Good Luck Row was a little row of
small, insignificant cabins towards the back of the
city, and at right angles to the direction of the main
street. Dawson faces the Yukon, and its main thoroughfare
lies parallel with the river. In the summer,
when the Yukon and the Klondike, that joins it just
above, are free, the waters of the two rivers united
come rolling by in jubilant majesty, tossing loose
blocks of ice, the remnants of their winter chains,
on their swelling tide. They form a little eddy
in front of the city, and their waters roll outward
and swirl back again to their course, as if the great
stream made a bow to the city front as it swept past.
Here in the summer, with the steamboats ploughing
through the rocking green water, and the sun streaming
down upon the banks crowded with active human beings,
glinting on the gay signs of the saloons and the white
and green painted doors of the warehouses, with the
brilliant azure sky stretched above, and far off the
tall green larches piercing it with their slender tops,-in
the summer this main street is a pleasant, cheerful
sight; but now, with the river solid and silent, the
banks black and frozen, and the bleak, bitter sky
above, it looked more desolate than the inner streets
of the town, more uninviting than Good Luck Row, which
had little cabins on each side, and where the inhabitants
overlooked their opposite neighbours’ firelit
interior instead of the frozen river. The side-walks
of the row were like the other side-walks of the city,
a wealth of soft mud and slush and dirt through the
warm weather, and now frozen hard into uneven lumps,
big depressions, and rough hummocks. The cabins
were uniform in size, small, with one fair-sized window
in the front, beside the door, which opened straight
into the main room, where the front window was.
At the back there was another smaller room with a tiny
window, looking out over a black barren ice-field,
for Good Luck Row was on the edge of the town.
Katrine lived at N. This
cabin had been the last to be occupied on account
of its unlucky number, but Katrine only laughed at
it, and painted it very large in white paint upon
the door. Here Katrine lived alone, though her
father, the little stunted Pole who kept the “Pistol
Shot,” was one of the richest men in the city.
And because she lived alone some of
her neighbours declared she was not respectable.
As a matter of fact, she was more respectable than
many of the married women living in the row, and Katrine
knew many a story with which she could have startled
an unsuspecting husband when he came into town after
a week or two’s absence prospecting or at work
on the claims; but she did not trouble about other
people’s affairs; she gave her friendship to
those who sought it, and heeded not at all those who
condemned her.
On an afternoon about three weeks
after her first meeting with Stephen, Katrine stood
in front of her little glass in the corner of her cabin,
smoothing her short glossy hair; when this was flattened
with mathematical exactness to her well-shaped head-for
Katrine was always trim and neat in her appearance-she
turned to the table and wrote on a slip of paper,
“I’m next door;” this she pinned
to the outside of her door, and then locking it went
into the next cabin in the row. She had grown
quite accustomed to Stephen’s visits now, and
generally left a note on her door when she went out,
in case he should come unexpectedly in her absence.
The cabin she entered presented a different appearance
from her own. There was the same large stove opposite
the door, the same rough table in the centre and wooden
chairs round, but the floor was dirty and gritty,
quite unlike Katrine’s, which always maintained
a white and floury look from her constant attentions,
and the stove looked rusty and uncleaned. The
small square panes of the window, too, hardly let
in any light, they were so obscured by dust inside
and snow frozen on to them without. By the stove
sat a young woman, in whose face ill-health and beauty
struggled together for predominance. Her hair,
twisted into a loose knot at the back of her head,
was of the lightest gold colour, like a young child’s,
and her face brought to one’s mind the idea
of milk and violets, the skin was so white and smooth
and the eyes so blue. This was the beauty which
no disease could kill, but ill-health triumphed in
the livid circles round the eyes, the drawn lines
round the faded lips. Katrine entered with her
brightest smile.
“Well, Annie, are you better to-day?”
she asked.
The woman rose with an unsteady movement
from the chair, and before she could answer burst
suddenly into a rain of tears. “Better?
Oh, Katie, I shall never be any better! But I
wish I could go home to die!”
Katrine advanced and put her arms
round her, drawing the frail attenuated form close
against her own warm vigorous frame.
“What nonsense!” she said
gently. “You are not going to die at home
or anywhere yet. Why, Will is going to make a
big strike, and take you home to live in style all
the rest of your life.”
“No,” sobbed the girl,-for
she was no more than a girl in age,-falling
back in her chair again. “No, it won’t
come in time for me.”
“Where is Will?” asked Katrine, looking
round.
“He’s just got a job up
at the west gulch on Mr. Stephen Wood’s claim,”
returned the other. “Oh, I am that thankful
he’s found some one to employ him at last.”
“Yes, it’s delightful,”
returned Katrine, absently, as she sat down on the
other side of the rusty stove and looked round the
dirty, cheerless room. It was due to her urgent
pleading with Stephen that Will had obtained the place
on the claim, but his wife did not seem to know, and
Katrine did not tell her.
“But then it don’t lead
to nothing,” continued Annie, despairingly.
“He can’t look out for himself if he’s
working another man’s ground.”
“Well, he only does a few hours’
work, I believe, and has the rest of the day to look
round for himself,” returned Katrine.
“It don’t amount to much,
anyway; this time of the year there ain’t no
day to speak of,” replied the other, gazing plaintively
through the dim glass of the window. “And
then if he do see a bit of land he fancies, why, he
can’t buy it, he’s got no money.”
“I think Mr. Wood will advance
him enough to buy any ground he thinks well of,”
replied Katrine, gently.
“Mr. Wood!” repeated Annie,
opening her sunken eyes wide with the first display
of interest she had shown. “Why should he
help my man along?”
“I don’t know,”
returned Katrine, evasively, with heightened colour;
“but he told me he would do so, and I know he
will. How is Tim to-day?” she added suddenly,
to divert the conversation.
The mother looked round.
“Tim!” she called; “where
is that child? Katie, you go and look if you
can see him in the wood-shed.”
Katrine crossed the room to the lean-to
attached to the cabin and looked in. On the floor
of the wood-shed, with the happy indifference to the
cold usually displayed by Klondike infants, little
Tim sat on the floor with a pile of chips beside him.
Great icicles hung from the rafters above him, and
his tiny hands were blue with cold, but he was contentedly
and silently piling up the wood on the frozen ground.
Katrine picked him up and carried him into the next
room, and put him by the fire at his mother’s
feet. He did not cry nor offer any resistance,
but when put in his new location looked round for a
few minutes, and then calmly leaned towards the stove
and began to play with the cinders in place of his
vanished wood chips.
“What a good little fellow he
is!” said Katrine, leaning over him.
“Yes; he’s his mother’s
darling, that’s what he is!” returned the
other, stooping to smooth the curly head that was
only a shade lighter than her own.
“Will you have some coffee?”
asked Annie presently, looking helplessly towards
the dirty stove, where a feeble fire was burning sulkily
amongst the old wood ash.
“No,” returned Katrine,
cheerfully; “you must be getting tired of coffee.
I brought you some tea for a change,” and she
extracted a neat little packet from one of her pockets.
“May I do up the fire and make some for you?”
“Why, it will make you so dirty;
that stove is in an awful state,” replied Annie,
looking over the other’s neat dress and figure
dubiously.
“I don’t mind that.
Pick up the baby,” Katrine answered, rolling
up her sleeves and displaying two rounded muscular
arms white as the snow outside. “You’d
better move farther out of the dust,” she added,
going down on her knees before the stove. Annie
picked up the child and retreated to a chair by the
window, from where she watched the other with a sort
of helpless envy.
“Lord! I’ve grown
that weak lately I can’t do nothing,” she
said after a minute. “You know how nice
I used to keep the place for Will when we first came.”
Katrine nodded in silence, and two
bright tears fell amongst the wood ash she was taking
from the stove. She did remember the bright, active
young wife, the united little family moving into the
cabin next her only a year ago; she remembered the
interior that had always been so neat and clean and
cheerful to receive Will when he came home, the unceasing
devotion of his wife, and the mutual love and hope
that had buoyed them up and made them face all hardships
smilingly. Then she had watched sorrowfully the
gradual deterioration of the man under the constant
disappointment; she had met him more and more frequently
in the saloons, less and less at his home. She
had seen day by day the rapid decline of the bright,
beautiful young creature he had brought with him into
this poor faded wraith dragging herself about in the
neglected, cheerless cabin.
“You’ll get stronger again
in the warm weather,” she said after a minute,
when her voice was steady.
“You wouldn’t say that
if you’d seen what I saw on the snow this morning
when I’d been coughing there back of the wood-shed,”
returned Annie, drearily leaning her tired head against
the dingy pane.
“What do you mean?” asked
Katrine, looking up apprehensively. “Blood?”
The other nodded in silence, and there
was quiet in the cabin except for the crooning of
the child. Then Katrine rose from the hearth impulsively
with a flushed, lovely face and the ash dust on her
hair and dress. She went over to Annie and drew
her head on to her strong, warm bosom.
“Oh, you poor, poor thing!
What can we do?” she said desperately.
“Nothing,” murmured Annie,
closing her eyes in the girl’s soothing embrace,
“unless you could persuade Will to take me home,
and nobody could do that now, he’s so set upon
the gold. That’s the second bleeding from
the chest that I’ve had this month; now the third’ll
do for me.”
She shivered as if from cold, and
Katrine kissed her and hastened back to her work at
the fire. It is not a pleasant nor an easy thing
to do to clean out a stove that has been left to itself
for a week or more and fresh fires kindled on the
old ashes every day, but in a few minutes Katrine
had the work completed and the fresh wood crackling
and filling the stove with red flame. Then she
made the tea rapidly, and neither of them spoke again
till Annie held a great tin mug of it to her white
lips. Katrine pulled her chair close to the stove
again, and took Tim on her own lap, where he found
a new toy in her cartridge belt. Annie sipped
from her mug and gazed absently into the flames.
“Lord, we were so happy,”
she said musingly, a little colour coming into her
face under the influence of the hot tea and the warmth
from the re-invigorated fire. “We had the
nicest little home down in Brixham. I daresay
you don’t know where that is?” Katrine
shook her head. “It’s just the prettiest,
sweetest village in the world, down in Devonshire;
and we had a cottage there, quite in the country, with
pink roses all over the front,-I can smell
those roses now. Oh, it was lovely; and Will
had regular work all the time, and he was the best
husband woman ever had. He used to bring his
wages in Saturdays, and say to me, ’Annie, old
girl, ain’t there enough there to get you a new
ribbon for Sunday or a fresh sash for the baby?’
He never spent a penny for drink nor tobacco.
And Sunday we’d go out on the downs and stand
looking at the sea; it do come in so splendid there,
and the wind from it seems to put new life in yer.
We was as happy and as well as could be, all of us;
and then them newspapers got to printing all those
tales of the gold in the Klondike, and Will he just
got mad like, and nothing would do but he must sell
the house and come out here. He thought he’d
come back so rich; well, so he may, but he won’t
have no wife to go back with.”
She lay back in her chair, and Katrine,
gazing at her white face and transparent hands, said
nothing.
“I’m glad I stuck to Will,
though,” the woman went on softly after a minute,
“and didn’t let him come out here alone.
A wife’s place is by her husband wherever he
goes, and I’d rather die with him than be separated.
But there, I do hate the name of gold. It broke
up our home, it’s broke up our lives, and it’s
just killed me, that’s what it’s done.
And what’s the good of it? Why, as I said
to Will before we came, ’We can’t be no
more than happy, and we’re that now.’”
Katrine said nothing. She was
one of those women who in society would have gained
the name of a good conversationalist, for she always
listened attentively and spoke hardly at all.
It grew rapidly darker outside and
began to snow a little, the peculiar sharp, small
snow of Alaska. The two women could hardly see
each other’s faces in the gloom, when Katrine
rose and offered to light the lamp.
“There ain’t no oil left,”
returned Annie, drearily. “I just sit in
the dark most of the time; I don’t mind as long
as I have a bit of fire. It do seem more lonesome
though when you’ve no light,” she added
with a sigh.
“Haven’t you any money to buy it with?”
Annie shook her head. “Not till Will comes
back.”
“Well, here’s enough to
keep you in oil for the next three months,” said
Katrine, taking a little object from her belt which
looked like a well-filled tobacco pouch and putting
it on the shelf above her head.
“What’s that? dust?”
said Annie. “Where-ever do you get so much
money?” she added, staring at her.
“I won that last night,”
returned Katrine, lightly. “I do have such
luck. I wish you could come, Annie, and see the
fun we have down town of a night, instead of moping
up here; and I do have such luck,” she repeated
again with a half sigh. “I don’t know
what I’d do if it should change. I’d
have to be bar-keep for a living, I suppose. Think
I’d make a good bar-keep?” she said, getting
up and stretching her arms above her head. All
her full lissom figure was revealed to advantage by
the attitude, and the firelight fell softly on the
gay, bewitching face, slanted over to one shoulder
as she put the question.
“I do that,” replied Annie,
with emphasis. “Your bar would always be
crammed by all the chaps in the place, my dear.”
Katrine laughed. “I’m
glad you think so. I’ll bring you some of
my oil to burn for to-night, and then I must be off
earning my living.”
She went into her own cabin and brought
back a can of oil with her, trimmed and cleaned and
lit Annie’s lamp, and then with a kiss bade her
good-bye till next day, and took her way down to the
main street. She had only a little dust in her
belt, just enough to start playing with, and if luck
should go against her she would have to return empty
handed; but then she always trusted to luck, and it
had never forsaken her. Her mode of life, precarious
and uncertain, dangerous and unsatisfactory as it
might seem to an onlooker, never troubled her.
She was in that state of glorious physical health
and strength which lends an unlimited confidence to
the mind, a sense of being able to cope with any difficulty
which might suddenly present itself, when every present
or possible trouble looks small, and when mere life
itself, the mere sensation of the blood being warm
in one’s veins, is a joy. She loved the
excitement, even the uncertainty of her life, and she
had more friends in the town than she could count,
who would be glad to lend her all she needed if her
luck failed.
That night, when Katrine lay fast
asleep in her small inner room, her curly head tucked
down comfortably under the rugs, she dreamed she heard
a knocking on her door. The sound seemed faint
at first, but grew louder, and after a minute she
woke up, lifted her head, and listened. Yes,
there was a tapping on her door, she heard it quite
distinctly. She got up immediately, slipped into
her fur coat and boots, and taking one of her pistols
in her hand, went to the door. That there was
danger in answering such a summons at such an hour
she knew quite well, but that did not hinder her.
She was accustomed to live with her life in her hand,
and she felt instinctively confident of being able
so to hold it, and meant to keep a tight grip on it.
When she opened the door it was to a vivid moonlight,
clear and brighter than day; the whole white world
was shining under it.
“Annie!” she exclaimed
as her eyes fell on the slight, feeble figure muffled
in a blanket that stood on her steps. “What
is the matter? Come in,” and she put the
door wide open and stood back for her to pass.
“Oh, Katie,” she said,
seizing the other’s hands when they stood inside
the room, “forgive me for waking you, but I want
Will. I feel I’m going to die to-night,
and I can’t without him-I can’t,”
and she burst into a flood of tears broken by short
sobbing coughs. She had slipped to her knees
and was holding Katrine’s hands in a feverish
clutch. The blanket had fallen from her head
and shoulders, and showed to Katrine that she was
still in her day dress; it did not seem as if she had
been to bed at all. There was a dark, half-dried
stain upon the front of her bodice.
“I’m dying! Oh, Katie,
it’s so dreadful all alone there. Will you
go and bring Will to me? Oh, do.”
Katrine looked down upon her as she
tried to raise her to her feet. The fire was
still burning brightly and filled the room with light.
Many people older than Katrine would have laughed
at the woman’s statement in face of her ability
to come to them and make it, but Katrine’s keen
perceptions read much, too much, in the bright glazed
eyes that looked up at her, in the hoarse grating
tones that came from the sunken chest, and the feverish
grasp of those burning fingers. She stooped down
and put her arms round the kneeling figure and drew
her up.
“Why, of course I will.
I will bring him to you. But you are only ill,
dear; you’re not dying.”
“Oh, I may not, I know; but
if I should, and he not here! Katie, can you
go now?-it’s so late, and so cold,
and so far. I don’t see how you can.”
“He’s working up on Mr.
Wood’s claim at the west gulch. I suppose
if I go to Mr. Wood’s cabin he can tell me where
to find Will.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” returned
Annie, eagerly, a crimson flush now lighting up each
cheek; “go straight to Mr. Wood and ask him for
Will. One of Will’s ponies is down here,
back of our house; you can take him and ride up.
Oh, it may kill you to go; I ought not to ask it.
Oh, what shall I do?”
Katrine laughed. “Kill
me!” she said. “It would take more
to kill me than that, I think. I shall be up
there and Will down here before you know where you
are. Now you’ve just got to drink this brandy
while I go and get some things on. You’re
just fretting for Will, that’s what is the matter
with you. I believe you will feel all right when
you see him again.”
She put the trembling woman into a
chair, and went back to her room to put her clothes
on. She noticed that her boots, which had been
damp the night before, had frozen to the ground, and
she had to break them from it by force.
“I shall be lucky if I get back
with my feet unfrozen,” she thought to herself,
looking regretfully at the warm bed she had left; but
it never once, even remotely, occurred to her to refuse
the unwelcome mission. She put on all her thickest
garments, buckled her pistols on her hip, and went
back to Annie, who was crouching over the fire in the
next room.
“I had better take the pony,”
she said; “he’ll get me there and back
quicker than I can walk, if you think the little animal
is up to it.”
Annie nodded. “He’s
well fed,” she said, “and has had nothing
to do since Will’s been gone.”
Katrine shut the stove up, and the
two women went out together.
It was a still dead cold without,
the sort of night on which your limbs might freeze
beyond recovery, and without your knowing it, so insidious
and so little aggressive was the cold.
“You go in and keep warm,”
said Katrine; “I’ll find the pony and manage
him,” and she pushed Annie gently within her
own door, and went round to the shed at the back of
the cabin where the pony was. Her hands in that
short time had grown so stiff with cold she could hardly
put the saddle on and fasten the girth and straps.
The pony knew her, and pricked his ears and snorted
while she was getting him ready; he had been idle in
his stable two days, and by this time was willing to
welcome any change in the monotony of life. When
she had adjusted everything carefully by the light
of the strong moon falling through the little window,
she threw herself cross leg upon his back and rode
him out of the shed. Annie had her face pressed
eagerly against the back window of her cabin, watching
for her to appear. Katrine smiled at her, lifted
her fur cap above her head for an instant as a man
would do, and then the next moment was cantering away
over the snowy waste that stretched behind Good Luck
Row. She went at a good pace, urged on by that
last glimpse of the pale face, with the terrible look
of haunted fear on it, pressed to the window.
The temperature was very low, but
the absence of wind and dampness in the air made the
cold bearable. Katrine, haunted by the fear of
frostbite, kept pinching her nose and pulling her ears
and banging her feet against the pony’s side
to keep the blood stirring in them. Inside the
first half-hour she was away some distance from the
lights of Dawson, and nothing but great snowy stretches
lay around her.
That night up at the west gulch it
happened that neither Stephen nor Talbot had gone
to bed. There is little to choose between night
and day there, since half of the day hours are dark
as the blackest night, and a man can sleep in them
as profitably or more so than in the moonlit hours
of the night. Three o’clock in the morning
had come, and the two men were still sitting talking
on each side of the stove, with an opened whisky bottle
on the table between them, in Stephen’s cabin,
when the dull sound of a horse’s footfall broke
the blank silence of the gulch. Both sprang to
their feet on the instant, and Talbot drew his pistol
from his belt and stood listening with it in his hand.
“I always said we oughtn’t
to keep our gold up here,” said Stephen, and
his face whitened.
Talbot held up his hand to enjoin
silence, and they waited while the sound of hoofs
moving slowly over the treacherous and uneven soil
came nearer. Then there was a pause, which seemed
to the men inside endless. Then two distinct
taps at the door. Talbot, who was nearer it, made
a forward movement, but Stephen caught his arm.
“What are you going to do?” he whispered.
“Open it and fire,” returned
Talbot, laconically, and he pushed back the latch
and raised his revolver as he opened the door.
Stephen was close behind him, and
Talbot almost stepped upon him as he drew back with
astonishment the next instant. Katrine jumped
from the pony’s back and stepped over the threshold
without invitation.
“How lucky I am to find you
up!” she exclaimed, and then seeing Talbot’s
hastily lowered revolver in his right hand she burst
out laughing. “So you were going to shoot,
were you?” she said, drawing out her own.
“Well, I was quite ready; I have been all the
ride. I am sorry I frightened you.”
“Frightened us!” repeated
the two men in a breath, with an indignant glance.
“Oh no, of course I didn’t
mean that,” rejoined Katrine, laughing.
“Disturbed you, I should say. Oh, Stephen,
give me some of that whisky; I am almost dead with
cold.”
Her face did indeed look frozen white
with cold under her fur cap, and her dark eyes shone
in it with a liquid splendour that made Stephen’s
heart beat tumultuously against his side. He poured
out some of the spirit for her and pushed her gently
into a chair, commencing to pull off her thick gloves
for her.
“I want Will Johnson,”
she said, with her customary directness. “Stephen,
I’ve come up to fetch him. He’s one
of your men. Tell me where I can find him.”
“What do you want with him at
this time of night?” questioned Stephen, while
Talbot silently extracted a plate of bread and bacon
from the cupboard and put it on the table at her elbow.
“I don’t want him for
myself,” she answered mischievously. “His
wife has sent me up to find him; she thinks she is
dying, and wants to see him to-night. Where can
I find him?”
“His cabin is a little higher
up the gulch, but you mustn’t go there; I will
go after him,” said Stephen hastily.
“I don’t know,”
replied Katrine; “I’d better ride up there
and then take him on home with me, hadn’t I?”
“Ride back again to-night!”
exclaimed Stephen. “What madness! It
was bad enough to make the ride once. She mustn’t
think of it, must she, Talbot?” and he turned
to his friend for corroboration.
“Certainly not, I should say,”
returned Talbot, in his quiet but final way.
“I will ride up to Johnson’s place and
send him down home, and you can make Katrine comfortable
here.”
The girl sprang to her feet.
“Why, what an idea!” she
said, with a flush on her pale cheeks. “I
only came to you to find Will. Of course I can’t
stay here all night.”
“Your mission will be accomplished,
won’t it, if Will goes to his wife?” returned
Talbot quietly. “There is no need to risk
your life again. There is no good in it; besides,
it will save time if you let Will have the pony at
once to take him back. You can have one of ours
in the morning.”
She looked up at him. She admired
Talbot exceedingly. His voice was so invariably
gentle and quiet, so different from all the voices
that she heard round her daily. Stephen’s,
though his resembled it, had not the same curious
accent of refinement. His manner, too, had the
same extreme gentleness; and yet beneath this apparent
softness she knew there existed a courage that equalled
any in the whole camp. He looked very handsome
too, she thought, at this moment, as she met a soft
smile in his eyes, and her tones were more hesitating
as she repeated-
“I think I ought to return.”
“Well, I’m going to despatch
Will for you,” replied Talbot, turning away.
“I leave it to you, Stephen, to persuade her
to stay,” and he walked out. A second later
they heard the pony’s hoofs going up the narrow
trail past the cabin.
“You can have my room; I’ll
sleep here on the floor,” remarked Stephen.
The girl got up.
“No,” she said in her
most decided tone. “I’ll stay if you
let me sleep here on the floor, or I’ll go home.
Turn you out of your own comfortable bed I will not.”
“Go home you can’t,”
said Stephen in an equally decided tone, “so
I’ll make you up a bed here just in front of
the stove.”
He went into the next room, and Katrine,
left alone, drank up her whisky and gazed round the
cabin. It was not at all an interesting interior,
and had not the faint suggestions of artistic taste
that redeemed Talbot’s. A few prints were
on the walls, seemingly cut from illustrated papers
and principally consisting of views of cathedrals and
school buildings, which Katrine’s eyes wandered
over without interest. At the farthest end from
her there were some stout shelves nailed against the
wall, and on these rested a row of flat tin pans; between
the pans were pushed one or two books, and she recognised
amongst them his Greek testament. She rose and
strolled over to the shelf, and standing on tiptoe
looked into the pans. As she thought, they contained
thin layers of gold dust. She was standing there
looking into them when Stephen returned and came up
behind her.
“They look fine, don’t
they?” he said. “That’s a thirty
dollar pan.”
Katrine turned, and looking up was
startled by the eager light in his face and the greed
written in every line of it. For herself, reckless,
happy-go-lucky gambler that she was by nature, gold
had little value for her except to toss by the handful
on the tables to buy half-an-hour’s excitement.
With a sudden movement she seized the fullest pan by
the rim in one hand and the Greek testament beside
it in the other, and danced away from him to the other
side of the room. Stephen turned with an involuntary
cry, and followed her with anxious eyes.
“Now which would you rather lose?” she
said, laughing.
His eyes were fixed upon the pan,
which was heavy and as much as she could support with
one hand. He dreaded each minute to see it tip
up and its golden treasure pour out on the floor.
“Oh, I don’t know.
Don’t be foolish,” he said in a vexed tone.
Katrine sidled up to the window.
“Answer, or I’ll-”
Stephen turned white. He felt
she was capable of doing any mad thing when he met
those mocking, sparkling eyes.
“Oh-I-I-would
rather lose the book,” he stammered, in an agony
to see the gold safely put back. “I could
replace that, you know.”
Katrine advanced to him, balancing
the pan as if weighing it.
“Stephen, this is very heavy,”
she said, looking him straight in the eyes.
“Let me take it from you,”
he said, eagerly stretching out his hands.
“Do you know what makes it so?”
she said, still balancing it and still looking at
him. “Your soul is in it!” and she
gave it back to him.
Stephen reddened angrily, and took
both the book and the gold from her and replaced them
sulkily on the shelf. Katrine had turned her back
and walked over to the fire, humming.
“What a royal couch you’ve
made me!” she remarked, breaking the awkward
silence that followed, and looking down on the pile
of red blankets he had spread in front of the stove.
He had, in fact, stripped his own
bed and collected blankets from every corner to make
a comfortable resting-place for her. Before Stephen
could answer he was summoned to the door. Talbot
looked in upon them, but would not come inside.
“I’ve sent Will off,”
he said; “he swore like anything, but he is gone.
No, thanks, Steve, I won’t come in. I’m
tired, and going to my own cabin now. See you
at breakfast. Good-night,” and before Katrine
could thank him he was gone.
The two thus left entirely alone in
the deep quiet of the gulch to pass the night together
looked at each other for a moment with a shade of
silent embarrassment. But the girl, accustomed
as she was to take care of herself in all sorts of
situations and surroundings, and endued with a certain
fierce chastity of nature, recovered herself instantly
and spoke quite naturally.
“I feel tired too, and would
like to go to sleep now, if I may.”
“Certainly,” said Stephen.
“You have this room to yourself. The stove
will burn till daylight, and you have the whisky if
you feel cold in the night. Good-night.”
His tone was very formal, for he would
so much have liked it to be otherwise, and without
looking at her he took a match from his pocket and
went into the other room, shutting the door after him.
The girl waited a moment, then she shut the door of
the stove and threw herself down on the soft pile
of blankets, and drawing one of them over her to her
ears, drew a deep, contented sigh, and was peacefully
asleep in a few seconds.
The next morning Stephen rose stiff
and cramped from his denuded bed. When he was
completely dressed he silently opened his door and
crept noiselessly into the adjoining room. The
girl was not yet awake, and he stole softly over to
the bed on the hearth and looked down at her.
She lay warm and sleeping comfortably amongst the
blankets. She was fully dressed, just as she
had been the previous evening, except that two or
three buttons were unfastened at the collar of her
dress, and allowed the solid white neck to show beneath
the rounded chin. The little head, with its mass
of dark silky curls, lay inclined towards the stove,
and the curled rosy lips had a softer smile than they
generally wore in the daytime. Stephen leaned
over her, entranced and breathless. As his eyes
followed the dark arch of the eyebrows, the sweet delicate
contour of the cheek, he forgot the horror he felt
of her sometimes in her waking moments, forgot the
hideous background of the saloons, forgot all the
evil there might be in her, and bowed before that supreme
power that human beauty has over us; he worshipped
her as he had never worshipped his God. For a
few seconds it was enough for him to gaze on her, then
came an overwhelming impulse to stoop and kiss the
soft youthful lips, to touch them even if ever so
lightly. If he could without awakening her!
But no, she was his guest, under his roof and protection.
All that was best in his nature rose and held him
motionless like a hand of iron. After a few seconds
Katrine stirred, and Stephen, feeling she was about
to awake, would have moved away, but his eyes seemed
fixed and as impossible to remove from her face as
one’s hands are from an electric battery.
The next minute her lids were lifted, and her eyes,
two wells of living light, flashed up at him.
“Good-morning,” she said,
sitting up. “How dreadfully pale you look,
Stephen! What is the matter?”
“Do I?” he answered, with
a forced laugh, feeling the blood, which had seemed
to rest suspended in his veins for those few seconds,
rush to his heart again in great waves.
“You do indeed,” she said,
getting up. “I expect you want your breakfast.
Tell me what I can do to make myself useful.”
She shook her hair straight, fastened
the collar of her bodice, and, was dressed. She
needed no toilet apparently, but looked as clean and
fresh as a rose waking up in its garden.
“Nothing,” returned Stephen
hastily. “Go over and tell Talbot to come
in to breakfast, if you like; I’ll have it ready
when you come back.”
Katrine looked round regretfully,
as if she would have liked to stay and help him; then
concluding she had better do as she was told, she took
up her fur cap and went out.
The west gulch looks magnificent in
the first early light, with all degrees of shadows,
some black, some dusky, some the clearest grey, lingering
in its snowy recesses, and the first glimpse of gold
falling down it from the east. Katrine stopped
and gazed up at the impressive beauty above and around
her: trees in the gulch, now covered with a thick
snowy mantle, stood assuming all sorts of grotesque
forms, and extending their arms as if calling the
spectator to their cold embrace. It was beautiful,
but to Katrine it seemed so silent, so overawing, and
so death-like, that she shivered as she looked up and
down from the flat plateau where she stood, and hurried
on the few necessary yards to Talbot’s cabin.
When they came back together they
found Stephen had all in readiness, the fire blazing
on the hearth and the breakfast waiting on the table.
He made Katrine sit at the head and pour out the coffee
for them, which she did with pleased, smiling eyes.
Talbot said good-bye to her and went out to his claim
immediately it was over, and Katrine and Stephen were
left alone. He said he would go and get a pony
for her and Katrine rose, but then Stephen hesitated
and did not go after all. He turned to her instead,
and came back from the door to where she was standing.
“Will you listen to something
I want to say to you?” he said, his heart beating
wildly.
“Why, certainly I will,”
the girl answered simply, and she sat down in the
chair behind her and folded her hands. Then she
looked up inquiringly, waiting for him to begin, but
Stephen’s voice was dried up in his throat.
He stood in front of her, one damp hand nervously
clasping the back of a chair, unable to articulate
a word. Confusion and excitement overwhelmed
him, and he stood turning paler and paler, staring
at the proud, handsome face framed in the living yellow
sunshine before him. At last he felt he could
not even stand, and he turned away with a groan and
sank down on the nearest chair with his face in his
hands. Katrine, who had been watching him anxiously
for the last few seconds, sprang up and went over
to him.
“What is the matter?”
she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. “Are
you ill?”
“No, oh no,” said Stephen,
catching the little hand in both of his. “No,
I want to tell you I love you. Do you care for
me? Will you marry me right away, and come up
and live here with me?”
His voice had come back to him all
right now, and he turned and gazed eagerly up at her.
Katrine did not answer immediately,
but she did not withdraw her hand that he was pressing
hotly between his own, and a faint smile that came
over her face showed she was not displeased; and here
Stephen missed his cue-he should have taken
the hesitating figure into his arms and kissed the
undecided lips. In the sudden awakening of womanly
feeling, in the momentary excitement, in the glimpse
into passion, Katrine would have consented, welcoming
as her nature did any new emotion; but Stephen was
embarrassed and afraid. Fear and uncertainty held
him back, the kiss burned ungiven on his own lips,
and Katrine uninfluenced by passion could think clearly.
What! come up here and live in this
deathly quiet, away from even such amusement as the
camp offered? Submit to all his tiresome religious
conversations, and, above all, give up those feverish
nights of excitement? the hazard and the stimulus
of the long tables and the little heaps of gold dust?
and her free life, her incomings and outgoings, with
no one to question her? No, it was an impossibility.
The next thing Stephen knew was that
she was smiling and looking down into his eyes, shaking
her head.
“No, Stephen, I can’t
do that. I like you awfully, and should like you
to come and see me; but I wouldn’t do for your
wife at all, and if you knew all about me you wouldn’t
want it either.”
Stephen clung fast to her hand.
“What is it that I don’t
know?” he said desperately, putting, as people
always do, the worst construction he could upon her
words, and at the same time feeling he would forgive
her everything, and in a sort of background in his
brain contemplating the figure of the forgiven Magdalen
at the feet of Christ.
Katrine dragged her hand away suddenly.
She was not going to tell him she was a gambler and
devoted to the excitement of the tables. She knew
that if she did their pleasant talks in the evenings
would be at an end. He could never come to see
her without thinking it his duty to try to reform
her; and as she knew she was not going to reform, what
would be the good of it?
“What does it matter to you?
I am not your wife, and am not going to be; I am an
acquaintance. If you like me as I am, very good;
if you don’t, no one cares.”
Stephen got up and faced her.
He was as white as the snow outside.
“You make me think the worst
by refusing to confide in me.”
Katrine laughed contemptuously.
“I don’t care a curse
what you think! Haven’t I just told you
so? Great heavens,” she added, with a burst
of conviction, “it would never do for us to
marry! Never! Your one idea is to curtail
a person’s liberty.”
“No,” answered Stephen
quietly, “not liberty in a general way; only
the liberty to sin and do evil, the liberty to be
ignorant and do things which have terrible consequences
that you don’t know.”
He looked very well at this moment,
his pale ascetic face and sympathetic eyes lighted
up with enthusiasm. Katrine looked at him and
then smiled with her quick, impulsive smile.
“Stephen, you are a good man,
and perfectly charming at times; but I am not a good
woman, and don’t want to be, and we should never
get on. So don’t let’s bother any
more about this question at all.”
An exceedingly pained expression came
over Stephen’s face, and Katrine was quick enough
to feel that from her words he judged her errors to
be other than they were. In a few words she might
have cleared his mind from the idea of her actual
immorality, but she was too proud to stand upon her
own defence before him; besides, if her faults were
not of that class, he would want to know what they
were, and in his eyes a girl that gambled and drank
and swore, and preferred the dance halls and variety
shows to the mission church any day, was quite bad
enough; so she concluded in her thoughts, “It
doesn’t matter if he is mixed.”
Stephen at the moment was afraid to
press her further, and did not know quite how to treat
her; but he was not wholly discouraged, and he thought
it best to retain the ground he already had.
“Well, I shall be in town in
a few days,” he said, “and I shall come
to see you as usual, mayn’t I?”
“Of course,” returned
Katrine, and they did not speak again till they were
outside and she was mounted at the head of the trail.
What a morning it was! The crisp
air was like a bath of sparkling sunlight; the untrodden
snow glittered everywhere. Far above the trail
a ridge of dark green pine broke against the pale
azure of the sky. Stephen leaned against the
pony’s side and gazed into the warm, lustrous
eyes.
“Good-bye, my darling-my own darling
perhaps some day.”
“I don’t think so,”
she answered, with a mischievous smile, and set the
pony at a trot down the trail.
She had to pass Talbot’s cabin
on her way back, and as she approached she saw him
a little way up the creek surrounded by his men.
She reined in her horse to a walk as she passed, and
contemplated him. His figure always pleased and
arrested her eyes-it had a certain height
and strength and grace that marked it out distinctly
from others; and then what an advantage it was, she
thought, he had no religion and believed in none of
those things, and, in short, was quite as bad or worse
than she herself was. She walked her horse on
slowly, thinking. Somehow it seemed to her that
life in his cabin would be far more piquant and amusing
than in Stephen’s. Yet he neither drank
nor gambled, and as for the dance halls and theatre,-well,
he had told her he liked dancing; and what a waltz
that had been they had had together! But life
with Stephen! He would be too good for her, and
too stupid. She had a vague sense that what she
lived for, excitement, he condemned in all its forms.
Just what she cared for in drink, in play, in the dance,
the electric pleasure of them, was just what he shrank
from as a wile of the Evil One. Even the religious
services of the High Church he condemned for the same
reason. No, it would never do; life with him would
be as cold as the snow around her. She was glad
that her answer had been as it had. There was
a level place in the trail here, and she put the horse
to a gallop, and so came into town with her cheeks
stung into rich crimson by the keen air, and her spirits
exhilarated and ready for any mischief going.
She went at once to N in the
row, and found Will sitting by his wife’s bedside
like a model husband. The girl was lying down,
her weak white hand clasped in and nearly hidden by
the swollen, rough red hand of the miner. She
gave a little cry as Katrine entered, and buried her
head under the blanket.
“You are not angry with me for
sending you up when it wasn’t really necessary?”
came a smothered voice.
Katrine flung herself on her knees
beside the bed and put her arms impetuously round
the thin form under the coverlet.
“Angry with you for not dying!”
she said, between laughing and crying. “Why,
I think you’re the best girl in the world, and
Will’s a pretty good doctor, too!” she
added, glancing up at him.
Will coloured and looked a little
uneasy, remembering his oaths of last night when he
was roused to a ten-mile ride; but Katrine couldn’t
or wouldn’t notice anything amiss. She
said sweet things to both of them, and then, unwilling
to rob Annie of any part of Will’s company, she
withdrew to her own cabin.
Two or three weeks passed, and dreary
weeks they were. The temperature fell below the
zero mark and stayed there, the sun hardly ever shone,
the whole sky being blotted out as behind a thick grey
curtain. The few hours of daylight that each
twenty-four hours brought round was little more than
a dismal twilight. Times were dreary, too, provisions
ran scarce and very high, and the cheerless cold and
darkness seemed to paralyse the energies of the strongest
and lay a grip upon the whole town. Many months
of the winter had already gone by, and strength and
spirits were beginning to flag; health and courage
had worn thin, and men who had faced the bitterness
of the cold with a joke when it had first set in felt
it keenly now like the rest. In Good Luck Row
matters were worse than anywhere else in the town;
the occupants were mostly very poor, and the pressure
of the high prices was sharpest upon them. In
addition to all else they had to suffer, typhoid broke
out amongst them, and another horrible fear was added
to the terror of the cold. In the universal gloom
that hung over the city, under the mantle of darkness,
want and starvation and fear and disease wrangled together,
while Death walked silently and continually about the
darkened streets. During all this time Katrine
was about the only one who kept up her spirits and
courage. She was the light and comfort of the
row, there was not a cabin in it that had not been
brightened and cheered by her smiles and benefited
by her gifts. She was absolutely without fear
herself. The quality seemed to have been left
out of her composition, or perhaps it was only that
her great physical health and strength made her feel
unconsciously that it was impossible for any harm to
come to her. She went in and out of the fever-stricken
cabins all day, doing what she could for each one
of the inmates, and always with her brilliant smile,
which was a tonic in itself, and half the night she
would sit gambling in the saloons, winning the money
to spend upon her sick patients the following day.
As soon as Stephen learned that typhoid
had broken out in the row, he came down to her and
urged her to marry him and come away to the west gulch,
if only as an asylum. But Katrine simply laughed
and joked, and would not listen to him. Then
he begged her to look upon herself merely as his tenant;
he and Talbot would share the same cabin, and she could
occupy his in perfect peace and security, and be safely
away from the depressing influences of the town and
its disease-laden atmosphere. Then she grew very
grave, and said simply in a sweet tone that echoed
through all the chambers of his heart-
“Dear Stephen, you are very
good to be so anxious for me, but I’m not a
bit anxious for myself. I should feel like a coward
if I went away from the row now. These people
are so dependent upon me, and I can do so many little
things for them. I feel it’s a duty to stay
here, and I’d rather do it;” and Stephen
had kissed her hand passionately and gone back to
the gulch, more in love with her than ever.
She saw very little of him, and was
too busy to think about him or note whether he came
or not, having so many anxieties on her mind just then,
of which the heaviest was the girl-wife Annie in the
next cabin. Since the semi-crisis in her illness,
over which Katrine had helped her, there seemed to
be little change in her condition from day to day.
That is, the change did not show itself externally;
within the delicate structure, the disease, aided
by the cold, the foul damp air of the town, and hopeless
spirits, crept steadily and quickly on, but gave little
or no outward sign, and Katrine hoped against hope
that she could possibly tide her over the time till
Will perhaps made a strike and could take her away.
She knew how the sick woman clung to this idea.
For months now she had been shut off from all communication
with the outer world, she never saw a paper or a book,
she could not move from her cabin, her whole sphere
was bounded now by its four rough walls, and so the
one idea that was left to her starved brain and heart
was that Will should make a strike. And as a
weed runs over a bare and neglected garden, so will
one single idea completely absorb and fill a neglected
brain, and grow and grow to gigantic strength.
This was Annie’s one idea; she brooded over
it, pondered over it, nursed it, slept with it, and
talked to Katrine of it with burning eyes, till the
latter felt if it could only be fulfilled the joy
of it would almost cure her. And it might be
fulfilled, she knew, any day. It was early days
in the Klondike then, and plenty of good ground lay
around waiting to be discovered. She heard from
Stephen that Will was steady and energetic, had given
up drink, and was set upon the idea of prospecting
for land of his own. Katrine’s heart beat
hard with pure sympathy as she heard, and she begged
Stephen as the one thing he could do for herself to
facilitate Will’s efforts in every way and aid
him for her sake. Meanwhile, her own care was
to keep the fragile creature who was living upon hope
still on this side of the Great Divide. And to
this end she worked night and day. She kept her
cabin clean and well lighted and well warmed.
She bought and made soup, and gave fabulous prices
for meat and wine, and sat with her long hours cheering
her with stories heard in the saloons and picked up
in the streets, and scraps of news from the gulch and
farther points.
The disease seemed so quiescent that
Katrine began to hope more and more that she should
be rewarded, and one morning a hurried note scribbled
in pencil was brought in to Annie while Katrine was
scrubbing the cabin floor, telling her in a few ill-spelt
words that Will thought he might get in to town that
night. A bright flame of colour leaped over the
woman’s pale face, and then the next moment faded
as her hands with the note in them fell listlessly
to her lap.
“He ain’t made no strike
yet,” Katrine heard her mutter to herself.
“You don’t know,”
rejoined Katrine, looking up flushed and warm from
her hard work. “He may have some good news
to tell you any way.”
Annie merely shook her head and gazed out of the window.
“He’d have told me,” she murmured,
and that was all.
Katrine had a long and heavy round
of visits to make that day, and for two long hours
she sat motionless by a dying woman’s bedside,
fearing to withdraw her hand, to which the poor terrified
enterer into the Valley of the Shadow was clinging.
In her arms, and with her tired head on Katrine’s
young bosom, the woman drew her last breath; and Katrine,
feeling her own soul wrenched asunder and her body
aching with strain and shock, came round in the afternoon
to Annie. She would not say a word to her of
the death-bed from which she had come. With an
effort she talked of cheerful things, of the spring-time
that was on its way to them, of the pleasure of seeing
Will again, and so on, till her head ached. She
did a few domestic offices for the girl, and then feeling
she must break down herself if she stayed longer,
she said she needed sleep, and if Annie could take
care of herself for a time she would go and lie down.
Annie noticed how heavy the lids were over her eyes
and begged her to go at once, though a strange fear,
like a child’s of the dark, came over her.
“Will will be soon with you
now-the best company,” Katrine said,
with a tired smile; “and if you want me, a knock
on the wall here will bring me to you,” and
Annie was left alone.
As the afternoon closed in her cough
seemed to grow more and more troublesome; the pain
in her chest, too, had never been so bad; she had
to keep her hand there all the time as she laboured
round the room putting everything to rights, making
sure that the cabin was neat and tidy against Will’s
return. At last she sat down in the circle of
hot light round the fire, and little Tim crawled into
her lap. She put her arms round him and held
him absently. She was thinking over Katrine’s
words. The Spring! were they really near it? “so
near,” she had said, “it was almost here.”
Her eyes looking upwards to the darkening windows
caught the old and smoke-hued almanac pinned up to
the wall beside it. She set the child down, and
getting up walked slowly over to it and ran one trembling
finger down the dates. Each one from December,
when they had first hung it up, had a heavy black
line against it, where she had scratched it out with
eager fingers; only the last days had no mark against
them. She had been too weary, too heart sick,
to note them any longer. What did it matter to
her when the Spring came? the almanac for her would
have come to an end before that. But now a fresh
gleam of hope seemed to have entered her heart, and
with a feverish movement she drew the old stump of
pencil from her pocket and scratched off the unmarked
days, and then stood gazing at the date of that day;
they were still far, far from the Spring-too
far. Oh, to go back in the Spring, to escape
from this prison of darkness, this country of horror
and starvation and misery, to be back once more in
her home in the Spring! Her mind fled away from
the dreary interior of the darkening cabin. She
stood once more in the rich grassy meadow with the
golden sunlight of an evening summer sky warm around
her, the song of the birds in her ears, the hot scent
of the meadow-sweet in her nostrils, before her the
little narrow path leading to the cottage that seemed
to bask sleepily in the yellow glow. She made
a step forward with dilated eyes, then the cough seized
her, the vision dissolved and fled. Again the
cabin with its blackened rafters enclosed her.
She turned from the calendar. What was the Spring’s
coming? It might come, but they would not go back.
What right had she to think of it? They had made
no strike, and had not Will sworn he would never go
back without the gold? This accursed gold!
If they could but have found it as others had!
She put her hands to her head to drive away the thoughts,
they were familiar and so useless. She had thought
them over and over again so often. As she went
back to the fire she noticed one of Will’s woollen
shirts lying on a chair. Why, that was the one
she had meant to wash that morning! How could
she have forgotten it? And now perhaps she would
not get it done before he returned. Her heart
began to beat, her limbs trembled. How weak and
queer she felt this afternoon! Still, she would
do it somehow. There was hot water on the fire
that Katrine had put there. She lifted with an
effort the great iron kettle from the fire, and with
that in one hand and the shirt in the other she went
into the adjoining sloping roofed compartment that
served as scullery, wood-shed, pantry, and wash-house.
It was many degrees colder here, and the long iron
nails that kept the boards together overhead had sparkling
icicles on them that glittered as the firelight from
the inner room touched them, and she could hardly
draw her breath. Nevertheless she walked over
to the wash-tub and poured in the water, and set to
work with shaking hands. “Had ever shirt
seemed so large?” she wondered vaguely, and
her thin arms moved slowly, lifting it up and down
with difficulty. It seemed getting so dark, too.
She should have lighted the candles, it wouldn’t
look so cheery for Will if he came back to find the
cabin dark. But was this only the twilight falling?
No, it was in her eyes. She leaned heavily on
the edge of the wooden tub, trembling, the floor unsteady
beneath her, a strangling suffocation in her throat,
a swimming darkness before her eyes. A sense
of terrible loneliness pressed in upon her, and then
suddenly she knew that in the chill of that dark twilight
she was alone with Death. He had come for her
at last.
Oh, to have had Will’s strong
arms round her, a human breast to lay her head down
upon, and so die! A nameless terror possessed
her, overwhelmed her; she started from the wash trestle.
There was a sudden cry, “Will! Will!”
and she fell forward on the damp flooring, a little
eager scarlet stream of blood pouring out from the
nerveless lips to stain the soap-suds under the trestle.
The child sitting playing in the ring
of warm firelight in the adjoining room heard that
last cry, and startled, dropped his toys, looking with
round eyes to the blackness beyond the open door.
He listened with one tiny finger in his mouth for
many minutes, but no further sound came to disturb
him from the wash-house, and he went on playing.
An hour passed perhaps before Will
set foot in Good Luck Row, and he tramped up it with
a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the
blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had
elastic springs in their soles. Yet he carried
an extra weight with him. There was something
in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand
as if it had been red-hot iron when he touched it.
As he came to N and saw the windows dark he merely
hurried his pace, and hardly stayed to lift the door
latch, but just burst through the half-opened door
and brought his huge burly frame over the threshold.
“Well, Annie, my girl, we’ve
struck it at last,” he shouted at the top of
his voice, “and you shall come home right away.
Where are you, Annie? Didn’t I say wait
a bit for me?”
He had entered by the wash-house,
but the darkness was thick, almost palpable, before
his face and revealed nothing. He went forward
to the open door, beyond which the burned-down fire
gave only a faint red light, and his foot kicked something
heavy on the floor. With a curious feeling gripping
his heart, he stopped dead short where he stood and
fumbled for a match. Then he struck it, and in
its sickly glare looked down. “Annie, my
dear!” he called in a shaking voice, and bent
down holding the match close to the upturned face.
The light played for an instant upon it and went out.
“Annie!” he called again, and the word
broke in his throat.
A thin wail went up from little Tim
in the dusk of the inner room. Where the man
stood was silence and darkness. His strike had
come too late. His wife was dead.
Half-an-hour later a man burst into
the “Pistol Shot.” It was between
hours, and the bar-tender was just going round lighting
the lamps; the place was nearly empty, only a few
miners were standing at the end of the counter, talking
together. The new customer staggered across the
floor as if already under the influence of drink, kicking
up the fresh sawdust on the ground; then he reached
the counter and demanded drink after drink. He
tossed the whiskies handed to him down his throat,
and then retreated to a bench that stood against the
wall and sat down staring stupidly in front of him.
The little group of men looked at him once or twice
curiously, and then one said-
“Why, it’s Bill Johnson,
who’s just made a strike. Come up, boys,
let’s congratulate him.”
The men moved up to the motionless,
staring figure, and one of them slapped him on the
shoulder.
“Say, Bill, old man, you’re
in luck, and we’ll all drink your health.
Got any gold to show us?”
The sitting figure seemed galvanised
suddenly out of its stupor. Will raised his head
with a jerk, and the men involuntarily drew back from
the glare of his bloodshot eyes. He put his hand
to his pocket and drew out a small dirty buckskin
bag. He dashed it suddenly on the ground with
all his force, so that the sawdust flew up in a little
cloud.
“Curse the gold!” he said,
and got up and tramped heavily out of the saloon.