by Unknown
Except for a faint murkiness in the air it was still day. There was light enough for the four men playing pinochle on the upper deck, though the women of their party, gossiping in chairs grouped near at hand, had at last put aside their embroidery. The girl who sat by herself at a little distance held a magazine still open on her lap. If she were not reading, her attitude suggested it was less because of the dusk than that she had surrendered herself to the spell of the mysterious beauty which for this hour at least had transfigured the North to a land all light and atmosphere and color.
Gordon Elliot had taken the boat at Pierre's Portage, fifty miles farther down the river. He had come direct from the creeks, and his impressions of the motley pioneer life at the gold-diggings were so vivid that he had found an isolated corner of the deck where he could scribble them in a notebook while still fresh.
But he had not been too busy to see that the girl in the wicker chair was as much of an outsider as he was. Plainly this was her first trip in. Gordon was a stranger in the Yukon country, one not likely to be over-welcome when it became known what his mission was. It may have been because he was out of the picture himself that he resented a little the exclusion of the young woman with the magazine. Certainly she herself gave no evidence of feeling about it. Her long-lashed eyes looked dreamily across the river to the glowing hills beyond. Not once did they turn with any show of interest to the lively party under the awning.
From where he was leaning against the deckhouse Elliot could see only a fine, chiseled profile shading into a mass of crisp, black hair, but some quality in the detachment of her personality stimulated gently his imagination. He wondered who she could be. His work had taken him to frontier camps before, but he could not place her as a type. The best he could do was to guess that she might be the daughter of some territorial official on her way in to join him.
A short, thick-set man who had ridden down on the stage with Elliot to Pierre's Portage drifted along the deck toward him. He wore the careless garb of a mining man in a country which looks first to comfort.
"Bound for Kusiak?" he asked, by way of opening conversation.
"Yes," answered Gordon.
The miner nodded toward the group under the awning. "That bunch lives at Kusiak. They've got on at different places the last two or three days--except Selfridge and his wife, they've been out. Guess you can tell that from hearing her talk--the little woman in red with the snappy black eyes. She's spillin' over with talk about the styles in New York and the cabarets and the new shows. That pot-bellied little fellow in the checked suit is Selfridge. He is Colby Macdonald's man Friday."
Elliot took in with a quickened interest the group bound for Kusiak. He had noticed that they monopolized as a matter of course the best places on the deck and in the dining-room. They were civil enough to outsiders, but their manner had the unconscious selfishness that often regulates social activities. It excluded from their gayety everybody that did not belong to the proper set.
"That sort of thing gets my goat," the miner went on sourly. "Those women over there have elected themselves Society with a capital S. They put on all the airs the Four Hundred do in New York. And who the hell are they anyhow?--wives to a bunch of grafting politicians mostly."
From the casual talk that had floated to him, with its many little allusions punctuating the jolly give-and-take of their repartee, Elliot guessed that their lives had the same background of tennis, dinners, hops, official gossip, and business. They evidently knew one another with the intimacy that comes only to the segment of a small community shut off largely from the world and forced into close social relations. No doubt they had loaned each other money occasionally, stood by in trouble, and gossiped back and forth about their shortcomings and family skeletons even as society on the outside does.
"That's the way of the world, isn't it? Our civilization is built on the group system," suggested Elliot.
"Maybeso," grumbled the miner. "But I hate to see Alaska come to it. Me, I saw this country first in '97--packed an outfit in over the Pass. Every man stood on his own hind legs then. He got there if he was strong--mebbe; he bogged down on the trail good and plenty if he was weak. We didn't have any of the artificial stuff then. A man had to have the guts to stand the gaff."
"I suppose it was a wild country, Mr. Strong."
The little miner's eyes gleamed. "Best country in the world. We didn't stand for anything that wasn't on the level. It was a poor man's country--wages fifteen dollars a day and plenty of work. Everybody had a chance. Anybody could stake a claim and gamble on his luck. Now the big corporations have slipped in and grabbed the best. It ain't a prospector's proposition any more. Instead of faro banks we've got savings banks. The wide-open dance hall has quit business in favor of moving pictures. And, as I said before, we've got Society."
"All frontier countries have to come to it."
"Hmp! In the days I'm telling you about that crowd there couldn't 'a' hustled meat to fill their bellies three meals. Parasites, that's what they are. They're living off that bunch of roughnecks down there and folks like 'em."
With a wave of his hand Strong pointed to a group of miners who had boarded the boat with them at Pierre's Portage. There were about a dozen of the men, for the most part husky, heavy-set foreigners. They had been drinking, and were in a sullen humor. Elliot gathered from their talk that they had lost their jobs because they had tried to organize an incipient strike in the Frozen Gulch district.
"Roughnecks and booze-fighters--that's all they are. But they earn their way. Not that I blame Macdonald for firing them, mind you," continued the miner.
"Were they working for Macdonald?"
"Yep. His superintendent up there was too soft. These here Swedes got gay. Mac hit the trail for Frozen Gulch. He hammered his big fist into the bread-basket of the ringleader and said, 'Git!' That fellow's running yet, I'll bet. Then Mac called the men together and read the riot act to them. He fired this bunch on the boat and was out of the camp before you could bat an eye. It was the cleanest hurry-up job I ever did see."
"From what I've heard about him he must be a remarkable man."
"He's the biggest man in Alaska, bar none."
This was a subject that interested Gordon Elliot very much. Colby Macdonald and his activities had brought him to the country.
"Do you mean personally--or because he represents the big corporations?"
"Both. His word comes pretty near being law up here, not only because he stands for the Consolidated, but because he's one man from the ground up. I ain't any too strong for that New York bunch of capitalists back of Mac, but I've got to give it to him that he's all there without leaning on anybody."
"I've heard that he's a domineering man--rides roughshod over others. Is that right, Mr. Strong?"
"He's a bear for getting his own way," grinned the little miner. "If you won't get out of his road he peels your hide off and hangs it up to dry. But I can't help liking him. He's big every way you take him. He'll stand the acid, Mac will."
"Do you mean that he's square--honest?"
"You've said two things, my friend," answered Strong dryly. "He's square. If he tells you anything, don't worry because he ain't put down his John Hancock before a notary. He'll see it through to a finish--to a fighting finish if he has to. Don't waste any time looking for fat or yellow streaks in Mac. They ain't there. Nobody ever heard him squeal yet and what's more nobody ever will."
"No wonder men like him."
"But when you say honest--Hell, no! Not the way you define honesty down in the States. He's a grabber, Mac is. Better not leave anything valuable around unless you've got it spiked to the floor. He takes what he wants."
"What does he look like?" asked Gordon.
"Oh, I don't know." Strong hesitated, while he searched for words to show the picture in his mind. "Big as a house--steps out like a buck in the spring--blue-gray eyes that bore right through you."
"How old?"
"Search me. You neve
r think of age when you're looking at him. Forty-five, mebbe--or fifty--I don't know."
"Married?"
"No-o." Hanford Strong nodded in the direction of the Kusiak circle. "They say he's going to marry Mrs. Mallory. She's the one with the red hair."
It struck young Elliot that the miner was dismissing Mrs. Mallory in too cavalier a fashion. She was the sort of woman at whom men look twice, and then continue to look while she appears magnificently unaware of it. Her hair was not red, but of a lustrous bronze, amazingly abundant, and dressed in waves with the careful skill of a coiffeur. Half-shut, smouldering eyes had met his for an instant at dinner across the table and had told him she was a woman subtle and complex. Slightest shades of meaning she could convey with a lift of the eyebrow or an intonation of the musical voice. If she was already fencing with the encroaching years there was little evidence of it in her opulent good looks. She had manifestly specialized in graceful idleness and was prepared to meet with superb confidence the competition of débutantes. The elusive shadow of lost illusions, of knowledge born of experience, was the only betrayal of vanished youth in her equipment.
CHAPTER II
ENTER A MAN
The whistle of the Hannah blew for the Tatlah Cache landing while Strong and Elliot were talking. Wally Selfridge had just bid three hundred seventy and found no help in the widow. He pushed toward each of the other players one red chip and two white ones.
"Can't make it," he announced. "I needed a jack of clubs."
The men counted their chips and settled up in time to reach the deck rail just as the gangplank was thrown out to the wharf. The crew transferred to the landing a pouch of mail, half a ton of sacked potatoes, some mining machinery, and several boxes containing provisions and dry goods.
A man came to the end of the wharf carrying a suitcase. He was well-set, thick in the chest, and broad-shouldered. He came up the gangplank with the strong, firm tread of a man in his prime. Looking down from above, Gordon Elliot guessed him to be in the early thirties.
Mrs. Mallory was the first to recognize him, which she did with a drawling little shout of welcome. "Oh you, Mr. Man. I knew you first. I speak for you," she cried.
The man on the gangplank looked up, smiled, and lifted to her his broad gray Stetson in a wave of greeting.
"How do you do, Mrs. Mallory? Glad to see you."
The miners from Frozen Gulch were grouped together on the lower deck. At sight of the man with the suitcase a sullen murmur rose among them. Those in the rear pushed forward and closed the lane leading to the cabins. One of the miners was flung roughly against the new passenger. With a wide, powerful sweep of his arm the man who had just come aboard hurled the miner back among his companions.
"Gangway!" he said brusquely, and as he strode forward did not even glance in the direction of the angry men pressing toward him.
"Here. Keep back there, you fellows. None of that rough stuff goes," ordered the mate sharply.
The big Cornishman who had been tossed aside crouched for a spring. He launched himself forward with the awkward force of a bear. The suitcase described a whirling arc of a circle with the arm of its owner as the radius. The bag and the head of the miner came into swift impact. Like a bullock which has been pole-axed the man went to the floor. He turned over with a groan and lay still.
The new passenger looked across the huge, sprawling body at the group of miners facing him. They glared in savage hate. All they needed was a leader to send them driving at him with the force of an avalanche. The man at whom they raged did not give an inch. He leaned forward slightly, his weight resting on the balls of his feet, alert to the finger tips. But in his eyes a grim little smile of derisive amusement rested.
"Next," he taunted.
Then the mate got busy. He hustled his stevedores forward in front of the miners and shook his fist in their faces as he stormed up and down. If they wanted trouble, by God! it was waiting for 'em, he swore in apoplectic fury. The Hannah was a river boat and not a dive for wharf rats. No bunch of roughnecks could come aboard a boat where he was mate and start anything. They could not assault any passengers of his and make it stick.
The man with the suitcase did not wait to hear out his tirade. He followed the purser to his stateroom, dropped his baggage beside the berth, and joined the Kusiak group on the upper deck.
They greeted him eagerly, a little effusively, as if they were anxious to prove themselves on good terms with him. The deference they paid and his assured acceptance of it showed him to be a man of importance. But apart from other considerations, he dominated by mental and physical virility the circle of which he instantly became the center. Only Mrs. Mallory held her own, and even she showed a quickened interest. Her indolent, half-disdainful manner sheathed a soft sensuousness that held the provocation of sex appeal.
"What was the matter?" asked Selfridge. "How did the trouble start?"
The big man shrugged his shoulders. "It didn't start. Some of the outfit thought they were looking for a row, but they balked on the job when Trelawney got his." Turning to Mrs. Mallory, he changed the subject abruptly. "Did you have a good time down the river?"
Gordon, as he watched from a little distance, corrected earlier impressions. This man had passed the thirties. Salt and pepper sprinkled the temples of his strong, lean head. He had the thick neck and solid trunk of middle life, but he carried himself so superbly that his whole bearing denied that years could touch his splendid physique. The suit he wore was a wrinkled corduroy, with trouser legs thrust into high-laced boots. An outdoor tan had been painted upon his face and neck, from the point where the soft flannel shirt fell away to show the fine slope of the throat line to the shoulders.
Strong had stepped to the wharf to talk with an old acquaintance, but when the boat threw out a warning signal he made a hurried good-bye and came on board. He rejoined Elliot.
"Well, what d'you think of him? Was I right?"
The young man had already guessed who this imperious stranger was. "I never saw anybody get away with a hard job as easily as he did that one. You could see with half an eye that those fellows meant fight. They were all primed for it--and he bluffed them out."
"Bluffed them--huh! If that's what you call bluffing. I was where I could see just what happened. Colby Macdonald wasn't even looking at Trelawney, but you bet he saw him start. That suitcase traveled like a streak of light. You'd 'a' thought it weighed about two pounds. That ain't all either. Mac used his brains. Guess what was in that grip."
"The usual thing, I suppose."
"You've got another guess--packed in among his socks and underwear was about twenty pounds of ore samples. The purser told me. It was that quartz put Trelawney to sleep so thorough that he'd just begun to wake up when I passed a minute ago."
The young man turned his eyes again upon the big Canadian Scotchman. He was talking with Mrs. Mallory, who was leaning back luxuriously in a steamer chair she had brought aboard at St. Michael's. It would have been hard to conceive a contrast greater than the one between this pampered heiress of the ages and the modern business berserk who looked down into her mocking eyes. He was the embodiment of the dominant male,--efficient to the last inch of his straight six feet. What he wanted he had always taken, by the sheer strength that was in him. Back of her smiling insolence lay a silken force to match his own. She too had taken what she wanted from life, but she had won it by indirection. Manifestly she was of those women who conceive that charm and beauty are tools to bend men to their wills. Was it the very width of the gulf between them that made the appeal of the clash in the sex duel upon which they had engaged?
The dusky young woman with the magazine was the first of those on the upper deck to retire for the night. She flitted so quietly that Gordon did not notice until she had gone. Mrs. Selfridge and her friends disappeared with their men folks, calling gay good-nights to one another as they left.
Macdonald and Mrs. Mallory still talked. After a time she too vanished.
&n
bsp; The big promoter leaned against the deck rail, where he was joined by Selfridge. For a long time they talked in low voices. The little man had most to say. His chief listened, but occasionally interrupted to ask a sharp, incisive question.
Elliot, sitting farther forward with Strong, judged that Selfridge was making a report of his trip. Once he caught a fragment of their talk, enough to confirm this impression.
"Did Winton tell you that himself?" demanded the Scotchman.
The answer of his employee came in a murmur so low that the words were lost. But the name used told Gordon a good deal. The Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington signed his letters Harold B. Winton.
Strong tossed the stub of his cigarette overboard and nodded good-night. A glance at his watch told Elliot that it was past two o'clock. He rose, stretched, and sauntered back to his stateroom.