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We were in a caldron of fire. The roar of doom was in our ears (page 143)

PRELUDE

The north wind is keening overhead. It minds me of the howl of a wolf-dog under the Arctic stars. Sitting alone by the glow of the great peat fire I can hear it high up in the braeside firs. It is the voice, inexorably scornful, of the Great White Land.

Oh, I hate it, I hate it! Why cannot a man be allowed to forget? It is near ten years since I joined the Eager Army. I have travelled: I have been a pilgrim to the shrines of beauty; I have pursued the phantom of happiness even to the ends of the earth. Still it is always the same—I cannot forget.

Why should a man be ever shadowed by the vampire wing of his past? Have I not a right to be happy? Money, estate, name, are mine, all that means an open sesame to the magic door. Others go in, but I beat against its flinty portals with hands that bleed. No! I have no right to be happy. The ways of the world are open; the banquet of life is spread; the wonder-workers plan their pageants of beauty and joy, and yet there is no praise in my heart. I have seen, I have tasted, I have tried. Ashes and dust and bitterness are all my gain. I will try no more. It is the shadow of the vampire wing.

So I sit in the glow of the great peat fire, tired and sad beyond belief. Thank God! at least I am home. Everything is so little changed. The fire lights the oak-panelled hall; the crossed claymores gleam; the eyes in the mounted deer-heads shine glassily; rugs of fur cover the polished floor; all is comfort, home and the haunting atmosphere of my boyhood. Sometimes I fancy it has been a dream, the Great White Silence, the lure of the gold-spell, the delirium of the struggle; a dream, and I will awake to hear Garry calling me to shoot over the moor, to see dear little Mother with her meek, sensitive mouth, and her cheeks as delicately tinted as the leaves of a briar rose. But no! The hall is silent. Mother has gone to her long rest. Garry sleeps under the snow. Silence everywhere; I am alone, alone.

So I sit in the big, oak-carved chair of my forefathers, before the great peat fire, a peak-faced drooping figure of a man with hair untimely grey. My crutch lies on the floor by my side. My old nurse comes up quietly to look at the fire. Her rosy, wrinkled face smiles cheerfully, but I can see the anxiety in her blue eyes. She is afraid for me. Maybe the doctor has told her—something.

No doubt my days are numbered, so I am minded to tell of it all: of the Big Stampede, of the Treasure Trail, of the Gold-born City; of those who followed the gold-lure into the Great White Land, of the evil that befell them, of Garry and of Berna. Perhaps it will comfort me to tell of these things. To-morrow I will begin; to-night, leave me to my memories.

Berna! I spoke of her last. She rises before me now with her spirit-pale face and her great troubleful grey eyes, a little tragic figure, ineffably pitiful. Where are you now, little one? I have searched the world for you. I have scanned a million faces. Day and night have I sought, always hoping, always baffled, for, God help me, dear, I love you. Among that mad, lusting horde you were so weak, so helpless, yet so hungry for love.

With the aid of my crutch I unlatch one of the long windows, and step out onto the terrace. From the cavernous dark the snowflakes sting my face. Yet as I stand there, once more I have a sense of another land, of imperious vastitudes, of a silent empire, unfathomably lonely.

Ghosts! They are all around me. The darkness teems with them, Garry, my brother, among them. Then they all fade and give way to one face....

Berna, I love you always. Out of the night I cry to you, Berna, the cry of a broken heart. Is it your little, pitiful ghost that comes down to me? Oh, I am waiting, waiting! Here will I wait, Berna, till we meet once more. For meet we will, beyond the mists, beyond the dreaming, at last, dear love, at last.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

BOOK I

THE ROAD TO ANYWHERE

CHAPTER I

As far back as I can remember I have faithfully followed the banner of Romance. It has given colour to my life, made me a dreamer of dreams, a player of parts. As a boy, roaming alone the wild heather hills, I have heard the glad shouts of the football players on the green, yet never ettled to join them. Mine was the richer, rarer joy. Still can I see myself in those days, a little shy-mannered lad in kilts, bareheaded to the hill breezes, with health-bright cheeks, and a soul happed up in dreams.

And, indeed, I lived in an enchanted land, a land of griffins and kelpies, of princesses and gleaming knights. From each black tarn I looked to see a scaly reptile rise, from every fearsome cave a corby emerge. There were green spaces among the heather where the fairies danced, and every scaur and linn had its own familiar spirit. I peopled the good green wood with the wild creatures of my thought, nymph and faun, naiad and dryad, and would have been in nowise surprised to meet in the leafy coolness the great god Pan himself.

It was at night, however, that my dreams were most compelling. I strove against the tyranny of sleep. Lying in my small bed, I revelled in delectable imaginings. Night after night I fought battles, devised pageants, partitioned empires. I gloried in details. My rugged war-lords were very real to me, and my adventures sounded many periods of history. I was a solitary caveman with an axe of stone; I was a Roman soldier of fortune; I was a Highland outlaw of the Rebellion. Always I fought for a lost cause, and always my sympathies were with the rebel. I feasted with Robin Hood on the King's venison; I fared forth with Dick Turpin on the gibbet-haunted heath; I followed Morgan, the Buccaneer, into strange and exotic lands of trial and treasure. It was a wonderful gift of visioning that was mine in those days. It was the bird-like flight of the pure child-mind to whom the unreal is yet the real.

Then, suddenly, I arrived at a second phase of my mental growth in which fancy usurped the place of imagination. The modern equivalents of Romance attracted me, and, with my increasing grasp of reality, my gift of vision faded. As I had hitherto dreamed of knight-errants, of corsairs and of outlaws, I now dreamed of cowboys, of gold-seekers, of beach-combers. Fancy painted scenes in which I, too, should play a rousing part. I read avidly all I could find dealing with the Far West, and ever my wistful gaze roved over the grey sea. The spirit of Romance beaconed to me. I, too, would adventure in the stranger lands, and face their perils and brave their dangers. The joy of the thought exulted in my veins, and scarce could I bide the day when the roads of chance and change would be open to my feet.

It is strange that in all these years I confided in no one. Garry, who was my brother and my dearest friend, would have laughed at me in that affectionate way of his. You would never have taken us for brothers. We were so different in temperament and appearance that we were almost the reverse of each other. He was the handsomest boy I have ever seen, frank, fair-skinned and winning, while I was dark, dour and none too well favoured. He was the best runner and swimmer in the parish, and the idol of the village lads. I cared nothing for games, and would be found somewhere among the heather hills, always by my lone self, and nearly always with a story book in my pocket. He was clever, practical and ambitious, excelling in all his studies; whereas, except in those which appealed to my imagination, I was a dullard and a dreamer.

Yet we loved each others as few brothers do. Oh, how I admired him! He was my ideal, and too often the hero of my romances. Garry would have laughed at my hero-worship; he was so matter-of-fact, effective and practical. Yet he understood me, my Celtic ideality, and that shy reserve which is the armour of a sensitive soul. Garry in his fine clever way knew me and shielded me and cheered me. He was so buoyant and charming he heartened you like Spring sunshine, and braced you like a morning wind on the mountain top. Yes, not excepting Mother, Garry knew me better than any one has ever done, and I loved him for it. It seems overfond to say this, but he did not have a fault: tenderness, humour, enthusiasm, sympathy and the beauty of a young god—all that was manfully endearing was expressed in this brother of mine.

So we grew to manhood there in that West Highland country, and surely our lives were pure and simple and sweet. I had never been further from home than the little market town where we sold our sheep. Mother managed the estate till Garry was old enough, when he took hold with a vigour and grasp that delighted every one. I think our little Mother stood rather in awe of my keen, capable, energetic brother. There was in her a certain dreamy, wistful idealism that made her beautiful in my eyes, and to look on she was as fair as any picture. Specially do I remember the delicate colouring of her face and her eyes, blue like deep corn-flowers. She was not overstrong, and took much comfort from religion. Her lips, which were fine and sensitive, had a particularly sweet expression, and I wish to record of her that never once did I see her cross, always sweet, gentle, smiling.

Thus our home was an ideal one; Garry, tall, fair and winsome; myself, dark, dreamy, reticent; and between us, linking all three in a perfect bond of love and sympathy, our gentle, delicate Mother.

CHAPTER II

So in serenity and sunshine the days of my youth went past. I still maintained my character as a drone and a dreamer. I used my time tramping the moorland with a gun, whipping the foamy pools of the burn for trout, or reading voraciously in the library. Mostly I read books of travel, and especially did I relish the literature of Vagabondia. I had come under the spell of Stevenson. His name spelled Romance to me, and my fancy etched him in his lonely exile. Forthright I determined I too would seek these ultimate islands, and from that moment I was a changed being. I nursed the thought with joyous enthusiasm. I would be a frontiersman, a trail-breaker, a treasure-seeker. The virgin prairies called to me; the susurrus of the giant pines echoed in my heart; but most of all, I felt the spell of those gentle islands where care is a stranger, and all is sunshine, song and the glowing bloom of eternal summer.

About this time Mother must have worried a good deal over my future. Garry was now the young Laird, and I was but an idler, a burden on the estate. At last I told her I wanted to go abroad, and then it seemed as if a great difficulty was solved. We remembered of a cousin who was sheep-ranching in the Saskatchewan valley and had done well. It was arranged that I should join him as a pupil, then, when I had learned enough, buy a place of my own. It may be imagined that while I apparently acquiesced in this arrangement, I had already determined that as soon as I reached the new land I would take my destiny into my own hands.

I will never forget the damp journey to Glasgow and the misty landscape viewed through the streaming window pane of a railway carriage. I was in a wondrous state of elation. When we reached the great smoky city I was lost in amazement not unmixed with fear. Never had I imagined such crowds, such houses, such hurry. The three of us, Mother, Garry and I, wandered and wondered for three days. Folks gazed at us curiously, sometimes admiringly, for our cheeks were bright with Highland health, and our eyes candid as the June skies. Garry in particular, tall, fair and handsome, seemed to call forth glances of interest wherever he went. Then as the hour of my departure drew near a shadow fell on us.

I will not dwell on our leave-taking. If I broke down in unmanly grief, it must be remembered I had never before been from home. I was but a lad, and these two were all in all to me. Mother gave up trying to be brave, and mingled her tears with mine. Garry alone contrived to make some show of cheerfulness. Alas! all my elation had gone. In its place was a sense of guilt, of desertion, of unconquerable gloom. I had an inkling then of the tragedy of motherhood, the tender love that would hold yet cannot, the world-call and the ruthless, estranging years, all the memories of clinging love given only to be taken away.

"Don't cry, sweetheart Mother," I said; "I'll be back again in three years."

"Mind you do, my boy, mind you do."

She looked at me woefully sad, and I had a queer, heartrending prevision I would never see her more. Garry was supporting her, and she seemed to have suddenly grown very frail. He was pale and quiet, but I could see he was vastly moved.

"Athol," said he, "if ever you need me just send for me. I'll come, no matter how long or how hard the way."

I can see them to this day standing there in the drenching rain, Garry fine and manly, Mother small and drooping. I can see her with her delicate rose colour, her eyes like wood violets drowned in tears, her tender, sensitive lips quivering with emotion.

"Good-bye, laddie, good-bye."

I forced myself away, and stumbled on board. When I looked back again they were gone, but through the grey shadows there seemed to come back to me a cry of heartache and irremediable loss.

"Good-bye, good-bye."

CHAPTER III

It was on a day of early Autumn when I stood knee-deep in the heather of Glengyle, and looked wistfully over the grey sea. 'Twas but a month later when, homeless and friendless, I stood on the beach by the Cliff House of San Francisco, and gazed over the fretful waters of another ocean. Such is the romance of destiny.

Consigned, so to speak, to my cousin the sheep-raiser of the Saskatchewan, I found myself setting foot on the strange land with but little heart for my new vocation. My mind, cramful of book notions, craved for the larger life. I was valiantly mad for adventure; to fare forth haphazardly; to come upon naked danger; to feel the bludgeonings of mischance; to tramp, to starve, to sleep under the stars. It was the callow boy-idea perpetuated in the man, and it was to lead me a sorry dance. But I could not overbear it. Strong in me was the spirit of the gypsy. The joy of youth and health was brawling in my veins. A few thistledown years, said I, would not matter. And there was Stevenson and his glamorous islands winning me on.

So it came about I stood solitary on the beach by the seal rocks, with a thousand memories confusing in my head. There was the long train ride with its strange pictures: the crude farms, the glooming forests, the gleaming lakes that would drown my whole country, the aching plains, the mountains that rip-sawed the sky, the fear-made-eternal of the desert. Lastly, a sudden, sunlit paradise, California.

I had lived through a week of wizardry such as I had never dreamed of, and here was I at the very throne of Western empire. And what a place it was, and what a people—with the imperious mood of the West softened by the spell of the Orient and mellowed by the glamour of Old Spain. San Francisco! A score of tongues clamoured in her streets and in her byways a score of races lurked austerely. She suckled at her breast the children of the old grey nations and gave them of her spirit, that swift purposeful spirit so proud of past achievement and so convinced of glorious destiny.

I marvelled at the rush of affairs and the zest of amusement. Every one seemed to be making money easily and spending it eagerly. Every one was happy, sanguine, strenuous. At night Market Street was a dazzling alley of light, where stalwart men and handsome women jostled in and out of the glittering restaurants. Yet amid this eager, passionate life I felt a dreary sense of outsideness. At times my heart fairly ached with loneliness, and I wandered the pathways of the park, or sat forlornly in Portsmouth Square as remote from it all as a gazer on his mountain top beneath the stars.

I became a dreamer of the water front, for the notion of the South Seas was ever in my head. I loafed in the sunshine, sitting on the pier-edge, with eyes fixed on the lazy shipping. These were care-free, irresponsible days, and not, I am now convinced, entirely misspent. I came to know the worthies of the wharfside, and plunged into an under-world of fascinating repellency. Crimpdom eyed and tempted me, but it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I rubbed shoulders with eager necessity, scrambled for free lunches in frowsy bar-rooms, and amid the scum and débris of the waterside found much food for sober thought. Yet at times I blamed myself for thus misusing my days, and memories of Glengyle and Mother and Garry loomed up with reproachful vividness.

I was, too, a seeker of curious experience, and this was to prove my undoing. The night-side of the city was unveiled to me. With the assurance of innocence I wandered everywhere. I penetrated the warrens of underground Chinatown, wondering why white women lived there, and why they hid at sight of me. Alone I poked my way into the opium joints and the gambling dens. Vice, amazingly unabashed, flaunted itself in my face. I wondered what my grim, Covenanting ancestors would have made of it all. I never thought to have seen the like, and in my inexperience it was like a shock to me.

My nocturnal explorations came to a sudden end. One foggy midnight, coming up Pacific Street with its glut of saloons, I was clouted shrewdly from behind and dropped most neatly in the gutter. When I came to, very sick and dizzy in a side alley, I found I had been robbed of my pocketbook with nearly all my money therein. Fortunately I had left my watch in the hotel safe, and by selling it was not entirely destitute; but the situation forced me from my citadel of pleasant dreams, and confronted me with the grimmer realities of life.

I became a habitué of the ten-cent restaurant. I was amazed to find how excellent a meal I could have for ten cents. Oh for the uncaptious appetite of these haphazard days! With some thirty-odd dollars standing between me and starvation, it was obvious I must become a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, and to this end I haunted the employment offices. They were bare, sordid rooms, crowded by men who chewed, swapped stories, yawned and studied the blackboards where the day's wants were set forth. Only driven to labour by dire necessity, their lives, I found, held three phases—looking for work, working, spending the proceeds. They were the Great Unskilled, face to face with the necessary evil of toil.

One morning, on seeking my favourite labour bureau, I found an unusual flutter among the bench-warmers. A big contractor wanted fifty men immediately. No experience was required, and the wages were to be two dollars a day. With a number of others I pressed forward, was interviewed and accepted. The same day we were marched in a body to the railway depot and herded into a fourth-class car.

Where we were going I knew not; of what we were going to do I had no inkling. I only knew we were southbound, and at long last I might fairly consider myself to be the shuttlecock of fortune.

CHAPTER IV

I left San Francisco blanketed in grey fog and besomed by a roaring wind; when I opened my eyes I was in a land of spacious sky and broad, clean sunshine. Orange groves rushed to welcome us; orchards of almond and olive twinkled joyfully in the limpid air; tall, gaunt and ragged, the scaly eucalyptus fluttered at us a morning greeting, while snowy houses, wallowing in greenery, flashed a smile as we rumbled past. It seemed like a land of promise, of song and sunshine, and silent and apart I sat to admire and to enjoy.

"Looks pretty swell, don't it?"

I will call him the Prodigal. He was about my own age, thin, but sun-browned and healthy. His hair was darkly red and silky, his teeth white and even as young corn. His eyes twinkled with a humorsome light, but his face was shrewd, alert and aggressive.

"Yes," I said soberly, for I have always been backward with strangers.

"Pretty good line. The banana belt. Old Sol working overtime. Blossom and fruit cavorting on the same tree. Eternal summer. Land of the mañana, the festive frijole, the never-chilly chili. Ever been here before?"

"No."

"Neither have I. Glad I came, even if it's to do the horny-handed son of toil stunt. Got the makings?"

"No, I'm sorry; I don't smoke."

"All right, guess I got enough."

He pulled forth a limp sack of powdery tobacco, and spilled some grains into a brown cigarette paper, twisting it deftly and bending over the ends. Then he smoked with such enjoyment that I envied him.

"Where are we going, have you any idea?" I asked.

"Search me," he said, inhaling deeply; "the guy in charge isn't exactly a free information bureau. When it comes to peddling the bull con he's there, but when you try to pry off a few slabs of cold hard fact it's his Sunday off."

"But," I persisted, "have you no idea?"

"Well, one thing you can bank on, they'll work the Judas out of us. The gentle grafter nestles in our midst. This here's a cinch game and we are the fall guys. The contractors are a bum outfit. They'll squeeze us at every turn. There was two plunks to the employment man; they got half. Twenty for railway fare; they come in on that. Stop at certain hotels: a rake-off there. Stage fare: more graft. Five dollars a week for board: costs them two-fifty, and they will be stomach robbers at that. Then they'll ring in twice as many men as they need, and lay us off half the time, so that we just about even up on our board bill. Oh, I'm onto their curves all right."

"Then," I said, "if you know so much why did you come with us?"

"Well, if I know so much you just bet I know some more. I'll go one better. You watch my smoke."

He talked on with a wonderful vivid manner and an outpouring knowledge of life, so that I was hugely interested. Yet ever and anon an allusion of taste would betray him, and at no time did I fail to see that his roughness was only a veneer. As it turned out he was better educated by far than I, a Yale boy taking a post-graduate course in the University of Hard Luck.

My reserve once thawed, I told him much of my simple life. He listened, intently sympathetic.

"Say," said he earnestly when I had finished, "I'm rough-and-ready in my ways. Life to me's a game, sort of masquerade, and I'm the worst masquerader in the bunch. But I know how to handle myself, and I can jolly my way along pretty well. Now, you're green, if you'll excuse me saying it, and maybe I can help you some. Likewise you're the only one in all the gang of hoboes that's my kind. Come on, let's be partners."

I felt greatly drawn to him and agreed gladly.

"Now," said he, "I must go and jolly along the other boys. Aren't they a fierce bunch? Coloured gentlemen, Slavonians, Polaks, Dagoes, Swedes—well, I'll go prospecting, and see what I can strike."

He went among them with a jabber of strange terms, a bright smile and ready banter, and I could see that he was to be a quick favourite. I envied him for his ease of manner, a thing I could never compass. Presently he returned to me.

"Say, partner, got any money?"

There was something frank and compelling in his manner, so that I produced the few dollars I had left, and spread them before him.

"That's all my wealth," I said smilingly.

He divided it into two equal portions and returned one to me. He took a note of the other, saying:

"All right, I'll settle up with you later on."

He went off with my money. He seemed to take it for granted I would not object, and on my part I cared little, being only too eager to show I trusted him. A few minutes later behold him seated at a card-table with three rough-necked, hard-bitten-looking men. They were playing poker, and, thinks I: "Here's good-bye to my money." It minded me of wolves and a lamb. I felt sorry for my new friend, and I was only glad he had so little to lose.

We were drawing in to Los Angeles when he rejoined me. To my surprise he emptied his pockets of wrinkled notes and winking silver to the tune of twenty dollars, and dividing it equally, handed half to me.

"Here," says he, "plant that in your dip."

"No," I said, "just give me back what you borrowed; that's all I want."

"Oh, forget it! You staked me, and it's well won. These guinneys took me for a jay. Thought I was easy, but I've forgotten more than they ever knew, and I haven't forgotten so much either."

"No, you keep it, please. I don't want it."

"Oh, come! put your Scotch scruples in your pocket. Take the money."

"No," I said obstinately.

"Look here, this partnership of ours is based on financial equality. If you don't like my gate, you don't need to swing on it."

"All right," said I tartly, "I don't want to."

Then I turned on my heel.

CHAPTER V

On either side of us were swift hills mottled with green and gold, ahead a curdle of snow-capped mountains, above a sky of robin's-egg blue. The morning was lyric and set our hearts piping as we climbed the canyon. We breathed deeply of the heady air, exclaimed at sight of a big bee ranch, shouted as a mule team with jingling bells came swinging down the trail. With cries of delight we forded the little crystal stream wherever the trail plunged knee-deep through it. Higher and higher we climbed, mile after mile, our packs on our shoulders, our hearts very merry. I was as happy as a holiday schoolboy, willing this should go on for ever, dreading to think of the grim-visaged toil that awaited us.

About midday we reached the end. Gangs of men were everywhere, ripping and tearing at the mountain side. There was a roar of blasting, and rocks hurtled down on us. Bunkhouses of raw lumber sweated in the sun. Everywhere was the feverish activity of a construction camp.

We were assigned to a particular bunkhouse, and there was a great rush for places. It was floorless, doorless and in part roofless. Above the medley of voices I heard that of the Prodigal:

"Say, fellows, let's find the softest side of this board! Strikes me the Company's mighty considerate. All kinds of ventilation. Good chance to study astronomy. Wonder if I couldn't borrow a mattress somewhere? Ha! Good eye! Watch me, fellows!"

We saw him make for a tent nearby where horses were stabled. He reconnoitred carefully, then darted inside to come out in a twinkling, staggering under a bale of hay.

"How's that for rustling? I guess I'm slow—hey, what? Guess this is poor!"

He was wadding his bunk with the hay, while the others looked on rather enviously. Then, as a bell rang, he left off.

"Hash is ready, boys; last call to the dining-car. Come on and see the pigs get their heads in the trough."

We hurried to the cookhouse, where a tin plate, a tin cup, a tin spoon and a cast-iron knife was laid for each of us at a table of unplaned boards. A great mess of hash was ready, and excepting myself every one ate voraciously. I found something more to my taste, a can of honey and some soda crackers, on which I supped gratefully.

When I returned to the bunkhouse I found my bunk had been stuffed with nice soft hay, and my blankets spread on top. I looked over to the Prodigal. He was reading, a limp cigarette between his yellow-stained fingers. I went up to him.

"It's very good of you to do this," I said.

"Oh no! Not at all. Don't mention it," he answered with much politeness, never raising his eyes from the book.

"Well," I said, "I've just got to thank you. And look here, let's make it up. Don't let the business of that wretched money come between us. Can't we be friends anyway?"

He sprang up and gripped my hand.

"Sure! nothing I want more. I'm sorry. Another time I'll make allowance for that shorter-catechism conscience of yours. Now let's go over to that big fire they've made and chew the rag."

So we sat by the crackling blaze of mesquite, sagebrush and live-oak limbs, while over us twinkled the friendly stars, and he told me many a strange story of his roving life.

"You know, the old man's all broke up at me playing the fool like this. He's got a glue factory back in Massachusetts. Guess he stacks up about a million or so. Wanted me to go into the glue factory, begin at the bottom, stay with it. 'Stick to glue, my boy,' he says; 'become the Glue King,' and so on. But not with little Willie. Life's too interesting a proposition to be turned down like that. I'm not repentant. I know the fatted calf's waiting for me, getting fatter every day. One of these days I'll go back and sample it."

It was he I first heard talk of the Great White Land, and it stirred me strangely.

"Every one's crazy about it. They're rushing now in thousands, to get there before the winter begins. Next spring there will be the biggest stampede the world has ever seen. Say, Scotty, I've the greatest notion to try it. Let's go, you and I. I had a partner once, who'd been up there. It's a big, dark, grim land, but there's the gold, shining, shining, and it's calling us to go. Somehow it haunts me, that soft, gleamy, virgin gold there in the solitary rivers with not a soul to pick it up. I don't care one rip for the value of it. I can make all I want out of glue. But the adventure, the excitement, it's that that makes me fit for the foolish house."

He was silent a long time while my imagination conjured up terrible, fascinating pictures of the vast, unawakened land, and a longing came over me to dare its shadows.

As we said good-night, his last words were:

"Remember, Scotty, we're both going to join the Big Stampede, you and I."

CHAPTER VI

I slept but fitfully, for the night air was nipping, and the bunkhouse nigh as open as a cage. A bonny morning it was, and the sun warmed me nicely, so that over breakfast I was in a cheerful humour. Afterwards I watched the gang labouring, and showed such an injudicious interest that that afternoon I too was put to work.

It was very simple. Running into the mountain there was a tunnel, which they were lining with concrete, and it was the task of I and another to push cars of the stuff from the outlet to the scene of operations. My partner was a Swede who had toiled from boyhood, while I had never done a day's work in my life. It was as much as I could do to lift the loaded boxes into the car. Then we left the sunshine behind us, and for a quarter of a mile of darkness we strained in an uphill effort.

From the roof, which we stooped to avoid, sheets of water descended. Every now and then the heavy cars would run off the rails, which were of scantling, worn and frayed by friction. Then my Swede would storm in Berserker rage, and we would lift till the veins throbbed in my head. Never had time seemed so long. A convict working in the salt mines of Siberia did not revolt more against his task than I. The sweat blinded me; a bright steel pain throbbed in my head; my heart seemed to hammer. Never so thankful was I as when we had made our last trip, and sick and dizzy I put on my coat to go home.

It was dark. There was a cable line running from the tunnel to the camp, and down this we shot in buckets two at a clip. The descent gave me a creepy sensation, but it saved a ten minutes' climb down the mountain side, and I was grateful.

Tired, wet and dirty, how I envied the Prodigal lying warm and cosy on his fragrant hay. He was reading a novel. But the thought that I had earned a dollar comforted me. After supper he, with Ginger and Dutchy, played solo till near midnight, while I tossed on my bunk too weary and sore to sleep.

Next day was a repetition of the first, only worse. I ached as if I had been beaten. Stiff and sore I dragged myself to the tunnel again. I lifted, strained, tugged and shoved with a set and tragic face. Five hours of hell passed. It was noon. I nursed my strength for the after effort. Angrily I talked to myself, and once more I pulled through. Weary and slimy with wet mud, I shot down the cable line. Snugly settled in his bunk, the Prodigal had read another two hundred pages of "Les Misérables." Yet—I reflected somewhat sadly—I had made two dollars.

On the third day sheer obstinacy forced me to the tunnel. My self-respect goaded me on. I would not give in. I must hold this job down, I must, I MUST. Then at the noon hour I fainted.

No one saw me, so I gritted my teeth and once more threw my weight against the cars. Once more night found me waiting to descend in the bucket. Then as I stood there was a crash and shouts from below. The cable had snapped. My Swede and another lay among the rocks with sorely broken bones. Poor beggars! how they must have suffered jolting down that boulder-strewn trail to the hospital.

Somehow that destroyed my nerve. I blamed myself indeed. I flogged myself with reproaches, but it was of no avail. I would sooner beg my bread than face that tunnel once again. The world seemed to be divided into two parts, the rest of it and that tunnel. Thank God, I didn't have to go into it again. I was exultantly happy that I didn't. The Prodigal had finished his book, and was starting another. That night he borrowed some of my money to play solo with.

Next day I saw the foreman. I said:

"I want to go. The work up there's too hard for me."

He looked at me kindly.

"All right, sonny," says he, "don't quit. I'll put you in the gravel pit."

So next day I found a more congenial task. There were four of us. We threw the gravel against a screen where the finer stuff that sifted through was used in making concrete.

The work was heart-breaking in its monotony. In the biting cold of the morning we made a start, long before the sun peeped above the wall of mountain.

We watched it crawl, snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its heat. We saw it drop again behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky gorgeously barred with colour from a tawny orange glow to an ice-pale green—a regular pousse café of a sunset. Then when the cold and the dark surged back, by the light of the evening star we straightened our weary spines, and throwing aside pick and shovel hurried to supper.

Heigh-ho! what a life it was. Resting, eating, sleeping; negative pleasures became positive ones. Life's great principle of compensation worked on our behalf, and to lie at ease, reading an old paper, seemed an exquisite enjoyment.

I was much troubled about the Prodigal. He complained of muscular rheumatism, and except to crawl to meals was unable to leave his bunk. Every day came the foreman to inquire anxiously if he was fit to go to work, but steadily he grew worse. Yet he bore his suffering with great spirit, and, among that nondescript crew, he was a thing of joy and brightness, a link with that other world which was mine own. They nicknamed him "Happy," his cheerfulness was so invincible. He played cards on every chance, and he must have been unlucky, for he borrowed the last of my small hoard.

One morning I woke about six, and found, pinned to my blanket, a note from my friend.

"Dear Scotty:

"I grieve to leave you thus, but the cruel foreman insists on me working off my ten days' board. Racked with pain as I am, there appears to be no alternative but flight. Accordingly I fade away once more into the unknown. Will write you general delivery, Los Angeles. Good luck and good-bye. Yours to a cinder,

"Happy."

There was a hue and cry after him, but he was gone, and a sudden disgust for the place came over me. For two more days I worked, crushed by a gloom that momently intensified. Clamant and imperative in me was the voice of change. I could not become toil-broken, so I saw the foreman.

"Why do you want to go?" he asked reproachfully.

"Well, sir, the work's too monotonous."

"Monotonous! Well, that's the rummest reason I ever heard a man give for quitting. But every man knows his own business best. I'll give you a time-cheque."

While he was making it out I wondered if, indeed, I did know my own business best; but if it had been the greatest folly in the world, I was bound to get out of that canyon.

Treasuring the slip of paper representing my labour, I sought one of the bosses, a sour, stiff man of dyspeptic tendencies. With a smile of malicious sweetness he returned it to me.

"All right, take it to our Oakland office, and you'll get the cash."

Expectantly I had been standing there, thinking to receive my money, the first I had ever earned (and to me so distressfully earned, at that). Now I gazed at him very sick at heart: for was not Oakland several hundred miles away, and I was penniless.

"Couldn't you cash it here?" I faltered at last.

"No!" (very sourly).

"Couldn't you discount it, then?"

"No!" (still more tartly).

I turned away, crestfallen and smarting. When I told the other boys they were indignant, and a good deal alarmed on their own account. I made my case against the Company as damning as I could, then, slinging my blankets on my back, set off once more down the canyon.

CHAPTER VII

I was gaining in experience, and as I hurried down the canyon and the morning burgeoned like a rose, my spirits mounted invincibly. It was the joy of the open road and the care-free heart. Like some hideous nightmare was the memory of the tunnel and the gravel pit. The bright blood in me rejoiced; my muscles tensed with pride in their toughness; I gazed insolently at the world.

So, as I made speed to get the sooner to the orange groves, I almost set heel on a large blue envelope which lay face up on the trail. I examined it and, finding it contained plans and specifications of the work we had been at, I put it in my pocket.

Presently came a rider, who reined up by me.

"Say, young man, you haven't seen a blue envelope, have you?"

Something in the man's manner aroused in me instant resentment. I was the toiler in mud-stiffened overalls, he arrogant and supercilious in broadcloth and linen.

"No," I said sourly, and, going on my way, heard him clattering up the canyon.

It was about evening when I came onto a fine large plain. Behind me was the canyon, gloomy like the lair of some evil beast, while before me the sun was setting, and made the valley like a sea of golden glaze. I stood, knight-errant-wise, on the verge of one of those enchanted lands of precious memory, seeking the princess of my dreams; but all I saw was a man coming up the trail. He was reeling homeward, with under one arm a live turkey, and swinging from the other a demijohn of claret.

He would have me drink. He represented the Christmas spirit, and his accent was Scotch, so I up-tilted his demijohn gladly enough. Then, for he was very merry, he would have it that we sing "Auld Lang Syne." So there, on the heath, in the golden dance of the light, we linked our hands and lifted our voices like two daft folk. Yet, for that it was Christmas Eve, it seemed not to be so mad after all.

There was my first orange grove. I ran to it eagerly, and pulled four of the largest fruit I could see. They were green-like of rind and bitter sour, but I heeded not, eating the last before I was satisfied. Then I went on my way.

As I entered the town my spirits fell. I remembered I was quite without money and had not yet learned to be gracefully penniless. However, I bethought me of the time-cheque, and entering a saloon asked the proprietor if he would cash it. He was a German of jovial face that seemed to say: "Welcome, my friend," and cold, beady eyes that queried: "How much can I get of your wad?" It was his eyes I noticed.

"No, I don'd touch dot. I haf before been schvindled. Himmel, no! You take him avay."

I sank into a chair. Catching a glimpse of my face in a bar mirror, I wondered if that hollow-cheeked, weary-looking lad was I. The place was crowded with revellers of the Christmastide, and geese were being diced for. There were three that pattered over the floor, while in the corner the stage-driver and a red-haired man were playing freeze-out for one of them.

I drowsed quietly. Wafts of bar-front conversation came to me. "Envelope ... lost plans ... great delay." Suddenly I sat up, remembering the package I had found.

"Were you looking for some lost plans?" I asked.

"Yes," said one man eagerly, "did you find them?"

"I didn't say I did, but if I could get them for you, would you cash this time-cheque for me?"

"Sure," he says, "one good turn deserves another. Deliver the goods and I'll cash your time-cheque."

His face was frank and jovial. I drew out the envelope and handed it over. He hurriedly ran through the contents and saw that all were there.

"Ha! That saves a trip to 'Frisco," he said, gay with relief.

He turned to the bar and ordered a round of drinks. They all had a drink on him, while he seemed to forget about me. I waited a little, then pressed forward with my time-cheque.

"Oh that," said he, "I won't cash that. I was only joshing."

A feeling of bitter anger welled up within me. I trembled like a leaf.

"You won't go back on your word?" I said.

He became flustered.

"Well, I can't do it anyway. I've got no loose cash."

What I would have said or done I know not, for I was nigh desperate; but at this moment the stage-driver, flushed with his victory at freeze-out, snatched the paper from my hand.

"Here, I'll discount that for you. I'll only give you five dollars for it, though."

It called for fourteen, but by this time I was so discouraged I gladly accepted the five-dollar goldpiece he held out to tempt me.

Thus were my fortunes restored. It was near midnight and I asked the German for a room. He replied that he was full up, but as I had my blankets there was a nice dry shed at the back. Alas! it was also used by his chickens. They roosted just over my head, and I lay on the filthy floor at the mercy of innumerable fleas. To complete my misery the green oranges I had eaten gave me agonizing cramps. Glad, indeed, was I when day dawned, and once more I got afoot, with my face turned towards Los Angeles.

CHAPTER VIII

Los Angeles will always be written in golden letters in the archives of my memory. Crawling, sore and sullen, from the clutch of toil, I revelled in a lotus life of ease and idleness. There was infinite sunshine, and the quiet of a public library through whose open windows came the fragrance of magnolias. Living was incredibly cheap. For seventy-five cents a week I had a little sunlit attic, and for ten cents I could dine abundantly. There was soup, fish, meat, vegetables, salad, pudding and a bottle of wine. So reading, dreaming and roaming the streets, I spent my days in a state of beatitude.

But even five dollars will not last for ever, and the time came when once more the grim face of toil confronted me. I must own that I had now little stomach for hard labour, yet I made several efforts to obtain it. However, I had a bad manner, being both proud and shy, and one rebuff in a day always was enough. I lacked that self-confidence that readily finds employment, and again I found myself mixing with the spineless residuum of the employment bureau.

At last the morning came when twenty-five cents was all that remained to me in the world. I had just been seeking a position as a dish-washer, and had been rather sourly rejected. Sitting solitary on the bench in that dreary place, I soliloquized:

"And so it has come to this, that I, Athol Meldrum, of gentle birth and Highland breeding, must sue in vain to understudy a scullion in a third-rate hash joint. I am, indeed, fallen. What mad folly is this that sets me lower than a menial? Here I might be snug in the Northwest raising my own fat sheep. A letter home would bring me instant help. Yet what would it mean? To own defeat; to lose my self-esteem; to call myself a failure. No, I won't. Come what may, I will play the game."

At that moment the clerk wrote:—

"Man Wanted to Carry Banner."

"How much do you want for that job?" I asked.

"Oh, two bits will hold you," he said carelessly.

"Any experience required?" I asked again.

"No, I guess even you'll do for that," he answered cuttingly.

So I parted with my last quarter and was sent to a Sheeny store in Broadway. Here I was given a vociferous banner announcing:

"Great retiring sale," and so forth.

With this hoisted I sallied forth, at first very conscious and not a little ashamed. Yet by and by this feeling wore off, and I wandered up and down with no sense of my employment, which, after all, was one adapted to philosophic thought. I might have gone through the day in this blissful coma of indifference had not a casual glance at my banner thrilled me with horror. There it was in hideous, naked letters of red:

"Retireing Sale."

I reeled under the shock. I did not mind packing a banner, but a misspelt one....

I hurried back to the store, resolved to throw up my position. Luckily the day was well advanced, and as I had served my purpose I was given a silver dollar.

On this dollar I lived for a month. Not every one has done that, yet it is easy to do. This is how I managed.

In the first place I told the old lady who rented me my room that I could not pay her until I got work, and I gave her my blankets as security. There remained only the problem of food. This I solved by buying every day or so five cents' worth of stale bread, which I ate in my room, washing it down with pure spring water. A little imagination and lo! my bread was beef, my water wine. Thus breakfast and dinner. For supper there was the Pacific Gospel Hall, where we gathered nightly one hundred strong, bawled hymns, listened to sundry good people and presently were given mugs of coffee and chunks of bread. How good the fragrant coffee tasted and how sweet the fresh bread!

At the end of the third week I got work as an orange-picker. It was a matter of swinging long ladders into fruit-flaunting trees, of sunshiny days and fluttering leaves, of golden branches plundered, and boxes filled from sagging sacks. There is no more ideal occupation. I revelled in it. The others were Mexicans; I was "El Gringo." But on an average I only made fifty cents a day. On one day, when the fruit was unusually large, I made seventy cents.

Possibly I would have gone on, contentedly enough, perched on a ladder, high up in the sunlit sway of treetops, had not the work come to an end. I had been something of a financier on a picayune scale, and when I counted my savings and found that I had four hundred and ninety-five cents, such a feeling of affluence came over me that I resolved to gratify my taste for travel. Accordingly I purchased a ticket for San Diego, and once more found myself southward bound.

CHAPTER IX

A few days in San Diego reduced my small capital to the vanishing point, yet it was with a light heart I turned north again and took the All-Tie route for Los Angeles. If one of the alluring conditions of a walking tour is not to be overburdened with cash surely I fulfilled it, for I was absolutely penniless. The Lord looks after his children, said I, and when I became too inexorably hungry I asked for bread, emphasising my willingness to do a stunt on the woodpile. Perhaps it was because I was young and notably a novice in vagrancy, but people were very good to me.

The railway track skirts the ocean side for many a sonorous league. The mile-long waves roll in majestically, as straight as if drawn with a ruler, and crash in thunder on the sandy beach. There were glorious sunsets and weird storms, with underhanded lightning stabs at the sky. I built little huts of discarded railway ties, and lit camp-fires, for I was fearful of the crawling things I saw by day. The coyote called from the hills. Uneasy rustlings came from the sagebrush. My teeth, a-chatter with cold, kept me awake, till I cinched a handkerchief around my chin. Yet, drenched with night-dews, half-starved and travel-worn, I seemed to grow every day stronger and more fit. Between bondage and vagabondage I did not hesitate to choose.

Leaving the sea, I came to a country of grass and she-oaks very pretty to see, like an English park. I passed horrible tulé swamps, and reached a cattle land with corrals and solitary cowboys. There was a quaint old Spanish Mission that lingers in my memory, then once again I came into the land of the orange-groves and the irrigating ditch. Here I fell in with two of the hobo fraternity, and we walked many miles together. One night we slept in a refrigerator car, where I felt as if icicles were forming on my spine. But walking was not much in their line, so next morning they jumped a train and we separated. I was very thankful, as they did not look over-clean, and I had a wholesome horror of "seam-squirrels."

On arriving in Los Angeles I went to the Post Office. There was a letter from the Prodigal dated New York, and inclosing fourteen dollars, the amount he owed me. He said:

"I returned to the paternal roof, weary of my rôle. The fatted calf awaited me. Nevertheless, I am sick again for the unhallowed swine-husks. Meet me in 'Frisco about the end of February, and I will a glorious proposition unfold. Don't fail. I must have a partner and I want you. Look for a letter in the General Delivery."

There was no time to lose, as February was nearly over. I took a steerage passage to San Francisco, resolving that I would mend my fortunes. It is so easy to drift. I was already in the social slough, a hobo and an outcast. I saw that as long as I remained friendless and unknown nothing but degraded toil was open to me. Surely I could climb up, but was it worth while? A snug farm in the Northwest awaited me. I would work my way back there, and arrive decently clad. Then none would know of my humiliation. I had been wayward and foolish, but I had learned something.

The men who toiled, endured and suffered were kind and helpful, their masters mean and rapacious. Everywhere was the same sordid grasping for the dollar. With my ideals and training nothing but discouragement and defeat would be my portion. Oh, it is so easy to drift!

I was sick of the whole business.

CHAPTER X

What with steamer fare and a few small debts to settle, I found when I landed in San Francisco that once more I was flatly broke. I was arrestively seedy, literally on my uppers, for owing to my long tramp my boots were barely holding together. There was no letter for me, and perhaps it was on account of my disappointment, perhaps on account of my extreme shabbiness, but I found I had quite lost heart. Looking as I did, I would not ask any one for work. So I tightened my belt and sat in Portsmouth Square, cursing myself for the many nickels I had squandered in riotous living.

Two days later I was still drawing in my belt. All I had eaten was one meal, which I had earned by peeling half a sack of potatoes for a restaurant. I slept beneath the floor of an empty house out the Presidio way.

On this day I was drowsing on my bench when some one addressed me.

"Say, young fellow, you look pretty well used up."

I saw an elderly, grey-haired man.

"Oh no!" I said, "I'm not. That's just my acting. I'm a millionaire in disguise, studying sociology."

He came and sat by me.

"Come, buck up, kid, you're pretty near down and out. I've been studyin' you them two days."

"Two days," I echoed drearily. "It seems like two years." Then, with sudden fierceness:

"Sir, I am a stranger to you. Never in my life before have I tried to borrow money. It is asking a great deal of you to trust me, but it will be a most Christian act. I am starving. If you have ten cents that isn't working lend it to me for the love of God. I'll pay you back if it takes me ten years."

"All right, son," he said cheerfully; "let's go and feed."

He took me to a restaurant where he ordered a dinner that made my head swim. I felt near to fainting, but after I had had some brandy, I was able to go on with the business of eating. By the time I got to the coffee I was as much excited by the food as if I had been drinking wine. I now took an opportunity to regard my benefactor.

He was rather under medium height, but so square and solid you felt he was a man to be reckoned with. His skin was as brown as an Indian's, his eyes light-blue and brightly cheerful, as from some inner light. His mouth was firm and his chin resolute. Altogether his face was a curious blend of benevolence and ruthless determination.

Now he was regarding me in a manner entirely benevolent.

"Feel better, son? Well, go ahead an' tell me as much of your story as you want to."

I gave an account of all that had happened to me since I had set foot on the new land.

"Huh!" he ejaculated when I had finished. "That's the worst of your old-country boys. You haven't got the get-up an' nerve to rustle a job. You go to a boss an' tell him: 'You've no experience, but you'll do your best.' An American boy says: 'I can do anything. Give me the job an' I'll just show you.' Who's goin' to be hired? Well, I think I can get you a job helpin' a gardener out Alameda way."

I expressed my gratitude.

"That's all right," he said; "I'm glad by the grace of God I've been the means of givin' you a hand-up. Better come to my room an' stop with me till somethin' turns up. I'm goin' North in three days."

I asked if he was going to the Yukon.

"Yes, I'm goin' to join this crazy rush to the Klondike. I've been minin' for twenty years, Arizona, Colorado, all over, an' now I am a-goin' to see if the North hasn't got a stake for me."

Up in his room he told me of his life.

"I'm saved by the grace of God, but I've been a Bad Man. I've been everything from a city marshal to boss gambler. I have gone heeled for two years, thinking to get my pass to Hell at any moment."

"Ever killed any one?" I queried.

He was beginning to pace up and down the room.

"Glory to God, I haven't, but I've shot.... There was a time when I could draw a gun an' drive a nail in the wall. I was quick, but there was lots that could give me cards and spades. Quiet men, too, you would never think it of 'em. The quiet ones was the worst. Meek, friendly, decent men, to see them drinkin' at a bar, but they didn't know Fear, an' every one of 'em had a dozen notches on his gun. I know lots of them, chummed with them, an' princes they were, the finest in the land, would give the shirts off their backs for a friend. You'd like them—but Lord be praised, I'm a saved man."

I was deeply interested.

"I know I'm talking as I shouldn't. It's all over now, an' I've seen the evil of my ways, but I've got to talk once in a while. I'm Jim Hubbard, known as 'Salvation Jim,' an' I know minin' from Genesis to Revelation. Once I used to gamble an' drink the limit. One morning I got up from the card-table after sitting there thirty-six hours. I'd lost five thousand dollars. I knew they'd handed me out 'cold turkey,' but I took my medicine.

"Right then I said I'd be a crook too. I learned to play with marked cards. I could tell every card in the deck. I ran a stud-poker game, with a Jap an' a Chinaman for partners. They were quicker than white men, an' less likely to lose their nerve. It was easy money, like taking candy from a kid. Often I would play on the square. No man can bluff strong without showing it. Maybe it's just a quiver of the eyelash, maybe a shuffle of the foot. I've studied a man for a month till I found the sign that gave him away. Then I've raised an' raised him till the sweat pricked through his brow. He was my meat. I went after the men that robbed me, an' I went one better. Here, shuffle this deck."

He produced a pack of cards from a drawer.

"I'll never go back to the old trade. I'm saved. I trust in God, but just for diversion I keep my hand in."

Talking to me, he shuffled the pack a few times.

"Here, I'm dealing; what do you want? Three kings?"

I nodded.

He dealt four hands. In mine there were three kings.

Taking up another he showed me three aces.

"I'm out of practice," he said apologetically. "My hands are calloused. I used to keep them as soft as velvet."

He showed me some false shuffles, dealing from under the deck, and other tricks.

"Yes, I got even with the ones that got my money. It was eat or be eaten. I went after the suckers. There was never a man did me dirt but I paid him with interest. Of course, it's different now. The Good Book says: 'Do good unto them that harm you.' I guess I would, but I wouldn't recommend no one to try and harm me. I might forget."

The heavy, aggressive jaw shot forward; the eyes gleamed with a fearless ferocity, and for a moment the man took on an air that was almost tigerish. I could scarce believe my sight; yet the next instant it was the same cheerful, benevolent face, and I thought my eyes must have played me some trick.

Perhaps it was that sedate Puritan strain in me that appealed to him, but we became great friends. We talked of many things, and most of all I loved to get him to tell of his early life. It was just like a story: thrown on the world while yet a child; a shoeblack in New York, fighting for his stand; a lumber-jack in the woods of Michigan; lastly a miner in Arizona. He told me of long months on the desert with only his pipe for company, talking to himself over the fire at night, and trying not to go crazy. He told me of the girl he married and worshipped, and of the man who broke up his home. Once more I saw that flitting tiger-look appear on his face and vanish immediately. He told me of his wild days.

"I was always a fighter, an' I never knew what fear meant. I never saw the man that could beat me in a rough-an'-tumble scrap. I was uncommon husky an' as quick as a cat, but it was my fierceness that won out for me. Get a man down an' give him the leather. I've kicked a man's face to a jelly. It was kick, bite an' gouge in them days—anything went.

"Yes, I never knew fear. I've gone up unarmed to a man I knew was heeled to shoot me on sight, an' I've dared him to do it. Just by the power of the eye I've made him take water. He thought I had a gun an' could draw quicker'n him. Then, as the drink got hold of me, I got worse and worse. Time was when I would have robbed a bank an' shot the man that tried to stop me. Glory to God! I've seen the evil of my ways."

"Are you sure you'll never backslide?" I asked.

"Never! I'm born again. I don't smoke, drink or gamble, an' I'm as happy as the day's long. There was the drink. I would go on the water-wagon for three months at a stretch, but day and night, wherever I went, the glass of whisky was there right between my eyes. Sooner or later it got the better of me. Then one night I went half-sober into a Gospel Hall. The glass was there, an' I was in agony tryin' to resist it. The speaker was callin' sinners to come forward. I thought I'd try the thing anyway, so I went to the penitents' bench. When I got up the glass was gone. Of course it came back, but I got rid of it again in the same way. Well, I had many a struggle an' many a defeat, but in the end I won. It's a divine miracle."

I wish I could paint or act the man for you. Words cannot express his curious character. I came to have a great fondness for him, and certainly owed him a huge debt of gratitude.

One day I was paying my usual visit to the Post Office, when some one gripped me by the arm.

"Hullo, Scotty! By all that's wonderful. I was just going to mail you a letter."

It was the Prodigal, very well dressed and spruce-looking.

"Say, I'm so tickled I got you; we're going to start in two days."

"Start! Where?" I asked.

"Why, for the Golden North, for the land of the Midnight Sun, for the treasure-troves of the Klondike Valley."

"You maybe," I said soberly; "but I can't."

"Yes you can, and you are, old sport. I fixed all that. Come on, I want to talk to you. I went home and did the returned prodigal stunt. The old man was mighty decent when I told him it was no good, I couldn't go into the glue factory yet awhile. Told him I had the gold-bug awful bad and nothing but a trip up there would cure me. He was rather tickled with the idea. Staked me handsomely, and gave me a year to make good. So here I am, and you're in with me. I'm going to grubstake you. Mind, it's a business proposition. I've got to have some one, and when you make the big strike you've got to divvy up."

I said something about having secured employment as an under-gardener.

"Pshaw! you'll soon be digging gold-nuggets instead of potatoes. Why, man, it's the chance of a lifetime, and anybody else would jump at it. Of course, if you're afraid of the hardships and so on——"

"No," I said quickly, "I'll go."

"Ha!" he laughed, "you're too much of a coward to be afraid. Well, we're going to be blighted Argonauts, but we've got to get busy over our outfits. We haven't got any too much time."

So we hustled around. It seemed as if half of San Francisco was Klondike-crazy. On every hand was there speculation and excitement. All the merchants had their outfitting departments, and wild and vague were their notions as to what was required. We did not do so badly, though like every one else we bought much that was worthless and foolish. Suddenly I bethought me of Salvation Jim, and I told the Prodigal of my new friend.

"He's an awfully good sort," I said; "white all through; all kinds of experience, and he's going alone."

"Why," said the Prodigal, "that's just the man we want. We'll ask him to join us."

I brought the two together, and it was arranged. So it came about that we three left San Francisco on the fourth day of March to seek our fortunes in the Frozen North.

BOOK II

THE TRAIL

CHAPTER I

"Say! you're looking mighty blue. Cheer up, darn you! What's the matter?" said the Prodigal affectionately.

And indeed there was matter enough, for had I not just received letters from home, one from Garry and one from Mother? Garry's was gravely censorious, almost remonstrant. Mother, he said, was poorly, and greatly put out over my escapade. He pointed out that I was in a fair way of being a rolling stone, and hoped that I would at once give up my mad notion of the South Seas and soberly proceed to the Northwest.

Mother's letter was reproachful, in parts almost distressful. She was failing, she said, and she begged me to be a good son, give up my wanderings and join my cousin at once. Also she enclosed post-office orders for forty pounds. Her letter, written in a fine faltering hand and so full of gentle affection, brought the tears to my eyes; so that it was very bleakly I leaned against the ship's rail and watched the bustle of departure. Poor Mother! Dear old Garry! With what tender longing I thought of those two in far-away Glengyle, the Scotch mist silvering the heather and the wind blowing caller from the sea. Oh, for the clean, keen breath of it! Yet alas, every day was the memory fading, and every day was I fitting more snugly into the new life.

"I've just heard from the folks," I said, "and I feel like going back on you."

"Oh, beat it," he cried; "you can't renig now. You've got to see the thing through. Mothers are all like that when you cut loose from their apron-strings. Ma's scared stiff about me, thinks the devil's got an option on my future sure. They get wised up pretty soon. What you want to do is to get busy and make yourself acquainted. Here I've been snooping round for the last two hours, and got a line on nearly every one on board. Say! Of all the locoed outfits this here aggregation has got everything else skinned to a hard-boiled finish. Most of them are indoor men, ink-slingers and calico snippers; haven't done a day's hard work in their lives, and don't know a pick from a mattock. They've got a notion they've just got to get up there and pick big nuggets out of the water like cherries out of a cocktail. It's the limit."

"Tell me about them," I said.

"Well, see that young fellow standing near us?"

I looked. He was slim, with gentle, refined features and an unnaturally fresh complexion.

"That fellow was a pen-pusher in a mazuma emporium—I mean a bank clerk. Pinklove's his name. He wanted to get hitched to some girl, but the directors wouldn't stand for it. Now he's chucked his job and staked his savings on this trip. There's his girl in the crowd."

Bedded in that mosaic of human faces I saw one that was all sweetness, yet shamelessly tear-stained.

"Lucky beggar," I said, "to have some one who cares so much about his going."

"Unlucky, you mean, lad. You don't want to have any strings on you when you play this game."

He pointed to a long-haired young man in a flowing-end tie.

"See that pale-faced, artistic-looking guy alongside him. That's his partner. Ineffectual, moony sort of a mut. He's a wood-carver; they call him Globstock; told me his knowledge of wood-carving would come in handy when we came to make boats at Lake Bennett. Then there's a third. See that little fellow shooting off his face?"

I saw a weazened, narrow-chested mannikin, with an aggressive certainty of feature.

"He's a professor, plumb-full of book dope on the Yukon. He's Mister Wise Mike. He knows it all. Hear his monologue on 'How It Should Be Done.' He's going to live on deck to inure himself to the rigours of the Arctic climate. Works with a pair of spring dumb-bells to get up his muscle so's he can shovel out the nuggets."

Our eyes roved round from group to group, picking out characteristic figures.

"See that big bleached-blond Englishman? Came over with me on the Pullman from New York. 'Awfully bored, don't you know.' When we got to 'Frisco, he says to me: 'Thank God, old chappie, the worst part of the journey's over.' Then there's Romulus and Remus, the twins, strapping young fellows. Only way I know them apart is one laces his boots tight, the other slack. They think the world of each other."

He swung around to where Salvation Jim was talking to two men.

"There's a pair of winners. I put my money on them. Nothing on earth can stop those fellows, native-born Americans, all grit and get-up. See that tall one smoking a cigar and looking at the women? He's an athlete. Name's Mervin; all whipcord and whalebone; springy as a bent bow. He's a type of the Swift. He's bound to get there. See the other. Hewson's his name; solid as a tower; muscled like a bear; built from the ground up. He represents the Strong. Look at the grim, determined face of him. You can't down a man like that."

He indicated another group.

"Now there's three birds of prey. Bullhammer, Marks and Mosher. The big, pig-eyed heavy-jowled one is Bullhammer. He's in the saloon business. The middle-sized one in the plug hat is Marks. See his oily, yellow face dotted with pimples. He's a phoney piece of work; calls himself a mining broker. The third's Jake Mosher. He's an out-and-out gambler, a sure-thing man, once was a parson."

I looked again. Mosher had just taken off his hat. His high-domed head was of monumental baldness, his eyes close-set and crafty, his nose negligible. The rest of his face was mostly beard. It grew black as the Pit to near the bulge of his stomach, and seemed to have drained his scalp in its rank luxuriance. Across the deck came the rich, oily tones of his voice.

"A bad-looking bunch," I said.

"Yes, there's heaps like them on board. There's a crowd of dance-hall girls going up, and the usual following of parasites. Look at that Halfbreed. There's a man for the country now, part Scotch, part Indian; the quietest man on the boat; light, but tough as wire nails."

I saw a lean, bright-eyed brown man with flat features, smoking a cigarette.

"Say! Just get next to those two Jews, Mike and Rebecca Winklestein. They're going to open up a sporty restaurant."

The man was a small bandy-legged creature, with eyes that squinted, a complexion like ham fat and waxed moustaches. But it was the woman who seized my attention. Never did I see such a strapping Amazon, six foot if an inch, and massive in proportion. She was handsome too, in a swarthy way, though near at hand her face was sensuous and bold. Yet she had a suave, flattering manner and a coarse wit that captured the crowd. Dangerous, unscrupulous and cruel, I thought; a man-woman, a shrew, a termagant!

But I was growing weary of the crowd and longed to go below. I was no longer interested, yet the voice of the Prodigal droned in my ear.

"There's an old man and his granddaughter, relatives of the Winklesteins, I believe. I think the old fellow's got a screw loose. Handsome old boy, though; looks like a Hebrew prophet out of a job. Comes from Poland. Speaks Yiddish or some such jargon; Only English he knows is 'Klondike, Klondike.' The girl looks heartbroken, poor little beggar."

"Poor little beggar!" I heard the words indeed, but my mind was far away. To the devil with Polish Jews and their granddaughters. I wished the Prodigal would leave me to my own thoughts, thoughts of my Highland home and my dear ones. But no! he persisted:

"You're not listening to what I'm saying. Look, why don't you!"

So, to please him, I turned full round and looked. An old man, patriarchal in aspect, crouched on the deck. Erect by his side, with her hand on his shoulder, stood a slim figure in black, the figure of a girl. Indifferently my eyes travelled from her feet to her face. There they rested. I drew a deep breath. I forgot everything else. Then for the first time I saw—Berna.

I will not try to depict the girl. Pen descriptions are so futile. I will only say that her face was very pale, and that she had large pathetic grey eyes. For the rest, her cheeks were woefully pinched and her lips drooped wistfully. 'Twas the face, I thought, of a virgin martyr with a fear-haunted look hard to forget. All this I saw, but most of all I saw those great, grey eyes gazing unseeingly over the crowd, ever so sadly fixed on that far-away East of her dreams and memories.

"Poor little beggar!"

Then I cursed myself for a sentimental impressionist and I went below. Stateroom forty-seven was mine. We three had been separated in the shuffle, and I knew not who was to be my room-mate. Feeling very downhearted, I stretched myself on the upper berth, and yielded to a mood of penitential sadness. I heard the last gang-plank thrown off, the great crowd cheer, the measured throb of the engines, yet still I sounded the depths of reverie. There was a bustle outside and growing darkness. Then, as I lay, there came voices to my door, guttural tones blended with liquid ones; lastly a timid knock. Quickly I answered it.

"Is this room number forty-seven?" a soft voice asked.

Even ere she spoke I divined it was the Jewish girl of the grey eyes, and now I saw her hair was like a fair cloud, and her face fragile as a flower.

"Yes," I answered her.

She led forward the old man.

"This is my grandfather. The Steward told us this was his room."

"Oh, all right; he'd better take the lower berth."

"Thank you, indeed; he's an old man and not very strong."

Her voice was clear and sweet, and there was an infinite tenderness in the tone.

"You must come in," I said. "I'll leave you with him for a while so that you can make him comfortable."

"Thank you again," she responded gratefully.

So I withdrew, and when I returned she was gone; but the old man slept peacefully.

It was late before I turned in. I went on deck for a time. We were cleaving through blue-black night, and on our right I could dimly discern the coast festooned by twinkling lights. Every one had gone below, I thought, and the loneliness pleased me. I was very quiet, thinking how good it all was, the balmy wind, the velvet vault of the night frescoed with wistful stars, the freedom-song of the sea; how restful, how sane, how loving!

Suddenly I heard a sound of sobbing, the merciless sobbing of a woman's breast. Distinct above the hollow breathing of the sea it assailed me, poignant and insistent. Wonderingly I looked around. Then, in a shadow of the upper deck, I made out a slight girl-figure, crouching all alone. It was Grey Eyes, crying fit to break her heart.

"Poor little beggar!" I muttered.

CHAPTER II

"Gr-r-r—you little brat! If you open your face to him I'll kill you, kill you, see!"

The voice was Madam Winklestein's, and the words, hissed in a whisper of incredible malignity, arrested me as if I had been struck by a live wire. I listened. Behind the stateroom door there followed a silence, grimly intense; then a dull pounding; then the same savage undertone.

"See here, Berna, we're next to you two—we're onto your curves. We know the old man's got the stuff in his gold-belt, two thousand in bills. Now, my dear, my sweet little angel what thinks she's too good to mix with the likes o' us, we need the mon, see!" (Knock, knock.) "And we're goin' to have it, see!" (Knock, knock.) "That's where you come in, honey, you're goin' to get it for us. Ain't you now, darlin'!" (Knock, knock, knock.)

Faintly, very faintly, I heard a voice:

"No."

If it be possible to scream in a whisper, the woman did it.

"You will! you will! Oh! oh! oh! There's the cursed mule spirit of your mother in you. She'd never tell us the name of the man that was the ruin of 'er, blast 'er."

"Don't speak of my mother, you vile woman!"

The voice of the virago contracted to an intensity of venom I have never heard the equal of.

"Vile woman! Vile woman! You, you to call me a vile woman, me that's been three times jined in holy wedlock.... Oh, you bastard brat! You whelp of sin! You misbegotten scum! Oh, I'll fix you for that, if I've got to swing for it."

Her scalding words were capped with an oath too foul to repeat, and once more came the horrible pounding, like a head striking the woodwork. Unable to bear it any longer, I rapped sharply on the door.

Silence, a long, panting silence; then the sound of a falling body; then the door opened a little and the twitching face of Madam appeared.

"Is there somebody sick?" I asked. "I'm sorry to trouble you, but I was thinking I heard groans and—I might be able to do something."

Piercingly she looked at me. Her eyes narrowed to slits and stabbed me with their spite. Her dark face grew turgid with impotent anger. As I stood there she was like to have killed me. Then like a flash her expression changed. With a dirty bejewelled hand she smoothed her tousled hair. Her coarse white teeth gleamed in a gold-capped smile. There was honey in her tone.

"Why, no! my niece in here's got a toothache, but I guess we can fix it between us. We don't need no help, thanks, young feller."

"Oh, that's all right," I said. "If you should, you know, I'll be nearby."

Then I moved away, conscious that her eyes followed me malevolently.

The business worried me sorely. The poor girl was being woefully abused, that was plain. I felt indignant, angry and, last of all, anxious. Mingled with my feelings was a sense of irritation that I should have been elected to overhear the affair. I had no desire just then to champion distressed damsels, least of all to get mixed up in the family brawls of unknown Jewesses. Confound her, anyway! I almost hated her. Yet I felt constrained to watch and wait, and even at the cost of my own ease and comfort to prevent further violence.

For that matter there were all kinds of strange doings on board, drinking, gambling, nightly orgies and hourly brawls. It seemed as if we had shipped all the human dregs of the San Francisco deadline. Never, I believe, in those times when almost daily the Argonaut-laden boats were sailing for the Golden North, was there one in which the sporting element was so dominant. The social hall reeked with patchouli and stale whiskey. From the staterooms came shrill outbursts of popular melody, punctuated with the popping of champagne corks. Dance-hall girls, babbling incoherently, reeled in the passageways, danced on the cabin table, and were only held back from licentiousness by the restraint of their bullies. The day was one long round of revelry, and the night was pregnant with sinister sound.

Already among the better element a moral secession was apparent. Convention they had left behind with their boiled shirts and their store clothes, and crazed with the idea of speedy fortune, they were even now straining at the leash of decency. It was a howling mob, elately riotous, and already infected by the virus of the goldophobia.

Oh, it was good to get on deck of a night, away from this saturnalia, to watch the beacon stars strewn vastly in the skyey uplift, to listen to the ancient threnody of the outcast sea. Blue and silver the nights were, and crystal clear, with a keen wind that painted the cheek and kindled the eye. And as I sat in silent thought there came to me Salvation Jim. His face was grim, his eyes brooding. From the brilliantly lit social hall came a blare of music-hall melody.

"I don't like the way of things a bit," he said; "I don't like it. Look here now, lad, I've lived round mining camps for twenty years, I've followed the roughest callings on earth, I've tramped the States all over, yet never have I seen the beat of this. Mind you, I ain't prejudiced, though I've seen the error of my ways, glory to God! I can make allowance once in a while for the boys gettin' on a jamboree, but by Christmas! Say! There's enough evil on this boat to stake a sub-section in Hell. There's men should be at home with their dinky little mothers an' their lovin' wives an' children, down there right now in that cabin buyin' wine for them painted Jezebels.

"There's doctors an' lawyers an' deacons in the church back in old Ohio, that never made a bad break in their lives, an' now they're rowin' like barroom bullies for the kisses of a baggage. In the bay-window of their souls the devil lolls an' grins an' God is freezin' in the attic. You mark my words, boy; there's a curse on this northern gold. The Yukon's a-goin' to take its toll. You mark my words."

"Oh, Jim," I said, "you're superstitious."

"No, I ain't. I've just got a hunch. Here we are a bit of floatin' iniquity glidin' through the mystery of them strange seas, an' the very officers on dooty sashed to the neck an' reekin' from the arms of the scented hussies below. It'll be God's mercy if we don't crash on a rock, an' go down good an' all to the bitter bottom. But it don't matter. Sooner or later there's goin' to be a reckonin'. There's many a one shoutin' an' singin' to-night'll leave his bones to bleach up in that bleak wild land."

"No, Jim," I protested, "they will be all right once they get ashore."

"Right nothin'! They're a pack of fools. They think they've got a bulge on fortune. Hear them a-howlin' now. They're all millionaires in their minds. There's no doubt with them. It's a cinch. They're spendin' it right now. You mark my words, young feller, for I'll never live to see them fulfilled—there's ninety in a hundred of all them fellers that's goin' to this here Klondike will never make good, an' of the other ten, nine won't do no good."

"One per cent. that will keep their stakes—that's absurd, Jim."

"Well, you'll see. An' as for me, I feel as sure as God's above us guidin' us through the mazes of the night, I'll never live to make the trip back. I've got a hunch. Old Jim's on his last stampede."

He sighed, then said sharply:

"Did you see that feller that passed us?"

It was Mosher, the gambler and ex-preacher.

"That man's a skunk, a renegade sky-pilot. I'm keepin' tabs on that man. Maybe him an' me's got a score to settle one of them days. Maybe."

He went off abruptly, leaving me to ponder long over his gloomy words.

We were now three days out. The weather was fine, and nearly every one was on deck in the sunshine. Even Bullhammer, Marks and Mosher had deserted the card-room for a time. The Bank clerk and the Wood-carver talked earnestly, planned and dreamed. The Professor was busy expounding a theory of the gold origin to a party of young men from Minnesota. Silent and watchful the athletic Mervin smoked his big cigar, while, patient and imperturbable, the iron Hewson chewed stolidly. The twins were playing checkers. The Winklesteins were making themselves solid with the music-hall clique. In and out among the different groups darted the Prodigal, as volatile as a society reporter at a church bazaar. And besides these, always alone, austerely aloof as if framed in a picture by themselves, a picture of dignity and sweetness, were the Jewish maid and her aged grandfather.

Although he was my room-mate I had seen but little of him. He was abed before I retired and I was up and out ere he awoke. For the rest I avoided the two because of their obvious connection with the Winklesteins. Surely, thought I, she cannot be mixed up with those two and be everything that's all right. Yet there was something in the girl's clear eyes, and in the old man's fine face, that reproached me for my doubt.

It was while I was thus debating, and covertly studying the pair, that something occurred.

Bullhammer and Marks were standing by me, and across the deck came the acridly nasal tones of the dance-hall girls. I saw the libertine eyes of Bullhammer rove incontinently from one unlovely demirep to another, till at last they rested on the slender girl standing by the side of her white-haired grandfather. Appreciatively he licked his lips.

"Say, Monkey, who's the kid with old Whiskers there?"

"Search me, Pete," said Marks; "want a knockdown?"

"Betcher! Seems kind-a standoffish, though, don't she?"

"Standoffish be darned! Never yet saw the little bit of all right that could stand off Sam Marks. I'm a winner, I am, an' don' you forget it. Just watch my splash."

I must say the man was expensively dressed in a flashy way. His oily, pimple-garnished face wreathed itself in a smirk of patronising familiarity, and with the bow of a dancing master he advanced. I saw her give a quick start, bite her lip and shrink back. "Good for you, little girl," I thought. But the man was in no way put out.

"Say, Sis, it's all right. Just want to interdooce you to a gentleman fren' o' mine."

The girl gazed at him, and her dilated eyes were eloquent of fear and distrust. It minded me of the panic of a fawn run down by the hunter, so that I found myself trembling in sympathy. A startled moment she gazed; then swiftly she turned her back.

This was too much for Marks. He flushed angrily.

"Say! what's the matter with you? Come off the perch there. Ain't we good enough to associate with you? Who the devil are you, anyhow?"

His face was growing red and aggressive. He closed in on her. He laid a rough hand on her shoulder. Thinking the thing had gone far enough I stepped forward to interfere, when the unexpected happened.

Suddenly the old man had risen to his feet, and it was a surprise to me how tall he was. Into his face there had come the ghost of ancient power and command. His eyes blazed with wrath, and his clenched fist was raised high in anathema. Then it came swiftly down on the head of Marks, crushing his stiff hat tightly over his eyes.

The climax was ludicrous in a way. There was a roar of laughter, and hearing it Marks spluttered as he freed himself. With a curse of rage he would have rushed the old man, but a great hand seized him by the shoulder. It was the grim, taciturn Hewson, and judging by the way his captive squirmed, his grip must have been peculiarly vise-like. The old man was pale as death, the girl crying, the passengers crowding round. Every one was gabbling and curious, so feeling I could do no good, I went below.

What was there about this slip of a girl that interested me so? Ever and anon I found myself thinking of her. Was it the conversation I had overheard? Was it the mystery that seemed to surround her? Was it the irrepressible instinct of my heart for the romance of life? With the old man, despite our stateroom propinquity, I had made no advances. With the girl I had passed no further words.

But the Gods of destiny act in whimsical ways. Doubtless the voyage would have finished without the betterment of our acquaintance; doubtless our paths would have parted, nevermore to cross; doubtless our lives would have been lived out to their fulness and this story never have been told—had it not been for the luckless fatality of the Box of Grapes.

CHAPTER III

Puget Sound was behind us and we had entered on that great sea that stretched northward to the Arctic barrens. Misty and wet was the wind, and cold with the kiss of many icebergs. Under a grey sky, glooming to purple, the gelid water writhed nakedly. Spectral islands elbowed each other, to peer at us as we flitted past. Still more wraithlike the mainland, fringed to the sea foam with saturnine pine, faded away into fastnesses of impregnable desolation. There was a sense of deathlike passivity in the land, of overwhelming vastitude, of unconquerable loneliness. It was as if I had felt for the first time the Spirit of the Wild; the Wild where God broods amid His silence; the Wild, His infinite solace and His sanctuary.

As we forged through the vague sea lanes, we were like a glittering trinket on the bosom of the night. Our mad merriment scarce ever abated. We were a blare of revelry and a blaze of light. Excitement mounted to fever heat. In the midst of it the women with the enamelled cheeks reaped a bountiful harvest. I marvel now that, with all the besotted recklessness of those that were our pilots, we met with no serious mishap.

"Don't mind you much of a Sunday-school picnic, does it?" commented the Prodigal. "It's fierce the way the girls are prying some of these crazy jays loose from their wads. They're all plumb batty. I'm tired trying to wise them up. 'Go and chase yourself,' they say; 'we're all right. Don't matter if we do loosen up a bit now, there's all kinds of easy money waiting for us up there.' Then they talk of what they're going to do when they've got the dough. One gazebo wants to buy a castle in the old country; another wants a racing stable; another a steam yacht. Oh, they're a hot bunch of sports. They're all planning to have a purple time in the sweet by-and-bye. I don't hear any of them speak of endowing a home for decrepit wash-ladies or pensioning off their aged grandmothers. They make me sick. There's a cold juicy awakening coming."

He was right. In their visionary leaps to affluence they soared to giddy heights. They strutted and bragged as if the millions were already theirs. To hear them, you would think they had an exclusive option on the treasure-troves of the Klondike. Yet, before and behind us, were dozens of similar vessels, bearing just as eager a mob of fortune-hunters, all drawn irresistibly northward by the Golden Magnet.

Nevertheless, it was hard not to be affected by the prevailing spirit of optimism. For myself the gold had but little attraction, but the adventure was very dear to my heart. Once more the clarion call of Romance rang in my ears, and I leapt to its summons. And indeed, I reflected, it was a wonderful kaleidoscope of a world, wherein I, but a half-year back cooling my heels in a highland burn, should be now part and parcel of this great Argonaut army. Already my native uncouthness was a thing of the past, and the quaint mannerisms of my Scots tongue were yielding to the racy slang of the frontier. More to the purpose, too, I was growing in strength and wiry endurance. As I looked around me I realised that there were many less fitted for the trail than I, and there was none with such a store of glowing health. You may picture me at this time, a tallish young man, with a fine colour in my cheeks, black hair that curled crisply, and dark eyes that were either alight with eagerness or agloom with dreams.

I have said that we were all more or less in a ferment of excitement, but to this I must make a reservation. One there was who, amid all our unrest, remained cold, distant and alien—the Jewish girl, Berna. Even in the old man the gold fever betrayed itself in a visionary eye and a tremor of the lips; but the girl was a statue of patient resignation, a living reproof to our febrile and purblind imaginings.

The more I studied her, the more out of place she seemed in my picture, and, almost unconsciously, I found myself weaving about her a fabric of romance. I endowed her with a mystery that piqued and fascinated me, yet without it I have no doubt I would have been attracted to her. I longed to know her uncommon well, to win her regard, to do something for her that should make her eyes rest very kindly on me. In short, as is the way of young men, I was beginning to grope blindly for that affection and sympathy which are the forerunners of passion and love.

The land was wintry and the wind shrilled so that the attendant gulls flapped their wings hard in the face of it. The wolf-pack of the sea were snarling whitely as they ran. The decks were deserted, and so many of the brawlers were sick and lay like dead folk that it almost seemed as if a Sabbath quiet lay on the ship. That day I had missed the old man, and on going below, found him lying as one sore stricken. A withered hand lay on his brow, and from his lips, which were almost purple, thin moans issued.

"Poor old beggar," I thought; "I wonder if I cannot do anything for him." And while I was thus debating, a timid knock came to the door. I opened it, and there was the girl, Berna.

There was a nervous anxiety in her manner, and a mute interrogation in her grey eyes.

"I'm afraid he's a little sick to-day," I said gently; "but come in, won't you, and see him?"

"Thank you." Pity, tenderness and love seemed to struggle in her face as she softly brushed past me. With some words of endearment, she fell on her knees beside him, and her small white hand sought his thin gnarled one. As if galvanised into life, the old man turned gratefully to her.

"Maybe he would care for some coffee," I said. "I think I could rustle him some."

She gave me a queer, sad look of thanks.

"If you could," she answered.

When I returned she had the old man propped up with pillows. She took the coffee from me, and held the cup to his lips; but after a few sips he turned away wearily.

"I'm afraid he doesn't care for that," I said.

"No, I'm afraid he won't take it."

She was like an anxious nurse hovering over a patient. She thought a while.

"Oh, if I only had some fruit!"

Then it was I bethought me of the box of grapes. I had bought them just before leaving, thinking they would be a grateful surprise to my companions. Obviously I had been inspired, and now I produced them in triumph, big, plump, glossy fellows, buried in the fragrant cedar dust. I shook clear a large bunch, and once more we tried the old man. It seemed as if we had hit on the one thing needful, for he ate eagerly. She watched him for a while with a growing sense of relief, and when he had finished and was resting quietly, she turned to me.

"I don't know how I can thank you, sir, for your kindness."

"Very easily," I said quickly; "if you will yourself accept some of the fruit, I shall be more than repaid."

She gave me a dubious look; then such a bright, merry light flashed into her eyes that she was radiant in my sight. It was as if half a dozen years had fallen from her, revealing a heart capable of infinite joy and happiness.

"If you will share them with me," she said simply.

So, for the lack of chairs, we squatted on the narrow stateroom floor, under the old man's kindly eye. The fruit minded us of sunlit vines, and the careless rapture of the South. To me the situation was one of rare charm. She ate daintily, and as we talked, I studied her face as if I would etch it on my memory forever.

In particular I noticed the wistful contour of her cheek, her sensitive mouth, and the fine modelling of her chin. She had clear, candid eyes and sweeping lashes, too. Her ears were shell-like, and her hair soft, wavy and warm. These things I marked minutely, thinking she was more than beautiful—she was even pretty. I was in a state of extraordinary elation, like a man that has found a jewel in the mire.

It must be remembered, lest I appear to be taking a too eager interest in the girl, that up till now the world of woman had been terra incognita to me; that I had lived a singularly cloistered life, and that first and last I was an idealist. This girl had distinction, mystery and charm, and it is not to be wondered at that I found a joy in her presence. I proved myself a perfect artesian well of conversation, talking freely of the ship, of our fellow-passengers and of the chances of the venture. I found her wonderfully quick in the uptake. Her mind seemed nimbly to outrun mine, and she divined my words ere I had them uttered. Yet she never spoke of herself, and when I left them together I was full of uneasy questioning.

Next day the old man was still abed, and again the girl came to visit him. This time I noticed that much of her timid manner was gone, and in its stead was a shy friendliness. Once more the box of grapes proved a mediator between us, and once more I found in her a reticent but sympathetic audience—so much so that I was frank in telling her of myself, my home and my kinsfolk. I thought that maybe my talk would weary her, but she listened with a bright-eyed regard, nodding her head eagerly at times. Yet she spoke no word of her own affairs, so that when again I left them together I was as much in the dark as ever.

It was on the third day I found the old man up and dressed, and Berna with him. She looked brighter and happier than I had yet seen her, and she greeted me with a smiling face. Then, after a little, she said:

"My grandfather plays the violin. Would you mind if he played over some of our old-country songs? It would comfort him."

"No, go ahead," I said; "I wish he would."

So she got an ancient violin, and the old man cuddled it lovingly and played soft, weird melodies, songs of the Czech race, that made me think of Romance, of love and hate, and passion and despair. Piece after piece he played, as if pouring out the sadness and heart-hunger of a burdened people, until my own heart ached in sympathy.

The wild music throbbed with passionate sweetness and despair. Unobserved, the pale twilight stole into the little cabin. The ruggedly fine face of the old man was like one inspired, and with clasped hands, the girl sat, very white-faced and motionless. Then I saw a gleam on her cheek, the soft falling of tears. Somehow, at that moment, I felt drawn very near to those two, the music, the tears, the fervent sadness of their faces. I felt as if I had been allowed to share with them a few moments consecrated to their sorrow, and that they knew I understood.

That day as I was leaving, I said to her:

"Berna, this is our last night on board."

"Yes."

"To-morrow our trails divide, maybe never again to cross. Will you come up on deck for a little while to-night? I want to talk to you."

"Talk to me?"

She looked startled, incredulous. She hesitated.

"Please, Berna, it's the last time."

"All right," she answered in a low tone.

Then she looked at me curiously.

CHAPTER IV

She came to meet me, lily-white and sweet. She was but thinly wrapped, and shivered so that I put my coat around her. We ventured forward, climbing over a huge anchor to the very bow of the boat, and crouching down in its peak, were sheltered from the cold breeze.

We were cutting through smooth water, and crowding in on us were haggard mountains, with now and then the greenish horror of a glacier. Overhead, in the desolate sky, the new moon nursed the old moon in her arms.

"Berna!"

"Yes."

"You're not happy, Berna. You're in sore trouble, little girl. I don't know why you come up to this God-forsaken country or why you are with those people. I don't want to know; but if there's anything I can do for you, any way I can prove myself a true friend, tell me, won't you?"

My voice betrayed emotion. I could feel her slim form, very close to me, all a-tremble. In the filtered silver of the crescent moon, I could see her face, wan and faintly sweet. Gently I prisoned one of her hands in mine.

She did not speak at once. Indeed, she was quiet for a long time, so that it seemed as if she must be stricken dumb, or as if some feelings were conflicting within her. Then at last, very gently, very quietly, very sweetly, as if weighing her words, she spoke.

"No, there's nothing you can do. You've been too kind all along. You're the only one on the boat that's been kind. Most of the others have looked at me—well, you know how men look at a poor, unprotected girl. But you, you're different; you're good, you're honourable, you're sincere. I could see it in your face, in your eyes. I knew I could trust you. You've been kindness itself to grandfather and I, and I never can thank you enough."

"Nonsense! Don't talk of thanks, Berna. You don't know what a happiness it's been to help you. I'm sorry I've done so little. Oh, I'm going to be sincere and frank with you. The few hours I've had with you have made me long for others. I'm a lonely beggar. I never had a sister, never a girl friend. You're the first, and it's been like sudden sunshine to me. Now, can't I be really and truly your friend, Berna; your friend that would do much for you? Let me do something, anything, to show how earnestly I mean it?"

"Yes, I know. Well, then, you are my dear, true friend—there, now."

"Yes,—but, Berna! To-morrow you'll go and we'll likely never see each other again. What's the good of it all?"

"Well, what do you want? We will both have a memory, a very sweet, nice memory, won't we? Believe me, it's better so. You don't want to have anything to do with a girl like me. You don't know anything about me, and you see the kind of people I'm going with. Perhaps I am just as bad as they."

"Don't say that, Berna," I interposed sternly; "you're all that's good and pure and sweet."

"No, I'm not, either. We're all of us pretty mixed. But I'm not so bad, and it's nice of you to think those things.... Oh! if I had never come on this terrible trip! I don't even know where we are going, and I'm afraid, afraid."

"No, little girl."

"Yes, I can't tell you how afraid I am. The country's so savage and lonely; the men are so like brute beasts; the women—well, they're worse. And here are we in the midst of it. I don't know what's going to become of us."

"Well, Berna, if it's like that, why don't you and your grandfather turn back? Why go on?"

"He will never turn back. He'll go on till he dies. He only knows one word of English and that's Klondike, Klondike. He mutters it a thousand times a day. He has visions of gold, glittering heaps of it, and he'll stagger and struggle on till he finds it."

"But can't you reason with him?"

"Oh, it's all no use. He's had a dream. He's like a man that's crazy. He thinks he has been chosen, and that to him will a great treasure be revealed. You might as well reason with a stone. All I can do is to follow him, is to take care of him."

"What about the Winklesteins, Berna?"

"Oh, they're at the bottom of it all. It is they who have inflamed his mind. He has a little money, the savings of a lifetime, about two thousand dollars; and ever since he came to this country, they've been trying to get it. They ran a little restaurant in New York. They tried to get him to put his little store in that. Now they are using the gold as a bait, and luring him up here. They'll rob and kill him in the end, and the cruel part is—he's not greedy, he doesn't want it for himself—but for me. That's what breaks my heart."

"Surely you're mistaken, Berna; they can't be so bad as that."

"Bad! I tell you they're vile. The man's a worm, and the woman, she's a devil incarnate. She's so strong and so violent in her tempers that when she gets drinking—well, it's just awful. I should know it, I lived with them for three years."

"Where?"

"In New York. I came from the old country to them. They worked me in the restaurant at first. Then, after a bit, I got employment in a shirt-waist factory. I was quick and handy, and I worked early and late. I attended a night school. I read till my eyes ached. They said I was clever. The teacher wanted me to train and be a teacher too. But what was the good of thinking of it? I had my living to get, so I stayed at the factory and worked and worked. Then when I had saved a few dollars, I sent for grandfather, and he came and we lived in the tenement and were very happy for a while. But the Winklesteins never gave us any peace. They knew he had a little money laid away, and they itched to get their hands on it. The man was always telling us of get-rich-quick schemes, and she threatened me in horrible ways. But I wasn't afraid in New York. Up here it's different. It's all so shadowy and sinister."

I could feel her shudder.

"Oh, Berna," I said, "can't I help you?"

She shook her head sadly.

"No, you can't; you have enough trouble of your own. Besides it doesn't matter about me. I didn't mean to tell you all this, but now, if you want to be a true friend, just go away and forget me. You don't want to have anything to do with me. Wait! I'll tell you something more. I'm called Berna Wilovich. That's my grandfather's name. My mother ran away from home. Two years later she came back—with me. Soon after she died of consumption. She would never tell my father's name, but said he was a Christian, and of good family. My grandfather tried to find out. He would have killed the man. So, you see, I am nameless, a child of shame and sorrow. And you are a gentleman, and proud of your family. Now, see the kind of friend you've made. You don't want to make friends with such as I."

"I want to make friends with such as need my friendship. What is going to happen to you, Berna?"

"Happen! God knows! It doesn't matter. Oh, I've always been in trouble. I'm used to it. I never had a really happy day in my life. I never expect to. I'll just go on to the end, enduring patiently, and getting what comfort I can out of things. It's what I was made for, I suppose."

She shrugged her shoulders and shivered a little.

"Let me go now, my friend. It's cold up here; I'm chilled. Don't look so terribly downcast. I expect I'll come out all right. Something may happen. Cheer up! Maybe you'll see me a Klondike queen yet."

I could see that her sudden brightness but hid a black abyss of bitterness and apprehension. What she had told me had somehow stricken me dumb. There seemed a stark sordidness in the situation that repelled me. She had arisen and was about to step over the fluke of the great anchor, when I aroused myself.

"Berna," I said, "what you have told me wrings my heart. I can't tell you how terribly sorry I feel. Is there nothing I can do for you, nothing to show I am not a mere friend of words and phrases? Oh, I hate to let you go like this."

The moon had gone behind a cloud. We were in a great shadow. She halted, so that, as we stood, we were touching each other. Her voice was full of pathetic resignation.

"What can you do? If we were going in together it might be different. When I met you at first I hoped, oh, I hoped—well, it doesn't matter what I hoped. But, believe me, I'll be all right. You won't forget me, will you?"

"Forget you! No, Berna, I'll never forget you. It cuts me to the heart I can do nothing now, but we'll meet up there. We can't be divided for long. And you'll be all right, believe me too, little girl. Be good and sweet and true and every one will love and help you. Ah, you must go. Well, well—God bless you, Berna."

"And I wish you happiness and success, dear friend of mine."

Her voice trembled. Something seemed to choke her. She stood a moment as if reluctant to go.

Suddenly a great impulse of tenderness and pity came over me, and before I knew it, my arms were around her. She struggled faintly, but her face was uplifted, her eyes starlike. Then, for a moment of bewildering ecstasy, her lips lay on mine, and I felt them faintly answer.

Poor yielding lips! They were cold as ice.

CHAPTER V

Never shall I forget the last I saw of her, a forlorn, pathetic figure in black, waving a farewell to me as I stood on the wharf. She wore, I remember, a low collar, and well do I mind the way it showed off the slim whiteness of her throat; well do I mind the high poise of her head, and the silken gloss of her hair. The grey eyes were clear and steady as she bade good-bye to me, and from where we stood apart, her face had all the pathetic sweetness of a Madonna.

Well, she was going, and sad enough her going seemed to me. They were all for Dyea, and the grim old Chilcoot, with its blizzard-beaten steeps, while we had chosen the less precipitous, but more drawn-out, Skagway trail. Among them I saw the inseparable twins; the grim Hewson, the silent Mervin, each quiet and watchful, as if storing up power for a tremendous effort. There was the large unwholesomeness of Madam Winklestein, all jewellery, smiles and coarse badinage, and near her, her perfumed husband, squinting and smirking abominably. There was the old man, with his face of a Hebrew Seer, his visionary eye now aglow with fanatical enthusiasm, his lips ever muttering: "Klondike, Klondike"; and lastly, by his side, with a little wry smile on her lips, there was the white-faced girl.

How my heart ached for her! But the time for sentiment was at an end. The clarion call to action rang out. Inflexibly the trail was mustering us. The hour was come for every one to give of the best that was in him, even as he had never given it before. The reign of peace was over; the fight was on.

On all sides were indescribable bustle, confusion and excitement; men shouting, swearing, rushing hither, thither; wrangling, anxious-eyed and distracted over their outfits. A mood of unsparing energy dominated them. Their only thought was to get away on the gold-trail. A frantic eagerness impelled them; insistent, imperative; the trail called to them, and the light of the gold-lust smouldered and flamed in their uneasy eyes. Already the spirit of the gold-trail was awakening.

Hundreds of scattered tents; a few frame buildings, mostly saloons, dance-halls and gambling joints; an eager, excited mob crowding on the loose sidewalks, floundering knee-deep in the mire of the streets, struggling and squabbling and cursing over their outfits—that is all I remember of Skagway. The mountains, stark and bare to the bluff, seemed to overwhelm the flimsy town, and between them, like a giant funnel, a great wind was roaring.

Lawlessness was rampant, but it did not touch us. The thugs lay in wait for the men with pokes from the "inside." To the great Cheechako army, they gave little heed. They were captained by one Smith, known as "Soapy," whom I had the fortune to meet. He was a pleasant-appearing, sociable man, and no one would have taken him for a desperado, a killer of men.

One picture of Skagway is still vivid in my memory. The scene is a saloon, and along with the Prodigal, I am having a glass of beer. In a corner sits a befuddled old man, half asleep. He is long and lank, with a leathery face and a rusty goatee beard—as ragged, disreputable an old sinner as ever bellied up to a bar. Suddenly there is a sound of shooting. We rush out and there are two toughs blazing away at each other from the sheltering corners of an opposite building.

"Hey, Dad! There's some shootin' goin' on," says the barkeeper.

The old man rouses and cocks up a bleary, benevolent eye.

"Shooting', did ye say? Pshaw! Them fellers don't know how to shoot. Old Dad'll show 'em how to shoot."

He comes to the door, and lugging out a big rusty revolver, blazes away at one of the combatants. The man, with a howl of surprise and pain, limps away. The old man turns to the other fellow. Bang! We see splinters fly, and a man running for dear life.

"Told you I'd show 'em how to shoot," remarks old Dad to us. "Thanks, I'll have a gin-fizz for mine."

The Prodigal developed a wonderful executive ability about this time; he was a marvel of activity, seemed to think of everything and to glory in his responsibility as a leader. Always cheerful, always thoughtful, he was the brains of our party. He never abated in his efforts a moment, and was an example and a stimulus to us all. I say "all," for we had added the "Jam-wagon"[ 1 ] to our number. It was the Prodigal who discovered him. He was a tall, dissolute Englishman, gaunt, ragged and verminous, but with the earmarks of a gentleman. He seemed indifferent to everything but whiskey and only anxious to hide himself from his friends. I discovered he had once been an officer in a Hussar regiment, but he was obviously reluctant to speak of his past. A lost soul in every sense of the word, the North was to him a refuge and an unrestricted stamping-ground. So, partly in pity, partly in hope of winning back his manhood, we allowed him to join the party.

Pack animals were in vast demand, for it was considered a pound of grub was the equal of a pound of gold. Old horses, fit but for the knacker's yard, and burdened till they could barely stand, were being goaded forward through the mud. Any kind of a dog was a prize, quickly stolen if left unwatched. Sheep being taken in for the butcher were driven forward with packs on their backs. Even was there an effort to make pack animals out of pigs, but they grunted, squealed and rolled their precious burdens in the mire. What crazy excitement, what urging and shouting, what desperate device to make a start!

We were lucky in buying a yoke of oxen from a packer for four hundred dollars. On the first day we hauled half of our outfit to Canyon City, and on the second we transferred the balance. This was our plan all through, though in bad places we had to make many relays. It was simple enough, yet, oh, the travail of it! Here is an extract from my diary of these days.

"Turn out at 4 A.M. Breakfasted on flapjacks and coffee. Find one of our oxen dying. Dies at seven o'clock. Harness remaining ox and start to remove goods up Canyon. Find trail in awful condition, yet thousands are struggling to get through. Horses often fall in pools of water ten to fifteen feet deep, trying to haul loads over the boulders that render trail almost impassable. Drive with sleigh over places that at other times one would be afraid to walk over without any load. Two feet of snow fell during the night, but it is now raining. Rains and snows alternately. At night bitterly cold. Hauled five loads up Canyon to-day. Finished last trip near midnight and turned in, cold, wet and played out."

The above is a fairly representative day and of such days we were to have many ere we reached the water. Slowly, with infinite effort, with stress and strain to every step of the way, we moved our bulky outfit forward from camp to camp. All days were hard, all exasperating, all crammed with discomfort; yet, bit by bit, we forged ahead. The army before us and the army behind never faltered. Like a stream of black ants they were, between mountains that reared up swiftly to storm-smitten palisades of ice. In the darkness of night the army rested uneasily, yet at the first streak of dawn it was in motion. It was an endless procession, in which every man was for himself. I can see them now, bent under their burdens, straining at their hand-sleighs, flogging their horses and oxen, their faces crimped and puckered with fatigue, the air acrid with their curses and heavy with their moans. Now a horse stumbles and slips into one of the sump-holes by the trail side. No one can pass, the army is arrested. Frenzied fingers unhitch the poor frozen brute and drag it from the water. Men, frantic with rage, beat savagely at their beasts of burden to make up the precious time lost. There is no mercy, no humanity, no fellowship. All is blasphemy, fury and ruthless determination. It is the spirit of the gold-trail.

At the canyon head was a large camp, and there, very much in evidence, the gambling fraternity. Dozens of them with their little green tables were doing a roaring business. On one side of the canyon they had established a camp. It was evening and we three, the Prodigal, Salvation Jim and myself, strolled over to where a three-shell man was holding forth.

"Hullo!" says the Prodigal. "It's our old friend Jake. Jake skinned me out of a hundred on the boat. Wonder how he's making out?"

It was Mosher, with his bald head, his crafty little eyes, his flat nose, his black beard. I saw Jim's face harden. He had always shown a bitter hatred of this man, and often I wondered why.

We stood a little way off. The crowd thinned and filtered away until but one remained, one of the tall young men from Minnesota. We heard Mosher's rich voice.

"Say, pard, bet ten dollars you can't place the bean. See! I put the little joker under here, right before your eyes. Now, where is it?"

"Here," said the man, touching one of the shells.

"Right you are, my hearty! Well, here's your ten."

The man from Minnesota took the money and was going away.

"Hold on," said Mosher; "how do I know you had the money to cover that bet?"

The man laughed and took from his pocket a wad of bills an inch thick.

"Guess that's enough, ain't it?"

Quick as lightning Mosher had snatched the bills from him, and the man from Minnesota found himself gazing into the barrel of a six-shooter.

"This here's my money," said Mosher; "now you git."

A moment only—a shot rang out. I saw the gun fall from Mosher's hand, and the roll of bills drop to the ground. Quickly the man from Minnesota recovered them and rushed off to tell his party. Then the men from Minnesota got their Winchesters, and the shooting began.

From their camp the gamblers took refuge behind the boulders that strewed the sides of the canyon, and blazed away at their opponents. A regular battle followed, which lasted till the fall of night. As far as I heard, only one casualty resulted. A Swede, about half a mile down the trail, received a spent bullet in the cheek. He complained to the Deputy Marshal. That worthy, sitting on his horse, looked at him a moment. Then he spat comprehensively.

"Can't do anything, Ole. But I'll tell you what. Next time there's bullets flying round this section of the country, don't go sticking your darned whiskers in the way. See!"

That night I said to Jim:

"How did you do it?"

He laughed and showed me a hole in his coat pocket which a bullet had burned.

"You see, having been in the game myself, I knew what was comin' and acted accordin'."

"Good job you didn't hit him worse."

"Wait a while, sonny, wait a while. There's something mighty familiar about Jake Mosher. He's mighty like a certain Sam Mosely I'm interested in. I've just written a letter outside to see, an' if it's him—well, I'm saved; I'm a good Christian, but—God help him!"

"And who was Sam Mosely, Jim?"

"Sam Mosely? Sam Mosely was the skunk that busted up my home an' stole my wife, blast him!"

———

[ 1 ] A Jam-wagon was the general name given to an Englishman on the trail.

CHAPTER VI

Day after day, each man of us poured out on the trail the last heel-tap of his strength, and the coming of night found us utterly played out. Salvation Jim was full of device and resource, the Prodigal, a dynamo of eager energy; but it was the Jam-wagon who proved his mettle in a magnificent and relentless way. Whether it was from a sense of gratitude, or to offset the cravings that assailed him, I know not, but he crammed the days with merciless exertion.

A curious man was the Jam-wagon, Brian Wanless his name, a world tramp, a derelict of the Seven Seas. His story, if ever written, would be a human document of moving and poignant interest. He must once have been a magnificent fellow, and even now, with strength and will-power impaired, he was a man among men, full of quick courage and of a haughty temper. It was ever a word and a blow with him, and a fight to the desperate finish. He was insular, imperious and aggressive, and he was always looking for trouble.

Though taciturn and morose with men, the Jam-wagon showed a tireless affection for animals. From the first he took charge of our ox; but it was for horses his fondness was most expressed, so that on the trail, where there was so much cruelty, he was constantly on the verge of combat.

"That's a great man," said the Prodigal to me, "a fighter from heel to head. There's one he can't fight, though, and that's old man Booze."

But on the trail every man was a fighter. It was fight or fall, for the trail would brook no weaklings. Good or bad, a man must be a man in the primal sense, dominant, savage and enduring. The trail was implacable. From the start it cried for strong men; it weeded out its weaklings. I had seen these fellows on the ship feed their vanity with foolish fancies; kindled to ardours of hope, I had seen debauch regnant among them; now I was to see them crushed, cowed, overwhelmed, realising each, according to his kind, the menace and antagonism of the way. I was to see the weak falter and fall by the trail side; I was to see the fainthearted quail and turn back; but I was to see the strong, the brave, grow grim, grow elemental in their desperate strength, and tightening up their belts, go forward unflinchingly to the bitter end. Thus it was the trail chose her own. Thus it was, from passion, despair and defeat, the spirit of the trail was born.

The spirit of the Gold Trail, how shall I describe it? It was based on that primal instinct of self-preservation that underlies our thin veneer of humanity. It was rebellion, anarchy; it was ruthless, aggressive, primitive; it was the man of the stone age in modern garb waging his fierce, incessant warfare with the forces of nature. Spurred on by the fever of the gold-lust, goaded by the fear of losing in the race; maddened by the difficulties and obstacles of the way, men became demons of cruelty and aggression, ruthlessly thrusting aside and trampling down the weaker ones who thwarted their progress. Of pity, humanity, love, there was none, only the gold-lust, triumphant and repellent. It was the survival of the fittest, the most tenacious, the most brutal. Yet there was something grandly terrible about it all. It was a barbaric invasion, an army, each man fighting for his own hand under the banner of gold. It was conquest. Every day, as I watched that human torrent, I realised how vast, how irresistible it was. It was Epic, it was Historical.

Many pitiful things I saw—men with haggard, hopeless faces, throwing their outfits into the snow and turning back broken-hearted; men staggering blindly on, exhausted to despair, then dropping wearily by the trail side in the bitter cold and sinister gloom; weaklings, every one. Many terrible things I saw—men cursing each other, cursing the trail, cursing their God, and in the echo of their curses, grinding their teeth and stumbling on. Then they would vent their fury and spite on the poor dumb animals. Oh, what cruelty there was! The life of the brute was as nothing; it was the tribute of the trail; it was a sacrifice on the altar of human greed.

Long before dawn the trail awakened and the air was full of breakfast smells, chiefly that of burnt porridge: for pots were seldom scraped, neither were dishes washed. Soon the long-drawn-out army was on the march, jaded animals straining at their loads, their drivers reviling and beating them. All the men were bearded, and many of them wore parkas. As many of the women had discarded petticoats, it was often difficult at a short distance to tell the sex of a person. There were tents built on sleighs, with faces of women and children peering out from behind. It was a wonderful procession, all classes, all nationalities, greybeards and striplings, parsons and prostitutes, rich and poor, filing past in their thousands, drawn desperately on by the golden magnet.

One day we were making a trip with a load of our stuff when, just ahead, there was a check in the march, so I and the Jam-wagon went forward to investigate. It was our old friend Bullhammer in difficulties. He had rather a fine horse, and in passing a sump-hole, his sled had skidded and slipped downhill into the water. Now he was belabouring the animal unmercifully, acting like a crazy man, shouting in a frenzy of rage.

The horse was making the most gallant efforts I ever saw, but, with every fresh attempt, its strength weakened. Time and again it came down on its knees, which were raw and bleeding. It was shining with sweat so that there was not a dry hair on its body, and if ever a dumb brute's eyes spoke of agony and fear, that horse's did. But Bullhammer grew every moment more infuriated, wrenching its mouth and beating it over the head with a club. It was a sickening sight and, used as I was to the inhumanity of the trail, I would have interfered had not the Jam-wagon jumped in. He was deadly pale and his eyes burned.

"You infernal brute! If you strike that horse another blow, I'll break your club over your shoulders."

Bullhammer turned on him. Surprise paralysed the man, rage choked him. They were both big husky fellows, and they drew up face to face. Then Bullhammer spoke.

"Curse you, anyway. Don't interfere with me. I'll beat bloody hell out of the horse if I like, an' you won't say one word, see?"

With that he struck the horse another vicious blow on the head. There was a quick scuffle. The club was wrenched from Bullhammer's hand. I saw it come down twice. The man sprawled on his back, while over him stood the Jam-wagon, looking very grim. The horse slipped quietly back into the water.

"You ugly blackguard! I've a good mind to beat you within an ace of your life. But you're not worth it. Ah, you cur!"

He gave Bullhammer a kick. The man got on his feet. He was a coward, but his pig eyes squinted in impotent rage. He looked at his horse lying shivering in the icy water.

"Get the horse out yourself, then, curse you. Do what you please with him. But, mark you—I'll get even with you for this—I'll—get—even."

He shook his fist and, with an ugly oath, went away. The block in the traffic was relieved. The trail was again in motion. When we got abreast of the submerged horse, we hitched on the ox and hastily pulled it out, and (the Jam-wagon proving to have no little veterinary skill) in a few days it was fit to work again.

Another week had gone and we were still on the trail, between the head of the canyon and the summit of the Pass. Day after day was the same round of unflinching effort, under conditions that would daunt any but the stoutest hearts. The trail was in a terrible condition, sometimes well-nigh impassable, and many a time, but for the invincible spirit of the Prodigal, would I have turned back. He had a way of laughing at misfortune and heartening one when things seemed to have passed the limit of all endurance.

Here is another day selected from my diary:

"Rose at 4:30 A.M. and started for summit with load. Trail all filled in with snow, and had dreadful time shovelling it out. Load upsets number of times. Got to summit at three o'clock. Ox almost played out. Snowing and blowing fearfully on summit. Ox tired; tries to lie down every few yards. Bitterly cold and have hard time trying to keep hands and feet from freezing. Keep on going to make Balsam City. Arrived there about ten o'clock at night. Clothing frozen stiff. Snow from seven to one hundred feet deep. No wood within a quarter mile and then only soft balsam. Had to go for wood. Almost impossible to start fire. Was near midnight when I had fire going well and supper cooked. Eighteen hours on the trail without a square meal. The way of the Klondike is hard, hard."

And yet I believe, compared with others, we were getting along finely. Every day, as the difficulties of the trail increased, I saw more and more instances of suffering and privation, and to many the name of the White Pass was the death-knell of hope. I could see their faces blanch as they gazed upward at that white immensity; I could see them tighten their pack-straps, clench their teeth and begin the ascent; could see them straining every muscle as they climbed, the grim lines harden round their mouths, their eyes full of hopeless misery and despair; I could see them panting at every step, ghastly with fatigue, lurching and stumbling on under their heavy packs. These were the weaker ones, who, sooner or later, gave up the struggle.

Then there were the strong, ruthless ones, who had left humanity at home, who flogged their staggering skin-and-bone pack animals till they dropped, then, with a curse, left them to die.

Far, far above us the monster mountains nuzzled among the clouds till cloud and mountain were hard to tell apart. These were giant heights heaved up to the stars, where blizzards were cradled and the storm-winds born, stupendous horrific familiars of the tempest and the thunder. I was conscious of their absolute sublimity. It was like height piled on height as one would pile up sacks of flour. As Jim remarked: "Say, wouldn't it give you crick in the neck just gazin' at them there mountains?"

How ant-like seemed the black army crawling up the icy pass, clinging to its slippery face in the blinding buffet of snow and rain! Men dropped from its ranks uncared for and unpitied. Heedless of those that fell, the gap closed up, the march went on. The great army crawled up and over the summit. Far behind could we see them, hundreds, thousands, a countless host, all with "Klondike" on their lips and the lust of the gold-lure in their hearts. It was the Great Stampede.

"Klondike or bust," was the slogan. It was ever on the lips of those bearded men. "Klondike or bust"—the strong man, with infinite patience, righted his overturned sleigh, and in the face of the blinding blizzard, pushed on through the clogging snow. "Klondike or bust"—the weary, trail-worn one raised himself from the hole where he had fallen, and stiff, cold, racked with pain, gritted his teeth doggedly and staggered on a few feet more. "Klondike or bust"—the fanatic of the trail, crazed with the gold-lust, performed mad feats of endurance, till nature rebelled, and raving and howling, he was carried away to die.

"'Member Joe?" some one would say, as a pack-horse came down the trail with, strapped on it, a dead, rigid shape. "Joe used to be plumb-full of fun; always joshin' or takin' some guy off; well—that's Joe."

Two weary, woe-begone men were pulling a hand-sleigh down from the summit. On it was lashed a man. He was in a high fever, raving, delirious. Half-crazed with suffering themselves, his partners plodded on unheedingly. I recognised in them the Bank clerk and the Professor, and I hailed them. From black hollows their eyes stared at me unrememberingly, and I saw how emaciated were their faces.

"Spinal meningitis," they said laconically, and they were taking him down to the hospital. I took a look and saw in that mask of terror and agony the familiar face of the Wood-carver.

He gazed at me eagerly, wildly: "I'm rich," he cried, "rich. I've found it—the gold—in millions, millions. Now I'm going outside to spend it. No more cold and suffering and poverty. I'm going down there to live, thank God, to live."

Poor Globstock! He died down there. He was buried in a nameless grave. To this day I fancy his old mother waits for his return. He was her sole support, the one thing she lived for, a good, gentle son, a man of sweet simplicity and loving kindness. Yet he lies under the shadow of those hard-visaged mountains in a nameless grave.

The trail must have its tribute.

CHAPTER VII

It was at Balsam City, and things were going badly. Marks and Bullhammer had formed a partnership with the Halfbreed, the Professor and the Bank clerk, and the arrangement was proving a regrettable one for the latter two. It was all due to Marks. At the best of times, he was a cross-grained, domineering bully, and on the trail, which would have worn to a wire edge the temper of an angel, his yellow streak became an eyesore. He developed a chronic grouch, and it was not long before he had the two weaker men toeing the mark. He had a way of speaking of those who had gone up against him in the past and were "running yet," of shooting scrapes and deadly knife-work in which he had displayed a spirit of cold-blooded ferocity. Both the Professor and the Bank clerk were men of peace and very impressionable. Consequently, they conceived for Marks a shuddering respect, not unmixed with fear, and were ready to stand on their heads at his bidding.

On the Halfbreed, however, his intimidation did not work. While the other two trembled at his frown, and waited on him hand and foot, the man of Indian blood ignored him, and his face was expressionless. Whereby he incurred the intense dislike of Marks.

Things were going from bad to worse. The man's aggressions were daily becoming more unbearable. He treated the others like Dagoes and on every occasion he tried to pick a quarrel with the Halfbreed, but the latter, entrenching himself behind his Indian phlegm, regarded him stolidly. Marks mistook this for cowardice and took to calling the Halfbreed nasty names, particularly reflecting on the good character of his mother. Still the Halfbreed took no notice, yet there was a contempt in his manner that stung more than words. This was the state of affairs when one evening the Prodigal and I paid them a visit.

Marks had been drinking all day, and had made life a little hell for the others. When we arrived he was rotten-ripe for a quarrel. Then the Prodigal suggested a game of poker, so four of them, himself, Marks, Bullhammer and the Halfbreed, sat in.

At first they made a ten-cent limit, which soon they raised to twenty-five; then, at last, there was no limit but the roof. A bottle passed from mouth to mouth and several big jack-pots were made. Bullhammer and the Prodigal were about breaking even, Marks was losing heavily, while steadily the Halfbreed was adding to his pile of chips.

Through one of those freaks of chance the two men seemed to buck one another continually. Time after time they would raise and raise each other, till at last Marks would call, and always his opponent had the cards. It was exasperating, maddening, especially as several times Marks himself was called on a bluff. The very fiend of ill-luck seemed to have gotten into him, and as the game proceeded, Marks grew more flushed and excited. He cursed audibly. He always had good cards, but always somehow the other just managed to beat him. He became explosively angry and abusive. The Halfbreed offered to retire from the game, but Marks would not hear of it.

"Come on, you nigger!" he shouted. "Don't sneak away. Give me a chance to get my money back."

So they sat down once more, and a hand was dealt. The Halfbreed called for cards, but Marks did not draw. Then the betting began. After the second round the others dropped out, and Marks and the Halfbreed were left. The Halfbreed was inimitably cool, his face was a perfect mask. Marks, too, had suddenly grown very calm. They started to boost each other.

Both seemed to have plenty of money and at first they raised in tens and twenties, then at last fifty dollars at a clip. It was getting exciting. You could hear a pin drop. Bullhammer and the Prodigal watched very quietly. Sweat stood on Marks's forehead, though the Halfbreed was utterly calm. The jack-pot held about three hundred dollars. Then Marks could stand it no longer.

"I'll bet a hundred," he cried, "and see you."

He triumphantly threw down a straight.

"There, now," he snarled, "beat that, you stinking Malamute."

There was a perceptible pause. I felt sorry for the Halfbreed. He could not afford to lose all that money, but his face showed no shade of emotion. He threw down his cards and there arose from us all a roar of incredulous surprise.

For the Halfbreed had thrown down a royal flush in diamonds. Marks rose. He was now livid with passion.

"You cheating swine," he cried; "you crooked devil!"

Quickly he struck the other on the face, a blow that drew blood. I thought for a moment the Halfbreed would return the blow. Into his eyes there came a look of cold and deadly fury. But, no! quickly bending down, he scooped up the money and left the tent.

We stared at each other.

"Marvellous luck!" said the Prodigal.

"Marvellous hell!" shouted Marks. "Don't tell me it's luck. He's a sharper, a dirty thief. But I'll get even. He's got to fight now. He'll fight with guns and I'll kill the son of a dog."

He was drinking from the bottle in big gulps, fanning himself into an ungovernable fury with fiery objurgations. At last he went out, and again swearing he would kill the Halfbreed, he made for another tent, from which a sound of revelry was coming.

Vaguely fearing trouble, the Prodigal and I did not go to bed, but sat talking. Suddenly I saw him listen intently.

"Hist! Did you hear that?"

I seemed to hear a sound like the fierce yelling of a wild animal.

We hurried out. It was Marks running towards us. He was crazy with liquor, and in one hand he flourished a gun. There was foam on his lips and he screamed as he ran. Then we saw him stop before the tent occupied by the Halfbreed, and throw open the flap.

"Come out, you dirty tin-horn, you crook, you Indian bastard; come out and fight."

He rushed in and came out again, dragging the Halfbreed at arm's length. They were tussling together, and we flung ourselves on them and separated them.

I was holding Marks, when suddenly he hurled me off, and flourishing a revolver, fired one chamber, crying:

"Stand back, all of you; stand back! Let me shoot at him. He's my meat."

We stepped back pretty briskly, for Marks had cut loose. In fact, we ducked for shelter, all but the Halfbreed, who stood straight and still.

Marks took aim at the man waiting there so coolly. He fired, and a tide of red stained the other man's shirt, near the shoulder. Then something happened. The Halfbreed's arm rose quickly. A six-shooter spat twice.

He turned to us. "I didn't want to do it, boys, but you see he druv' me to it. I'm sorry. He druv' me to it."

Marks lay in a huddled, quivering heap. He was shot through the heart and quite dead.

CHAPTER VIII

We were camping in Paradise Valley. Before us and behind us the great Cheechako army laboured along with infinite travail. We had suffered, but the trail of the land was near its end. And what an end! With every mile the misery and difficulty of the way seemed to increase. Then we came to the trail of Rotting Horses.

Dead animals we had seen all along the trail in great numbers, but the sight as we came on this particular place beggared description. There were thousands of them. One night we dragged away six of them before we could find room to put up the tent. There they lay, sprawling horribly, their ribs protruding through their hides, their eyes putrid in the sunshine. It was like a battlefield, hauntingly hideous.

And every day was adding to their numbers. The trail ran over great boulders covered with icy slush, through which the weary brutes sank to their bellies. Struggling desperately, down they would come between two boulders. Then their legs would snap like pipe-stems, and there usually they were left to die.

One would see, jammed in the cleft of a rock, the stump of a hoof, or sticking up sharply, the jagged splinter of a leg; while far down the bluff lay the animal to which it belonged. One would see the poor dead brutes lying head and tail for an hundred yards at a stretch. One would see them deserted and desperate, wandering round foraging for food. They would come to the camp at night whinnying pitifully, and with a look of terrible entreaty on their starved faces. Then one would take pity on them—and shoot them.

I remember stumbling across a big, heavy horse one night in the gloom. It was swaying from side to side, and as I drew near I saw its throat was hideously cut. It looked at me with such agony in its eyes that I put my handkerchief over its face, and, with the blow of an axe, ended its misery. The most spirited of the horses were the first to fall. They broke their hearts in gallant effort. Goaded to desperation, sometimes they would destroy themselves, throw themselves frantically over the bluff. Oh, it was horrible! horrible!

Our own horse proved a ready victim. To tell the truth, no one but the Jam-wagon was particularly sorry. If there was a sump-hole in sight, that horse was sure to flounder into it. Sometimes twice in one day we had to unhitch the ox and pull him out. There was a place dug out of the snow alongside the trail, which was being used as a knacker's yard, and here we took him with a broken leg and put a bullet in his brain. While we waited there were six others brought in to be shot.

It was a Sunday and we were in the tent, indescribably glad of a day's rest. The Jam-wagon was mending a bit of harness; the Prodigal was playing solitaire. Salvation Jim had just returned from a trip to Skagway, where he had hoped to find a letter from the outside regarding one Jake Mosher. His usually hale and kindly face was drawn and troubled. Wearily he removed his snow-sodden clothes.

"I always did say there was God's curse on this Klondike gold," he said; "now I'm sure of it. There's a hoodoo on it. What it's a-goin' to cost, what hearts it's goin' to break, what homes it's goin' to wreck no man'll ever know. God only knows what it's cost already. But this last is the worst yet."

"What's the matter, Jim?" I said; "what last?"

"Why, haven't you heard? Well, there's just been a snow-slide on the Chilcoot an' several hundred people buried."

I stared aghast. Living as we did in daily danger of snow-slides, this disaster struck us with terror.

"You don't say!" said the Prodigal. "Where?"

"Oh, somewhere's near Lindeman. Hundreds of poor sinners cut off without a chance to repent."

He was going to improve on the occasion when the Prodigal cut in.

"Poor devils! I guess we must know some of them too." He turned to me. "I wonder if your little Polak friend's all right?"

Indeed my thoughts had just flown to Berna. Among the exigencies of the trail (when we had to fix our minds on the trouble of the moment and every moment had its trouble) there was little time for reflection. Nevertheless, I had found at all times visions of her flitting before me, thoughts of her coming to me when I least expected them. Pity, tenderness and a good deal of anxiety were in my mind. Often I wondered if ever I would see her again. A feeling of joy and a great longing would sweep over me in the hope. At these words then of the Prodigal, it seemed as if all my scattered sentiments crystallised into one, and a vast desire that was almost pain came over me. I suppose I was silent, grave, and it must have been some intuition of my thoughts that made the Prodigal say to me:

"Say, old man, if you would like to take a run over the Dyea trail, I guess I can spare you for a day or so."

"Yes, indeed, I'd like to see the trail."

"Oh, yes, we've observed your enthusiastic interest in trails. Why don't you marry the girl? Well, cut along, old chap. Don't be gone too long."

So next morning, travelling as lightly as possible, I started for Bennett. How good it seemed to get off unimpeded by an outfit, and I sped past the weary mob, struggling along on the last lap of their journey. I had been in some expectation of the trail bettering itself, but indeed it appeared at every step to grow more hopelessly terrible. It was knee-deep in snowy slush, and below that seemed to be literally paved with dead horses.

I only waited long enough at Bennett to have breakfast. A pie nailed to a tent-pole indicated a restaurant, and there, for a dollar, I had a good meal of beans and bacon, coffee and flapjacks. It was yet early morning when I started for Linderman.

The air was clear and cold, ideal mushing weather, and already parties were beginning to struggle into Bennett, looking very weary and jaded. On the trail a man did a day's work by nine in the morning, another by four in the afternoon, and a third by nightfall. You were lucky to get off at that.

I was jogging along past the advance guard of the oncoming army, when who should I see but Mervin and Hewson. They looked thoroughly seasoned, and had made record time with a large outfit. In contrast to the worn, weary-eyed men with faces pinched and puckered, they looked insolently fit and full of fight. They had heard of the snow-slide but could give me no particulars. I inquired for Berna and the old man. They were somewhere behind, between Chilcoot and Lindeman. "Yes, they were probably buried under the slide. Good-bye."

I hurried forward, full of apprehension. A black stream of Cheechakos were surging across Lindeman; then I realised the greatness of the other advancing army, and the vastness of the impulse that was urging these indomitable atoms to the North. It was blowing quite hard and many had put up sails on their sleds with good effect. I saw a Jew driving an ox, to which he had four small sleds harnessed. On each of these he had hoisted a small sail. Suddenly the ox looked round and saw the sails. Here was something that did not come within the scope of his experience. With a bellow of fear, he stampeded, pursued by a yelling Hebrew, while from the chain of sleds articles scattered in all directions. When last I saw them in the far distance, Jew and ox were still going.

Why was I so anxious about Berna? I did not know, but with every mile my anxiety increased. A dim unreasoning fear possessed me. I imagined that if anything happened to her I would forever blame myself. I saw her lying white and cold as the snow itself, her face peaceful in death. Why had I not thought more of her? I had not appreciated her enough, her precious sweetness and her tenderness. If only she was spared, I would show her what a good friend I could be. I would protect her and be near her in case of need. But then how foolish to think anything could have happened to her. The chances were one in a hundred. Nevertheless, I hurried forward.

I met the Twins. They had just escaped the slide, they told me, and had not yet recovered from the shock. A little way back on the trail it was. I would see men digging out the bodies. They had dug out seventeen that morning. Some were crushed as flat as pancakes.

Again, with a pain at my heart, I asked after Berna and her grandfather. Twin number one said they were both buried under the slide. I gasped and was seized with sudden faintness. "No," said twin number two, "the old man is missing, but the girl has escaped and is nearly crazy with grief. Good-bye."

Once more I hurried on. Gangs of men were shovelling for the dead. Every now and then a shovel would strike a hand or a skull. Then a shout would be raised and the poor misshapen body turned out.

Again I put my inquiries. A busy digger paused in his work. He was a sottish-looking fellow, and there was something of the glare of a ghoul in his eyes.

"Yes, that must have been the old guy with the whiskers they dug out early on from the lower end of the slide. Relative, name of Winklestein, took charge of him. Took him to the tent yonder. Won't let any one go near."

He pointed to a tent on the hillside, and it was with a heavy heart I went forward. The poor old man, so gentle, so dignified, with his dream of a golden treasure that might bring happiness to others. It was cruel, cruel....

"Say, what d'ye want here? Get to hell outa this."

The words came with a snarl. I looked up in surprise.

There at the door of the tent, all a-bristle like a gutter-bred cur, was Winklestein.

CHAPTER IX

I stared at the man a moment, for little had I expected so gracious a reception.

"Mush on, there," he repeated truculently; "you're not wanted 'round here. Mush! Pretty darned smart."

I felt myself grow suddenly, savagely angry. I measured the man for a moment and determined I could handle him.

"I want," I said soberly, "to see the body of my old friend."

"You do, do you? Well, you darned well won't. Besides, there ain't no body here."

"You're a liar!" I observed. "But it's no use wasting words on you. I'm going on anyhow."

With that I gripped him suddenly and threw him sideways with some force. One of the tent ropes took away his feet violently, and there on the snow he sprawled, glowering at me with evil eyes.

"Now," said I, "I've got a gun, and if you try any monkey business, I'll fix you so quick you won't know what's happened."

The bluff worked. He gathered himself up and followed me into the tent, looking the picture of malevolent impotence. On the ground lay a longish object covered with a blanket. With a strange feeling of reluctant horror I lifted the covering. Beneath it lay the body of the old man.

He was lying on his back, and had not been squeezed out of all human semblance like so many of the others. Nevertheless, he was ghastly enough, with his bluish face and wide bulging eyes. What had worn his fingers to the bone so? He must have made a desperate struggle with his bare hands to dig himself out. I will never forget those torn, nailless fingers. I felt around his waist. Ha! the money belt was gone!

"Winklestein," I said, turning suddenly on the little Jew, "this man had two thousand dollars on him. What have you done with it?"

He started violently. A look of fear came into his eyes. It died away, and his face was convulsed with rage.

"He did not," he screamed; "he didn't have a red cent. He's no more than an old pauper I was taking in to play the fiddle. He owes me, curse him! And who are you anyways, you blasted meddler, that accuses a decent man of being a body robber?"

"I was this dead man's friend. I'm still his granddaughter's friend. I'm going to see justice done. This man had two thousand dollars in a gold belt round his waist. It belongs to the girl now. You've got to give it up, Winklestein, or by——"

"Prove it, prove it!" he spluttered. "You're a liar; she's a liar; you're all a pack of liars, trying to blackmail a decent man. He had no money, I say! He had no money, and if ever he said so, he's a liar."

"Oh, you vile wretch!" I cried. "It's you that's lying. I've a mind to choke your dirty throat. But I'll hound you till I make you cough up that money. Where's Berna?"

Suddenly he had become quietly malicious.

"Find her," he jibed; "find her for yourself. And take yourself out of my sight as quickly as you please."

I saw he had me over a barrel, so, with a parting threat, I left him. A tent nearby was being run as a restaurant, and there I had a cup of coffee. Of the man who kept it, a fat, humorous cockney, I made enquiries regarding the girl. Yes, he knew her. She was living in yonder tent with Madam Winklestein.

"They sy she's tykin' on horful baht th' old man, pore kid!"

I thanked him, gulped down my coffee, and made for the tent. The flap was down, but I rapped on the canvas, and presently the dark face of Madam appeared. When she saw me, it grew darker.

"What d'you want?" she demanded.

"I want to see Berna," I said.

"Then you can't. Can't you hear her? Isn't that enough?"

Surely I could hear a very low, pitiful sound coming from the tent, something between a sob and a moan, like the wailing of an Indian woman over her dead, only infinitely subdued and anguished. I was shocked, awed, immeasurably grieved.

"Thank you," I said; "I'm sorry. I don't want to intrude on her in her hour of affliction. I'll come again."

"All right," she laughed tauntingly; "come again."

I had failed. I thought of turning back, then I thought I might as well see what I could of the far-famed Chikoot, so once more I struck out.

The faces of the hundreds I met were the same faces I had passed by the thousand, stamped with the seal of the trail, seamed with lines of suffering, wan with fatigue, blank with despair. There was the same desperate hurry, the same indifference to calamity, the same grim stoical endurance.

A snowstorm was raging on the summit of the Chikoot and the snow was drifting, covering the thousands of caches to the depth of ten and fifteen feet. I stood on the summit of that nearly perpendicular ascent they call the "Scales." Steps had been cut in the icy steep, and up these men were straining, each with a huge pack on his back. They could only go in single file. It was the famous "Human Chain." At regular distances, platforms had been cut beside the trail, where the exhausted ones might leave the ranks and rest; but if a worn-out climber reeled and crawled into one of the shelters, quickly the line closed up and none gave him a glance.

The men wore ice-creepers, so that their feet would clutch the slippery surface. Many of them had staffs, and all were bent nigh double under their burdens. They did not speak, their lips were grimly sealed, their eyes fixed and stern. They bowed their heads to thwart the buffetings of the storm-wind, but every way they turned it seemed to meet them. The snow lay thick on their shoulders and covered their breasts. On their beards the spiked icicles glistened. As they moved up step by step, it seemed as if their feet were made of lead, so heavily did they lift them. And the resting-places by the trail were never empty.

You saw them in the canyon at the trail top, staggering in the wind that seemed to blow every way at once. You saw them blindly groping for the caches they had made but yesterday and now fathoms deep under the snowdrift. You saw them descending swiftly, dizzily, leaning back on their staffs, for the down trail was like a slide. In a moment they were lost to sight, but to-morrow they would come again, and to-morrow and to-morrow, the men of the Chilcoot.

The Trail of Travail—surely it was all epitomised in the tribulations of that stark ascent. From my eyrie on its blizzard-beaten crest I could see the Human Chain drag upward link by link, and every link a man. And as he climbed that pitiless treadmill, on each man's face there could be deciphered the palimpsest of his soul.

Oh, what a drama it was, and what a stage! The Trail of '98—high courage, frenzied fear, despotic greed, unflinching sacrifice. But over all—its hunger and its hope, its passion and its pain—triumphed the dauntless spirit of the Pathfinder—the mighty Pioneer.

"No," she said firmly, "you can't see the girl"

Then I knew, I knew. These silent, patient, toiling ones were the Conquerors of the Great White Land; the Men of the High North, the Brotherhood of the Arctic Wild. No saga will ever glorify their deeds, no epic make them immortal. Their names will be written in the snows that melt and vanish at the smile of Spring; but in their works will they live, and their indomitable spirit will be as a beacon-light, shining down the dim corridors of Eternity.

I slept at a bunkhouse that night, and next morning I again made a call at the tent within which lay Berna. Again Madam, in a gaudy wrapper, answered my call, but this time, to my surprise, she was quite pleasant.

"No," she said firmly, "you can't see the girl. She's all prostrated. We've given her a sleeping powder and she's asleep now. But she's mighty sick. We've sent for a doctor."

There was indeed nothing to be done. With a heavy heart I thanked her, expressed my regrets and went away. What had got into me, I wondered, that I was so distressed about the girl. I thought of her continually, with tenderness and longing. I had seen so little of her, yet that little had meant so much. I took a sad pleasure in recalling her to mind in varying aspects; always she appeared different to me somehow. I could get no definite idea of her; ever was there something baffling, mysterious, half revealed.

To me there was in her, beauty, charm, every ideal quality. Yet must my eyes have been anointed, for others passed her by without a second glance. Oh, I was young and foolish, maybe; but I had never before known a girl that appealed to me, and it was very, very sweet.

So I went back to the restaurant and gave the fat cockney a note which he promised to deliver into her own hands. I wrote:

"Dear Berna: I cannot tell you how deeply grieved I am over your grandfather's death, and how I sympathise with you in your sorrow. I came over from the other trail to see you, but you were too ill. Now I must go back at once. If I could only have said a word to comfort you! I feel terribly about it.

"Oh, Berna, dear, go back, go back. This is no country for you. If I can help you, Berna, let me know. If you come on to Bennett, then I will see you.

"Believe me again, dear, my heart aches for you.

"Be brave.

"Always affectionately yours,
"Athol Meldrum."

Then once more I struck out for Bennett.

CHAPTER X

Our last load was safely landed in Bennett and the trail of the land was over. We had packed an outfit of four thousand pounds over a thirty-seven-mile trail and it had taken us nearly a month. For an average of fifteen hours a day we had worked for all that was in us; yet, looking back, it seems to have been more a matter of dogged persistence and patience than desperate endeavour and endurance.

There is no doubt that to the great majority, the trail spelt privation, misery and suffering; but they were of the poor, deluded multitude that never should have left their ploughs, their desks and their benches. Then there were others like ourselves to whom it meant hardship, more or less extreme, but who managed to struggle along fairly well. Lastly, there was a minority to whom it was little more than discomfort. They were the seasoned veterans of the trail to whom its trials were all in the day's work. It was as if the Great White Land was putting us to the test, was weeding out the fit from the unfit, was proving itself a land of the Strong, a land for men.

And indeed our party was well qualified to pass the test of the trail. The Prodigal was full of irrepressible enthusiasm, and always loaded to the muzzle with ideas. Salvation Jim was a mine of foresight and resource, while the Jam-wagon proved himself an insatiable glutton for work. Altogether we fared better than the average party.

We were camped on the narrow neck of water between Lindeman and Bennett, and as hay was two hundred and fifty dollars a ton, the first thing we did was to butcher the ox. The next was to see about building a boat. We thought of whipsawing our own boards, but the timber near us was poor or thinned out, so that in the end we bought lumber, paying for it twenty cents a foot. We were all very unexpert carpenters; however, by watching others, we managed to make a decent-looking boat.

These were the busy days. At Bennett the two great Cheechako armies converged, and there must have been thirty thousand people camped round the lake. The night was ablaze with countless camp-fires, the day a buzz of busy toil. Everywhere you heard the racket of hammer and saw, beheld men in feverish haste over their boat-building. There were many fine boats, but the crude makeshift effort of the amateur predominated. Some of them, indeed, had no more shape than a packing-case, and not a few resembled a coffin. Anything that would float and keep out the water was a "boat."

Oh, it was good to think that from thenceforward, the swift, clear current would bear us to our goal. No more icy slush to the knee, no more putrid horse-flesh under foot, no more blinding blizzards and heart-breaking drift of snows. But the blue sky would canopy us, the gentle breezes fan us, the warm sun lock us in her arms. No more bitter freezings and sinister dawns and weary travail of mind and body. The hills would busk themselves in emerald green, the wild crocus come to gladden our eyes, the long nights glow with sunsets of theatric splendour. No wonder, in the glory of reaction, we exulted and laboured on our boat with brimming hearts. And always before us gleamed the Golden Magnet, making us chafe and rage against the stubborn ice that stayed our progress.

The days were full of breezy sunshine and at all times the Eager Army watched the rotting ice with anxious eyes. In places it was fairly honeycombed now, in others corroded and splintered into silver spears. Here and there it heaved up and cracked across in gaping chasms; again it sagged down suddenly. There were sheets of surface water and stretches of greenish slush that froze faintly overnight. In large, flaming letters of red, the lake was dangerous, near to a break-up, a death trap; yet every day the reckless ones were going over it to be that much nearer the golden goal.

In this game of taking desperate chances, many a wild player lost, many a foolhardy one never reached the shore. No one will ever know the number of victims claimed by these black unfathomable waters.

It was the Professor who opened our eyes to the danger of crossing the lake. He and the Bank clerk quarrelled over the wisdom of delay. The Professor was positive it was quite safe. The ice was four feet thick. Go fast over the weak spots and you would be all right. He argued, fumed and ranted. They were losing precious time, time which might mean all the difference between failure and success. It was expedient to get ahead of the rabble. He, for one, was no craven; he had staked his all on this trip. He had studied the records of Arctic explorers. He thought he was no man's fool. If others were cowardly enough to hold back, he would go alone.

The upshot of it was that one grey morning he took his share of the outfit and started off by himself.

Said the Bank clerk, half crying:

"Poor old Pondersby! In spite of the words we had, we parted the best of friends. We shook hands and I wished him all good-speed. I saw him twisting and wriggling among the patches of black and white ice. For a long time I watched him with a heavy heart. Yet he seemed to be getting along nicely, and I was beginning to think he was right and to call myself a fool. He was getting quite small in the distance, when suddenly he seemed to disappear. I got the glasses. There was a big hole in the ice, no sleigh, no Pondersby. Poor old fellow!"

There were many such cases of separation on the shores of Lake Bennett. Parties who had started out on that trail as devoted chums, finished it as lifelong enemies. Tempers were ground to a razor-edge; words dropped crudely; anger flamed to meet anger. You could scarcely blame them. They did not realise that the trail demanded all that was in a man of gentleness, patience and forbearance. Poor human nature was strained and tested inexorably, and the most loving friends became the most deadly foes forevermore.

One instance of this was the twins.

"Say," said the Prodigal, "you ought to see Romulus and Remus. They're scrapping like cat and dog. Seems they've had a bunch of trouble right along the line—you know how the trail brings out the yellow streak in a man. Well, they're both fiery as Hades, so after a particularly warm evening they swore that as soon as they got to Bennett, they'd divvy up the stuff and each go off by his lonesome. Somehow, they patched it up when they reached here and got busy on their boat. Now it seems they've quarrelled worse than ever. Romulus is telling Remus his real name and vice-versa. They're raking up old grievances of their childhood days, and the end of it is they've once more decided to halve tip the outfit. They're mad enough to kill each other. They've even decided to cut their boat in two."

It was truly so. We went and watched them. Each had a bitter determination on his face. They were sawing the boat through the middle. Afterwards, I believe, they patched up their ends and made a successful trip to Dawson.

The ice was going fast. Strangers were still coming in over the trail with awful tales of its horrors. Bennett was all excitement and seething life. Thousands of ungainly boats, rafts and scows were waiting to be launched. Already craft were beginning to come through from Lindeman, rushing down the fierce torrent between the two lakes. From where we were camped we saw them pass. There were ugly rapids and a fang-like rock, against which many a luckless craft was piled up.

It was the most fascinating thing in the world to watch these daring Argonauts rush the rapids, to speculate whether or not they would get through. The stroke of an oar, a few feet to right or left, meant unspeakable calamity. Poor souls! Their faces of utter despair as they landed dripping from the water and saw their precious goods disappearing in the angry foam would have moved a heart of stone. As one man said, in the bitterness of his heart:

"Oh, boys, what a funny God we've got!"

There was a man who came sailing through the passage with a fine boat and a rich outfit. He had lugged it over the trail at the cost of infinite toil and weariness. Now his heart was full of hope. Suddenly he was in the whirl of the current, then all at once loomed up the cruel rock. His face blanched with horror. Frantically he tried to avoid it. No use. Crash! and his frail boat splintered like matchwood.

But this man was a fighter. He set his jaw. Once more he went back over that deadly trail. He bought, at great expense, a new outfit and had packers hustle it over the trail. He procured a new boat. Once more he sailed through the narrow canyon. His face was set and grim.

Suddenly, like some iron Nemesis, once more loomed up the fatal rock. He struggled gallantly, but again the current seemed to grip him and throw him on that deadly fang. With another sickening crash he saw his goods sink in the seething waters.

Did he give up? No! A third time he struggled, weary, heartbroken, over that trail. He had little left now, and with that little he bought his third outfit, a poor, pathetic shadow of the former ones, but enough for a desperate man.

Once more he packed it over the trail, now a perfect Avernus of horror. He reached the river, and in a third poor little boat, again he sailed down the passage. There was the swift-leaping current, the ugly tusk of rock staked with wreckage. A moment, a few feet, a turn of the oar-blade, and he would have been past. But, no! The rock seemed to fascinate him as the eyes of a snake fascinate a bird. He stared at it fearfully, a look of terror and despair. Then for the third time, with a hideous crash, his frail boat was piled up in a pitiful ruin.

He was beaten now.

He climbed on the bank, and there, with a last look at the ugly snarl of waters, and the jagged up-thrust of that evil rock, he put a bullet smashing through his brain.

The ice was loose and broken. We were all ready to start in a few days. The mighty camp was in a ferment of excitement. Every one seemed elated beyond words. On, once more, to Eldorado!

It was near midnight, but the sky, where the sun had dipped below the mountain rim, was a sea of translucent green, weirdly and wildly harmonious with the desolation of the land. On the bleak lake one could hear the lap of waves, while the high, rocky shore to the left was a black wall of shadow. I stood by the beach near our boat, all alone in the wan light, and tried to think calmly of the strange things that had happened to me.

Surely there was something of Romance left in this old world yet if one would only go to seek it. Here I was, sun-browned, strong, healthy, having come through many trials and still on the edge of adventure, when I might, but for my own headstrong perversity, have yet been vegetating on the hills of Glengyle. A great exultation welled up in me, the voice of youth and ambition, the lust to conquer. I would succeed, I would wrest from the vast, lonely, mysterious North some of its treasure. I would be a conqueror.

Silent and abstracted, I looked into the brooding disk of sheeny sky, my eyes dream-troubled.

Then I felt a ghostly hand touch my arm, and with a great start of surprise, I turned.

"Berna!"

CHAPTER XI

The girl was wearing a thin black shawl around her shoulders, but in the icy wind blowing from the lake, she trembled like a wand. Her face was pale, waxen, almost spiritual in its expression, and she looked at me with just the most pitiably sweet smile in the world.

"I'm sorry I startled you; but I wanted to thank you for your letter and for your sympathy."

It was the same clear voice, with the throb of tender feeling in it.

"You see, I'm all alone now." The voice faltered, but went on bravely. "I've got no one that cares about me any more, and I've been sick, so sick I wonder I lived. I knew you'd forgotten me, and I don't blame you. But I've never forgotten you, and I wanted to see you just once more."

She was speaking quite calmly and unemotionally.

"Berna!" I cried; "don't say that. Your reproach hurts me so. Indeed I did try to find you, but it's such a vast camp. There are so many thousands of people here. Time and again I inquired, but no one seemed to know. Then I thought you must surely have gone back, and it's been such a busy time, building our boat and getting ready. No, Berna, I didn't forget. Many's and many's a night I've lain awake thinking of you, wondering, longing to see you again—but haven't you forgotten a little?"

I saw the sensitive lips smile almost bitterly.

"No! not even a little."

"Oh! I'm sorry, Berna. I'm sorry I've looked after you so badly. I'll never forgive myself. You've been terribly sick, too. What a little white whisp you are! You look as if a breeze would blow you away. You shouldn't be out this night, girl. Put my coat around you, come now."

I wrapped her in it and saw with gladness her shivering cease. As I buttoned it at her throat I marvelled at the thinness of her, and at the delicacy of her face. In the opal light of the luminous sky her great grey eyes were lustrous.

"Berna," I said again, "why did you come in here, why? You should have gone back."

"Gone back," she repeated; "indeed I would have, oh, so gladly. But you don't understand—they wouldn't let me. After they had got all his money—and they did get it, though they swear he had nothing—they made me come on with them. They said I owed them for his burial, and for the care and attention they gave me when I was sick. They said I must come on with them and work for them. I protested, I struggled. But what's the use? I can't do anything against them any more. I'm weak, and I'm terribly afraid of her."

She shuddered, then a look of fear came into her eyes. I put my hand on her arm and drew her close to me.

"I just slipped away to-night. She thinks I'm asleep in the tent. She watches me like a cat, and will scarce let me speak to any one. She's so big and strong, and I'm so slight and weak. She would kill me in one of her rages. Then she tells every one I'm no good, an ingrate, everything that's bad. Once when I threatened to run away, she said she would accuse me of stealing and have me put in gaol. That's the kind of woman she is."

"This is terrible, Berna. What have you been doing all the time?"

"Oh, I've been working, working for them. They've been running a little restaurant and I've waited on table. I saw you several times, but you were always too busy or too far away in dreams to see me, and I couldn't get a chance to speak. But we're going down the lake to-morrow, so I thought I would just slip away and say good-bye."

"Not good-bye," I faltered; "not good-bye."

Her tone was measured, her eyes closed almost.

"Yes, I'm afraid I must say it. When we get down there, it's good-bye, good-bye. The less you have to do with me, the better."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean this. These people are not decent. They're vile. I must go with them; I cannot get away. Already, though I'm as pure as your sister would be, already my being with them has smirched me in everybody's eyes. I can see it by the way the men look at me. No, go your way and leave me to whatever fate is in store for me."

"Never!" I said harshly. "What do you take me for, Berna?"

"My friend ... you know, after his death, when I was so sick, I wanted to die. Then I got your letter, and I felt I must see you again for—I thought a lot of you. No man's ever been so kind to me as you have. They've all been—the other sort. I used to think of you a good deal, and I wanted to do some little thing to show you I was really grateful. On the boat I used to notice you because you were so quiet and abstracted. Then you were grandfather's room-mate and gentle and kind to him. You looked different from the others, too; your eyes were good——"

"Oh, come, Berna, never mind that."

"Yes, I mean it. I just wanted to tell you the things a poor girl thought of you. But now it's all nearly over. We've neither of us got to think of each other any more ... and I just wanted to give you this—to remind you sometimes of Berna."

It was a poor little locket and it contained a lock of her silken hair.

"It's worth nothing, I know, but just keep it for me."

"Indeed I will, Berna, keep it always, and wear it for you. But I can't let you go like this. See here, girl, is there nothing I can do? Nothing? Surely there must be some way. Berna, Berna, look at me, listen to me! Is there? What can I do? Tell me, tell me, my girl."

She seemed to sway to me gently. Indeed I did not intend it, but somehow she was in my arms. She felt so slight and frail a thing, I feared to hurt her.

Then I felt her bosom heaving greatly, and I knew she was crying. For a little I let her cry, but presently I lifted up the white face that lay on my shoulder. It was wet with tears. Again and again I kissed her. She lay passively in my arms. Never did she try to escape nor hide her face, but seemed to give herself up to me. Her tears were salt upon my lips, yet her own lips were cold, and she did not answer to my kisses.

At last she spoke. Her voice was like a little sigh.

"Oh, if it could only be!"

"What, Berna? Tell me what?"

"If you could only take me away from them, protect me, care for me. Oh, if you could only marry me, make me your wife. I would be the best wife in the world to you; I would work my fingers to the bone for you; I would starve and suffer for you, and walk the world barefoot for your sake. Oh, my dear, my dear, pity me!"

It seemed as if a sudden light had flashed upon my brain, stunning me, bewildering me. I thought of the princess of my dreams. I thought of Garry and of Mother. Could I take her to them?

"Berna," I said sternly, "look at me."

She obeyed.

"Berna, tell me, by all you regard as pure and holy, do you love me?"

She was silent and averted her eyes.

"No, Berna," I said, "you don't; you're afraid. It's not the sort of love you've dreamed of. It's not your ideal. It would be gratitude and affection, love of a kind, but never that great dazzling light, that passion that would raise to heaven or drag to hell."

"How do I know? Perhaps that would come in time. I care a great deal for you. I think of you always. I would be a true, devoted wife——"

"Yes, I know, Berna; but you don't love me, love me; see, dear. It's so different. You might care and care till doomsday, but it wouldn't be the other thing; it wouldn't be love as I have conceived of it, dreamed of it. Listen, Berna! Here's where our difference in race comes in. You would rush blindly into this. You would not consider, test and prove yourself. It's the most serious matter in life to me, something to be looked at from every side, to be weighed and balanced."

As I said this, my conscience was whispering fiercely: "Oh, fool! Coward! Paltering, despicable coward! This girl throws herself on you, on your honour, chivalry, manhood, and you screen yourself behind a barrier of convention."

However, I went on.

"You might come to love me in time, but we must wait a while, little girl. Surely that is reasonable? I care for you a great, great deal, but I don't know if I love you in the great way people should love. Can't we wait a little, Berna? I'll look after you, dear; won't that do?"

She disengaged herself from me, sighing woefully.

"Yes, I suppose that'll do. Oh, I'll never forgive myself for saying that to you. I shouldn't, but I was so desperate. You don't know what it meant to me. Please forget it, won't you?"

"No, Berna, I'll never forget it, and I'll always bless you for having said it. Believe me, dear, it will all come right. Things aren't so bad. You're just scared, little one. I'll watch no one harms you, and love will come to both of us in good time, that love that means life and death, hate and adoration, rapture and pain, the greatest thing in the world. Oh, my dear, my dear, trust me! We have known each other such a brief space. Let us wait a little longer, just a little longer."

"Yes, that's right, a little longer."

Her voice was faint and toneless. She disengaged herself.

"Now, good-night; they may have missed me."

Almost before I could realise it she had disappeared amid the tents, leaving me there in the gloom with my heart full of doubt, self-reproach and pain.

Oh, despicable, paltering coward!

CHAPTER XII

Spring in the Yukon! Majestic mountains crowned with immemorial snow! The mad midnight melodies of birds! From the kindly stars to the leaves of grass that glimmer in the wind, a world pregnant with joy, a land jewel-bright and virgin-sweet!

After the obsession of the long, long night, Spring leaps into being with a sudden sun-thrilled joy, a radiant uplift. The shy emerald mantles the valleys and fledges the heights; the pussy-willows tremble by lake and stream; the wild crocus brims the hollows with a haze of violet; trailing his last ragged pennants of snow on the hills, winter makes his sullen retreat.

Perhaps I am over-sensitive, but I have ecstasied moments when to me it seems the grass is greener, the sky bluer than they are to most; I surrender my heart to wonder and joy; I am in tune with the triumphant cadence of Things; I am an atom of praise; I live, therefore I exult.

Only in hyperbole could I express that golden Spring, as we set sail on the sunlit waters of Lake Bennett. Never had I felt so glad. And indeed it was a vastly merry mob that sailed with us, straining their eyes once more to the Eldorado of their dreams. Bottled-up spirits effervesced wildly; hearts beat bravely; hopes were high. The bitter landtrail was forgotten. The clear, bright water leaped laughingly at the bow; the gallant breeze was blowing behind. The strong men bared their breasts and drank of it deeply.

Yes, they were the strong, the fit, suffered by the North to survive, stiffened and braced and seasoned, the Chosen of the Test, the Proven of the Trail. Songs of jubilation rang in the night air; men, eager-eyed and watchful, roared snatches of melody as they toiled at sweep and oar; banjos, mandolins, fiddles, flutes, mingled in maddest confusion. Once more the great invading army of the Cheechakos moved forward tumultuously, but now with mirth and rejoicing.

The great calm night was never dark, the great deep lakes infinitely serene, the great mountains majestically solemn. In the lighted sky the pale ghost-moon seemed ever apologising for itself. The world was a grand harmonious symphony that even the advancing tide of the Argonauts could not mar.

Yet, under all the mirth and gaiety, you could feel, tense, ruthless and dominant, the spirit of the trail. In that invincible onrush of human effort, as the oars bent with their strokes of might, as the sail bellied before the breeze, as the eager wave leapt at the bow, you could feel the passion that quickened their hearts and steeled their arms. Klondike or bust! Once more the slogan rang on bearded lips; once more the gold-lust smouldered in their eyes. The old primal lust resurged: to win at any cost, to thrust down those in the way, to fight fiercely, brutally, even as wolf-dogs fight, this was the code, the terrible code of the Gold-trail. The basic passions up-leapt, envy and hate and fear triumphed, and with ever increasing excitement the great fleet of the gold-hunters strained onward to the valley of the treasure.

Of all who had started out with us but a few had got this far. Of these Mervin and Hewson were far in front, victors of the trail, qualified to rank with the Men of the High North, the Sourdoughs of the Yukon Valley. Somewhere in the fleet were the Bank clerk, the Halfbreed and Bullhammer, while three days' start ahead were the Winklesteins.

"These Jews have the only system," commented the Prodigal; "they ran the 'Elight' Restaurant in Bennett and got action on their beans and flour and bacon. The Madam cooked, the old man did the chores and the girl waited on table. They've roped in a bunch of money, and now they've lit out for Dawson in a nice, tight little scow with their outfits turned into wads of the long green."

I kept a keen lookout for them and every day I hoped we would overtake their scow, for constantly I thought of Berna. Her little face, so wistfully tender, haunted me, and over and over in my mind I kept recalling our last meeting.

At times I blamed myself for letting her go so easily, and then again I was thankful that I had not allowed my heart to run away with my head. For I was beginning to wonder if I had not given her my heart, given it easily, willingly and without reserve. And in truth at the idea I felt a strange thrill of joy. The girl seemed to me all that was fair, lovable and sweet.

We were now skimming over Tagish Lake. With grey head bared to the breeze and a hymn stave on his lips, Salvation Jim steered in the strong sunlight. His face was full of cheer, his eyes alight with kindly hope. Leaning over the side, the Prodigal was dragging a spoon-bait to catch the monster trout that lived in those depths. The Jam-wagon, as if disgusted at our enforced idleness, slumbered at the bow. As he slept I noticed his fine nostrils, his thin, bitter lips, his bare brawny arms, tattooed with strange devices. How clean he kept his teeth and nails! There was the stamp of the thoroughbred all over him. In what strange parts of the world had he run amuck? What fair, gracious women mourned for him in far-away England?

Ah, those enchanted days, the sky spaces abrim with light, the gargantuan mountains, the eager army of adventurers, undismayed at the gloomy vastness!

We came to Windy Arm, rugged, desolate and despairful. Down it, with menace and terror on its wings, rushes the furious wind, driving boats and scows crashing on an iron shore. In the night we heard shouts; we saw wreckage piled up on the beach, but we pulled away. For twelve weary hours we pulled at the oars, and in the end our danger was past.

We came to Lake Tagish; a dead calm, a blazing sun, a seething mist of mosquitoes. We sweltered in the heat; we strained, with blistered hands, at the oars; we cursed and toiled like a thousand others of that grotesque fleet. There were boats of every shape, square, oblong, circular, three-cornered, flat, round—anything that would float. They were made mostly of boards, laboriously hand-sawn in the woods, and from a half-inch to four inches thick. Black pitch smeared the seams of the raw lumber. They travelled sideways as well as in any other fashion. And in such crazy craft were thousands of amateur boatmen, sailing serenely along, taking danger with sang-froid, and at night, over their camp-fires, hilariously telling of their hairbreadth escapes.

We entered the Fifty-mile River; we were in a giant valley; tier after tier of benchland rose to sentinel mountains of austerest grandeur. There at the bottom the little river twisted like a silver wire, and down it rowed the eager army. They shattered the silence into wildest echo, they roused the bears out of their frozen sleep; the forest flamed from their careless fires.

The river was our beast of burden now, a tireless, gentle beast. Serenely and smoothly it bore us onward, yet there was a note of menace in its song. They had told us of the canyon and of the rapids, and as we pulled at the oars and battled with the mosquitoes, we wondered when the danger was coming, how we would fare through it when it came.

Then one evening as we were sweeping down the placid river, the current suddenly quickened. The banks were sliding past at a strange speed. Swiftly we whirled around a bend, and there we were right on top of the dreadful canyon. Straight ahead was what seemed to be a solid wall of rock. The river looked to have no outlet; but as we drew nearer we saw that there was a narrow chasm in the stony face, and at this the water was rearing and charging with an angry roar.

The current was gripping us angrily now; there was no chance to draw back. At his post stood the Jam-wagon with the keen, alert look of the man who loves danger. A thrill of excitement ran through us all. With set faces we prepared for the fight.

I was in the bow. All at once I saw directly in front a scow struggling to make the shore. In her there were three people, two women and a man. I saw the man jump out with a rope and try to snub the scow to a tree. Three times he failed, running along the bank and shouting frantically. I saw one of the women jump for the shore. Then at the same instant the rope parted, and the scow, with the remaining woman, went swirling on into the canyon.

CHAPTER XIII

All this I saw, and so fascinated was I that I forgot our own peril. I heard a shrill scream of fear; I saw the solitary woman crouch down in the bottom of the scow, burying her face in her hands; I saw the scow rise, hover, and then plunge downward into the angry maw of the canyon.

The river hurried us on helplessly. We were in the canyon now. The air grew dark. On each side, so close it seemed we could almost touch them with our oars, were black, ancient walls, towering up dizzily. The river seemed to leap and buck, its middle arching four feet higher than its sides, a veritable hog-back of water. It bounded on in great billows, green, hillocky and terribly swift, like a liquid toboggan slide. We plunged forward, heaved aloft, and the black, moss-stained walls brindled past us.

About midway in the canyon is a huge basin, like the old crater of a volcano, sloping upwards to the pine-fringed skyline. Here was a giant eddy, and here, circling round and round, was the runaway scow. The forsaken woman was still crouching on it. The light was quite wan, and we were half blinded by the flying spray, but I clung to my place at the bow and watched intently.

"Keep clear of that scow," I heard some one shout. "Avoid the eddy."

It was almost too late. The ill-fated scow spun round and swooped down on us. In a moment we would have been struck and overturned, but I saw Jim and the Jam-wagon give a desperate strain at the oars. I saw the scow swirling past, just two feet from us. I looked again—then with a wild panic of horror I saw that the crouching figure was that of Berna.

I remember jumping—it must have been five feet—and I landed half in, half out of the water. I remember clinging a moment, then pulling myself aboard. I heard shouts from the others as the current swept them into the canyon. I remember looking round and cursing because both sweeps had been lost overboard, and lastly I remember bending over Berna and shouting in her ear:

"All right, I'm with you!"

If an angel had dropped from high heaven to her rescue I don't believe the girl could have been more impressed. For a moment she stared at me unbelievingly. I was kneeling by her and she put her hands on my shoulders as if to prove to herself that I was real. Then, with a half-sob, half-cry of joy, she clasped her arms tightly around me. Something in her look, something in the touch of her slender, clinging form made my heart exult. Once again I shouted in her ear.

"It's all right, don't be frightened. We'll pull through, all right."

Once more we had whirled off into the main current; once more we were in that roaring torrent, with its fearsome dips and rises, its columned walls corroded with age and filled with the gloom of eternal twilight. The water smashed and battered us, whirled us along relentlessly, lashed us in heavy sprays; yet with closed eyes and thudding hearts we waited. Then suddenly the light grew strong again. The primæval walls were gone. We were sweeping along smoothly, and on either side of us the valley sloped in green plateaus up to the smiling sky.

I unlocked my arms and peered down to where her face lay half hidden on my breast.

"Thank God, I was able to reach you!"

"Yes, thank God!" she answered faintly. "Oh, I thought it was all over. I nearly died with fear. It was terrible. Thank God for you!"

But she had scarce spoken when I realised, with a vast shock, that the danger was far from over. We were hurrying along helplessly in that fierce current, and already I heard the roar of the Squaw Rapids. Ahead, I could see them dancing, boiling, foaming, blood-red in the sunset glow.

"Be brave, Berna," I had to shout again; "we'll be all right. Trust me, dear!"

She, too, was staring ahead with dilated eyes of fear. Yet at my words she became wonderfully calm, and in her face there was a great, glad look that made my heart rejoice. She nestled to my side. Once more she waited.

We took the rapids broadside on, but the scow was light and very strong. Like a cork in a mill-stream we tossed and spun around. The vicious, mauling wolf-pack of the river heaved us into the air, and worried us as we fell. Drenched, deafened, stunned with fierce, nerve-shattering blows, every moment we thought to go under. We were in a caldron of fire. The roar of doom was in our ears. Giant hands with claws of foam were clutching, buffeting us. Shrieks of fury assailed us, as demon tossed us to demon. Was there no end to it? Thud, crash, roar, sickening us to our hearts; lurching, leaping, beaten, battered ... then all at once came a calm; we must be past; we opened our eyes.

We were again sweeping round a bend in the river in the shadow of a high bluff. If we could only make the bank—but, no! The current hurled us along once more. I saw it sweep under a rocky face of the hillside, and then I knew that the worst was coming. For there, about two hundred yards away, were the dreaded Whitehorse Rapids.

"Close your eyes, Berna!" I cried. "Lie down on the bottom. Pray as you never prayed before."

We were on them now. The rocky banks close in till they nearly meet. They form a narrow gateway of rock, and through those close-set jaws the raging river has to pass. Leaping, crashing over its boulder-strewn bed, gaining in terrible impetus at every leap, it gathers speed for its last desperate burst for freedom. Then with a great roar it charges the gap.

But there, right in the way, is a giant boulder. Water meets rock in a crash of terrific onset. The river is beaten, broken, thrown back on itself, and with a baffled roar rises high in the air in a raging hell of spume and tempest. For a moment the chasm is a battleground of the elements, a fierce, titanic struggle. Then the river, wrenching free, falls into the basin below.

"Lie down, Berna, and hold on to me!"

We both dropped down in the bottom of the scow, and she clasped me so tightly I marvelled at the strength of her. I felt her wet cheek pressed to mine, her lips clinging to my lips.

"Now, dear, just a moment and it will all be over."

Once again the angry thunder of the waters. The scow took them nose on, riding gallantly. Again we were tossed like a feather in a whirlwind, pitchforked from wrath to wrath. Once more, swinging, swerving, straining, we pelted on. On pinnacles of terror our hearts poised nakedly. The waters danced a fiery saraband; each wave was a demon lashing at us as we passed; or again they were like fear-maddened horses with whipping manes of flame. We clutched each other convulsively. Would it never, never end ... then ... then ...

It seemed the last had come. Up, up we went. We seemed to hover uncertainly, tilted, hair-poised over a yawning gulf. Were we going to upset? Mental agony screamed in me. But, no! We righted. Dizzily we dipped over; steeply we plunged down. Oh! it was terrible! We were in a hornets' nest of angry waters and they were stinging us to death; we were in a hollow cavern roofed over with slabs of seething foam; the fiery horses were trampling us under their myriad hoofs. I gave up all hope. I felt the girl faint in my arms. How long it seemed! I wished for the end. The flying hammers of hell were pounding us, pounding us—Oh, God! Oh, God!...

Then, swamped from bow to stern, half turned over, wrecked and broken, we swept into the peaceful basin of the river below.

CHAPTER XIV

On the flats around the Whitehorse Rapids was a great largess of wild flowers. The shooting stars gladdened the glade with gold; the bluebells brimmed the woodland hollow with amethyst; the fire-weed splashed the hills with the pink of coral. Daintily swinging, like clustered pearls, were the petals of the orchid. In glorious profusion were begonias, violets, and Iceland poppies, and all was in a setting of the keenest emerald. But over the others dominated the wild rose, dancing everywhere and flinging its perfume to the joyful breeze.

Boats and scows were lined up for miles along the river shore. On the banks water-soaked outfits lay drying in the sun. We, too, had shipped much water in our passage, and a few days would be needed to dry out again. So it was that I found some hours of idleness and was able to see a good deal of Berna.

Madam Winklestein I found surprisingly gracious. She smiled on me, and in her teeth, like white quartz, the creviced gold gleamed. She had a smooth, flattering way with her that disarmed enmity. Winklestein, too, had conveniently forgotten our last interview, and extended to me the paw of spurious friendship. I was free to see Berna as much as I chose.

Thus it came about that we rambled among the woods and hills, picking wild flowers and glad almost with the joy of children. In these few days I noted a vast change in the girl. Her cheeks, pale as the petals of the wild orchid, seemed to steal the tints of the briar-rose, and her eyes beaconed with the radiance of sun-waked skies. It was as if in the poor child a long stifled capacity for joy was glowing into being.

One golden day, with her cheeks softly flushed, her eyes shining, she turned to me.

"Oh, I could be so happy if I only had a chance, if I only had the chance other girls have. It would take so little to make me the happiest girl in the world—just to have a home, a plain, simple home where all was sunshine and peace; just to have the commonest comforts, to be care-free, to love and be loved. That would be enough." She sighed and went on:

"Then if I might have books, a little music, flowers—oh, it seems like a dream of heaven; as well might I sigh for a palace."

"No palace could be too fair for you, Berna, no prince too noble. Some day, your prince will come, and you will give him that great love I told you of once."

Swiftly a shadow came into the bright eyes, the sweet mouth curved pathetically.

"Not even a beggar will seek me, a poor nameless girl travelling in the train of dishonour ... and again, I will never love."

"Yes, you will indeed, girl—infinitely, supremely. I know you, Berna; you'll love as few women do. Your dearest will be all your world, his smile your heaven, his frown your death. Love was at the fashioning of you, dear, and kissed your lips and sent you forth, saying, 'There goeth my handmaiden.'"

I thought for a while ere I went on.

"You cared for your grandfather; you gave him your whole heart, a love full of self-sacrifice, of renunciation. Now he is gone, you will love again, but the next will be to the last as wine is to water. And the day will come when you will love grandly. Yours will be a great, consuming passion that knows no limit, no assuagement. It will be your glory and your shame. For him will your friends be foes, your light darkness. You will go through fire and water for your beloved's sake; your parched lips will call his name, your frail hands cling to him in the shadow of death. Oh, I know, I know. Love has set you apart. You will immolate yourself on his altars. You will dare, defy and die for him. I'm sorry for you, Berna."

Her face hung down, her lips quivered. As for me, I was surprised at my words and scarce knew what I was saying.

At last she spoke.

"If ever I loved like that, the man I loved must be a king among men, a hero, almost a god."

"Perhaps, Berna, perhaps; but not needfully. He may be a grim man with a face of power and passion, a virile, dominant brute, but—well, I think he will be more of a god. Let's change the subject."

I found she had all the sad sophistication of the lowly-born, yet with it an invincible sense of purity, a delicate horror of the physical phases of love. She was a finely motived creature with impossible ideals, but out of her stark knowledge of life she was naïvely outspoken.

Once I asked of her:

"Berna, if you had to choose between death and dishonour, which would you prefer?"

"Death, of course," she answered promptly.

"Death's a pretty hard proposition," I commented.

"No, it's easy; physical death, compared with the other, compared with moral death."

She was very emphatic and angry with me for my hazarded demur. In an atmosphere of disillusionment and moral miasma she clung undauntedly to her ideals. Never was such a brave spirit, so determined in goodness, so upright in purity, and I blessed her for her unfaltering words. "May such sentiments as yours," I prayed, "be ever mine. In doubt, despair, defeat, oh Life, take not away from me my faith in the pure heart of woman!"

Often I watched her thoughtfully, her slim, well-poised figure, her grey eyes that were fuller of soul than any eyes I have ever seen, her brown hair wherein the sunshine loved to pick out threads of gold, her delicate features with their fine patrician quality. We were dreamers twain, but while my outlook was gay with hope, hers was dark with despair. Since the episode of the scow I had never ventured to kiss her, but had treated her with a curious reserve, respect and courtesy.

Indeed, I was diagnosing my case, wondering if I loved her, affirming, doubting on a very see-saw of indetermination. When with her I felt for her an intense fondness and at times an almost irresponsible tenderness. My eyes rested longingly on her, noting with tremulous joy the curves and shading of her face, and finding in its very defects, beauties.

When I was away from her—oh, the easeless longing that was almost pain, the fanciful elaboration of our last talk, the hint of her graces in bird and flower and tree! I wanted her wildly, and the thought of a world empty of her was monstrous. I wondered how in the past we had both existed and how I had lived, carelessly, happy and serenely indifferent. I tried to think of a time when she should no longer have power to make my heart quicken with joy or contract with fear—and the thought of such a state was insufferable pain. Was I in love? Poor, fatuous fool! I wanted her more than everything else in all the world, yet I hesitated and asked myself the question.

Hundreds of boats and scows were running the rapids, and we watched them with an untiring fascination. That was the most exciting spectacle in the whole world. The issue was life or death, ruin or salvation, and from dawn till dark, and with every few minutes of the day, was the breathless climax repeated. The faces of the actors were sick with dread and anxiety. It was curious to study the various expressions of the human countenance unmasked and confronted with gibbering fear. Yes, it was a vivid drama, a drama of cheers and tears, always thrilling and often tragic. Every day were bodies dragged ashore. The rapids demanded their tribute. The men of the trail must pay the toll. Sullen and bloated the river disgorged its prey, and the dead, without prayer or pause, were thrown into nameless graves.

On our first day at the rapids we met the Halfbreed. He was on the point of starting downstream. Where was the Bank clerk? Oh, yes; they had upset coming through; when last he had seen little Pinklove he was struggling in the water. However, they expected to get the body every hour. He had paid two men to find and bury it. He had no time to wait.

We did not blame him. In those wild days of headstrong hurry and gold-delirium human life meant little. "Another floater," one would say, and carelessly turn away. A callousness to death that was almost mediæval was in the air, and the friends of the dead hurried on, the richer by a partner's outfit. It was all new, strange, sinister to me, this unveiling of life's naked selfishness and lust.

Next morning they found the body, a poor, shapeless, sodden thing with such a crumpled skull. My thoughts went back to the sweet-faced girl who had wept so bitterly at his going. Even then, maybe, she was thinking of him, fondly dreaming of his return, seeing the glow of triumph in his boyish eyes. She would wait and hope; then she would wait and despair; then there would be another white-faced woman saying, "He went to the Klondike, and never came back. We don't know what became of him."

Verily, the way of the gold-trail was cruel.

Berna was with me when they buried him.

"Poor boy, poor boy!" she repeated.

"Yes, poor little beggar! He was so quiet and gentle. He was no man for the trail. It's a funny world."

The coffin was a box of unplaned boards loosely nailed together, and the men were for putting him into a grave on top of another coffin. I protested, so sullenly they proceeded to dig a new grave. Berna looked very unhappy, and when she saw that crude, shapeless pine coffin she broke down and cried bitterly.

At last she dried her tears and with a happier look in her eyes bade me wait a little until she returned. Soon again she came back, carrying some folds of black sateen over her arm. As she ripped at this with a pair of scissors, I noticed there was a deep frilling to it. Also a bright blush came into her cheek at the curious glance I gave to the somewhat skimpy lines of her skirt. But the next instant she was busy stretching and tacking the black material over the coffin.

The men had completed the new grave. It was only three feet deep, but the water coming in had prevented them from digging further. As we laid the coffin in the hole it looked quite decent now in its black covering. It floated on the water, but after some clods had been thrown down, it sank with many gurglings. It was as if the dead man protested against his bitter burial. We watched the grave-diggers throw a few more shovelsful of earth over the place, then go off whistling. Poor little Berna! she cried steadily. At last she said:

"Let's get some flowers."

So out of briar-roses she fashioned a cross and a wreath, and we laid them reverently on the muddy heap that marked the Bank clerk's grave.

Oh, the pitiful mockery of it!

CHAPTER XV

Soon I knew that Berna and I must part, and but two nights later it came. It was near midnight, yet in no ways dark, and everywhere the camp was astir. We were sitting by the river, I remember, a little way from the boats. Where the sun had set, the sky was a luminous veil of ravishing green, and in the elusive light her face seemed wanly sweet and dreamlike.

A sad spirit rustled amid the shivering willows and a great sadness had come over the girl. All the happiness of the past few days seemed to have ebbed away from her and left her empty of hope. As she sat there, silent and with hands clasped, it was as if the shadows that for a little had lifted, now enshrouded her with a greater gloom.

"Tell me your trouble, Berna."

She shook her head, her eyes wide as if trying to read the future.

"Nothing."

Her voice was almost a whisper.

"Yes, there is, I know. Tell me, won't you?"

Again she shook her head.

"What's the matter, little chum?"

"It's nothing; it's only my foolishness. If I tell you, it wouldn't help me any. And then—it doesn't matter. You wouldn't care. Why should you care?"

She turned away from me and seemed absorbed in bitter thought.

"Care! why, yes, I would care; I do care. You know I would do anything in the world to help you. You know I would be unhappy if you were unhappy. You know——"

"Then it would only worry you."

She was regarding me anxiously.

"Now you must tell me, Berna. It will worry me indeed if you don't."

Once more she refused. I pleaded with her gently. I coaxed, I entreated. She was very reluctant, yet at last she yielded.

"Well, if I must," she said; "but it's all so sordid, so mean, I hate myself; I despise myself that I should have to tell it."

She kneaded a tiny handkerchief nervously in her fingers.

"You know how nice Madam Winklestein's been to me lately—bought me new clothes, given me trinkets. Well, there's a reason—she's got her eye on a man for me."

I gave an exclamation of surprise.

"Yes; you know she's let us go together—it's all to draw him on. Oh, couldn't you see it? Didn't you suspect something? You don't know how bitterly they hate you."

I bit my lip.

"Who's the man?"

"Jack Locasto."

I started.

"Have you heard of him?" she asked. "He's got a million-dollar claim on Bonanza."

Had I heard of him! Who had not heard of Black Jack, his spectacular poker plays, his meteoric rise, his theatric display?

"Of course he's married," she went on, "but that doesn't matter up here. There's such a thing as a Klondike marriage, and they say he behaves well to his discarded mis——"

"Berna!" angry and aghast, I had stopped her. "Never let me hear you utter that word. Even to say it seems pollution."

She laughed harshly, bitterly.

"What's this whole life but pollution?... Well, anyway, he wants me."

"But you wouldn't, surely you wouldn't?"

She turned on me fiercely.

"What do you take me for? Surely you know me better than that. Oh, you almost make me hate you."

Suddenly she pressed the little handkerchief to her eyes. She fell to sobbing convulsively. Vainly I tried to soothe her, whispering:

"Oh, my dear, tell me all about it. I'm sorry, girl, I'm sorry."

She ceased crying. She went on in her fierce, excited way.

"He came to the restaurant in Bennett. He used to watch me a lot. His eyes were always following me. I was afraid. I trembled when I served him. He liked to see me tremble, it gave him a feeling of power. Then he took to giving me presents, a diamond ring, a heart-shaped locket, costly gifts. I wanted to return them, but she wouldn't let me, took them from me, put them away. Then he and she had long talks. I know it was all about me. That was why I came to you that night and begged you to marry me—to save me from him. Now it's gone from bad to worse. The net's closing round me in spite of my flutterings."

"But he can't get you against your will," I cried.

"No! no! but he'll never give up. He'll try so long as I resist him. I'm nice to him just to humour him and gain time. I can't tell you how much I fear him. They say he always gets his way with women. He's masterly and relentless. There's a cold, sneering command in his smile. You hate him but you obey him."

"He's an immoral monster, Berna. He spares neither time nor money to gratify his whims where a woman is concerned. And he has no pity."

"I know, I know."

"He's intensely masculine, handsome in a vivid, gipsy sort of way; big, strong and compelling, but a callous libertine."

"Yes, he's all that. And can you wonder then my heart is full of fear, that I am distracted, that I asked you what I did? He is relentless and of all women he wants me. He would break me on the wheel of dishonour. Oh, God!"

Her face grew almost tragic in its despair.

"And everything's against me; they're all helping him. I haven't a single friend, not one to stand by me, to aid me. Once I thought of you, and you failed me. Can you wonder I'm nearly crazy with the terror of it? Can you wonder I was desperate enough to ask you to save me? I'm all alone, friendless, a poor, weak girl. No, I'm wrong. I've one friend—death; and I'll die, I'll die, I swear it, before I let him get me."

Her words came forth in a torrent, half choked by sobs. It was hard to get her calmed. Never had I thought her capable of such force, such passion. I was terribly distressed and at a loss how to comfort her.

"Hush, Berna," I pleaded, "please don't say such things. Remember you have a friend in me, one that would do anything in his power to help you."

She looked at me a moment.

"How can you help me?"

I held both of her hands firmly, looking into her eyes.

"By marrying you. Will you marry me, dear? Will you be my wife?"

"No!"

I started. "Berna!"

"No! I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man left in the world," she cried vehemently.

"Why?" I tried to be calm.

"Why! why, you don't love me; you don't care for me."

"Yes, I do, Berna. I do indeed, girl. Care for you! Well, I care so much that—I beg you to marry me."

"Yes, yes, but you don't love me right, not in your great, grand way. Not in the way you told me of. Oh, I know; it's part pity, part friendship. It would be different if I cared in the same way, if—if I didn't care so very much more."

"You do, Berna; you love me like that?"

"How do I know? How can I tell? How can any of us tell?"

"No, dear," I said, "love has no limits, no bounds, it is always holding something in reserve. There are yet heights beyond the heights, that mock our climbing, never perfection; no great love but might have been eclipsed by a greater. There's a master key to every heart, and we poor fools delude ourselves with the idea we are opening all the doors. We are on sufferance, we are only understudies in the love drama, but fortunately the star seldom appears on the scene. However, this I know——"

I rose to my feet.

"Since the moment I set eyes on you, I loved you. Long before I ever met you, I loved you. I was just waiting for you, waiting. At first I could not understand, I did not know what it meant, but now I do, beyond the peradventure of a doubt; there never was any but you, never will be any but you. Since the beginning of time it was all planned that I should love you. And you, how do you care?"

She stood up to hear my words. She would not let me touch her, but there was a great light in her eyes. Then she spoke and her voice was vibrant with passion, all indifference gone from it.

"Oh, you blind! you coward! Couldn't you see? Couldn't you feel? That day on the scow it came to me—Love. It was such as I had never dreamed of, rapture, ecstasy, anguish. Do you know what I wished as we went through the rapids? I wished that it might be the end, that in such a supreme moment we might go down clinging together, and that in death I might hold you in my arms. Oh, if you'd only been like that afterwards, met love open-armed with love. But, no! you slipped back to friendship. I feel as if there were a barrier of ice between us now. I will try never to care for you any more. Now leave me, leave me, for I never want to see you again."

"Yes, you will, you must, you must, Berna. I'd sell my immortal soul to win that love from you, my dearest, my dearest; I'd crawl around the world to kiss your shadow. If you called to me I would come from the ends of the earth, through storm and darkness, to your side. I love you so, I love you so."

I crushed her to me, I kissed her madly, yet she was cold.

"Have you nothing more to say than fine words?" she asked.

"Marry me, marry me," I repeated.

"Now?"

Now! I hesitated again. The suddenness of it was like a cold douche. God knows, I burned for the girl, yet somehow convention clamped me.

"Now if you wish," I faltered; "but better when we get to Dawson. Better when I've made good up there. Give me one year, Berna, one year and then——"

"One year!"

The sudden gleam of hope vanished from her eyes. For the third time I was failing her, yet my cursed prudence overrode me.

"Oh, it will pass swiftly, dear. You will be quite safe. I will be near you and watch over you."

I reassured her, anxiously explaining how much better it would be if we waited a little.

"One year!" she repeated, and it seemed to me her voice was toneless. Then she turned to me in a sudden spate of passion, her face pleading, furrowed, wretchedly sad.

"Oh, my dear, my dear, I love you better than the whole world, but I hoped you would care enough for me to marry me now. It would have been best, believe me. I thought you would rise to the occasion, but you've failed me. Well, be it so, we'll wait one year."

"Yes, believe me, trust me, dear; it will be all right. I'll work for you, slave for you, think only of you, and in twelve short months—I'll give my whole life to make you happy."

"Will you, dear? Well, it doesn't matter now.... I've loved you."

All that night I wrestled with myself. I felt I ought to marry her at once to shield her from the dangers that encompassed her. She was like a lamb among a pack of wolves. I juggled with my conscience. I was young and marriage to me seemed such a terribly all-important step.

Yet in the end my better nature triumphed, and ere the camp was astir I arose. I was going to marry Berna that day. A feeling of relief came over me. How had it ever seemed possible to delay? I was elated beyond measure.

I hurried to tell her, I pictured her joy. I was almost breathless. Love words trembled on my tongue tip. It seemed to me I could not bear to wait a moment.

Then as I reached the place where they had rested I gazed unbelievingly. A sickening sense of loss and failure crushed me.

For the scow was gone.

CHAPTER XVI

It was three days before we made a start again, and to me each day was like a year. I chafed bitterly at the delay. Would those sacks of flour never dry? Longingly I gazed down the big, blue Yukon and cursed the current that was every moment carrying her farther from me. Why her sudden departure? I had no doubt it was enforced. I dreaded danger. Then in a while I grew calmer. I was foolish to worry. She was safe enough. We would meet in Dawson.

At last we were under way. Once more we sped down that devious river, now swirling under the shadow of a steep bank, now steering around a sandspit. The scenery was hideous to me, bluffs of clay with pines peeping over their rims, willow-fringed flats, swamps of niggerhead, ugly drab hills in endless monotony.

How full of kinks and hooks was the river! How vicious with snags! How treacherous with eddies! It was beginning to bulk in my thoughts almost like an obsession. Then one day Lake Labarge burst on my delighted eyes. The trail was nearing its end.

Once more with swelling sail we drove before the wind. Once more we were in a fleet of Argonaut boats, and now, with the goal in sight, each man redoubled his efforts. Perhaps the rich ground would all be gone ere we reached the valley. Maddening thought after what we had endured! We must get on.

There was not a man in all that fleet but imagined that fortune awaited him with open arms. They talked exultantly. Their eyes shone with the gold-lust. They strained at sweep and oar. To be beaten at the last! Oh, it was inconceivable! A tigerish eagerness filled them; a panic of fear and cupidity spurred them on.

Labarge was a dream lake, mirroring noble mountains in its depths (for soon after we made it, a dead calm fell). But we had no eyes for its beauty. The golden magnet was drawing us too strongly now. We cursed that exquisite serenity that made us sweat at the oars; we cursed the wind that never would arise; the currents that always were against us. In that breathless tranquillity myriads of mosquitoes assailed us, blinded us, covered our food as we ate, made our lives a perfect hell of misery. Yet the trail was nearing its finish.

What a relief it was when a sudden storm came up! White-caps tossed around us, and the wind drove us on a precipitous shore, so that we nearly came to a sorry end. But it was over at last, and we swept on into the Thirty-mile River.

A furious, hurling stream was this, that matched our mad, impatient mood; but it was staked with hidden dangers. We gripped our weary oars. Keenly alert we had to be, steering and watching for rocks that would have ripped us from bow to stern. There was a famously terrible one, on which scows smashed like egg-shells under a hammer, and we missed it by a bare hand's-breadth. I felt sick to think of our bitterness had we piled up on it. That was an evil, ugly river, full of capricious turns and eddies, and the bluffs were high and steep.

Hootalinqua, Big Salmon, Little Salmon, these are names to me now. All I can remember is long days of toil at the oar, fighting the growing obsession of mosquitoes, ever pressing on to the golden valley. The ceaseless strain was beginning to tell on us. We suffered from rheumatism, we barked with cold. Oh, we were weary, weary, yet the trail was nearing its end.

One sunlit Sabbath evening I remember well. We were drifting along and we came on a lovely glade where a creek joined the river. It was a green, velvety, sparkling place, and by the creek were two men whipsawing lumber. We hailed them jauntily and asked them if they had found prospects. Were they getting out lumber for sluice-boxes?

One of the men came forward. He was very tired, very quiet, very solemn. "No," he said, "we are sawing out a coffin for our dead."

Then we saw a limp shape in their boat and we hurried on, awed and abashed.

The river was mud colour now, swirling in great eddies or convulsed from below with sudden upheavals. Drifting on that oily current one seemed to be quite motionless, and only the gliding banks assured us of progress. The country seemed terrible to me, sinister, guilty, God-forsaken. At the horizon, jagged mountains stabbed viciously at the sky.

The river overwhelmed me. Sometimes it was a stream of blood, running into the eye of the setting sun, beautiful, yet weird and menacing. It broadened, deepened, and every day countless streams swelled its volume. Islands waded in it greenly. Always we heard it singing, a seething, hissing noise supposed to be the pebbles shuffling on the bottom.

The days were insufferably hot and mosquito-curst; the nights chilly, damp and mosquito-haunted. I suffered agonies from neuralgia. Never mind, it would soon be over. We were on our last lap. The trail was near its end.

Yes, it was indeed the homestretch. Suddenly sweeping round a bend we raised a shout of joy. There was that great livid scar on the mountain face—the "Slide," and clustered below it like shells on the seashore, an army of tents. It was the gold-born city.

Trembling with eagerness we pulled ashore. Our troubles were over. At last we had gained our Eldorado, thank God, thank God!

A number of loafers were coming to meet us. They were strangely calm.

"How about the gold?" said the Prodigal; "lots of ground left to stake?"

One of them looked at us contemptuously. He chewed a moment ere he spoke.

"You Cheechakers better git right home. There ain't a foot of ground to stake. Everything in sight was staked last Fall. The rest is all mud. There's nothing doin' an' there's ten men for every job! The whole thing's a fake. You Cheechakers better git right home."

Yes, after all our travail, all our torment, we had better go right home. Already many were preparing to do so. Yet what of that great oncoming horde of which we were but the vanguard? What of the eager army, the host of the Cheechakos? For hundreds of miles were lake and river white with their grotesque boats. Beyond them again were thousands and thousands of others struggling on through mosquito-curst morasses, bent under their inexorable burdens. Reckless, indomitable, hope-inspired, they climbed the passes and shot the rapids; they drowned in the rivers, they rotted in the swamps. Nothing could stay them. The golden magnet was drawing them on; the spell of the gold-lust was in their hearts.

And this was the end. For this they had mortgaged homes and broken hearts. For this they had faced danger and borne suffering: to be told to return.

The land was choosing its own. All along it had weeded out the weaklings. Now let the fainthearted go back. This land was only for the Strong.