Connie Morgan in Alaska

by James B. Hendryx

And then, one day, at a depth of ten feet, Waseche Bill's pick struck against something hard. He struck again and the steel rang loudly in the cistern-like shaft. With his shovel he scraped away the thin covering of loose gravel which was deepest where his claim joined Connie's.

That evening the boy wondered at the silence of his big partner, who devoured his beans and bacon and sourdough bread, and washed them down with great draughts of black coffee. But he spoke no word, and after supper helped Connie with the dishes and then, filling his pipe, tilted his chair against the log wall and smoked, apparently engrossed in deep thought. At the table, Connie, poring over the contents of a year-old illustrated magazine, from time to time cast furtive glances toward the man and wondered at his strange silence. After a while the boy laid the magazine aside, drew the bootjack from beneath the bunk, pulled off his small boots, and with a sleepy "good-night, pardner," rolled snugly into his blankets.

CHAPTER IV

PARTNERS

For a long time Waseche Bill sat tilted back against the wall. His pipe went out unheeded and remained black and cold, gripped between his clenched teeth. At length he arose and, noiselessly crossing the room, stood looking down at the tousled yellow curls that shone dully in the lamp-light at the end of the roll of blankets. Making sure that the boy slept, he began silently to assemble his trail pack. Tent, blankets, grub, and rifle he bound firmly onto the strong dog-sled, and returning to the room, slid back a loose board from its place in the floor. From the black hole beneath he withdrew a heavy buckskin pouch and, pouring the contents onto a folded paper, proceeded to divide equally the pile of small glittering particles, and the flattened black nuggets of water-worn gold. One portion he stuffed into a heavy canvas money belt which he strapped about him, the other he placed in the pouch and returned to its hiding place under the floor. He fumbled in his pocket for the stub of a lead pencil and, with a sheet of brown paper before him, sat down at the table and began laboriously to write.

"Making sure that the boy slept, he began silently to assemble his trail pack."

Waseche Bill had never written a letter, nor had he ever received one. There was no one to write to, for, during an epidemic of smallpox in a dirty, twenty-two calibre town of a river State, he had seen his mother and father placed in long, black, pine boxes, by men who worked swiftly and silently, and wore strange-looking white masks with sponges at the mouth, and terrible straight, black robes which smelled strongly, like the open door of a drug store, and he had seen the boxes carried out at night and placed on a flat dray which drove swiftly away in the direction of the treeless square of sand waste, within whose white-fenced enclosure a few cheap marble slabs gleamed whitely among many wooden ones. All this he watched from the window, tearful, terrorized, alone, and from the same window watched the dray driven hurriedly back through the awful silence of the deserted street and stop before other houses where other black boxes were carried out by the strange, silent men dressed in their terrible motley.

The next day other men came and took him away to the "home." That is, the men called it a "home," but it was not at all like the home he had left where there was always plenty to eat, and where mother and father, no matter how tired and worried they were, always found time to smile or romp, and in the long evenings, to tell stories. But in this new home were a matron and a superintendent, instead of mother and father, and, except on visiting days, there was rarely enough to eat, and many rules to be obeyed, and irksome work to be done that tired small bodies. And instead of smiles and romps and stories there were frowns and whippings and quick, terrifying shakings and scoldings over hard lessons. He remembered how one day he stole out through an unlocked gate and hid until dark in a weed patch, and then trudged miles and miles through the long night and in the morning found himself in the bewildering outskirts of a great city—he was not Waseche Bill then, but just Willie Antrum, a small boy, who at the age of nine faced the great world alone.