This was the first time that Swiftwater had seen me since he left me in Dawson alone and unprotected, to find means as best I could to provide shelter and sustenance for his little baby boy, Clifford.
In spite of myself, I laughed, forgetting all of the long months that we had waited for some sign of Swiftwater and an indication of his desire to do what was right by his own two little babies.
“Coward,” I said, still laughing. “You know you deserve to be shot.”
No answer from Swiftwater, whose body was completely covered up by bed clothes.
Now, most men and most women will admire a MAN, but a cur and a coward are universally despised.
As I looked at that huddled up mass of humanity underneath the white bedspread, my heart rose in rage. The contempt I felt for him is beyond all expression.
“Come out of that, Bill,” said I. “I have no gun!”
After a while, Swiftwater poked his head from beneath the bed clothes and showed a blanched face covered with a three weeks’ old growth of black beard. I told him to dress and I would wait outside. In a few minutes Swiftwater emerged and there stood a man who had commanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in money and gold in Alaska, looking just exactly as if he had dropped from the brake-beam of a Northern Pacific freight train and had walked his way into Seattle. He was clad in a dirty sack coat, that shone like a mirror, with brown striped trousers, an old brown derby hat and shoes that were out at the sole and side.
“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater in a trembling voice, “I am all in. If you will not have me arrested, but will give me a chance, I’ll soon provide for the babies and Bera.”
Swiftwater pleaded as if for his life. He said that he could get money in San Francisco from a man who had offered to back him in a new scheme in the Tanana country.