by Rex Beach
NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE
Big George was drinking, and the activities of the little Arcticmining camp were paralysed. Events invariably ceased their progressand marked time when George became excessive, and now nothing ofpublic consequence stirred except the quicksilver, which was retiringfearfully into its bulb at the song of the wind which came racingover the lonesome, bitter, northward waste of tundra.
He held the centre of the floor at the Northern Club, and proclaimedhis modest virtues in a voice as pleasant as the cough of abull-walrus.
"Yes, me! Little Georgie! I did it. I've licked 'em all fromHerschel Island to Dutch Harbour, big uns and little uns. When theydidn't suit I made 'em over. I'm the boss carpenter of the Arcticand I own this camp; don't I, Slim? Hey? Answer me!" he roared atthe emaciated bearer of the title, whose attention seemed wanderingfrom the inventory of George's startling traits toward a card game.
"Sure ye do," nervously smiled Slim, frightened out of a heart-soloas he returned to his surroundings.
"Well, then, listen to what I'm saying. I'm the big chief of thevillage, and when I'm stimulated and happy them fellers I don't likehides out and lets me and Nature operate things. Ain't that right?"He glared inquiringly at his friends.
Red, the proprietor, explained over the bar in a whisper to Captain,the new man from Dawson: "That's Big George, the whaler. He's asquaw-man and sort of a bully--see? When he's sober he's on thelevel strickly, an' we all likes him fine, but when he gets tofightin' the pain-killer, he ain't altogether a gentleman. Will hefight? Oh! Will he fight? Say! he's there with chimes, he is!Why, Doc Miller's made a grub-stake rebuildin' fellers that's had alingerin' doubt cached away about that, an' now when he gets thebooze up his nose them patched-up guys oozes away an' hibernates tillthe gas dies out in him. Afterwards he's sore on himself an'apologizes to everybody. Don't get into no trouble with him, causehe's two checks past the limit. They don't make 'em as bad as himany more. He busted the mould."
George turned, and spying the new-comer, approached, eyeing him withcritical disfavour.
Captain saw a bear-like figure, clad cap-a-pie in native fashion.Reindeer pants, with the hair inside, clothed legs like rock pillars,while out of the loose squirrel parka a corded neck rose, brown andstrong, above which darkly gleamed a rugged face seamed and scarredby the hate of Arctic winters. He had kicked off his deer-skinsocks, and stood bare-footed on the cold and draughty floor, whilethe poison he had imbibed showed only in his heated face, Silently heextended a cracked and hardened hand, which closed like the armouredclaw of a crustacean and tightened on the crunching fingers of theother. Captain's expression remained unchanged and, graduallyslackening his grip, the sailor roughly inquired:
"Where'd you come from?"
"Just got in from Dawson yesterday," politely responded the stranger.
"Well! what're you goin' to do now you're here?" he demanded.
"Stake some claims and go to prospecting, I guess. You see, I wantedto get in early before the rush next spring."
"Oh! I 'spose you're going to jump some of our ground, hey? Well,you ain't! We don't want no claim jumpers here," disagreeablycontinued the seaman; "we won't stand for it. This is my camp--see?I own it, and these is my little children." Then, as the otherrefused to debate with him, he resumed, groping for a new ground ofattack.
"Say! I'll bet you're one of them eddicated dudes, too, ain't you?You talk like a feller that had been to college," and, as the otherassented, he scornfully called to his friends, saying "Look here,fellers! Pipe the jellyfish! I never see one of these here animalsthat was worth a cuss; they plays football an' smokes cigareets atschool; then when they're weaned they come off up here an' jump ourclaims 'cause we can't write a location notice proper. They ain't nogood. I guess I'll stop it."
Captain moved toward the door, but the whaler threw his bulky frameagainst it and scowlingly blocked the way.
"No, you don't. You ain't goin' to run away till I've had the nextdance, Mister Eddication! Humph! I ain't begun to tell ye yet whata useless little barnacle you are."
Red interfered, saying: "Look 'ere, George, this guy ain't noplaymate of yourn. We'll all have a jolt of this disturbancepromoter, an' call it off." Then, as the others approached he winkedat Captain, and jerked his head slightly toward the door.
The latter, heeding the signal, started out, but George leaped afterhim and, seizing an arm, whirled him back, roaring:
"Well, of all the cussed impidence I ever see! You're too high-tonedto drink with us, are you? You don't get out of here now till youtake a lickin' like a man."
He reached over his head and, grasping the hood of his fur shirt,with one movement he stripped it from him, exposing a massive nakedbody, whose muscles swelled and knotted beneath a skin as clear as amaiden's, while a map of angry scars strayed across the heavy chest.
As the shirt sailed through the air. Red lightly vaulted to the barand, diving at George's naked middle, tackled beautifully, crying toCaptain: "Get out quick; we'll hold him."
Others rushed forward and grasped the bulky sailor, but Captain'svoice replied: "I sort of like this place, and I guess I'll stay awhile. Turn him loose."
"Why, man, he'll kill ye," excitedly cried Slim. "Get out!"
The captive hurled his peacemakers from him and, shaking off theclinging arms, drove furiously at the insolent stranger.
In the cramped limits of the corner where he stood. Captain wasunable to avoid the big man, who swept him with a crash against theplank door at his back, grasping hungrily at his throat. As hisshoulders struck, however, he dropped to his knees and, before theraging George could seize him, he avoided a blow which would havestrained the rivets of a strength-tester and ducked under the other'sarms, leaping to the cleared centre of the floor.
Seldom had the big man's rush been avoided and, whirling, he swung aboom-like arm at the agile stranger. Before it landed, Captainstepped in to meet his adversary and, with the weight of his bodybehind the blow, drove a clenched and bony fist crashing into theother's face. The big head with its blazing shock of hair snappedbackward and the whaler drooped to his knees at the other's feet.
The drunken flush of victory swept over Captain as he stood above theswaying figure; then, suddenly, he felt the great bare arms closeabout his waist with a painful grip. He struck at the bleeding facebelow him and wrenched at the circling bands which wheezed the breathfrom his lungs, but the whaler squeezed him writhing to his breast,and, rising, unsteadily wheeled across the floor and in a shiver ofbroken glass fell crashing against the bar and to the floor.
As the struggling men writhed upon the planks the door opened at thehurried entrance of an excited group, which paused at the sight ofthe ruin, then, rushing forward, tore the men apart.
The panting Berserker strained at the arms about his glistening body,while Captain, with sobbing sighs, relieved his aching lungs andwatched his enemy, who frothed at the interference.
"It was George's fault," explained Slim to the questions of thearrivals. "This feller tried to make a get-away, but George had tohave his amusement."
A new-comer addressed the squaw-man in a voice as cold as the wind."Cut this out, George! This is a friend of mine. You're making thiscamp a regular hell for strangers, and now I'm goin' to tap yourlittle snap. Cool off--see?"
Jones's reputation as a bad gun-man went hand in hand with his nameas a good gambler, and his scanty remarks invariably evoked attentiveanswers, so George explained: "I don't like him Jones, and I was jus'makin' him over to look like a man. I'll do it yet, too," he flashedwrathfully at his quiet antagonist.
"'Pears to me like he's took a hand in the remodelling himself,"replied the gambler, "but if you're lookin' for something to do,here's your chance. Windy Jim just drove in and says Barton and KidSullivan are adrift on the ice."
"What's that?" questioned eager voices, and, forgetting the recenttrouble at the news, the crowd pressed forward anxiously.
A torrent of questions followed and many suggestions as to the fateof the men.
"They'll freeze before they can get ashore," said one.
"The ice-pack'll break up in this wind," added another, "and if theydon't drown, they'll freeze before the floe comes in close enough forthem to land."
From the first announcement of his friends' peril, Captain had beenthinking rapidly. His body, sore from his long trip and aching fromthe hug of his recent encounter, cried woefully for rest, but hisvoice rose calm and clear:
"We've got to get them off," he said. "Who will go with me? Threeis enough."
The clamouring voices ceased, and the men wheeled at the sound,gazing incredulously at the speaker. "What!"--"In thisstorm?"--"You're crazy," many voices said.
He gazed appealingly at the faces before him. Brave and adventurousmen he knew them to be, jesting with death, and tempered to perils inthis land where hardship rises with the dawn, but they shook theirragged heads hopelessly.
"We _must_ save them!" resumed Captain hotly. "Barton and I playedas children together, and if there's not a man among you who's gotthe nerve to follow me--I'll go alone by Heavens!"
In the silence of the room, he pulled the cap about his ears and,tying it snugly under his chin, drew on his huge fur mittens; thenwith a scornful laugh he turned toward the door.
He paused as his eye caught the swollen face of Big George. Bloodhad stiffened in the heavy creases of his face like rusted stringersin a ledge, while his mashed and discoloured lips protruded thickly.His hair gleamed red, and the sweat had dried upon his nakedshoulders, streaked with dirt and flecked with spots of blood, yetthe battered features shone with the unconquered, fearless light of arough, strong man.
Captain strode to him with outstretched hand. "You're a man," hesaid. "You've got the nerve, George, and you'll go with me, won'tyou?"
"What! Me?" questioned the sailor vaguely. His wondering glanceleft Captain, and drifted round the circle of shamed and silentfaces--then he straightened stiffly and cried: "Will I go with you?Certainly! I'll go to ---- with you."
Ready hands harnessed the dogs, dragged from protected nooks wherethey sought cover from the storm which moaned and whistled round thelow houses. Endless ragged folds of sleet whirled out of the north,then writhed and twisted past, vanishing into the grey veil whichshrouded the landscape in a twilight gloom.
The fierce wind sank the cold into the aching flesh like a knife andstiffened the face to a whitening mask, while a fusillade of frozenice-particles beat against the eyeballs with blinding fury.
As Captain emerged from his cabin, furred and hooded, he found a longtrain of crouching, whining animals harnessed and waiting, whilemuffled figures stocked the sled with robes and food and stimulants.
Big George approached through the whirling white, a great squatfigure with fluttering squirrel tails blowing from his parka, and athis heels there trailed a figure, skin-clad and dainty.
"It's my wife," he explained briefly to Captain. "She won't let mego alone."
They gravely bade farewell to all, and the little crowd cheeredlustily against the whine of the blizzard as, with cracking whip andhoarse shouts, they were wrapped in the cloudy winding sheet of snow.
Arctic storms have an even sameness; the intense cold, the heartlesswind which augments tenfold the chill of the temperature, the airthick and dark with stinging flakes rushing by in an endless cloud.A drifting, freezing, shifting eternity of snow, driven by a raveninggale which sweeps the desolate, bald wastes of the Northland.
The little party toiled through the smother till they reached the"egloos" under the breast of the tall, coast bluffs, where coughingEskimos drilled patiently at ivory tusks and gambled the furs fromtheir backs at stud-horse poker.
To George's inquiries they answered that their largest canoe was thethree-holed bidarka on the cache outside. Owing to the smallcircular openings in its deck, this was capable of holding but threepassengers, and Captain said; "We'll have to make two trips, George."
"Two trips, eh?" answered the other. "We'll be doin' well if we lastthrough one, I'm thinking."
Lashing the unwieldy burden upon the sled, they fought their wayalong the coast again till George declared they were opposite thepoint where their friends went adrift. They slid their light craftthrough the ragged wall of ice hummocks guarding the shore pack, anddimly saw, in the grey beyond them, a stretch of angry waters mottledby drifting cakes and floes.
George spoke earnestly to his wife, instructing her to keep the teamin constant motion up and down the coast a rifle-shot in eitherdirection, and to listen for a signal of the return. Then he pickedher up as he would a babe, and she kissed his storm-beaten face.
"She's been a good squaw to me," he said, as they pushed theirdancing craft out into the breath of the gale, "and I've always donethe square thing by her; I s'pose she'll go back to her people now,though."
The wind hurried them out from land, while it drove the sea-water infreezing spray over their backs and changed their fur garments intoscaly armour, as they worked through the ice cakes, peering withstrained eyes for a sign of their friends.
The sailor, with deft strokes, steered them, between the grindingbergs, raising his voice in lone signals like the weird cry of asiren.
Twisting back and forth through the floes, they held to their quest,now floating with the wind, now paddling desperately in a race withsome drifting mass which dimly towered above them and splinteredhungrily against its neighbour close in their wake.
Captain emptied his six-shooter till his numbed fingers grew rigid asthe trigger, and always at his back swelled the deep shouts of thesailor, who, with practised eye and mighty strokes, forced their waythrough the closing lanes between the jaws of the ice pack.
At last, beaten and tossed, they rested disheartened and hopeless.Then, as they drifted, a sound struggled to them against the wind--afaint cry, illusive and fleeting as a dream voice--and, stilldoubting, they heard it again.
"Thank God! We'll save 'em yet," cried Captain, and they drove thecanoe boiling toward the sound.
Barton and Sullivan had fought the cold and wind stoutly hour afterhour, till they found their great floe was breaking up in the heavingwaters.
Then the horror of it had struck the Kid, till he raved and cursed upand down their little island, as it dwindled gradually to a smallacre.
He had finally yielded to the weight of the cold which crushedresistance out of him, and settled, despairing and listless, upon theice. Barton dragged him to his feet and forced him round theirrocking prison, begging him to brace up, to fight it out like a man,till the other insisted on resting, and dropped to his seat again.
The older man struck deliberately at the whitening face of hisfreezing companion, who recognized the well-meant insult and refusedto be roused into activity. Then to their ears had come the faintcries of George, and, in answer to their screams, through the gloomthey beheld a long, covered, skin canoe, and the anxious faces oftheir friends.
Captain rose from his cramped seat, and, ripping his cracklinggarments from the boat where they had frozen, he wriggled out of thehole in the deck and grasped the weeping Barton.
"Come, come, old boy! It's all right now," he said.
"Oh, Charlie, Charlie!" cried the other. "I might have known you'dtry to save us. You're just in time, though, for the Kid's about allin." Sullivan apathetically nodded and sat down again.
"Hurry up there; this ain't no G. A. R. Encampment, and you ain't gotno time to spare," said George, who had dragged the canoe out and,with a paddle, broke the sheets of ice which covered it. "It'll betoo
dark to see anything in half an hour."
The night, hastened by the storm, was closing rapidly, and theyrealized another need of haste, for, even as they spoke, a crack hadcrawled through the ice-floe where they stood, and, widening as itwent, left but a heaving cake supporting them.
George spoke quietly to Captain, while Barton strove to animate theKid. "You and Barton must take him ashore and hurry him down to thevillage. He's most gone now."
"But you?" questioned the other. "We'll have to come back for you,as soon as we put him ashore."
"Never mind me," roughly interrupted George. "It's too late to getback here. When you get ashore it'll be dark. Besides Sullivan'sfreezing, and you'll have to rush him through quick. I'll stay here."
"No! No! George!" cried the other, as the meaning of it bore inupon him. "I got you into this thing, and it's my place to stayhere. You must go--"
But the big man had hurried to Sullivan, and, seizing him in hisgreat hands, shook the drowsy one like a rat, cursing and beating agoodly share of warmth back into him. Then he dragged the listlessburden to the canoe and forced him to a seat in the middle opening.
"Come, come," he cried to the others; "you can't spend all nighthere. If you want to save the Kid, you've got to hurry. You takethe front seat there, Barton," and, as he did so, George turned tothe protesting Captain: "Shut up, curse you, and get in!"
"I won't do it," rebelled the other. "I can't let you lay down yourlife in this way, when I made you come."
George thrust a cold face within an inch of the other's and grimlysaid: "If they hadn't stopped me, I'd beat you into dog-meat thismorning, and if you don't quit this snivelling I'll do it yet. Nowget in there and paddle to beat ---- or you'll never make it back.Quick!"
"I'll come back for you then, George, if I live to the shore,"Captain cried, while the other slid the burdened canoe into the icywaters.
As they drove the boat into the storm, Captain realized thedifficulty of working their way against the gale. On him fell theadded burden of holding their course into the wind and avoiding thechurning ice cakes. The spray whipped into his face like shot, andfroze as it clung to his features. He strained at his paddle tillthe sweat soaked out of him and the cold air filled his aching lungs.
Unceasingly the merciless frost cut his face like a keen blade, tillhe felt the numb paralysis which told him his features were hardeningunder the touch of the cold.
An arm's length ahead the shoulders of the Kid protruded from thedeck hole where he had sunk again into the death sleep, while Barton,in the forward seat, leaned wearily on his ice-clogged paddle,moaning as he strove to shelter his face from the sting of theblizzard.
An endless time they battled with the storm, slowly gaining, foot byfoot, till in the darkness ahead they saw the wall of shore ice andswung into its partial shelter.
Dragging the now unconscious Sullivan from the boat, Captain rolledand threshed him, while Barton, too weak and exhausted to assist,feebly strove to warm his stiffened limbs.
In answer to their signals, the team appeared, maddened by the lashof the squaw. Then they wrapped Sullivan in warm robes, and forcedscorching brandy down his throat, till he coughed weakly and beggedthem to let him rest.
"You must hurry him to the Indian village," directed Captain. "He'llonly lose some fingers and toes now, maybe; but you've got to hurry!"
"Aren't you coming, too?" queried Barton. "We'll hire some Eskimosto go after George. I'll pay 'em anything."
"No, I'm going back to him now; he'd freeze before we could sendhelp, and, besides, they wouldn't come out in the storm and the dark."
"But you can't work that big canoe alone. If you get out there anddon't find him you'll never get back. Charlie! let me go, too," hesaid; then apologized. "I'm afraid I won't last, though; I'm tooweak."
The squaw, who had questioned not at the absence of her lord, nowtouched Captain's arm. "Come," she said; "I go with you." Thenaddressing Barton, "You quick go Indian house; white man die, mebbe.Quick! I go Big George."
"Ah, Charlie, I'm afraid you'll never make it," cried Barton, and,wringing his friend's hand, he staggered into the darkness behind thesled wherein lay the fur-bundled Sullivan.
Captain felt a horror of the starving waters rise up in him and apanic shook him fiercely, till he saw the silent squaw waiting forhim at the ice edge. He shivered as the wind searched through hisdampened parka and hardened the wet clothing next to his body, but hetook his place and dug the paddle fiercely into the water, till thewaves licked the hair of his gauntlets.
The memory of that scudding trip through the darkness was alwayscloudy and visioned. Periods of keen alertness alternated withmoments when his weariness bore upon him till he stiffly bent to hiswork, wondering what it all meant.
It was the woman's sharpened ear which caught the first answeringcry, and her hands which steered the intricate course to the heavingberg where the sailor crouched, for, at their approach, Captain hadyielded to the drowse of weariness and, in his relief at the finding,the blade floated from his listless hands.
He dreamed quaint dreams, broken by the chilling lash of spray fromthe strokes of the others, as they drove the craft back against thewind, and he only partly awoke from his lethargy when George wrenchedhim from his seat and forced him down the rough trail toward warmthand safety.
Soon, however, the stagnant blood tingled through his veins, andunder the shelter of the bluffs they reached the village, where theyfound the anxious men waiting.
Skilful natives had worked the frost from Sullivan's members, and thestimulants in the sled had put new life into Barton as well. So, asthe three crawled wearily through the dog-filled tunnel of the egloo,they were met by two wet-eyed and thankful men, who silently wrungtheir hands or uttered broken words.
When they had been despoiled of their frozen furs, and the welcomeheat of whisky and fire had met in their blood, Captain approachedthe whaler, who rested beside his mate.
"George, you're the bravest man I ever knew, and your woman is worthyof you," he said. He continued slowly, "I'm sorry about the fightthis morning, too."
The big man rose and, crushing the extended palm in his grasp, said:"We'll just let that go double, partner. You're as game as I eversee." Then he added: "It was too bad them fellers interferred jestwhen they did--but we can finish it up whenever you say," and as theother, smiling, shook his head, he continued:
"Well, I'm glad of it, 'cause you'd sure beat me the next time."