He strutted up and down, inflating his chest.

"Have you framed up any dope lately?" asked the Prodigal.

"Why, yes; only this morning, while I was eating my beans and bacon, I dashed off a few lines. I always write best when I'm eating. Want to hear them?"

He drew from his pocket an old envelope.

"They were written to the order of Stillwater Willie. He wants to present them to one of the Labelle Sisters. You know—that fat lymphatic blonde, Birdie Labelle. It is short and sweet. He wants to have it engraved on a gold-backed hand-mirror he's giving her.

"I see within my true love's eyes The wide blue spaces of the skies; I see within my true love's face The rose and lily vie in grace; I hear within my true love's voice The songsters of the Spring rejoice. Oh, why need I seek Nature's charms— I hold my true love in my arms.

"How'll that hit her? There's such a lot of natural beauty about Birdie."

"Do you get much work?" I asked.

"No, it's dull. Poetry's rather a drug on the market up here. It's just a side-line. For a living I clean shoes at the 'Elight' Barbershop—I, who have lingered on the sunny slopes of Parnassus, and quenched my soul-thirst at the Heliconian spring—gents' tans a specialty."

"Did you ever publish a book?" I asked.

"Sure! Did you never read my 'Rhymes of a Rustler'? One reviewer would say I was the clear dope, the genuine eighteen-carat, jewelled-movement article; the next would aver I was the rankest dub that ever came down the pike. They said I'd imitated people, people I'd never read, people I'd never heard of, people I never dreamt existed. I was accused of imitating over twenty different writers. Then the pedants got after me, said I didn't conform to academic formulas, advised me to steep myself in tradition. They talked about form, about classic style and so on. As if it matters so long as you get down the thing itself so that folks can see it, and feel it go right home to their hearts. I can write in all the artificial verse forms, but they're mouldy with age, back numbers. Forget them. Quit studying that old Greek dope: study life, modern life, palpitating with colour, crying for expression. Life! Life! The sunshine of it was in my heart, and I just naturally tried to be its singer."

"I say," said the Prodigal from the bunk where he was lounging, in a haze of cigarette smoke, "read us that thing you did the other day, 'The Last Supper.'"

The Pote's eyes twinkled with pleasure.

"All right," he said. Then, in a clear voice, he repeated the following lines:

"THE LAST SUPPER.

Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, And the mouth so mocking gay; A wanton you to the finger tips, That break men's hearts in play; A thing of dust I have striven for, Honour and Manhood given for, Headlong for ruin driven for— And this is the last, you say:

Drinking your wine with dainty sips, Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips.

Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, Long have you held your sway; I have laughed at your merry quips, Now is my time to pay. What we sow we must reap again; When we laugh we must weep again; So to-night we will sleep again, Nor wake till the Judgment Day.

'Tis a prison wine that your palate sips, Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips.

Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, Down on your knees and pray; Pray your last ere the moment slips, Pray ere the dark and the terror grips, And the bright world fades away: Pray for the good unguessed of us, Pray for the peace and rest of us. Here comes the Shape in quest of us, Now must we go away—

You and I in the grave's eclipse, Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips."

Just as he finished there came a knock at the door, and a young man entered. He had the broad smiling face of a comedian, and the bulgy forehead of a Baptist Missionary. The Pote introduced him to me.

"The Yukon Yorick."

"Hello," chuckled the newcomer, "how's the bunch? Don't let me stampede you. How d'ye do, Horace! Glad to meet you." (He called everybody Horace.) "Just come away from a meeting of my creditors. What's that? Have a slab of booze? Hardly that, old fellow, hardly that. Don't tempt me, Horace, don't tempt me. Remember I'm only a poor working-girl."

He seemed brimming over with jovial acceptance of life in all its phases. He lit a cigar.

"Say, boys, you know old Dingbats the lawyer. Ha, yes. Well, met him on Front Street just now. Says I: 'Horace, that was a pretty nifty spiel you gave us last night at the Zero Club.' He looked at me all tickled up the spine. Ha, yes. He was pleased as Punch. 'Say, Horace,' I says, 'I'm on, but I won't give you away. I've got a book in my room with every word of that speech in it.' He looked flabbergasted. So I have—ha, yes, the dictionary."

He rolled his cigar unctuously in his mouth, with many chuckles and a histrionic eye.

"No, don't tempt me, Horace. Remember, I'm only a poor working-girl. Thanks, I'll just sit down on this soap-box. Knew a man once, Jobcroft was his name, Charles Alfred Jobcroft, sat down on a custard pie at a pink tea; was so embarrassed he wouldn't get up. Just sat on till every one else was gone. Every one was wondering why he wouldn't budge: just sat tight."

"I guess he cussed hard," ventured the Prodigal.

"Oh, Horace, spare me that! Remember I'm only a poor working-girl. Hardly that, old fellow. Say, hit me with a slab of booze quick. Make things sparkle, boys, make things sparkle."

He drank urbanely of the diluted alcohol that passed for whisky.

"Hit me easy, boys, hit me easy," he said, as they refilled his glass. "I can't hold my hootch so well as I could a few summers ago—and many hard Falls. Talking about holding your 'hooch,' the best I ever saw was a man called Podstreak, Arthur Frederick Podstreak. You couldn't get that man going. The way he could lap up the booze was a caution. He would drink one bunch of boys under the table, then leave them and go on to another. He would start in early in the morning and keep on going till the last thing at night. And he never got hilarious even; it didn't seem to phase him; he was as sober after the twentieth drink as when he started. Gee! but he was a wonder."

The others nodded their heads appreciatively.

"He was a fine, healthy-looking chap, too; the booze didn't seem to hurt him. Never saw such a constitution. I often watched him, for I suspected him of 'sluffing,' but no! He always had a bigger drink than every one else, always drank whisky, always drank it neat, and always had a chaser of water after. I said to myself: 'What's your system?' and I got to studying him hard. Then, one day, I found him out."

"What was it?"

"Well, one day I noticed something. I noticed he always held his glass in a particular way when he drank, and at the same time he pressed his stomach in the region of the 'solar plexus.' So that night I took him aside.

"'Look here, Podstreak,' I said, 'I'm next to you.' I really wasn't, but the bluff worked. He grew white.

"'For Heaven's sake, don't give me away,' he cried; 'the boys'll lynch me.'

"'All right,' I said; 'if you'll promise to quit.'

"Then he made a full confession, and showed me how he did it. He had an elastic rubber bag under his shirt, and a tube going up his arm and down his sleeve, ending in a white nozzle inside his cuff. When he went to empty his glass of whisky he simply pressed some air out of the rubber bag, put the nozzle in the glass, and let it suck up all the whisky. At night he used to empty all the liquor out of the bag and sell it to a saloon-keeper. Oh, he was a phoney piece of work.

"'I've been a total abstainer (in private) for seven years,' he told me. 'Yes,' I said, 'and you'll become one in public for another seven.' And he did."

Several men had dropped in to swell this Bohemian circle. Some had brought bottles. There was a painter who had been "hung," a Mus Bac., an ex-champion amateur pugilist, a silver-tongued orator, a man who had "suped" for Mansfield, and half a dozen others. The little cabin was crowded, the air hazy with smoke, the conversation animated. But mostly it was a monologue by the inimitable Yorick.

Suddenly the conversation turned to the immorality of the town.

"Now, I have a theory," said the Pote, "that the regeneration of Dawson is at hand. You know Good is the daughter of Evil, Virtue the offspring of Vice. You know how virtuous a man feels after a jag. You've got to sin to feel really good. Consequently, Sin must be good to be the means of good, to be the raw material of good, to be virtue in the making, mustn't it? The dance-halls are a good foil to the gospel-halls. If we were all virtuous, there would be no virtue in virtue, and if we were all bad no one would be bad. And because there's so much bad in this old burg of ours, it makes the good seem unnaturally good."

The Pote had the floor.

"A friend of mine had a beautiful pond of water-lilies. They painted the water exultantly and were a triumphant challenge to the soul. Folks came from far and near to see them. Then, one winter, my friend thought he would clean out his pond, so he had all the nasty, slimy mud scraped away till you could see the silver gravel glimmering on the bottom. But the lilies, with all their haunting loveliness, never came back."

"Well, what are you driving at, you old dreamer?"

"Oh, just this: in the nasty mud and slime of Dawson I saw a lily-girl. She lives in a cabin by the Slide along with a Jewish couple. I only caught a glimpse of her twice. They are unspeakable, but she is fair and sweet and pure. I would stake my life on her goodness. She looks like a young Madonna——"

He was interrupted by a shout of cynical laughter.

"Oh, get off your foot! A Madonna in Dawson—Ra! Ra!"

He shut up abashed, but I had my clue. I waited until the last noisy roisterer had gone.

"In the cabin by the Slide?" I asked.

He started, looked at me searchingly: "You know her?"

"She means a good deal to me."

"Oh, I understand. Yes, that long, queer cabin highest up the hill."

"Thanks, old chap."

"All right, good luck." He accompanied me to the door, staring at the marvel of the glamorous Northern midnight.

"Oh, for a medium to express it all! Your pedantic poetry isn't big enough; prose isn't big enough. What we want is something between the two, something that will interpret life, and stir the great heart of the people. Good-night."



CHAPTER VII

Very softly I approached the cabin, for a fear of encountering her guardians was in my heart. It was in rather a lonely place, perched at the base of that vast mountain abrasion they call the Slide, a long, low cabin, quiet and dark, and surrounded by rugged boulders. Carefully I reconnoitered, and soon, to my infinite joy, I saw the Jewish couple come forth and make their way townward. The girl was alone.

How madly beat my heart! It was a glooming kind of a night, and the cabin looked woefully bleak and solitary. No light came through the windows, no sound through the moss-chinked walls. I drew near.

Why this wild commotion of my being? What was it? Anxiety, joy, dread? I was poised on the pinnacle of hope that overhangs the abyss of despair. Fearfully I paused. I was racked with suspense, conscious of a longing so poignant that the thought of disappointment became insufferable pain. So violent was my emotion that a feeling almost of nausea overcame me.

I knew now that I cared for this girl more than I had ever thought to care for woman. I knew that she was dearer to me than all the world else; I knew that my love for her would live as long as life is long.

I knocked at the door. No answer.

"Berna," I cried in a faltering whisper.

Came the reply: "Who is there?"

"Love, love, dear; love is waiting."

Then, at my words, the door was opened, and the girl was before me. I think she had been lying down, for her soft hair was a little ruffled, but her eyes were far too bright for sleep. She stood gazing at me, and a little fluttering hand went up to her heart as if to still its beating.

"Oh, my dear, I knew you were coming."

A great radiance of joy seemed to descend on her.

"You knew?"

"I knew, yes, I knew. Something told me you were come at last. And I've waited—how I've waited! I've dreamed, but it's not a dream now, is it, dear; it's you?"

"Yes, it's me. I've tried so hard to find you. Oh, my dear, my dear!"

I seized the sweet, soft hand and covered it with kisses. At that moment I could have kissed the shadow of that little hand; I could have fallen before her in speechless adoration; I could have made my heart a footstool for her feet; I could have given her, O, so gladly, my paltry life to save her from a moment's sorrow—I loved her so, I loved her so!

"High and low I've sought you, beloved. Morning, noon and night you've been in my brain, my heart, my soul. I've loved you every moment of my life. It's been desire feeding despair, and, O, the agony of it! Thank God, I've found you, dear! thank God! thank God!"

O Love, look down on us and choir your harmonies! Transported was I, speaking with whirling words of sweetest madness, tremulous, uplifted with rapture, scarce conscious of my wild, impassioned metaphors. It was she, most precious of all creation; she, my beloved. And there, in the doorway, she poised, white as a lily, lustrous-eyed, and with hair soft as sunlit foam. O Divinity of Love, look down on us thy children; fold us in thy dove-soft wings; illumine us in thy white radiance; touch us with thy celestial hands. Bless us, Love!

How vastly alight were the grey eyes! How ineffably tender the sweet lips! A faint glow had come into her cheeks.

"O, it's you, really, really you at last," she cried again, and there was a tremor, the surface ripple of a sob in that clear voice. She fetched a deep sigh: "And I thought I'd lost you forever. Wait a moment. I'll come out."

Endlessly long the moment seemed, yet wondrously irradiate. The shadow had lifted from the world; the skies were alight with gladness; my heart was heaven-aspiring in its ecstasy. Then, at last, she came.

She had thrown a shawl around her shoulders, and coaxed her hair into charming waves and ripples.

"Come, let us go up the trail a little distance. They won't be back for nearly an hour."

She led the way along that narrow path, looking over her shoulder with a glorious smile, sometimes extending her hand back to me as one would with a child.

Along the brow of the bluff the way wound dizzily, while far below the river swept in a giant eddy. For a long time we spoke no word. 'Twas as if our hearts were too full for utterance, our happiness too vast for expression. Yet, O, the sweetness of that silence! The darkling gloom had silvered into lustrous light, the birds were beginning again their mad midnight melodies. Then, suddenly turning a bend in the narrow trail, a blaze of glory leapt upon our sight.

"Look, Berna," I cried.

The swelling river was a lake of saffron fire; the hills a throne of rosy garnet; the sky a dazzling panoply of rubies, girdled with flames of gold. We almost cringed, so gorgeous was its glow, so fierce its splendour.

Then, when we had seated ourselves on the hillside, facing the conflagration, she turned to me.

"And so you found me, dear. I knew you would, somehow. In my heart I knew you would not fail me. So I waited and waited. The time seemed pitilessly long. I only thought of you once, and that was always. It was cruel we left so suddenly, not even time to say good-bye. I can't tell you how bad I felt about it, but I could not help myself. They dragged me away. They began to be afraid of you, and he bade them leave at once. So in the early morning we started."

"I see, I see." I looked into the pools of her eyes; I sheathed her white hands in my brown ones, thrilling greatly at the contact of them.

"Tell me about it, child. Has he bothered you?"

"Oh, not so much. He thinks he has me safe enough, trapped, awaiting his pleasure. But he's taken up with some woman of the town just now. By-and-bye he'll turn his attention to me."

"Terrible! Terrible! Berna, you wring my heart. How can you talk of such things in that matter-of-fact way—it maddens me."

An odd, hard look ridged the corners of her mouth.

"I don't know. Sometimes I'm surprised at myself how philosophical I'm getting."

"But, Berna, surely nothing in this world would ever make you yield? O, it's horrible! horrible!"

She leaned to me tenderly. She put my arms around her neck; she looked at me till I saw my face mirrored in her eyes.

"Nothing in the world, dear, so long as I have you to love me and help me. If ever you fail me, well, then it wouldn't matter much what became of me."

"Even then," I said, "it would be too awful for words. I would rather drag your body from that river than see you yield to him. He's a monster. His very touch is profanation. He could not look on a woman without cynical lust in his heart."

"I know, my boy, I know. Believe me and trust me. I would rather throw myself from the bluff here than let him put a hand on me. And so long as I have your love, dear, I'm safe enough. Don't fear. O, it's been terrible not seeing you! I've craved for you ceaselessly. I've never been out since we came here. They wouldn't let me. They kept in themselves. He bade them. He has them both under his thumb. But now, for some reason, he has relaxed. They're going to open a restaurant downtown, and I'm to wait on table."

"No, you're not!" I cried, "not if I have anything to say in the matter. Berna, I can't bear to think of you in that garbage-heap of corruption down there. You must marry me—now."

"Now," she echoed, her eyes wide with surprise.

"Yes, right away, dear. There's nothing to prevent us. Berna, I love you, I want you, I need you. I'm just distracted, dear. I never know a moment's peace. I cannot take an interest in anything. When I speak to others I'm thinking of you, you all the time. O, I can't bear it, dearest; have pity on me: marry me now."

In an agony of suspense I waited for her answer. For a long time she sat there, thoughtful and quiet, her eyes cast down. At last she raised them to me.

"You said one year."

"Yes, but I was sorry afterwards. I want you now. I can't wait."

She looked at me gravely. Her voice was very soft, very tender.

"I think it better we should wait, dear. This is a blind, sudden desire on your part. I mustn't take advantage of it. You pity me, fear for me, and you have known so few other girls. It's generosity, chivalry, not love for poor little me. O, we mustn't, we mustn't. And then—you might change."

"Change! I'll never, never change," I pleaded. "I'll always be yours, absolutely, wholly yours, little girl; body and soul, to make or to mar, for ever and ever and ever."

"Well, it seems so sudden, so burning, so intense, your love, dear. I'm afraid, I'm afraid. Maybe it's not the kind that lasts. Maybe you'll tire. I'm not worth it, indeed I'm not. I'm only a poor ignorant girl. If there were others near, you would never think of me."

"Berna," I said, "if you were among a thousand, and they were the most adorable in all the world, I would pass over them all and turn with joy and gratitude to you. Then, if I were an Emperor on a throne, and you the humblest in all that throng, I would raise you up beside me and call you 'Queen.'"

"Ah, no," she said sadly, "you were wise once. I saw it afterwards. Better wait one year."

"Oh, my dearest," I reproached her, "once you offered yourself to me under any conditions. Why have you changed?"

"I don't know. I'm bitterly ashamed of that. Never speak of it again."

She went on very quietly, full of gentle patience.

"You know, I've been thinking a great deal since then. In the long, long days and longer nights, when I waited here in misery, hoping always you would come to me, I had time to reflect, to weight your words. I remember them all: 'love that means life and death, that great dazzling light, that passion that would raise to heaven or drag to hell.' You have awakened the woman in me; I must have a love like that."

"You have, my precious; you have, indeed."

"Well, then, let me have time to test it. This is June. Next June, if you have not made up your mind you were foolish, blind, hasty, I will give myself to you with all the love in the world."

"Perhaps you will change."

She smiled a peculiar little smile.

"Never, never fear that. I will be waiting for you, longing for you, loving you more and more every day."

I was bitterly cast down, crestfallen, numbed with the blow of her refusal.

"Just now," she said, "I would only be a drag on you. I believe in you. I have faith in you. I want to see you go out and mix in the battle of life. I know you will win. For my sake, dear, win. I would handicap you just now. There are all kinds of chances. Let us wait, boy, just a year."

I saw the pathetic wisdom of her words.

"I know you fear something will happen to me. No! I think I will be quite safe. I can withstand him. After a while he will leave me alone. And if it should come to the worst I can call on you. You mustn't go too far away. I will die rather than let him lay a hand on me. Till next June, dear, not a day longer. We will both be the better for the wait."

I bowed my head. "Very well," I said huskily; "and what will I do in the meantime?"

"Do! Do what you would have done otherwise. Do not let a woman divert the current of your life; let her swim with it. Go out on the creeks! Work! It will be better for you to go away. It will make it easier for me. Here we will both torture each other. I, too, will work and live quietly, and long for you. The time will pass quickly. You will come and see me sometimes?"

"Yes," I answered. My voice choked with emotion.

"Now we must go home," she said; "I'm afraid they will be back."

She rose, and I followed her down the narrow trail. Once or twice she turned and gave me a bright, tender look. I worshipped her more than ever. Was there ever maid more sweet, more gentle, more quick with anxious love? "Bless her, O bless her," I sighed. "Whatever comes, may she be happy." I adored her, but a great sadness filled my heart, and never a word I spoke.

We reached the cabin, and on the threshold she paused. The others had not yet returned. She held out both hands to me, and her eyes were glittering with tears.

"Be brave, my dearest; it's all for my sake—if you love me."

"I love you, my darling; anything for your sake. I'll go to-morrow."

"We're betrothed now, aren't we, dearest?"

"We're betrothed, my love."

She swayed to me and seemed to fit into my arms as a sword fits into its sheath. My lips lay on hers, and I kissed her with a passionate joy. She took my face between her hands and gazed at me long and earnestly.

"I love you, I love you," she murmured; "next June, my darling, next June."

Then she gently slipped away from me, and I was gazing blankly at the closed door.

"Next June," I heard a voice echo; and there, looking at me with a smile, was Locasto.



CHAPTER VIII

It comes like a violent jar to be awakened so rudely from a trance of love, to turn suddenly from the one you care for most in all the world, and behold the one you have best reason to hate. Nevertheless, it is not in human nature to descend rocket-wise from the ethereal heights of love. I was still in an exalted state of mind when I turned and confronted Locasto. Hate was far from my heart, and when I saw the man himself was regarding me with no particular unfriendliness, I was disposed to put aside for the moment all feelings of enmity. The generosity of the victor glowed within me.

As he advanced to me his manner was almost urbane in its geniality.

"You must forgive me," he said, not without dignity, "for overhearing you; but by chance I was passing and dropped upon you before I realised it."

He extended his hand frankly.

"I trust my congratulations on your good luck will not be entirely obnoxious. I know that my conduct in this affair cannot have impressed you in a very favourable light; but I am a badly beaten man. Can't you be generous and let by-gones be by-gones? Won't you?"

I had not yet come down to earth. I was still soaring in the rarefied heights of love, and inclined to a general amnesty towards my enemies.

As he stood there, quiet and compelling, there was an assumption of frankness and honesty about this man that it was hard to withstand. For the nonce I was persuaded of his sincerity, and weakly I surrendered my hand. His grip made me wince.

"Yes, again I congratulate you. I know and admire her. They don't make them any better. She's pure gold. She's a little queen, and the man she cares for ought to be proud and happy. Now, I'm a man of the world, I'm cynical about woman as a rule. I respect my mother and my sisters—beyond that——" He shrugged his shoulders expressively.

"But this girl's different. I always felt in her presence as I used to feel twenty-five years ago when I was a youth, with all my ideals untarnished, my heart pure, and woman holy in my sight."

He sighed.

"You know, young man, I've never told it to a soul before, but I'd give all I'm worth—a clear million—to have those days back. I've never been happy since."

He drew away quickly from the verge of sentiment.

"Well, you mustn't mind me taking an interest in your sweetheart. I'm old enough to be her father, you know, and she touches me strangely. Now, don't distrust me. I want to be a friend to you both. I want to help you to be happy. Jack Locasto's not such a bad lot, as you'll find when you know him. Is there anything I can do for you? What are you going to do in this country?"

"I don't quite know yet," I said. "I hope to stake a good claim when the chance comes. Meantime I'm going to get work on the creeks."

"You are?" he said thoughtfully; "do you know any one?"

"No."

"Well, I'll tell you what: I've got laymen working on my Eldorado claim; I'll give you a note to them if you like."

I thanked him.

"Oh, that's all right," he said. "I'm sorry I played such a mean part in the past, and I'll do anything in my power to straighten things out. Believe me, I mean it. Your English friend gave me the worst drubbing of my life, but three days after I went round and shook hands with him. Fine fellow that. We opened a case of wine to celebrate the victory. Oh, we're good friends now. I always own up when I'm beaten, and I never bear ill-will. If I can help you in any way, and hasten your marriage to that little girl there, well, you can just bank on Jack Locasto: that's all."

I must say the man could be most conciliating when he chose. There was a gravity in his manner, a suave courtesy in his tone, the heritage of his Spanish forefathers, that convinced me almost in spite of my better judgment. No doubt he was magnetic, dominating, a master of men. I thought: there are two Locastos, the primordial one, the Indian, who had assaulted me; and the dignified genial one, the Spaniard, who was willing to own defeat and make amends. Why should I not take him as I found him?

So, as he talked entertainingly to me, my fears were dissipated, my suspicions lulled. And when we parted we shook hands cordially.

"Don't forget," he said; "if you want help bank on me. I mean it now, I mean it."

* * * * *

'Twas early in the bright and cool of the morning when we started for Eldorado, Jim and I. I had a letter from Locasto to Ribwood and Hoofman, the laymen, and I showed it to Jim. He frowned.

"You don't mean to say you've palled up with that devil," he said.

"Oh, he's not so bad," I expostulated. "He came to me like a man and offered me his hand in friendship. Said he was ashamed of himself. What could I do? I've no reason to doubt his sincerity."

"Sincerity be danged. He's about as sincere as a tame rattlesnake. Put his letter in the creek."

But no! I refused to listen to the old man.

"Well, go your own gait," he said; "but don't say that I didn't warn you."

We had crossed over the Klondike to its left limit, and were on a hillside trail beaten down by the feet of miners and packers. Cabins clustered on the flat, and from them plumes of violet smoke mounted into the golden air. Already the camp was astir. Men were chopping their wood, carrying their water. The long, long day was beginning.

Following the trail, we struck up Bonanza, a small muddy stream in a narrow valley. Down in the creek-bed we could see ever-increasing signs of an intense mining activity. On every claim were dozens of cabins, and many high cones of greyish muck. We saw men standing on raised platforms turning windlasses. We saw buckets come up filled with the same dark grey dirt, to be dumped over the edge of the platform. Sometimes, where the dump had gradually arisen around man and windlass, the platform in the centre of that dark-greyish cone was twenty feet high.

Every mile the dumps grew more numerous, till some claims seemed covered with them. Looking down from the trail, they were like innumerable anthills blocking up the narrow channel, and around them swarmed the little ant-men in never-resting activity. The golden valley opened out to us in a vista of green curves, and the cleft of it was packed with tents, cabins, dumps and tailing piles, all bedded in a blue haze of wood fires.

"Look at that great centipede striding across the valley," I said.

"Yes," said Jim, "it's a long line of sluice-boxes. See the water a-shinin' in the sun. Looks like some big golden-backed caterpillar."

The little ants were shovelling into it from one of their heaps, and from that point it swirled on into the stream, a current of mud and stone.

"Seems to me that stream would wash away all the gold," I said. "I know it's all caught in the riffles, but I think if that dump was mine I would want sluice-boxes a mile long and about sixteen hundred riffles. But I guess they know what they are doing."

About noon we descended into the creek-bed and came to the Forks. It was a little town, a Dawson in miniature, with all its sordid aspects infinitely accentuated. It had dance-halls, gambling dens and many saloons: every convenience to ease the miner of the plethoric poke. There in the din and daze and dirt we tarried awhile; then, after eating heartily, we struck up Eldorado.

Here was the same feverish activity of gold-getting. Every claim was valued at millions, and men who had rarely owned enough to buy a decent coat were crying in the saloons because life was not long enough to allow them to spend their sudden wealth. Nevertheless, they were making a good stab at it. At the Forks I enquired regarding Ribwood and Hoofman: "Goin' to work for them, are you? Well, they've got a blamed hard name. If you get a job elsewhere, don't turn it down."

Jim left me; he would work on no claim of Locasto's, he said. He had a friend, a layman, who was a good man, belonged to the Army. He would try him. So we parted.

Ribwood was a tall, gaunt Cornishman, with a narrow, jutting face and a gloomy air; Hoofman, a burly, beet-coloured Australian with a bulging stomach.

"Yes, we'll put you to work," said Hoofman, reading the letter. "Get your coat off and shovel in."

So, right away, I found myself in the dump-pile, jamming a shovel into the pay-dirt and swinging it into a sluice-box five feet higher than my head. Keeping at this hour after hour was no fun, and if ever a man desisted for a moment the hard eyes of Hoofman were upon him, and the gloomy Ribwood had snatched up a shovel and was throwing in the muck furiously.

"Come on, boys," he would shout; "make the dirt fly. 'Taint every part of the world you fellers can make your ten bucks a day."

And it can be said that never labourer proved himself more worthy of his hire than the pick-and-shovel man of those early days. Few could stand it long without resting. They were lean as wolves those men of the dump and drift, and their faces were gouged and grooved with relentless toil.

Well, for three days I made the dirt fly; but towards quitting time, I must say, its flight was a very uncertain one. Again I suffered all the tortures of becoming toil-broken, the old aches and pains of the tunnel and the gravel-pit. Towards evening every shovelful of dirt seemed to weigh as much as if it was solid gold; indeed, the stuff seemed to get richer and richer as the day advanced, and during the last half-hour I judged it must be nearly all nuggets. The constant hoisting into the overhead sluice-box somehow worked muscles that had never gone into action before, and I ached elaborately.

In the morning the pains were fiercest. How I groaned until the muscles became limber. I found myself using very rough language, groaning, gritting my teeth viciously. But I stayed with the work and held up my end, while the laymen watched us sedulously, and seemed to grudge us even a moment to wipe the sweat out of our blinded eyes.

I was glad, indeed, when, on the evening of the third day, Ribwood came to me and said:

"I guess you'd better work up at the shaft to-morrow. We want a man to wheel muck."

They had a shaft sunk on the hillside. They were down some forty feet and were drifting in, wheeling the pay-dirt down a series of planks placed on trestles to the dump. I gripped the handles of a wheelbarrow loaded to overspilling, and steered it down that long, unsteady gangway full of uneven joins and sudden angles. Time and again I ran off the track, but after the first day I became quite an expert at the business. My spirits rose. I was on the way of becoming a miner.



CHAPTER IX

Turning the windlass over the shaft was a little, tough mud-rat, who excited in me the liveliest sense of aversion. Pat Doogan was his name, but I will call him the "Worm."

The Worm was the foulest-mouthed specimen I have yet met. He had the lowest forehead I have ever seen in a white man, and such a sharp, ferrety little face. His reddish hair had the prison clip, and his little reddish eyes were alive with craft and cruelty. I noticed he always regarded me with a peculiarly evil grin, that wrinkled up his cheeks and revealed his hideously blackened teeth. From the first he gave me a creepy feeling, a disgust as if I were near some slimy reptile.

Yet the Worm tried to make up to me. He would tell me stories blended of the horrible and the grotesque. One in particular I remember.

"Youse wanta know how I lost me last job. I'll tell youse. You see, it was like dis. Dere was two Blackmoor guys dat got into de country dis Spring; came by St. Michaels; Hindoos dey was. One of dem 'Sicks' (an' dey looked sick, dey was so loose an' weary in der style) got a job from old man Gustafson down de shaft muckin' up and fillin' de buckets.

"Well, dere was dat Blackmoor down in de deep hole one day when I comes along, an' strikes old Gus for a job. So, seein' as de man on de windlass wanted to quit, he passed it up to me, an' I took right hold an' started in.

"Say, I was feelin' powerful mean. I'd just finished up a two weeks' drunk, an' you tink de booze wasn't workin' in me some. I was seein' all kinds of funny t'ings. Why, as I was a-turnin' away at dat ol' windlass dere was red spiders crawlin' up me legs. But I was wise. I wouldn't look at dem, give dem de go-by. Den a yeller rat got gay wid me an' did some stunts on me windlass. But still I wouldn't let on. Den dere was some green snakes dat wriggled over de platform like shiny streaks on de water. Sure, I didn't like dat one bit, but I says, 'Dere ain't no snakes in de darned country, Pat, and you knows it. It's just a touch of de horrors, dat's all. Just pass 'em up, boy; don't take no notice of dem.'

"Well, dis went on till I begins to get all shaky an' jumpy, an' I was mighty glad when de time came to quit, an' de boys down below gives me de holler to pull dem up.

"So I started hoistin' wid dose snakes an' spiders an' rats jus' cavortin' round me like mad, when all to once who should I hoist outa de bowels of de earth but de very devil himself.

"His face was black. I could see de whites of his eyes, an' he had a big dirty towel tied round his head. Well, say, it was de limit. At de sight of dat ferocious monster comin' after old Pat I gives one yell, drops de crank-handle of de windlass, an' makes a flyin' leap down de dump. I hears an awful shriek, an' de bucket an' de devil goes down smash to de bottom of de shaft, t'irty-five feet. But I kep' on runnin'. I was so scared.

"Well, how was I to know dey had a Blackmoor down dere? He was a stiff when dey got him up, but how was I to know? So I lost me job."

On another occasion he told me:

"Say, kid, youse didn't know as I was liable to fits, did youse? Dat's so; eppylepsy de doctor tells me. Dat's what I am scared of. You see, it's like dis: if one of dem fits should hit me when I'm hoistin' de boys outer de shaft, den it would be a pity. I would sure lose me job like de oder time."

He was the most degraded type of man I had yet met on my travels, a typical degenerate, dirty, drunken, diseased. He had three suits of underclothing, which he never washed. He would wear through all three in succession, and when the last got too dirty for words he would throw it under his trunk and sorrowfully go back to the first, keeping up this rotation, till all were worn out.

One day Hoofman told me he wanted me to go down the shaft and work in the drift. Accordingly, next morning I and a huge Slav, by name Dooley Rileyvich, were lowered down into the darkness.

The Slav initiated me. Every foot of dirt had to be thawed out by means of wood fires. We built a fire at the far end of the drift every night, covering the face we were working. First we would lay kindling, then dry spruce lying lengthways, then a bank of green wood standing on end to keep in the heat and shed the dirt that sloughed down from the roof. In the morning our fire would be burned out, and enough pay-dirt thawed to keep us picking all day.

Down there I found it the hardest work of all. We had to be careful that the smoke had cleared from the drift before we ventured in, for frequently miners were asphyxiated. Indeed, the bad air never went entirely away. It made my eyes sore, my head ache. Yet, curiously enough, so long as you were below it did not affect you so much. It was when you stepped out of the bucket and struck the pure outer air that you reeled and became dizzy. It was blinding, too. Often at supper have my eyes been so blurred and sore I had to grope around uncertainly for the sugar bowl and the tin of cream.

In the drift it was always cool. The dirt kept sloughing down on us, and we had really gone in too far for our own safety, but the laymen cared little for that. At the end of the drift the roof was so low we were bent almost double, picking at the face in all kinds of cramped positions, and dragging after us the heavy bucket. To the big Slav it was all in the day's work, but to me it was hard, hard.

The shaft was almost forty feet deep. For the first ten feet a ladder ran down it, then stopped suddenly as if the excavators had decided to abandon it. I often looked at this useless bit of ladder and wondered why it had been left unfinished.

Every morning the Worm hoisted us down into the darkness, and at night drew us up. Once he said to me:

"Say, wouldn't it be de tough luck if I was to take a fit when I was hoistin' youse up? Such a nice bit of a boy, too, an' I guess I'd lose my job over de head of it."

I said: "Cut that out, or you'll have me so scared I won't go down."

He grinned unpleasantly and said nothing more. Yet somehow he was getting on my nerves terribly.

It was one evening we had banked our fires and were ready to be hoisted up. Dooley Rileyvich went first, and I watched him blot out the bit of blue for a while. Then, slowly, down came the bucket for me.

I got in. I was feeling uneasy all of a sudden, and devoutly wished I were anywhere else but in that hideous hole. I felt myself leave the ground and rise steadily. The walls of the shaft glided past me. Up, up I went. The bit of blue sky grew bigger, bigger. There was a star shining there. I watched it. I heard the creak, creak of the windlass crank. Somehow it seemed to have a sinister sound. It seemed to say: "Have a care, have a care, have a care." I was now ten feet from the top. The bucket was rocking a little, so I put out my hand and grasped the lowest rung of the ladder to steady myself.

Then, at that instant, it seemed the weight of the bucket pressing up against my feet was suddenly removed, and my arm was nigh jerked out of its socket. There I was hanging desperately on the lowest rung of the ladder, while, with a crash that made my heart sick, the bucket dashed to the bottom. At last, I realised, the Worm had had his fit.

Quickly I gripped with both hands. With a great effort I raised myself rung by rung on the ladder. I was panic-stricken, faint with fear; but some instinct had made me hold on desperately. Dizzily I hung all a-shudder, half-sobbing. A minute seemed like a year.

Ah! there was the face of Dooley looking down on me. He saw me clinging there. He was anxiously shouting to me to come up. Mastering an overpowering nausea I raised myself. At last I felt his strong arm around me, and here I swear it on a stack of Bibles that brutish Slav seemed to me like one of God's own angels.

I was on firm ground once more. The Worm was lying stiff and rigid. Without a word the stalwart Slav took him on his brawny shoulder. The creek was downhill but fifty yards. Ere we reached it the Worm had begun to show signs of reviving consciousness. When we got to the edge of the icy water he was beginning to groan and open his eyes in a dazed way.

"Leave me alone," he says to Rileyvich; "you Slavonian swine, lemme go."

Not so the Slav. Holding the wriggling, writhing little man in his powerful arms he plunged him heels over head in the muddy current of the creek.

"I guess I cure dose fits anyway," he said grimly.

Struggling, spluttering, blaspheming, the little man freed himself at last and staggered ashore. He cursed Rileyvich most comprehensively. He had not yet seen me, and I heard him wailing:

"Sure de boy's a stiff. Just me luck; I've lost me job."



CHAPTER X

"You'd better quit," said the Prodigal.

It was the evening of my mishap, and he had arrived unexpectedly from town.

"Yes, I mean to," I answered. "I wouldn't go down there again for a farm. I feel as weak as a sick baby. I couldn't stay another day."

"Well, that goes," said he. "It just fits in with my plans. I'm getting Jim to come in, too. I've realised on that stuff I bought, made over three thousand clear profit, and with it I've made a dicker for a property on the bench above Bonanza, Gold Hill they call it. I've a notion it's all right. Anyway, we'll tunnel in and see. You and Jim will have a quarter share each for your work, while I'll have an extra quarter for the capital I've put in. Is it a go?"

I said it was.

"Thought it would be. I've had the papers made out; you can sign right now."

So I signed, and next day found us all three surveying our claim. We put up a tent, but the first thing to do was to build a cabin. Right away we began to level off the ground. The work was pleasant, and conducted in such friendship that the time passed most happily. Indeed, my only worry was about Berna. She had never ceased to be at the forefront of my mind. I schooled myself into the belief that she was all right, but, thank God, every moment was bringing her nearer to me.

One morning, when we were out in the woods cutting timber for the cabin, I said to Jim:

"Did you ever hear anything more about that man Mosely?"

He stopped chopping, and lowered the axe he had poised aloft.

"No, boy; I've had no mail at all. Wait awhile."

He swung his axe with viciously forceful strokes. His cheery face had become so downcast that I bitterly blamed myself for my want of tact. However, the cloud soon passed.

About two days after that the Prodigal said to me:

"I saw your little guttersnipe friend to-day."

"Indeed, where?" I asked; for I had often thought of the Worm, thought of him with fear and loathing.

"Well, sir, he was just getting the grandest dressing-down I ever saw a man get. And do you know who was handing it to him—Locasto, no less."

He lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke.

"I was just coming along the trail from the Forks when I suddenly heard voices in the bush. The big man was saying:

"'Lookee here, Pat, you know if I just liked to say half a dozen words I could land you in the penitentiary for the rest of your days.'

"Then the little man's wheedling voice:

"'Well, I did me best, Jack. I know I bungled the job, but youse don't want to cast dem t'ings up to me. Dere's more dan me orter be in de pen. Dere's no good in de pot callin' de kettle black, is dere?'

"Then Black Jack flew off the handle. You know he's got a system of manhandling that's near the record in these parts. Well, he just landed on the little man. He got him down and started to lambast the Judas out of him. He gave him the 'leather,' and then some. I guess he'd have done him to a finish hadn't I been Johnnie on the spot. At sight of me he gives a curse, jumps on his horse and goes off at a canter. Well, I propped the little man against a tree, and then some fellows came along, and we got him some brandy. But he was badly done up. He kept saying: 'Oh, de devil, de big devil, sure I'll give him his before I get t'rough.' Funny, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it's strange;" and for some time I pondered over the remarkable strangeness of it.

"That reminds me," said Jim; "has any one seen the Jam-wagon?"

"Oh yes," answered the Prodigal; "poor beggar! he's down and out. After the fight he went to pieces, every one treating him, and so on. You remember Bullhammer?"

"Yes."

"Well, the last I saw of the Jam-wagon—he was cleaning cuspidors in Bullhammer's saloon."

* * * * *

We had hauled the logs for the cabin, and the foundation was laid. Now we were building up the walls, placing between every log a thick wadding of moss. Every day saw our future home nearer completion.

One evening I spied the saturnine Ribwood climbing the hill to our tent. He hailed me:

"Say, you're just the man I want."

"What for?" I asked; "not to go down that shaft again?"

"No. Say! we want a night watchman up at the claim to go on four hours a night at a dollar an hour. You see, there's been a lot of sluice-box robberies lately, and we're scared for our clean-up. We're running two ten-hour shifts now and cleaning up every three days; but there's four hours every night the place is deserted, and Hoofman proposed we should get you to keep watch."

"Yes," I said; "I'll run up every evening if the others don't object."

They did not; so the next night, and for about a dozen after that, I spent the darkest hours watching on the claim where previously I had worked.

There was never any real darkness down there in that narrow valley, but there was dusk of a kind that made everything grey and uncertain. It was a vague, nebulous atmosphere in which objects merged into each other confusedly. Bushes came down to within a few feet of where we were working, dense-growing alder and birch that would have concealed a whole regiment of sluice-robbers.

It was the dimmest and most uncertain hour of the four, and I was sitting at my post of guard. As the night was chilly I had brought along an old grey blanket, similar in colour to the mound of the pay-dirt. There had been quite a cavity dug in the dump during the day, and into this I crawled and wrapped myself in my blanket. From my position I could see the string of boxes containing the riffles. Over me brooded the vast silence of the night. By my side lay a loaded shot-gun.

"If the swine comes," said Ribwood, "let him have a clean-up of lead instead of gold."

Lying there, I got to thinking of the robberies. They were remarkable. All had been done by an expert. In some cases the riffles had been extracted and the gold scooped out; in others a quantity of mercury had been poured in at the upper end of the boxes, and, as it passed down, the "quick" had gathered up the dust. Each time the robbers had cleaned up from two to three thousand dollars, and all within the past month. There was some mysterious master-crook in our midst, one who operated swiftly and surely, and left absolutely no clue of his identity.

It was strange, I thought. What nerve, what cunning, what skill must this midnight thief be possessed of! What desperate chances was he taking! For, in the miners' eyes, cache-stealing and sluice-box robbing were in the same category, and the punishment was—well, a rope and the nearest tree of size. Among those strong, grim men justice would be stern and swift.

I was very quiet for a while, watching dreamily the dark shadows of the dusk.

Hist! What was that? Surely the bushes were moving over there by the hillside. I strained my eyes. I was right: they were.

I was all nerves and excitement now, my heart beating wildly, my eyes boring through the gloom. Very softly I put out my hand and grasped the shot-gun.

I watched and waited. A man was parting the bushes. Stealthily, very stealthily, he peered around. He hesitated, paused, peered again, crouched on all-fours, crept forward a little. Everything was quiet as a grave. Down in the cabins the tired men slept peacefully; stillness and solitude.

Cautiously the man, crawling like a snake, worked his way to the sluice-boxes. None but a keen watcher could have seen him. Again and again he paused, peered around, listened intently. Very carefully, with my eyes fixed on him, I lifted the gun.

Now he had gained the shadow of the nearest sluice-box. He clung to the trestle-work, clung so closely you could scarce tell him apart from it. He was like a rat, dark, furtive, sinister. Slowly I lifted the gun to my shoulder. I had him covered.

I waited. Somehow I was loath to shoot. My nerves were a-quiver. Proof, more proof, I said. I saw him working busily, lying flat alongside the boxes. How crafty, how skilful he was! He was disconnecting the boxes. He would let the water run to the ground; then, there in the exposed riffles, would be his harvest. Would I shoot ... now ... now....

Then, in the midnight hush, my gun blazed forth. With one scream the man tumbled down, carrying along with him the disconnected box. The water rushed over the ground in a deluge. I must capture him. There he lay in that pouring stream.... Now I had him.

In that torrent of icy water I grappled with my man. Over and over we rolled. He tried to gouge me. He was small, but oh, how strong! He held down his face. Fiercely I wrenched it up to the light. Heavens! it was the Worm.

I gave a cry of surprise, and my clutch on him must have weakened, for at that moment he gave a violent wrench, a cat-like twist, and tore himself free. Men were coming, were shouting, were running in from all directions.

"Catch him!" I cried. "Yonder he goes."

But the little man was shooting forward like a deer. He was in the bushes now, bursting through everything, dodging and twisting up the hill. Right and left ran his pursuers, mistaking each other for the robber in the semi-gloom, yelling frantically, mad with the excitement of a man-hunt. And in the midst of it all I lay in a pool of mud and water, with a sprained wrist and a bite on my leg.

"Why didn't you hold him?" shouted Ribwood.

"I couldn't," I answered. "I saved your clean-up, and he got some of the lead. Besides, I know who he is."

"You don't! Who is he?"

"Pat Doogan."

"You don't say. Well, I'm darned. You're sure?"

"Dead sure."

"Swear it in Court?"

"I will."

"Well, that's all right. We'll get him. I'll go into town first thing in the morning and get out a warrant for him."

He went, but the next evening back he returned, looking very surly and disgruntled.

"Well, what about the warrant?" said Hoofman.

"Didn't get it."

"Didn't get——"

"No, didn't get it," snapped Ribwood. "Look here, Hoofman, I met Locasto. Black Jack says Pat was cached away, dead to all the world, in the backroom of the Omega Saloon all night. There's two loafers and the barkeeper to back him up. What can we do in the face of that? Say, young feller, I guess you mistook your man."

"I guess I did not," I protested stoutly.

They both looked at me for a moment and shrugged their shoulders.



CHAPTER XI

Time went on and the cabin was quietly nearing completion. The roof of poles was in place. It only remained to cover it with moss and thawed-out earth to make it our future home. I think these were the happiest days I spent in the North. We were such a united trio. Each was eager to do more than the other, and we vied in little acts of mutual consideration.

Once again I congratulated myself on my partners. Jim, though sometimes bellicosely evangelical, was the soul of kindly goodness, cheerfulness and patience. It was refreshing to know among so many sin-calloused men one who always rang true, true as the gold in the pan. As for the Prodigal, he was a Prince. I often thought that God at the birth of him must have reached out to the sunshine and crammed a mighty handful of it into the boy. Surely it is better than all the riches in the world to have a temperament of eternal cheer.

As for me, I have ever been at the mercy of my moods, easily elated, quickly cast down. I have always been abnormally sensitive, affected by sunshine and by shadows, vacillating, intense in my feelings. I was truly happy in those days, finding time in the long evenings to think of the scenes of stress and sorrow I had witnessed, reconstructing the past, and having importune me again and again the many characters in my life drama.

Always and always I saw the Girl, elusively sweet, almost unreal, a thing to enshrine in that ideal alcove of our hearts we keep for our saints. (And God help us always to keep shining there a great light.)

Many others importuned me: Pinklove, Globstock, Pondersby, Marks, old Wilovich, all dead; Bullhammer, the Jam-wagon, Mosher, the Winklesteins, plunged in the vortex of the gold-born city; and lastly, looming over all, dark and ominous, the handsome, bold, sinister face of Locasto. Well, maybe I would never see any of them again.

Yet more and more my dream hours were jealously consecrated to Berna. How ineffably sweet were they! How full of delicious imaginings! How pregnant of high hope! O, I was born to love, I think, and I never loved but one. This story of my life is the story of Berna. It is a thing of words and words and words, yet every word is Berna, Berna. Feel the heartache behind it all. Read between the lines, Berna, Berna.

Often in the evenings we went to the Forks, which was a lively place indeed. Here was all the recklessness and revel of Dawson on a smaller scale, and infinitely more gross. Here were the dance-hall girls, not the dazzling creatures in diamonds and Paris gowns, the belles of the Monte Carlo and the Tivoli, but drabs self-convicted by their coarse, puffy faces. Here the men, fresh from their day's work, the mud of the claim hardly dry on their boot-tops, were buying wine with nuggets they had filched from sluice-box, dump and drift.

There was wholesale robbery going on in the gold-camp. On many claims where the owners were known to be unsuspicious, men would work for small wages because of the gold they were able to filch. On the other hand, many of the operators were paying their men in trade-dust valued at sixteen dollars an ounce, yet so adulterated with black sand as to be really worth about fourteen. All these things contributed to the low morale of the camp. Easy come, easy go with money, a wild intoxication of success in the air; gold gouged in glittering heaps from the ground during the day, and at night squandered in a carnival of lust and sin.

The Prodigal was always "snooping" around and gleaning information from most mysterious sources. One evening he came to us.

"Boys, get ready, quick. There's a rumour of a stampede for a new creek, Ophir Creek they call it, away on the other side of the divide somewhere. A prospector went down ten feet and got fifty-cent dirt. We've got to get in on this. There's a mob coming from Dawson, but we'll get there before the rush."

Quickly we got together blankets and a little grub, and, keeping out of sight, we crawled up the hill under cover of the brush. Soon we came to a place from which we could command a full view of the valley. Here we lay down, awaiting developments.

It was at the hour of dusk. Scarfs of smoke wavered over the cabins down in the valley. On the far slope of Eldorado I saw a hawk soar upwards. Surely a man was moving amid the brush, two men, a dozen men, moving in single file very stealthily. I pointed them out.

"It's the stampede," whispered Jim. "We've got to get on to the trail of that crowd. Travel like blazes. We can cut them off at the head of the valley."

So we struck into the stampede gait, a wild, jolting, desperate pace, that made the wind pant in our lungs like bellows, and jarred our bones in their sockets. Through brush and scrub timber we burst. Thorny vines tore at us detainingly, swampy niggerheads impeded us; but the excitement of the stampede was in our blood, and we plunged down gulches, floundered over marshes, climbed steep ridges and crashed through dense masses of underwood.

"Throw away your blankets, boys," said the Prodigal. "Just keep a little grub. Eldorado was staked on a stampede. Maybe we're in on another Eldorado. We must connect with that bunch if we break our necks."

It was hours after when we overtook them, about a dozen men, all in the maddest hurry, and casting behind them glances of furtive apprehension. When they saw us they were hugely surprised. Ribwood was one of the party.

"Hello," he says roughly; "any more coming after you boys?"

"Don't see them," said the Prodigal breathlessly. "We spied you and cottoned on to what was up, so we made a fierce hike to get in on it. Gee, I'm all tuckered out."

"All right, get in line. I guess there's lots for us all. You're in on a good thing, all right. Come along."

So off we started again. The leader was going like one possessed. We blundered on behind. We were on the other side of the divide looking into another vast valley. What a magnificent country it was! What a great manoeuvring-ground it would make for an army! What splendid open spaces, and round smooth hills, and dimly blue valleys, and silvery winding creeks! It was veritably a park of the Gods, and enclosing it was the monstrous, corrugated palisade of the Rockies.

But there was small time to look around. On we went in the same mad, heart-breaking hurry, mile after mile, hour after hour.

"This is going to be a banner creek, boys," the whisper ran down the line. "We're in luck. We'll all be Klondike Kings yet."

Cheering, wasn't it? So on we went, hotter than ever, content to follow the man of iron who was guiding us to the virgin treasure.

We had been pounding along all night, up hill and down dale. The sun rose, the dawn blossomed, the dew dried on the blueberry; it was morning. Still we kept up our fierce gait. Would our leader never come to his destination? By what roundabout route was he guiding us? The sun climbed up in the blue sky, the heat quivered; it was noon. We panted as we pelted on, parched and weary, faint and footsore. The excitement of the stampede had sustained us, and we scarcely had noted the flight of time. We had been walking for fourteen hours, yet not a man faltered. I was ready to drop with fatigue; my feet were a mass of blisters, and every step was intolerable pain to me. But still our leader kept on.

"I guess we'll fool those trying to follow us," snapped Ribwood grimly.

Suddenly the Prodigal said to me: "Say, you boys will have to go on without me. I'm all in. Go ahead, I'll follow after I'm rested up."

He dropped in a limp heap on the ground and instantly fell asleep. Several of the others had dropped out too. They fell asleep where they gave up, utterly exhausted. We had now been going sixteen hours, and still our leader kept on.

"You're pretty tough for a youngster," growled one of them to me. "Keep it up, we're almost there."

So I hobbled along painfully, though the desire to throw myself down was becoming imperative. Just ahead was Jim, sturdily holding his own. The others were reduced to a bare half-dozen.

It was about four in the afternoon when we reached the creek. Up it our leader plunged, till he came to a place where a rude shaft had been dug. We gathered around him. He was a typical prospector, a child of hope, lean, swarthy, clear-eyed.

"Here it is, boys," he said. "Here's my discovery stake. Now you fellows go up or down, anywhere you've a notion to, and put in your stakes. You all know what a lottery it is. Maybe you'll stake a million-dollar claim, maybe a blank. Mining's all a gamble. But go ahead, boys. I wish you luck."

So we strung out, and, coming in rotation, Jim and I staked seven and eight below discovery.

"Seven's a lucky number for me," said Jim; "I've a notion this claim's a good one."

"I don't care," I said, "for all the gold in the world. What I want is sleep, sleep, rest and sleep."

So I threw myself down on a bit of moss, and, covering my head with my coat to ward off the mosquitoes, in a few minutes I was dead to the world.



CHAPTER XII

I was awakened by the Prodigal.

"Rouse up," he was saying; "you've slept right round the clock. We've got to get back to town and record those claims. Jim's gone three hours ago."

It was five o'clock of a crystal Yukon morning, with the world clear-cut and fresh as at the dawn of Things. I was sleep-stupid, sore, stiff in every joint. Racking pains made me groan at every movement, and the chill night air had brought on twinges of rheumatism. I looked at my location stake, beside which I had fallen.

"I can't do it," I said; "my feet are out of business."

"You must," he insisted. "Come, buck up, old man. Bathe your feet in the creek, and then you'll feel as fit as a fighting-cock. We've got to get into town hot-foot. They've got a bunch of crooks at the gold office, and we're liable to lose our claims if we are late."

"Have you staked, too?"

"You bet. I've got thirteen below. Hurry up. There's a wild bunch coming from town."

I groaned grievously, yet felt mighty refreshed by a dip in the creek. Then we started off once more. Every few moments we would meet parties coming post-haste from town. They looked worn and jaded, but spread eagerly up and down. There must have been several hundred of them, all sustained by the mad excitement of the stampede.

We did not take the circuitous route of the day before, but one that shortened the distance by some ten miles. We travelled a wild country, crossing unknown creeks that have since proved gold-bearing, and climbing again the high ridge of the divide. Then once more we dropped down into the Bonanza basin, and by nightfall we had reached our own cabin.

We lay down for a few hours. It seemed my weary head had just touched the pillow when once more the inexorable Prodigal awakened me.

"Come on, kid, we've got to get to Dawson when the recording office opens." So once more we pelted down Bonanza. Fast as we had come, we found many of those who had followed us were ahead. The North is the land of the musher. In that pure, buoyant air a man can walk away from himself. Any one of us thought nothing of a fifty-mile tramp, and one of eighty was scarcely considered notable.

It was about nine in the morning when we got to the gold office. Already a crowd of stampeders were waiting. Foremost in the crowd I saw Jim. The Prodigal looked thoughtful.

"Look here," he said, "I guess it's all right to push in with that bunch, but there's a slicker way of doing it for those that are 'next.' Of course, it's not according to Hoyle. There's a little side-door where you can get in ahead of the gang. See that fellow, Ten-Dollar Jim they call him; well, they say he can work the oracle for us."

"No," I said, "you can pay him ten dollars if you like. I'll take my chance in the regulation way."

So the Prodigal slipped away from me, and presently I saw him admitted at the side entrance. Surely, thought I, there must be some mistake. The public would not "stand for" such things.

There was quite a number ahead of me, and I knew I was in for a long wait. I will never forget it. For three days, with the exception of two brief sleep-spells, I had been in a fierce helter-skelter of excitement, and I had eaten no very satisfying food. As I stood in that sullen crowd I swayed with weariness, and my legs were doubling under me. Invisible hands were dragging me down, throwing dust in my eyes, hypnotising me with soporific gestures. I staggered forward and straightened up suddenly. On the outskirts of the crowd I saw the Prodigal trying to locate me. When he saw me he waved a paper.

"Come on, you goat," he shouted; "have a little sense. I'm all fixed up."

I shook my head. An odd sense of fair play in me made me want to win the game squarely. I would wait my turn. Noon came. I saw Jim coming out, tired but triumphant.

"All right," he megaphoned to me; "I'm through. Now I'll go and sleep my head off."

How I envied him. I felt I, too, had a "big bunch" of sleep coming to me. I was moving forward slowly. Bit by bit I was wedging nearer the door. I watched man after man push past the coveted threshold. They were all miners, brawny, stubble-chinned fellows with grim, determined faces. I was certainly the youngest there.

"What have you got?" asked a thick-set man on my right.

"Eight below," I answered.

"Gee! you're lucky."

"What'll you take for it?" asked a tall, keen-looking fellow on my left.

"Five thousand."

"Give you two."

"No."

"Well, come round and see me to-morrow at the Dominion, and we'll talk it over. My name's Gunson. Bring your papers."

"All right."

Something like dizziness seized me. Five thousand! The crowd seemed to be composed of angels and the sunshine to have a new and brilliant quality of light and warmth. Five thousand! Would I take it? If the claim was worth a cent it ought to be worth fifty thousand. I soared on rosy wings of optimism. I revelled in dreams. My claim! Mine! Eight below! Other men had bounded into affluence. Why not I?

No longer did I notice the flight of time. I was ready to wait till doomsday. A new lease of strength came to me. I was near the wicket now. Only two were ahead of me. A clerk was recording their claims. One had thirty-four above, the other fifty-two below. The clerk looked flustered, fatigued. His dull eyes were pursy with midnight debauches; his flesh sagged. In contrast with the clean, hard, hawk-eyed miners, he looked blotched and unwholesome.

Crossly he snatched from the other two their miner's certificates, made the entries in his book, and gave them their receipts. It was my turn now. I dashed forward eagerly. Then I stopped, for the man with the bleary eyes had shut the wicket in my face.

"Three o'clock," he snapped.

"Couldn't you take mine?" I faltered; "I've been waiting now these seven hours."

"Closing time," he ripped out still more tartly; "come again to-morrow."

There was a growling thunder from the crowd behind, and the weary, disappointed stampeders slouched away.

Body and soul of me craved for sleep. Beyond an overwhelming desire for rest, I was conscious of nothing else. My eyelids were weighted with lead. I lagged along dejectedly. At the hotel I saw the Prodigal.

"Get fixed up?"

"No, too late."

"You'd better take advantage of the general corruption and the services of Ten-Dollar Jim."

I was disheartened, disgusted, desperate.

"I will," I said. Then, throwing myself on the bed, I launched on a dreamless sea of sleep.



CHAPTER XIII

Next morning bright and early found me at the side-door, and the tall man admitted me. I slipped a ten-dollar gold piece into his palm, and presently found myself waiting at the yet unopened wicket. Outside I could see the big crowd gathering for their weary wait. I felt a sneaking sense of meanness, but I did not have long to enjoy my despicable sensations.

The recording clerk came to the wicket. He was very red-faced and watery-eyed. Involuntarily I turned my head away at the reek of his breath.

"I want to record eight below on Ophir," I said.

He looked at me curiously. He hesitated.

"What name?" he asked.

I gave it. He turned up his book.

"Eight below, you say. Why, that's already recorded."

"Can't be," I retorted. "I just got down from there yesterday after planting my stakes."

"Can't help it. It's recorded by some one else, recorded early yesterday."

"Look here," I exclaimed; "what kind of a game are you putting up on me? I tell you I was the first on the ground. I alone staked the claim."

"That's strange," he said. "There must be some mistake. Anyway, you'll have to move on and let the others get up to the wicket. You're blocking the way. All I can do is to look into the matter for you, and I've got no time now. Come back to-morrow. Next, please."

The next man pushed me aside, and there I stood, gaping and gasping. A man in the waiting line looked at me pityingly.

"It's no use, young fellow; you'd better make up your mind to lose that claim. They'll flim-flam you out of it somehow. They've sent some one out now to stake over you. If you kick, they'll say you didn't stake proper."

"But I have witnesses."

"It don't matter if you call the Angel Gabriel to witness, they're going to grab your claim. Them government officials is the crookedest bunch that ever made fuel for hell-fire. You won't get a square deal; they're going to get the fat anyhow. They've got the best claims spotted, an' men posted to jump them at the first chance. Oh, they're feathering their nests all right. They're like a lot of greedy pike just waiting to gobble down all they can. A man can't buy wine at twenty dollars per, and make dance-hall Flossies presents of diamond tararas on a government salary. That's what a lot of them are doing. Wine and women, and their wives an' daughters outside thinkin' they're little tin gods. Somehow they've got to foot the bill. Oh, it's a great country."

I was stunned with disappointment.

"What you want," he continued, "is to get a pull with some of the officials. Why, there's friends of mine don't need to go out of town to stake a claim. Only the other day a certain party known to me, went to—well, I mustn't mention names, anyway, he's high up in the government, and a friend of Quebec Suzanne's,—and says to him,'I want you to get number so and so on Hunker recorded for me. Of course I haven't been able to get out there, but—'

"The government bug puts his hands to his ears. 'Don't give me any unnecessary information,' he says; 'you want so and so recorded, Sam. Well, that's all right. I'll fix it.'

"That was all there was to it, and when next day a man comes in post-haste claiming to have staked it, it was there recorded in Sam's name. Get a stand-in, young fellow."

"But surely," I said, "somehow, somewhere there must be justice. Surely if these facts were represented at Ottawa and proof forthcoming——"

"Ottawa!" He gave a sniffing laugh. "Ottawa! Why, it's some of the big guns at Ottawa that's gettin' the cream of it all. The little fellows are just lapping up the drips. Look at them big concessions they're selling for a song, good placer ground that would mean pie to the poor miner, closed tight and everlastingly tied up. How is it done? Why, there's some politician at the bottom of the whole business. Look at the liquor permits—crude alcohol sent into the country by the thousand gallons, diluted to six times its bulk, and sold to the poor prospector for whisky at a dollar a drink. An' you can't pour your own drinks at that."

"Well," I said, "I'm not going to be cheated out of my claim. If I've got to move Heaven and earth——"

"You'll do nothing of the kind. If you get sassy there's the police to put the lid on you. You can talk till you're purple round the gills. It won't cut no figure. They've got us all cinched. We've just got to take our medicine. It's no use goin' round bellyaching. You'd better go away and sit down."

And I did.



CHAPTER XIV

I had to see Berna at once. Already I had paid a visit to the Paragon Restaurant, that new and glittering place of resort run by the Winklesteins, but she was not on duty. I saw Madam, resplendent in her false jewellery, with her beetle-black hair elaborately coiffured, and her large, bold face handsomely enamelled. She looked the picture of fleshy prosperity, a big handsome Jewess, hawk-eyed and rapacious. In the background hovered Winklestein, his little, squeezed-up, tallowy face beaded with perspiration. But he was dressed quite superbly, and his moustache was more wondrously waxed than ever.

I mingled with the crowd of miners, and in my rough garb, swarthy and bearded as I was, the Jewish couple did not know me. As I paid her, Madam gave me a sharp glance. But there was no recognisant gleam in her eyes.

In the evening I returned. I took a seat in one of the curtained boxes. At the long lunch-counter rough-necked fellows perched on tripod stools were guzzling food. The place was brilliantly lit up, many-mirrored and flashily ornate in gilt and white. The bill of fare was elaborate, the prices exalted. In the box before me a white-haired lawyer was entertaining a lady of easy virtue; in the box behind, a larrikin quartette from the Pavilion Theatre were holding high revelry. There was no mistaking the character of the place. In the heart of the city's tenderloin it was a haunt of human riff-raff, a palace of gilt and guilt, a first scene in the nightly comedy of "The Lobster."

I was feeling profoundly depressed, miserable, disgusted with everything. For the first time I began to regret ever leaving home. Out on the creeks I was happy. Here in the town the glaring corruption of things jarred on my nerves.

And it was in this place Berna worked. She waited on these wantons; she served those swine. She heard their loose talk, their careless oaths. She saw them foully drunk, staggering off to their shameful assignations. She knew everything. O, it was pitiful; it sickened me to the soul. I sat down and buried my face in my hands.

"Order, please."

I knew that sweet voice. It thrilled me, and I looked up suddenly. There was Berna standing before me.

She gave a quick start, then recovered herself. A look of delight came into her eyes, eager, vivid delight.

"My, how you frightened me, I wasn't expecting you. Oh, I am so glad to see you again."

I looked at her. I was conscious of a change in her, and the consciousness came with a sense of shearing pain.

"Berna," I said, "what are you doing with that paint on your face?"

"Oh, I'm sorry." She was rubbing distressfully at a dab of rouge on her cheek. "I knew you would be cross, but I had to; they made me. They said I looked like a spectre at the feast with my chalk face; I frightened away the customers. It's just a little pink,—all the women do it. It makes me look happier, and it doesn't hurt me any."

"What I want is to see in your cheeks, dear, the glow of health, not the flush of a cosmetic. However, never mind. How are you?"

"Pretty well——" hesitatingly.

"Berna," boomed the rough, contumacious voice of Madam, "attend to the customers."

"All right," I said; "get me anything. I just wanted to see you."

She hurried away. I saw her go behind the curtains of one of the closed boxes carrying a tray of dishes. I heard coarse voices chaffing her. I saw her come out, her cheeks flushed, yet not with rouge. A miner had tried to detain her. Somehow it all made me writhe, agitated me so that I could hardly keep my seat.

Presently she came hurrying round, bringing me some food.

"When can I see you, girl?" I asked.

"To-night. See me home. I'm off at midnight."

"All right. I'll be waiting."

She was kept very busy, and, though once or twice a tipsy roysterer ventured on some rough pleasantry, I noticed with returning satisfaction that most of the big, bearded miners treated her with chivalrous respect. She was quite friendly with them. They called her by name, and seemed to have a genuine affection for her. There was a protective manliness in the manner of these men that reassured me. So I swallowed my meal and left the place.

"That's a good little girl," said a grizzled old fellow to me, as he stood picking his teeth energetically outside the restaurant. "Straight as a string, and there ain't many up here you can say that of. If any one was to try any monkey business with that little girl, sir, there's a dozen of the boys would make him a first-rate case for the hospital ward. Yes, siree, that's a jim-dandy little girl. I just wish she was my darter."

In my heart I blessed him for his words, and pressed on him a fifty-cent cigar.

Again I wandered up and down the now familiar street, but the keen edge of my impression had been blunted. I no longer took the same interest in its sights. More populous it was, noisier, livelier than ever. In the gambling-annex of the Paystreak Saloon was Mr. Mosher shuffling and dealing methodically. Everywhere I saw flushed and excited miners, each with his substantial poke of dust. It was usually as big as a pork-sausage, yet it was only his spending-poke. Safely in the bank he had cached half a dozen of them ten times as big.

These were the halcyon days. Success was in the air. Men were drunk with it; carried off their feet, delirious. Money! It had lost its value. Every one you met was "lousy" with it; threw it away with both hands, and fast as they emptied one pocket it filled up the others. Little wonder a mad elation, a semi-frenzy of prodigality prevailed, for every day the golden valley was pouring into the city a seemingly exhaustless stream of treasure.

I saw big Alec, one of the leading operators, coming down the street with his men. He carried a Winchester, and he had a pack-train of burros, each laden down with gold. At the bank flushed and eager mobs were clamouring to have their pokes weighed. In buckets, coal-oil cans, every kind of receptacle, lay the precious dust. Sweating clerks were handling it as carelessly as a grocer handles sugar. Goldsmiths were making it into wonders of barbaric jewellery. There seemed no limit to the camp's wealth. Every one was mad, and the demi-mondaine was queen of all.

I saw Hewson and Mervin. They had struck it rich on a property they had bought on Hunker. Fortune was theirs.

"Come and have a drink," said Hewson. Already he had had many. His face was relaxed, flushed, already showing signs of a flabby degeneration. In this man of iron sudden success was insidiously at work, enervating his powers.

Mervin, too. I caught a glimpse of him, in the doorway of the Green Bay Tree. The Maccaroni Kid had him in tow, and he was buying wine.

I looked in vain for Locasto. He was on a big debauch, they told me. Viola Lennoir had "got him going."

At midnight, at the door of the Paragon, I was waiting in a fever of impatience when Berna came out.

"I'm living up at the cabin," she said; "you can walk with me as far as that. That is, if you want to," she added coquettishly.

She was very bright and did most of the talking. She showed a vast joy at seeing me.

"Tell me what you've been doing, dear—everything. Have you made a stake? So many have. I have prayed you would, too. Then we'll go away somewhere and forget all this. We'll go to Italy, where it's always beautiful. We'll just live for each other. Won't we, honey?"

She nestled up to me. She seemed to have lost much of her shyness. I don't know why, but I preferred my timid, shrinking Berna.

"It will take a whole lot to make me forget this," I said grimly.

"Yes, I know. Isn't it frightful? Somehow I don't seem to mind so much now. I'm getting used to it, I suppose. But at first—O, it was terrible! I thought I never could stand it. It's wonderful how we get accustomed to things, isn't it?"

"Yes," I answered bitterly.

"You know, those rough miners are good to me. I'm a queen among them, because they know I'm—all right. I've had several offers of marriage, too, really, really good ones from wealthy claim-owners."

"Yes," still more bitterly.

"Yes, young man; so you want to make a strike and take me away to Italy. Oh, how I plan and plan for us two. I don't care, my dearest, if you haven't got a cent in the world, I'm yours, always yours."

"That's all right, Berna," I said. "I'm going to make good. I've just lost a fifty-thousand dollar claim, but there's more coming up. By the first of June next I'll come to you with a bank account of six figures. You'll see, my little girl. I'm going to make this thing stick."

"You foolish boy," she said; "it doesn't matter if you come to me a beggar in rags. Come to me anyway. Come, and do not fail."

"What about Locasto?" I asked.

"I've scarcely seen anything of him. He leaves me alone. I think he's interested elsewhere."

"And are you sure you're all right, dear, down there?"

"Quite sure. These men would risk their lives for me. The other kind know enough to leave me alone. Besides, I know better now how to take care of myself. You remember the frightened cry-baby I used to be—well, I've learned to hold my own."

She was extraordinarily affectionate, full of unexpected little ways of endearment, and clung to me when we parted, making me promise to return very soon. Yes, she was my girl, devoted to me, attached to me by every tendril of her being. Every look, every word, every act of her expressed a bright, fine, radiant love. I was satisfied, yet unsatisfied, and once again I entreated her.

"Berna, are you sure, quite sure, you're all right in that place among all that folly and drunkenness and vice? Let me take you away, dear."

"Oh, no," she said very tenderly; "I'm all right. I would tell you at once, my boy, if I had any fear. That's just what a poor girl has to put up with all the time; that's what I've had to put up with all my life. Believe me, boy, I'm wonderfully blind and deaf at times. I don't think I'm very bad, am I?"

"You're as good as gold."

"For your sake I'll always try to be," she answered.

As we were kissing good-bye she asked timidly:

"What about the rouge, dear? Shall I cease to use it?"

"Poor little girl! Oh no, I don't suppose it matters. I've got very old-fashioned ideas. Good-bye, darling."

"Good-bye, beloved."

I went away treading on sunshine, trembling with joy, thrilled with love for her, blessing her anew.

Yet still the rouge stuck in my crop as if it were the symbol of some insidious decadence.



CHAPTER XV

It was about two months later when I returned from a flying visit to Dawson.

"Lots of mail for you two," I cried, exultantly bursting into the cabin.

"Mail? Hooray!"

Jim and the Prodigal, who were lying on their bunks, leapt up eagerly. No one longs for his letters like your Northern exile, and for two whole months we had not heard from the outside.

"Yes, I got over fifty letters between us three. Drew about a dozen myself, there's half a dozen for you, Jim, and the balance for you, old sport."

I handed the Prodigal about two dozen letters.

"Ha! now we'll have the whole evening just to browse on them. My, what a stack! How was it you had a time getting them?"

"Well, you see, when I got into town the mail had just been sorted, and there was a string of over three hundred men waiting at the general delivery wicket. I took my place at the tail-end of the line, and every newcomer fell in behind me. My! but it was such weary waiting, moving up step by step; but I'd just about got there when closing-time came. They wouldn't give out any more mail—after my three hours' wait, too."

"What did you do?"

"Well, it seems every one gives way to the womenfolk. So I happened to see a girl friend of mine, and she said she would go round first thing in the morning and enquire if there were any letters for us. She brought me this bunch."

I indicated the pile of letters.

"I'm told lots of women in town make a business of getting letters for men, and charge a dollar a letter. It's awful how hard it is to get mail. Half of the clerks seem scarcely able to read the addresses on the envelopes. It's positively sad to watch the faces of the poor wretches who get nothing, knowing, too, that the chances are there is really something for them sorted away in a wrong box."

"That's pretty tough."

"Yes, you should have seen them; men just ravenous to hear from their families; a clerk carelessly shuffling through a pile of letters. 'Beachwood, did you say? Nope, nothing for you.' 'Hold on there! what's that in your hand? Surely I know my wife's writing.' 'Beachwood—yep, that's right. Looked like Peachwood to me. All right. Next there.' Then the man would go off with his letter, looking half-wrathful, half-radiant. Well, I enjoyed my trip, but I'm glad I'm home."

I threw myself on my bunk voluptuously, and began re-reading my letters. There were some from Garry and some from Mother. While still unreconciled to the life I was leading, they were greatly interested in my wildly cheerful accounts of the country. They were disposed to be less censorious, and I for my part was only too glad Mother was well enough to write, even if she did scold me sometimes. So I was able to open my mail without misgivings.

But I was still aglow with memories of the last few hours. Once more I had seen Berna, spent moments with her of perfect bliss, left her with my mind full of exaltation and bewildered gratitude. She was the perfect answer to my heart's call, a mirror that seemed to flash back the challenge of my joy. I saw the love mists gather in her eyes, I felt her sweet lips mould themselves to mine, I thrilled with the sheathing ardour of her arms. Never in my fondest imaginings had I conceived that such a wealth of affection would ever be for me. Buoyant she was, brave, inspiring, and always with her buoyancy so wondrous tender I felt that willingly would I die for her.

Once again I told her of my fear, my anxiety for her safety among those rough men in that cesspool of iniquity. Very earnestly she strove to reassure me.

"Oh, my dear, it is in those rough men, the uncouth, big-hearted miners, that I place my trust. They know I'm a good girl. They wouldn't say a coarse thing before me for the world. You've no idea the chivalrous respect they show for me, and the rougher they are the finer their instincts seem to be. It's the others, the so-called gentlemen, who would like to take advantage of me if they could."

She looked at me with bright, clear eyes, fearless in their scorn of sham and pretence.

"Then there are the women. It's strange, but no matter how degraded they are they try to shield and protect me. Only last week Kimona Kate made a fearful scene with her escort because he said something bad before me. I'm getting tolerant. Oh, you've no idea until you know them what good qualities some of these women have. Often their hearts are as big as all outdoors; they would nurse you devotedly if you were sick; they would give you their last dollar if you were in want. Many of them have old mothers and little children they're supporting outside, and they would rather die than that their dear ones should know the life they are living. It's the men, the men that are to blame."

I shook my head sadly.

"I don't like it, Berna, I don't like it at all. I hate you to know the like of such people, such things. I just want you to be again the dear, sweet little girl I first knew, all maidenly modesty and shuddering aversion of evil."

"I'm afraid, dear, I shall never be that again," she said sorrowfully; "but am I any the worse for knowing? Why should you men want to keep all such knowledge to yourselves? Is our innocence simply to be another name for ignorance?"

She put her arms round my neck and kissed me fervently.

"Oh, no, my dear, my dear. I have seen the vileness of things, and it only makes me more in love with love and beauty. We'll go, you and I, to Italy very soon, and forget, forget. Even if we have to toil like peasants in the vineyards we'll go, far, far away."

So I felt strengthened, stimulated, gladdened, and, as I lay on my bunk listening to the merry crackle of the wood fire, I was in a purring lethargy of content. Then I remembered something.

"Oh, say, boys, I forgot to tell you. I met McCrimmon down the creek. You remember him on the trail, the Halfbreed. He was asking after you both; then all at once he said he wanted to see us on important business. He has a proposal to make, he says, that would be greatly to our advantage. He's coming along this evening.—What's the matter, Jim?"

Jim was staring blankly at one of the letters he had received. His face was a picture of distress, misery, despair. Without replying, he went and knelt down by his bed. He sighed deeply. Slowly his face grew calm again; then I saw that he was praying. We were silent in respectful sympathy, but when, in a little, he got up and went out, I followed him.

"Had bad news, old man?"

"I've had a letter that's upset me. I'm in a terrible position. If ever I wanted strength and guidance, I want it now."

"Heard about that man?"

"Yes, it's him, all right; it's Mosher. I suspicioned it all along. Here's a letter from my brother. He says there's no doubt that Mosher is Moseley."

His eyes were stormy, his face tragic in its bitterness.

"Oh, you don't know how I worshipped that woman, trusted her, would have banked my life on her; and when I was away making money for her she ups and goes away with that slimy reptile. In the old days I would have torn him to pieces, but now——"

He sighed distractedly.

"What am I to do? What am I to do? The Good Book says forgive your enemies, but how can I forgive a wrong like that? And my poor girl—he deserted her, drove her to the streets. Ugh! if I could kill him by slow torture, gloat over his agony—but I can't, can I?"

"No, Jim, you can't do anything. Vengeance is the Lord's."

"Yes, I know, I know. But it's hard, it's hard. O my girl, my girl!"

Tears overran his cheeks. He sat down on a log, burying his face in his hands.

"O God, help and sustain me in this my hour of need."

I was at a loss how to comfort him, and it was while I was waiting there that suddenly we saw the Halfbreed coming up the trail.

"Better come in, Jim," I said, "and hear what he's got to say."



CHAPTER XVI

We made McCrimmon comfortable. We kept no whisky in the cabin, but we gave him some hot coffee, which he drank with great satisfaction. Then he twisted a cigarette, lit it, and looked at us keenly. On his brown, flattish face were remarkable the impassivity of the Indian and the astuteness of the Scot. We were regarding him curiously. Jim had regained his calm, and was quietly watchful. The Prodigal seemed to have his ears cocked to listen. There was a feeling amongst us as if we had reached a crisis in our fortunes.

The Halfbreed lost no time in coming to the point.

"I like you boys. You're square and above-board. You're workers, and you don't drink—that's the main thing.

"Well, to get right down to cases. I'm a bit of a mining man. I've mined at Cassiar and Caribou, and I know something of the business. Now I've got next to a good thing.—I don't know how good yet, but I'll swear to you it's a tidy bit. There may be only ten thousand in it, and there may be one hundred and ten. It's a gambling proposition, and I want pardners, pardners that'll work like blazes and keep their faces shut. Are you on?"

"That's got us kodaked," said the Prodigal. "We're that sort, and if the proposition looks good to us we're with you. Anyway, we're clams at keeping our food-traps tight."

"All right; listen. You know the Arctic Transportation Co. have claims on upper Bonanza—well, a month back I was working for them. We were down about twenty feet and were drifting in. They set me to work in the drift. The roof kept sloughing in on me, and it was mighty dangerous. So far we hadn't got pay-dirt, but their mining manager wanted us to drift in a little further. If we didn't strike good pay in a few more feet we were to quit.

"Well, one morning I went down and cleaned away the ash of my fire. The first stroke of my pick on the thawed face made me jump, stare, stand stock-still, thinking hard. For there, right in the hole I had made, was the richest pocket I ever seen."

"You don't say! Are you sure?"

"Why, boys, as I'm alive there was nuggets in it as thick as raisins in a Christmas plum-duff. I could see the yellow gleam where the pick had grazed them, and the longer I looked the more could I see."

"Good Lord! What did you do?"

"What did I do! I just stepped back and picked at the roof for all I was worth. A big bunch of muck came down, covering up the face. Then, like a crazy man, I picked wherever the dirt seemed loose all the way down the drift. Great heaps of dirt caved in on me. I was stunned, nearly buried, but I did the trick. There were tons of dirt between me and my find."