The Trail of 98

by Service, Robert W

"Then it would only worry you."

  She was regarding me anxiously.

  "Now you must tell me, Berna. It will worry me indeed if you don't."

  Once more she refused. I pleaded with her gently. I coaxed, I entreated. She was very reluctant, yet at last she yielded.

  "Well, if I must," she said; "but it's all so sordid, so mean, I hate myself; I despise myself that I should have to tell it."

  She kneaded a tiny handkerchief nervously in her fingers.

  "You know how nice Madam Winklestein's been to me latelybought me new clothes, given me trinkets. Well, there's a reasonshe's got her eye on a man for me."

  I gave an exclamation of surprise.

  "Yes; you know she's let us go togetherit's all to draw him on. Oh, couldn't you see it? Didn't you suspect something? You don't know how bitterly they hate you."

  I bit my lip.

  "Who's the man?"

  "Jack Locasto."

  I started.

  "Have you heard of him?" she asked. "He's got a million-dollar claim on Bonanza."

  Had I heard of him! Who had not heard of Black Jack, his spectacular poker plays, his meteoric rise, his theatric display?

  "Of course he's married," she went on, "but that doesn't matter up here. There's such a thing as a Klondike marriage, and they say he behaves well to his discarded mis"

  "Berna!" angry and aghast, I had stopped her. "Never let me hear you utter that word. Even to say it seems pollution."

  She laughed harshly, bitterly.

  "What's this whole life but pollution?... Well, anyway, he wants me."

  "But you wouldn't, surely you wouldn't?"

  She turned on me fiercely.

  "What do you take me for? Surely you know me better than that. Oh, you almost make me hate you."

  Suddenly she pressed the little handkerchief to her eyes. She fell to sobbing convulsively. Vainly I tried to soothe her, whispering:

  "Oh, my dear, tell me all about it. I'm sorry, girl, I'm sorry."

  She ceased crying. She went on in her fierce, excited way.

  "He came to the restaurant in Bennett. He used to watch me a lot. His eyes were always following me. I was afraid. I trembled when I served him. He liked to see me tremble, it gave him a feeling of power. Then he took to giving me presents, a diamond ring, a heart-shaped locket, costly gifts. I wanted to return them, but she wouldn't let me, took them from me, put them away. Then he and she had long talks. I know it was all about me. That was why I came to you that night and begged you to marry meto save me from him. Now it's gone from bad to worse. The net's closing round me in spite of my flutterings."

  "But he can't get you against your will," I cried.

  "No! no! but he'll never give up. He'll try so long as I resist him. I'm nice to him just to humour him and gain time. I can't tell you how much I fear him. They say he always gets his way with women. He's masterly and relentless. There's a cold, sneering command in his smile. You hate him but you obey him."

  "He's an immoral monster, Berna. He spares neither time nor money to gratify his whims where a woman is concerned. And he has no pity."

  "I know, I know."

  "He's intensely masculine, handsome in a vivid, gipsy sort of way; big, strong and compelling, but a callous libertine."

  "Yes, he's all that. And can you wonder then my heart is full of fear, that I am distracted, that I asked you what I did? He is relentless and of all women he wants me. He would break me on the wheel of dishonour. Oh, God!"

  Her face grew almost tragic in its despair.

  "And everything's against me; they're all helping him. I haven't a single friend, not one to stand by me, to aid me. Once I thought of you, and you failed me. Can you wonder I'm nearly crazy with the terror of it? Can you wonder I was desperate enough to ask you to save me? I'm all alone, friendless, a poor, weak girl. No, I'm wrong. I've one frienddeath; and I'll die, I'll die, I swear it, before I let him get me."

  Her words came forth in a torrent, half choked by sobs. It was hard to get her calmed. Never had I thought her capable of such force, such passion. I was terribly distressed and at a loss how to comfort her.

  "Hush, Berna," I pleaded, "please don't say such things. Remember you have a friend in me, one that would do anything in his power to help you."

  She looked at me a moment.

  "How can you help me?"

  I held both of her hands firmly, looking into her eyes.

  "By marrying you. Will you marry me, dear? Will you be my wife?"

  "No!"

  I started. "Berna!"

  "No! I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man left in the world," she cried vehemently.

  "Why?" I tried to be calm.

  "Why! why, you don't love me; you don't care for me."

  "Yes, I do, Berna. I do indeed, girl. Care for you! Well, I care so much thatI beg you to marry me."

  "Yes, yes, but you don't love me right, not in your great, grand way. Not in the way you told me of. Oh, I know; it's part pity, part friendship. It would be different if I cared in the same way, ifif I didn't care so very much more."

  "You do, Berna; you love me like that?"

  "How do I know? How can I tell? How can any of us tell?"

  "No, dear," I said, "love has no limits, no bounds, it is always holding something in reserve. There are yet heights beyond the heights, that mock our climbing, never perfection; no great love but might have been eclipsed by a greater. There's a master key to every heart, and we poor fools delude ourselves with the idea we are opening all the doors. We are on sufferance, we are only understudies in the love drama, but fortunately the star seldom appears on the scene. However, this I know"

  I rose to my feet.

  "Since the moment I set eyes on you, I loved you. Long before I ever met you, I loved you. I was just waiting for you, waiting. At first I could not understand, I did not know what it meant, but now I do, beyond the peradventure of a doubt; there never was any but you, never will be any but you. Since the beginning of time it was all planned that I should love you. And you, how do you care?"

  She stood up to hear my words. She would not let me touch her, but there was a great light in her eyes. Then she spoke and her voice was vibrant with passion, all indifference gone from it.

  "Oh, you blind! you coward! Couldn't you see? Couldn't you feel? That day on the scow it came to meLove. It was such as I had never dreamed of, rapture, ecstasy, anguish. Do you know what I wished as we went through the rapids? I wished that it might be the end, that in such a supreme moment we might go down clinging together, and that in death I might hold you in my arms. Oh, if you'd only been like that afterwards, met love open-armed with love. But, no! you slipped back to friendship. I feel as if there were a barrier of ice between us now. I will try never to care for you any more. Now leave me, leave me, for I never want to see you again."

  "Yes, you will, you must, you must, Berna. I'd sell my immortal soul to win that love from you, my dearest, my dearest; I'd crawl around the world to kiss your shadow. If you called to me I would come from the ends of the earth, through storm and darkness, to your side. I love you so, I love you so."

  I crushed her to me, I kissed her madly, yet she was cold.

  "Have you nothing more to say than fine words?" she asked.

  "Marry me, marry me," I repeated.

  "Now?"

  Now! I hesitated again. The suddenness of it was like a cold douche. God knows, I burned for the girl, yet somehow convention clamped me.

  "Now if you wish," I faltered; "but better when we get to Dawson. Better when I've made good up there. Give me one year, Berna, one year and then"

  "One year!"

  The sudden gleam of hope vanished from her eyes. For the third time I was failing her, yet my cursed prudence overrode me.

  "Oh, it will pass swiftly, dear. You will be quite safe. I will be near you and watch over you."

  I reassured her, anxiously explaining how much better it would be if we waited a little.
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  "One year!" she repeated, and it seemed to me her voice was toneless. Then she turned to me in a sudden spate of passion, her face pleading, furrowed, wretchedly sad.

  "Oh, my dear, my dear, I love you better than the whole world, but I hoped you would care enough for me to marry me now. It would have been best, believe me. I thought you would rise to the occasion, but you've failed me. Well, be it so, we'll wait one year."

  "Yes, believe me, trust me, dear; it will be all right. I'll work for you, slave for you, think only of you, and in twelve short monthsI'll give my whole life to make you happy."

  "Will you, dear? Well, it doesn't matter now.... I've loved you."

  * * *

  All that night I wrestled with myself. I felt I ought to marry her at once to shield her from the dangers that encompassed her. She was like a lamb among a pack of wolves. I juggled with my conscience. I was young and marriage to me seemed such a terribly all-important step.

  Yet in the end my better nature triumphed, and ere the camp was astir I arose. I was going to marry Berna that day. A feeling of relief came over me. How had it ever seemed possible to delay? I was elated beyond measure.

  I hurried to tell her, I pictured her joy. I was almost breathless. Love words trembled on my tongue tip. It seemed to me I could not bear to wait a moment.

  Then as I reached the place where they had rested I gazed unbelievingly. A sickening sense of loss and failure crushed me.

  For the scow was gone.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XVI

  It was three days before we made a start again, and to me each day was like a year. I chafed bitterly at the delay. Would those sacks of flour never dry? Longingly I gazed down the big, blue Yukon and cursed the current that was every moment carrying her farther from me. Why her sudden departure? I had no doubt it was enforced. I dreaded danger. Then in a while I grew calmer. I was foolish to worry. She was safe enough. We would meet in Dawson.

  At last we were under way. Once more we sped down that devious river, now swirling under the shadow of a steep bank, now steering around a sandspit. The scenery was hideous to me, bluffs of clay with pines peeping over their rims, willow-fringed flats, swamps of niggerhead, ugly drab hills in endless monotony.

  How full of kinks and hooks was the river! How vicious with snags! How treacherous with eddies! It was beginning to bulk in my thoughts almost like an obsession. Then one day Lake Labarge burst on my delighted eyes. The trail was nearing its end.

  Once more with swelling sail we drove before the wind. Once more we were in a fleet of Argonaut boats, and now, with the goal in sight, each man redoubled his efforts. Perhaps the rich ground would all be gone ere we reached the valley. Maddening thought after what we had endured! We must get on.

  There was not a man in all that fleet but imagined that fortune awaited him with open arms. They talked exultantly. Their eyes shone with the gold-lust. They strained at sweep and oar. To be beaten at the last! Oh, it was inconceivable! A tigerish eagerness filled them; a panic of fear and cupidity spurred them on.

  Labarge was a dream lake, mirroring noble mountains in its depths (for soon after we made it, a dead calm fell). But we had no eyes for its beauty. The golden magnet was drawing us too strongly now. We cursed that exquisite serenity that made us sweat at the oars; we cursed the wind that never would arise; the currents that always were against us. In that breathless tranquillity myriads of mosquitoes assailed us, blinded us, covered our food as we ate, made our lives a perfect hell of misery. Yet the trail was nearing its finish.

  What a relief it was when a sudden storm came up! White-caps tossed around us, and the wind drove us on a precipitous shore, so that we nearly came to a sorry end. But it was over at last, and we swept on into the Thirty-mile River.

  A furious, hurling stream was this, that matched our mad, impatient mood; but it was staked with hidden dangers. We gripped our weary oars. Keenly alert we had to be, steering and watching for rocks that would have ripped us from bow to stern. There was a famously terrible one, on which scows smashed like egg-shells under a hammer, and we missed it by a bare hand's-breadth. I felt sick to think of our bitterness had we piled up on it. That was an evil, ugly river, full of capricious turns and eddies, and the bluffs were high and steep.

  Hootalinqua, Big Salmon, Little Salmon, these are names to me now. All I can remember is long days of toil at the oar, fighting the growing obsession of mosquitoes, ever pressing on to the golden valley. The ceaseless strain was beginning to tell on us. We suffered from rheumatism, we barked with cold. Oh, we were weary, weary, yet the trail was nearing its end.

  One sunlit Sabbath evening I remember well. We were drifting along and we came on a lovely glade where a creek joined the river. It was a green, velvety, sparkling place, and by the creek were two men whipsawing lumber. We hailed them jauntily and asked them if they had found prospects. Were they getting out lumber for sluice-boxes?

  One of the men came forward. He was very tired, very quiet, very solemn. "No," he said, "we are sawing out a coffin for our dead."

  Then we saw a limp shape in their boat and we hurried on, awed and abashed.

  The river was mud colour now, swirling in great eddies or convulsed from below with sudden upheavals. Drifting on that oily current one seemed to be quite motionless, and only the gliding banks assured us of progress. The country seemed terrible to me, sinister, guilty, God-forsaken. At the horizon, jagged mountains stabbed viciously at the sky.

  The river overwhelmed me. Sometimes it was a stream of blood, running into the eye of the setting sun, beautiful, yet weird and menacing. It broadened, deepened, and every day countless streams swelled its volume. Islands waded in it greenly. Always we heard it singing, a seething, hissing noise supposed to be the pebbles shuffling on the bottom.

  The days were insufferably hot and mosquito-curst; the nights chilly, damp and mosquito-haunted. I suffered agonies from neuralgia. Never mind, it would soon be over. We were on our last lap. The trail was near its end.

  Yes, it was indeed the homestretch. Suddenly sweeping round a bend we raised a shout of joy. There was that great livid scar on the mountain facethe "Slide," and clustered below it like shells on the seashore, an army of tents. It was the gold-born city.

  Trembling with eagerness we pulled ashore. Our troubles were over. At last we had gained our Eldorado, thank God, thank God!

  A number of loafers were coming to meet us. They were strangely calm.

  "How about the gold?" said the Prodigal; "lots of ground left to stake?"

  One of them looked at us contemptuously. He chewed a moment ere he spoke.

  "You Cheechakers better git right home. There ain't a foot of ground to stake. Everything in sight was staked last Fall. The rest is all mud. There's nothing doin' an' there's ten men for every job! The whole thing's a fake. You Cheechakers better git right home."

  Yes, after all our travail, all our torment, we had better go right home. Already many were preparing to do so. Yet what of that great oncoming horde of which we were but the vanguard? What of the eager army, the host of the Cheechakos? For hundreds of miles were lake and river white with their grotesque boats. Beyond them again were thousands and thousands of others struggling on through mosquito-curst morasses, bent under their inexorable burdens. Reckless, indomitable, hope-inspired, they climbed the passes and shot the rapids; they drowned in the rivers, they rotted in the swamps. Nothing could stay them. The golden magnet was drawing them on; the spell of the gold-lust was in their hearts.

  And this was the end. For this they had mortgaged homes and broken hearts. For this they had faced danger and borne suffering: to be told to return.

  The land was choosing its own. All along it had weeded out the weaklings. Now let the fainthearted go back. This land was only for the Strong.

  Yet it was sad, so much weariness, and at the end disenchantment and failure.

  Verily the ways of the gold-trail were cruel.

  * * *

  BO
OK III

  THE CAMP

  For once you've panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust,

  Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;

  It's little else you care about; you go because you must,

  And you feel that you could follow it to hell.

  You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in cold;

  You'd follow it in solitude and pain;

  And when you're stiff and battened down let some one whisper "Gold,"

  You're lief to rise and follow it again.

  "The Prospector."

  CHAPTER I

  I will always remember my first day in the gold-camp. We were well in front of the Argonaut army, but already thousands were in advance of us. The flat at the mouth of Bonanza was a congestion of cabins; shacks and tents clustered the hillside, scattered on the heights and massed again on the slope sweeping down to the Klondike. An intense vitality charged the air. The camp was alive, ahum, vibrant with fierce, dynamic energy.

  In effect the town was but one street stretching alongside the water front. It was amazingly packed with men from side to side, from end to end. They lounged in the doorways of oddly assorted buildings, and jostled each other on the dislocated sidewalks. Stores of all kinds, saloons, gambling joints flourished without number, and in one block alone there were half a dozen dance-halls. Yet all seemed plethorically prosperous.

  Many of the business houses were installed in tents. That huge canvas erection was a mining exchange; that great log barn a dance-hall. Dwarfish log cabins impudently nestled up to pretentious three-story hotels. The effect was oddly staccato. All was grotesque, makeshift, haphazard. Back of the main street lay the red-light quarter, and behind it again a swamp of niggerheads, the breeding-place of fever and mosquito.

  The crowd that vitalised the street was strikingly cosmopolitan. Mostly big, bearded fellows they were, with here the full-blooded face of the saloon man, and there the quick, pallid mask of the gambler. Women too I saw in plenty, bold, free, predacious creatures, a rustle of silk and a reek of perfume. Till midnight I wandered up and down the long street; but there was no darkness, no lull in its clamorous life.