Significantly the thumb of his mitten turned toward the earth, and Jim understood. The shadows on the snow, sharp and defined, nodded their heads in assent, and the gambler looked from man to man, reading in those dim faces a sentence. It was characteristic of him that after this quick appraisement he drew a deep breath, looked out across the broad expanse of snow-clad river, up at the flaming skies, and then laughed, deeply, recklessly, and shrugged his shoulders. Also it was characteristic that he turned toward the door, and said: “Good! Come ahead and see if I can’t play any game!”
Once inside he walked unhesitatingly to the rough bar, seized a cigar cutter that rested thereon, and banged it loudly on the pine boards. Every one in the room paused and turned toward him, men’s faces, dim through the smoke, expressing open-mouthed curiosity.
“Men,” said Jim, when he had their full attention, “I’ve been accused of turning a crooked game. It isn’t so. I’ve played it fair, but had rare good luck. I owe Shakespeare George a debt. I’m paying it, full and square. And to pay it, and be quits with a clean slate, he demands that I play no more—any game—in Marook. It costs me a lot, for you’re a bunch of easy marks—suckers—with gold dust! But I pay! From this minute, now, I play nothing, gamble nothing in this camp, and am done!”
The surprised silence following this strange assertion was broken by his big, hearty laugh, and the banging of his emphatic fist on the bar. Quite mockingly he backed away from George, doffed his hat, brought his heels together, and bowed deeply.
“I’ve made good,” he said. “Othello’s occupation’s gone! But God speed the spring so that he may find other fields to conquer!”
And he backed away, down the open space in front of the bar, and out of the door, while George’s face lighted with sudden interest at the sound of the double quotation.
“That’s from the third act and the third scene,” said George delightedly, as if he had made a great discovery. And then: “It means that he’s lost his job! That’s the place where Othello talks about the dread clamorous counterfeiters. That Jim’s a scholar! That’s what he is—a scholar.”
It was not the fear of enmities that kept us away from the camp on the banks of the Yukon in the weeks that followed that night, but the demands of work. Slowly the disappointment had come to us that our claims were not of the best, and that only by continuous effort could we hope to make them pay scant profit. Save on occasions when some of them passed on the trail we saw nothing of the men of Marook or Laughing Jim. Once we heard that the latter had complained that George had kept him from reaping the profits of the camp, and again that, loafing on the outer edge of his gambling world, he had angrily sworn that if he had been left undisturbed he would have made his fortune. I suppose there was some truth in his statement. Yet he held to his word, this unmoral, reckless vagabond who laughed. They said that he was still there, wearing, despite derision, his pointed-toed shoes, and manicuring his nails; but gambling not at all.
And so, at last, the sun found us, and burst glaring upon our activities, and thawed the huge black dumps, and melted the snow, devoting all his energy of the high latitudes throughout the long days. Water streamed from the hillsides. Every brook was a torrent, every snow bank the repository for the continuous, melodious chorus of tinkling water drops as they dripped and dripped, and sang their little good-by songs. The dams were built, the gates swung up and down, the shovels tore into the pay dumps, and the sluice boxes roared as we men of Little Marook strove, and cleaned up our winter’s profit, be it large or small. Gone was the whine of the windlass in the frosty air, gone the sound of belabored arms beating heavy chests in the struggle to keep warm. Gone was the ring of the ax, the clatter of buckets emptying their contents on the apex of pyramids. The air was redolent with the call of wild fowl come to the breeding ground, the chirping of migratory birds, and the noiseless hum of insects.
“Boys,” said Bill Davis on the night we cleaned up the last of our pay dirt, “I figure that she runs about fifteen thousand dollars, at eighteen an ounce. Not much, but a mighty sight better than nothing.”