by Rex Beach
“That’s Anvil Creek up yonder,” said Glenister. “There’s where the Midas lies. See!” He indicated a gap in the buttress of mountains rolling back from the coast. “It’s the greatest creek in the world. You’ll see gold by the mule-load, and hillocks of nuggets. Oh, I’m glad to get back. This is life. That stretch of beach is full of gold. These hills are seamed with quartz. The bed-rock of that creek is yellow. There’s gold, gold, gold, everywhere—more than ever was in old Solomon’s mines—and there’s mystery and peril and things unknown.”
“Let us make haste,” said the girl. “I have something I must do to-night. After that, I can learn to know these things.”
Securing a small boat, they were rowed ashore, the partners plying their ferryman with eager questions. Having arrived five days before, he was exploding with information and volunteered the fruits of his ripe experience till Dextry stated that they were “sourdoughs” themselves, and owned the Midas, whereupon Miss Chester marvelled at the awe which sat upon the man and the wondering stare with which he devoured the partners, to her own utter exclusion.
“Sufferin” cats! Look at the freight!” ejaculated Dextry. If a storm come up it would bust the community !”
The beach they neared was walled and crowded to the high-tide mark with ramparts of merchandise, while every incoming craft deposited its quota upon whatever vacant foot was close at hand, till bales, boxes, boilers, and baggage of all kinds were confusedly intermixed in the narrow space. Singing longshoremen trundled burdens from the lighters and piled them on the heap, while yelling, cursing crowds fought over it all, selecting, sorting loading.
There was no room for more, yet hourly they added to the mass. Teams splashed through the lapping surf or stuck in the deep sand between hillocks of goods. All was noise, profanity, congestion, and feverish hurry. This burning haste rang in the voice of the multitude, showed in its violence of gesture and redness of face permeated the atmosphere with a magnetic, electrifying energy.
“It’s somethin’ fierce ashore,” said the oarsman. “I been up fer three days an’ nights steady—there ain’t no room, nor time, nor darkness to sleep in. Ham an’ eggs is a dollar an’ a half, an’ whiskey’s four bits a throw.” He wailed the last, sadly, as a complaint unspeakable.
“Any trouble doin’?” inquired the old man.
“You know it!” the other cried, colloquially. “There was a massacree in the Northern last night.”
“Gamblin’ row?”
“Yep. Tin-horn called ‘ Missou’ done it.”
“Sho!” said Dextry, “I know him. He’s a bad actor.” All three men nodded sagely, and the girl wished for further light, but they volunteered no explanation.
Leaving the skiff, they plunged into turmoil. Dodging through the tangle, they came out into fenced lots where tents stood wall to wall and every inch was occupied. Here and there was a vacant spot guarded jealously by its owner, who gazed sourly upon all men with the forbidding eye of suspicion. Finding an eddy in the confusion, the men stopped.
“Where do you want to go?” they asked Miss Chester.
There was no longer in Glenister’s glance that freedom with which he had come to regard the women of the North. He had come to realize dully that here was a girl driven by some strong purpose into a position repellent to her. In a man of his type, her independence awoke only admiration and her coldness served but to inflame him the more. Delicacy, in Glenister, was lost in a remarkable singleness of purpose. He could laugh at her loathing, smile under her abuse, and remain utterly ignorant that anything more than his action in seizing her that night lay at the bottom of her dislike. He did not dream that he possessed characteristics abhorrent to her; and he felt a keen reluctance at parting.
She extended both hands.
“I can never thank you enough for what you have done—you two; but I shall try. Good-bye!”
Dextry gazed doubtfully at his own hand, rough and gnarly, then taking hers as he would have handled a robin’s egg, waggled it limply.
“We ain’t goin’ to turn you adrift this-a-way. Whatever your destination is, we’ll see you to it.”
“I can find my friends,” she assured him.
“This is the wrong latitude in which to dispute a lady, but knowin’ this camp from soup to nuts, as I do, I su’gests a male escort.”
“Very well! I wish to find Mr. Struve, of Dunham & Struve, lawyers.”
“I’ll take you to their offices,” said Glenister. “You see to the baggage, Dex. Meet me at the Second Class in half an hour and we’ll run out to the Midas.” They pushed through the tangle of tents, past piles of lumber, and emerged upon the main thoroughfare, which ran parallel to the shore.
Nome consisted of one narrow street, twisted between solid rows of canvas and half-erected frame buildings, its every other door that of a saloon. There were fair-looking blocks which aspired to the dizzy height of three stories, some sheathed in corrugated iron, others gleaming and galvanized. Lawyers’ signs, doctors’, surveyors’, were in the upper windows. The street was thronged with men from every land—Helen Chester heard more dialects than she could count. Laplanders in quaint, three-cornered, padded caps idled past. Men with the tan of the tropics rubbed elbows with yellow-haired Norsemen, and near her a carefully groomed Frenchman with riding-breeches and monocle was in pantomime with a skin-clad Eskimo. To her left was the sparkling sea, alive with ships of every class. To her right towered timberless mountains, unpeopled, unexplored, forbidding, and desolate—their hollows inlaid with snow. On one hand were the life and the world she knew; on the other, silence, mystery, possible adventure.
The roadway where she stood was a crush of sundry vehicles from bicycles to dog-hauled water-carts, and on all sides men were laboring busily, the echo of hammers mingling with the cries of teamsters and the tinkle of music within the saloons.
“And this is midnight!” exclaimed Helen, breathlessly. “Do they ever rest?”
“There isn’t time—this is a gold stampede. You haven’t caught the spirit of it yet.”
They climbed the stairs in a huge, iron-sheeted building to the office of Dunham & Struve, and in answer to their knock, a red-faced, white-haired, tousled man, in shirt-sleeves and stocking-feet, opened the door.
“What d’ye wan’?” he bawled, his legs wavering uncertainly. His eyes were heavy and bloodshot, his lips loose, and his whole person exhaled alcoholic fumes like a gust from a still-house. Hanging to the knob, he strove vainly to solve the mystery of his suspenders—hiccoughing intermittently.
“Humph! Been drunk ever since I left?” questioned Glenister.
“Somebody mus’ have tol’ you,” the lawyer replied. There was neither curiosity, recognition, nor resentment in his voice. In fact, his head drooped so that he paid no attention to the girl, who had shrunk back at sight of him. He was a young man, with marks of brilliancy showing through the dissipation betrayed by his silvery hair and coarsened features.
“Oh, I don’t know what to do,” lamented the girl.
“Anybody else here besides you?” asked her escort of the lawyer.
“No. I’m runnin’ the law business unassisted. Don’t need any help. Dunham’s in Wash’n’ton, D. C, the Ian of the home, the free of the brave. What can I do for you?”
He made to cross the threshold hospitably, but tripped, plunged forward, and would have rolled down the stairs had not Glenister gathered him up and borne him back into the office, where he tossed him upon a bed in a rear room.
“Now what, Miss Chester?” asked the young man, returning.
“Isn’t that dreadful?” she shuddered. “Oh, and I must see him to-night!” She stamped impatiently. “I must see him alone.”
“No, you mustn’t,” said Glenister, with equal decision. “In the first place, he wouldn’t know what you were talking about, and in the second place—I know Struve. He’s too drunk to talk business and too sober to—well, to see you alone.”
“But I must see him,
” she insisted. “It’s what brought me here. You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than he could. He’s in no condition to act on any important matter. You come around to-morrow when he’s sober.”
“It means so much,” breathed the girl. “The beast!”
Glenister noted that she had not wrung her hands nor even hinted at tears, though plainly her disappointment and anxiety were consuming her.
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to wait, but I don’t know where to go—some hotel, I suppose.”
“There aren’t any. They’re building two, but to night you couldn’t hire a room in Nome for money. I was about to say ‘love or money.’ Have you no other friends here—no women? Then you must let me find a place for you. I have a friend whose wife will take you in.”
She rebelled at this. Was she never to have done with this man’s favors? She thought of returning to the ship, but dismissed that. She undertook to decline his aid, but he was half-way down the stairs and paid no attention to her beginning—so she followed him.
It was then that Helen Chester witnessed her first tragedy of the frontier, and through it came to know better the man whom she disliked and with whom she had been thrown so fatefully. Already she had thrilled at the spell of this country, but she had not learned that strength and license carry blood and violence as corollaries.
Emerging from the doorway at the foot of the stairs, they drifted slowly along the walk, watching the crowd. Besides the universal tension, there were laughter and hope and exhilaration in the faces. The enthusiasm of this boyish multitude warmed one. The girl wished to get into this spirit—to be one of them. Then suddenly from the babble at their elbows came a discordant note, not long nor loud, only a few words, penetrating and harsh with the metallic quality lent by passion.
Helen glanced over her shoulder to find that the smiles of the throng were gone and that its eyes were bent on some scene in the street, with an eager interest she had never seen mirrored before. Simultaneously Glenister spoke:
“Come away from here.”
With the quickened eye of experience he foresaw trouble and tried to drag her on, but she shook off his grasp impatiently, and, turning, gazed absorbed at the spectacle which unfolded itself before her. Although not comprehending the play of events, she felt vaguely the quick approach of some crisis, yet was unprepared for the swiftness with which it came.
Her eyes had leaped to the figures of two men in the street from whom the rest had separated like oil from water. One was slim and well dressed; the other bulky, mackinawed, and lowering of feature. It was the smaller who spoke, and for a moment she misjudged his bloodshot eyes and swaying carriage to be the result of alcohol, until she saw that he was racked with fury.
“Make good, I tell you, quick! Give me that bill of
sale, you——.”
The unkempt man swung on his heel with a growl and walked away, his course leading him towards Glenister and the girl. With two strides he was abreast of them; then, detecting the flashing movement of the other, he whirled like a wild animal. His voice had the snarl of a beast in it.
“Ye had to have it, didn’t ye? Well, there!”
The actions of both men were quick as light, yet to the girl’s taut senses they seemed theatrical and deliberate. Into her mind was seared forever the memory of that second, as though the shutter of a camera had snapped, impressing upon her brain the scene, sharp, clear-cut, and vivid. The shaggy back of the large man almost brushing her, the rage-drunken, white-shirted man in the derby hat, the crowd sweeping backward like rushes before a blast, men with arms flexed and feet raised in flight, the glaring yellow sign of the “Gold Belt Dance Hall” across the way—these were stamped upon her retina, and then she was jerked violently backward, two strong arms crushed her down upon her knees against the wall, and she was smothered in the arms of Roy Glenister.
“My God! Don’t move! We’re in line!”
He crouched over her, his cheek against her hair, his weight forcing her down into the smallest compass, his arms about her, his body forming a living shield against the flying bullets. Over them the big man stood, and the sustained roar of his gun was deafening. In an instant they heard the thud and felt the jar of lead in the thin boards against which they huddled. Again the report echoed above their heads, and they saw the slender man in the street drop his weapon and spin half round as though hit with some heavy hand. He uttered a cry and, stooping for his gun, plunged forward, burying his face in the sand.
The man by Glenister’s side shouted curses thickly, and walked towards his prostrate enemy, firing at every step. The wounded man rolled to his side, and, raising himself on his elbow, shot twice, so rapidly that the reports blended—but without checking his antagonist’s approach. Four more times the relentless assailant fired deliberately, his last missile sent as he stood over the body which twitched and shuddered at his feet, its garments muddy and smeared. Then he turned and retraced his steps. Back within arm’s-length of the two who pressed against the building he came, and as he went by they saw his coarse and sullen features drawn and working pallidly, while the breath whistled through his teeth. He held his course to the door they had just quitted, then as he turned he coughed bestially, spitting out a mouthful of blood. His knees wavered. He vanished within the portals and, in the sickly silence that fell, they heard his hob-nailed boots clumping slowly up the stairs.
Noise awoke and rioted down the thoroughfare. Men rushed forth from every quarter, and the ghastly object in the dirt was hidden by a seething mass of miners.
Glenister raised the girl, but her head rolled limply, and she would have slipped to her knees again had he not placed his arm about her waist. Her eyes were staring and horror-filled.
“Don’t be frightened,” said he, smiling at her reassuringly ; but his own lips shook and the sweat stood out like dew on him; for they had both been close to death. There came a surge and swirl through the crowd, and Dextry swooped upon them like a hawk.
“Be ye hurt? Holy Mackinaw! When I see ’em blaze away I yells at ye fit to bust my throat. I shore thought you was gone. Although I can’t say but this killin’ was a sight for sore eyes—so neat an’ genteel—still, as a rule, in these street brawls it’s the innocuous bystander that has flowers sent around to his house afterwards.”
“Look at this,” said Glenister. Breast-high in the wall against which they had crouched, not three feet apart, were bullet holes.
“Them’s the first two he unhitched,” Dextry remarked, jerking his head towards the object in the street. “Must have been a new gun an’ pulled hard—throwed him to the right. See!”
Even to the girl it was patent that, had she not been snatched as she was, the bullet would have found her.
“Come away quick,” she panted, and they led her into a near-by store, where she sank upon a seat and trembled until Dextry brought her a glass of whiskey.
“Here, Miss,” he said. “Pretty tough go for a ‘cheechako.’ I’m afraid you ain’t gettin’ enamoured of this here country a whole lot.”
For half an hour he talked to her, in his whimsical way, of foreign things, till she was quieted. Then the partners arose to go. Although Glenister had arranged for her to stop with the wife of the merchant for the rest of the night, she would not.
“I can’t go to bed. Please don’t leave me! I’m too nervous. I’ll go mad if you do. The strain of the last week has been too much for me. If I sleep I’ll see the faces of those men again.”
Dextry talked with his companion, then made a purchase which he laid at the lady’s feet.
“Here’s a pair of half-grown gum boots. You put ’em on an’ come with us. We’ll take your mind off of things complete. An’ as fer sweet dreams, when you get back you’ll make the slumbers of the just seem as restless as a riot, or the antics of a mountain-goat which nimbly leaps from crag to crag, and—well, that’s restless enough. Come on!”
As the sun slanted up out of Behring Sea,
they marched back towards the hills, their feet ankle-deep in the soft fresh moss, while the air tasted like a cool draught and a myriad of earthy odors rose up and en’ circled them. Snipe and reed birds were noisy in the hollows and from the misty tundra lakes came the honking of brant. After their weary weeks on ship-board, the dewy freshness livened them magically, cleansing from their memories the recent tragedy, so that the girl became herself again.
“Where are we going?” she asked, at the end of an hour, pausing for breath.
“Why, to the Midas, of course,” they said; and one of them vowed recklessly, as he drank in the beauty of her clear eyes and the grace of her slender, panting form, that he would gladly give his share of all its riches to undo what he had done one night on the Santa Maria.
CHAPTER V
WHEREIN A MAN APPEARS
IN the lives of countries there are crises where, for a breath, destinies lie in the laps of the gods and are jumbled, heads or tails. Thus are marked distinctive cycles like the seven ages of a man, and though, perhaps, they are too subtle to be perceived at the time, yet, having swung past the shadowy milestones, the epochs disclose themselves.
Such a period in the progress of the Far Northwest was the nineteenth day of July, although to those concerned in the building of this new empire the day appealed only as the date of the coming of the law. All Nome gathered on the sands as lighters brought ashore Judge Stillman and his following. It was held fitting that the Senator should be the ship to safeguard the dignity of the first court and to introduce Justice into this land of the wild.
The interest awakened by His Honor was augmented by the fact that he was met on the beach by a charming girl, who flung herself upon him with evident delight.