I was just in time to see the last boat go out. Already the river was "throwing ice," and every day the jagged edges of it crept further towards midstream. An immense and melancholy mob stood on the wharf as the little steamer backed off into the channel. There were uproarious souls on board, and many women of the town screaming farewells to their friends. On the boat all was excited, extravagant joy; on the wharf, a sorry attempt at resignation.
The last boat! they watched her as her stern paddle churned the freezing water; they watched her forge her slow way through the ever-thickening ice-flakes; they watched her in the far distance battling with the Klondike current; then, sad and despondent, they turned away to their lonely cabins. Never had their exile seemed so bitter. A few more days and the river would close tight as a drum. The long, long night would fall on them, and for nigh on eight weary months they would be cut off from the outside world.
Yet soon, very soon, a mood of reconciliation would set in. They would begin to make the best of things. To feed that great Octopus, the town, the miners would flock in from the creeks with treasure hoarded up in baking-powder tins; the dance-halls and gambling-places would absorb them; the gaiety would go on full swing, and there would seem but little change in the glittering abandon of the gold-camp. As I paced its sidewalks once more I marvelled at its growth. New streets had been made; the stores boasted expensive fittings and gloried in costly goods; in the bar-rooms were splendid mirrors and ornate woodwork; the restaurants offered European delicacies; all was on a new scale of extravagance, of garish display, of insolent wealth.
Everywhere the man with the fat "poke" was in evidence. He came into town unshorn, wild-looking, often raggedly clad, yet always with the same wistful hunger in his eyes. You saw that look, and it took you back to the dark and dirt and drudgery of the claim, the mirthless months of toil, the crude cabin with its sugar barrel of ice behind the door, its grease light dimly burning, its rancid smell of stale food. You saw him lying smoking his strong pipe, looking at that can of nuggets on the rough shelf, and dreaming of what it would mean to him—out there where the lights glittered and the gramophones blared. Surely, if patience, endurance, if grim, unswerving purpose, if sullen, desperate toil deserved a reward, this man had a peckful of pleasure for his due.
And always that hungry, wistful look. The women with the painted cheeks knew that look; the black-jack boosters knew it; the barkeeper with his knock-out drops knew it. They waited for him; he was their "meat."
Yet in a few days your wild and woolly man is transformed, and no longer does your sympathy go out towards him. Shaven and shorn, clad in silken underwear, with patent leather shoes, and a suit in New York style, you absolutely fail to recognise him as your friend of the moccasins and mackinaw coat. He is smoking a dollar Laranago, he has half a dozen whiskies "under his belt," and later on he has a "date" with a lady singer of the Pavilion Theatre. He is having a "whale" of a good time, he tells you; you wonder how long he will last.
Not for long. Sharp and short and sweet it is. He is brought up with a jerk, and the Dago Queen, for whom he has bought so much wine at twenty dollars a bottle, has no recognition for him in her flashing eyes. He has been "taken down the line," "trimmed to a finish" by an artist in the business. Ruefully he turns his poke inside out—not a "colour." He cannot even command the price of a penitential three-fingers of rye. Such is one of the commonest phases of life in the gold-camp.
As I strolled the streets I saw many a familiar face. Mosher I saw. He had grown very fat, and was talking to a diminutive woman with heavy blond hair (she must have weighed about ninety-five pounds, I think). They went off together.
A knife-edged wind was sweeping down from the north, and men in bulging coonskin coats filled up the sidewalks. At the Aurora corner I came across the Jam-wagon. He was wearing a jacket of summer flannels, and, as if to suggest extra warmth, he had turned up its narrow collar. In his trembling fingers he held an emaciated cigarette, which he inhaled avidly. He looked wretched, pinched with hunger, peaked with cold, but he straightened up when he saw me into a semblance of well-being. Then, in a little, he sagged forward, and his eyes went dull and abject. It was a business of the utmost delicacy to induce him to accept a small loan. I knew it would only plunge him more deeply into the mire; but I could not bear to see him suffer.
I went into the Parisian Restaurant. It was more glittering, more raffish, more clamant of the tenderloin than ever. There were men waiters in the conventional garb of waiterdom, and there was Madam, harder looking and more vulturish. You wondered if such a woman could have a soul, and what was the end and aim of her being. There she sat, a creature of rapacity and sordid lust. I marched up to her and asked abruptly: