no discipline, no uniformity. It was one only in its arrogance, its greed and its ignorance. Hector knew its weaknesses well. He had seen it swindled, robbed and murdered by the Prospect gangsters. He had watched it fighting to make headway on the trail to Hopeful Pass, with dogs it could not drive, pack-horses it could not pack, tools it could not handle. He had seen it freezing in scanty clothing, starving on luxuries that should have been necessities, dying of weakness and disease, quarreling for precedence, fighting for life with 'six-guns' against thugs who made an end of the fight when it pleased them. He had heard it shout for joy when it won at last to the Mounted Police post on the summit of the Pass, sighted the Union Jack and scarlet coats which symbolized Law and Order, put away its weapons as no longer necessary and pushed on through the entry as though it went through the pearly gates, from Hell to Heaven. He had watched it settling down to spend its miserable winter. And, last of all, that morning, when the ice was finally departed, he had seen it embark—men, women in tights, children, dogs, ponies, cattle, goats, equipment and supplies—and rejoicingly set sail on the closing leg of its desperate journey.
With his men, he had played father, mother and big brother to this extraordinary conglomeration through all the winter, from the moment of their entry into Canadian country. He had now to see them safely to Discovery and to safeguard their interests and the country's interests when they got there.
For this engaging task, he had at his command unlimited authority and two hundred men—two hundred men among thirty thousand, two hundred men in a territory the size of France; unlimited authority, his own ability, two hundred men and the prestige of the Mounted Police.
He mentally ran over the dispositions he had made:
At Hopeful Pass, holding the keys to Heaven against all Hell, one Corporal St. Peter surnamed Dunsmuir with a dozen wingless buck policemen; at Pioneer Lake and Lake Miner—in the mountain chain cutting off Black Elk Territory from the civilized Canada to the south—at Nugget City and the town of Lucky, north of Lake Nugget, and at Discovery Creek—to name the more important points—were other detachments; posts at intervals along the Black Elk above and below Discovery City; and, in barracks at Discovery City, headquarters, the jail and what was left of his two hundred.