The tolling of the ship’s bell roused him from the subconscious struggle into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. Ordinarily he had no sympathy with himself when he fell into one of these mental spasms, as he called them. Without knowing it, he was a little proud of a certain dispassionate tolerance which he possessed—a philosophical mastery of his emotions which at times was almost cold-blooded, and which made some people think he was a thing of stone instead of flesh and blood. His thrills he kept to himself. And a mildly disturbing sensation passed through him now, when he found that unconsciously his fingers had twined themselves about the little handkerchief in his pocket. He drew it out and made a sudden movement as if to toss it overboard. Then, with a grunt expressive of the absurdity of the thing, he replaced it in his pocket and began to walk slowly toward the bow of the ship.
He wondered, as he noted the lifting of the fog, what he would have been had he possessed a sister like Mary Standish. Or any family at all, for that matter—even an uncle or two who might have been interested in him. He remembered his father vividly, his mother a little less so, because his mother had died when he was six and his father when he was twenty. It was his father who stood out above everything else, like the mountains he loved. The father would remain with him always, inspiring him, urging him, encouraging him to live like a gentleman, fight like a man, and die at last unafraid. In that fashion the older Alan Holt had lived and died. But his mother, her face and voice scarcely remembered in the passing of many years, was more a hallowed memory to him than a thing of flesh and blood. And there had been no sisters or brothers. Often he had regretted this lack of brotherhood. But a sister.... He grunted his disapprobation of the thought. A sister would have meant enchainment to civilization. Cities, probably. Even the States. And slavery to a life he detested. He appreciated the immensity of his freedom. A Mary Standish, even though she were his sister, would be a catastrophe. He could not conceive of her, or any other woman like her, living with Keok and Nawadlook and the rest of his people in the heart of the tundras. And the tundras would always be his home, because his heart was there.
He had passed round the wheel-house and came suddenly upon an odd figure crumpled in a chair. It was Stampede Smith. In the clearer light that came with the dissolution of the sea-mist Alan saw that he was not asleep. He paused, unseen by the other. Stampede stretched himself, groaned, and stood up. He was a little man, and his fiercely bristling red whiskers, wet with dew, were luxuriant enough for a giant. His head of tawny hair, bristling like his whiskers, added to the piratical effect of him above the neck, but below that part of his anatomy there was little to strike fear into the hearts of humanity. Some people smiled when they looked at him. Others, not knowing their man, laughed outright. Whiskers could be funny. And they were undoubtedly funny on Stampede Smith. But Alan neither smiled nor laughed, for in his heart was something very near to the missing love of brotherhood for this little man who had written his name across so many pages of Alaskan history.
This morning, as Alan saw him, Stampede Smith was no longer the swiftest gunman between White Horse and Dawson City. He was a pathetic reminder of the old days when, single-handed, he had run down Soapy Smith and his gang—days when the going of Stampede Smith to new fields meant a stampede behind him, and when his name was mentioned in the same breath with those of George Carmack, and Alex McDonald, and Jerome Chute, and a hundred men like Curley Monroe and Joe Barret set their compasses by his. To Alan there was tragedy in his aloneness as he stood in the gray of the morning. Twenty times a millionaire, he knew that Stampede Smith was broke again.
“Good morning,” he said so unexpectedly that the little man jerked himself round like the lash of a whip, a trick of the old gun days. “Why so much loneliness, Stampede?”
Stampede grinned wryly. He had humorous, blue eyes, buried like an Airedale’s under brows which bristled even more fiercely than his whiskers. “I’m thinkin’,” said he, “what a fool thing is money. Good mornin’, Alan!”
He nodded and chuckled, and continued to chuckle in the face of the lifting fog, and Alan saw the old humor which had always been Stampede’s last asset when in trouble. He drew nearer and stood beside him, so that their shoulders touched as they leaned over the rail.
“Alan,” said Stampede, “it ain’t often I have a big thought, but I’ve been having one all night. Ain’t forgot Bonanza, have you?”
Alan shook his head. “As long as there is an Alaska, we won’t forget Bonanza, Stampede.”
“I took a million out of it, next to Carmack’s Discovery—an’ went busted afterward, didn’t I?”