Surely the river ice could not hold much longer. It was patchy, netted with cracks, heaved up in ridges, mottled with slushy pools, corroded to the bottom. Decidedly it was rotten, rotten. Still it held stubbornly. The Klondike hammered it with mighty bergs, black and heavy as a house. Down the swift current they sped, crashing, grinding, roaring, to batter into the unbroken armour of the Yukon. And along its banks, watching even as we watched, were thousands of others. On every lip was the question—"The ice—when will it go out?" For to these exiles of the North, after eight months of isolation, the sight of open water would be like Heaven. It would mean boats, freedom, friendly faces, and a step nearer to that "outside" of their dreams.
Towards the centre of the vast mass of ice that belted in the city was a post, and on this lonely post thousands of eyes were constantly turning. For an electric wire connected it with the town, so that when it moved down a certain distance a clock would register the exact moment. Thus, thousands gazing at that solitary post thought of the bets they had made, and wondered if this year they would be the lucky ones. It is a unique incident in Dawson life, this gambling on the ice. There are dozens of pools, large and small, and both men and women take part in the betting, with an eagerness and excitement that is almost childish.
I sat on a bench on the N. C. trail overlooking the town, and watched the Jam-wagon crawl down the hill to his cabin. Poor fellow! How drawn and white was his face, and his long, clean frame—how gaunt and weary! I felt sorry for him. What would become of him? He was a splendid "misfit." If he only had another chance! Somehow I believed in him, and fervently I hoped he would have that good clean start again.
Up in the cold remoteness of the North are many of his kind—the black sheep, the undesirables, the discards of the pack. Their lips are sealed; their eyes are cold as glaciers, and often they drink deep. Oh, they are a mighty company, the men you don't enquire about; but it is the code of the North to take them as you find them, so they go their way unregarded.
How clear the air was! It was like looking through a crystal lens—every leaf seemed to stand out vividly. Sounds came up to me with marvellous distinctness. Summer was coming, and with it the assurance of a new peace. Down there I could see our home, and on its veranda, hammock-swung, the white figure of Berna. How precious she was to me! How anxiously I watched over her! A look, a word meant more to me than volumes. If she was happy I was full of joy; if she was sad the sunshine paled, the flowers drooped, there was no gladness in the day. Often as she slept I watched her, marvelling at the fine perfection of her face. Always was she an object of wonder to me—something to be adored, to demand all that was fine and high in me.
Yet sometimes it was the very intensity of my love that made me fear; so that in the ecstasy of a moment I would catch my breath and wonder if it all could last. And always the memory of Locasto was a sinister shadow. He had gone "outside," terribly broken in health, gone cursing me hoarsely and vowing he would return. Would he?
Who that knows the North can ever deny its lure? Wherever you be, it will call and call to you. In the sluggish South you will hear it, will long for the keen tingle of its silver days, the vaster glory of its star-strewn nights. In the city's heart it will come to you till you hunger for its big, clean spaces, its racing rivers, its purple tundras. In the homes of the rich its voice will seek you out, and you will ache for your lonely camp-fire, a sunset splendouring to golden death, the night where the silence clutches and the heavens vomit forth white fire. Yes, you will hear it, and hear it, till a madness comes over you, till you leave the crawling men of the sticky pavements to seek it out once more, the sapphire of its lustrous lakes, the white yearning of its peaks to the myriad stars. Then, as a child comes home, will you come home. And I knew that some day to the land wherein he had reigned a conqueror, Locasto, too, would return.
As I looked down on the grey town, the wonder of its growth came over me. How changed from the muddle of tents and cabins, the boat-lined river, the swarming hordes of the Argonauts! Where was the niggerhead swamp, the mud, the unrest, the mad fever of '98? I looked for these things and saw in their stead fine residences, trim gardens, well-kept streets. I almost rubbed my eyes as I realised the magic of the transformation.
And great as was the city's outward change, its change of spirit was still greater. The day of dance-hall domination was over. Vice walked very circumspectly. No longer was it possible on the street to speak to a lady of easy virtue without causing comment.
The demireps of the deadline had been banished over the Klondike, where, in a colony reached by a crazy rope bridge, their red lights gleamed like semaphores of sin. The dance-halls were still running, but the picturesque impunity of the old muckluck days was gone forever. You looked in vain for the crude scenes where the wilder passions were unleashed, and human nature revealed itself in primal nakedness. Heroism, brutality, splendid achievement, unbridled license, the North seems to bring out all that is best and worst in a man. It breeds an exuberant vitality, a madness for action, whether it be for good or evil.