The Luck of the Kid

by Ridgwell Cullum

For days and weeks the outfit stood ready. Each day the dogs were harnessed, and every man was in his place. Then the word was passed to unhitch, and the men were permitted to return to the city.

The intending pursuit knew the game from A to Z. It was not new. It had been practised a hundred times. It was no less ready. It was no less on the watch. When the start was actually made word would reach them within two hours and the whole wolf pack would jump.

So it happened. One day the men did not return to the city. But word came back, and the rush began. Out into the twilight of the Arctic night leapt the army of trail dogs and their teamsters. Hundreds of sleds hissed their way over the snow-bed on the great river. Hundreds of voices shouted the jargon of the trail at their eager beasts of burden, and the fierce whips flung out. Many were rushing on disaster in the blind northern night. Many would never reach the hoped-for goal to grab the alluring wealth from the bosom of mother earth. But that was always the way of it. Whatever the threat, whatever the dread, whatever the possibility of disaster, the lust of gold in the hearts of these people remained triumphant.

But the thing worked out for Wilder as he designed. The old tried artifice gave him the start he needed. Three hours was all he required. For the rest these hardy adventurers behind him would never see the snow dust from his sled runners. He was equipped for a speed such as none of them could compete with, and if the weather became bad he calculated to lose the pursuit utterly.

It was a storming journey. The North he loved and courted did her best for him in return. Snow-storm and blizzard came to his aid, and, after weeks of terrible hardship, he reached the Caribou with his track lost beneath feet of drift snow.

He had gained all the time he needed. And so when the spring sun rose above the horizon, and the world of ice began its thunderous peals of disintegration, and the hordes of Placer swarmed on the banks of the Caribou he had established his outfit upon the staked claims ready to hurl at the work before him, and defend his property from all lawless aggression.

With the return of daylight it was a bewildering scene on the river. From its mouth right up to the gold-working on the creek, which had lain so long hidden, the tide of adventurers was swarming. And almost with every passing hour the flood seemed to grow. The low banks were dotted with tents and habitations of almost every sort of primitive construction. And men and women, and even children, were like human flies where for ages the silence of the North had remained all unbroken.

As the season advanced and the fever of work developed to its height, the reality of the thing became evident. Gold? Why the original strike was little more than the fringe of the thing awaiting those whose hardihood had been sufficient for them to survive the winter journey. The creek, as Chilcoot had suggested, was laden with its immense treasure, and rich claims were staked for ten miles up its narrow course. “The Luck of the Kid,” as Wilder had christened it, was a veritable Eldorado.

The homestead lying back in its shelter of windswept bluff had no place in the bustle and traffic on the river. It was a home of even deeper calm now than was its wont when the northern world aroused itself at the dawn of the open season. Usually at such a time the caribou herd was brought in, and the work its advent entailed never failed to absorb the rising spirits of those young lives, ready like the simple wild flowers of spring, to hurl themselves into their annual labours after the long night of winter’s inactivity. Usually at such a time it was the hub of life upon the river, literally teeming in contrast with the stillness of the cheerless valley. But now the herd remained at large free to drift back to its original wild state. The corrals were empty and unrepaired, for there was no Usak to guide the efforts of the half-breed Eskimo, and no half-breed Eskimo to need such guidance.

The farm had died in the winter night. And curiously enough there were no mourners. All that remained was the homestead itself, with Hesther McLeod and the girl children, and the Kid, to enjoy its sturdy shelter. The half-breeds had joined in the rush for gold. And Clarence, and Alg, and Perse were out there, away up the river “batching it” on their claims, absorbed in the exhilarating pursuit of extracting the wealth which had been literally flung into their hands. Then Usak had failed to return from his “one big trip.”