The Trail of 98

by Service, Robert W

  I was looking for Berna. My heart hungered for her; my eyes ached for her; my mind was so full of her there seemed no room for another single thought. But it was like looking for a needle in a strawstack to find her in that seething multitude. I knew no one, and it seemed futile to inquire regarding her. These keen-eyed men with eager talk of claims and pay-dirt could not help me. There seemed to be nothing for it but to wait. So with spirits steadily sinking zerowards I waited.

  We found, indeed, that there was little ground left to stake. The mining laws were in some confusion, and were often changing. Several creeks were closed to location, but always new strikes were being made and stampedes started. So, after a session of debate, we decided to reserve our rights to stake till a good chance offered. It was a bitter awakening. Like all the rest we had expected to get ground that was gold from the grass-roots down. But there was work to be had, and we would not let ourselves be disheartened.

  The Jam-wagon had already deserted us. He was off up on Eldorado somewhere, shovelling dirt into a sluice-box for ten dollars a day. I made up my mind I would follow him. Jim also would get to work, while the Prodigal, we agreed, would look after all our interests, and stake or buy a good claim.

  Thus we planned, sitting in our little tent near the beach. We were in a congeries of tents. The beach was fast whitening with them. If one was in a hurry it was hard to avoid tripping over ropes and pegs. As each succeeding party arrived they had to go further afield to find camping-ground. And they were arriving in thousands daily. The shore for a mile was lined five deep with boats. Scows had been hauled high and dry on the gravel, and there the owners were living. A thousand stoves were eloquent of beans and bacon. I met a man taking home a prize, a porterhouse steak. He was carrying it over his arm like a towel, paper was so scarce. The camp was a hive of energy, a hum of occupation.

  But how many, after they had paraded that mile-long street with its mud, its seething foam of life, its blare of gramophones and its blaze of dance-halls, ached for their southland homes again! You could read the disappointment in their sun-tanned faces. Yet they were the eager navigators of the lakes, the reckless amateurs of the rivers. This was a something different from the trail. It was as if, after all their efforts, they had butted up against a stone wall. There was "nothing doing," no ground left, and only hard work, the hardest on earth.

  Moreover, the country was at the mercy of a gang of corrupt officials who were using the public offices for their own enrichment. Franchises were being given to the favourites of those in power, concessions sold, liquor permits granted, and abuses of every kind practised on the free miner. All was venality, injustice and exaction.

  "Go home," said the Man in the Street; "the mining laws are rotten. All kinds of ground is tied up. Even if you get hold of something good, them dam-robber government sharks will flim-flam you out of it. There's no square deal here. They tax you to mine; they tax you to cut a tree; they tax you to sell a fish; pretty soon they'll be taxing you to breathe. Go home!"

  And many went, many of the trail's most indomitable. They could face hardship and danger, the blizzards, the rapids, nature savage and ravening; but when it came to craft, graft and the duplicity of their fellow men they were discouraged, discomfited.

  "Say, boys, I guess I've done a slick piece of work," said the Prodigal with some satisfaction, as he entered the tent. "I've bought three whole outfits on the beach. Got them for twenty-five per cent. less than the cost price in Seattle. I'll pull out a hundred per cent. on the deal. Now's the time to get in and buy from the quitters. They so soured at the whole frame-up they're ready to pull their freights at any moment. All they want's to get away. They want to put a few thousand miles between them and this garbage dump of creation. They never want to hear the name of Yukon again except as a cuss-word. I'm going to keep on buying outfits. You boys see if I don't clean up a bunch of money."

  "It's too bad to take advantage of them," I suggested.

  "Too bad nothing! That's business; your necessity, my opportunity. Oh, you'd never make a money-getter, my boy, this side of the millenniumand you Scotch too."

  "That's nothing," said Jim; "wait till I tell you of the deal I made to-day. You recollect I packed a flat-iron among my stuff, an' you boys joshed me about it, said I was bughouse. But I figured out: there's camp-meetin's an' socials up there, an' a nice, dinky, white shirt once in a way goes pretty good. Anyway, thinks I, if there ain't no one else to dress for in that wilderness, I'll dress for the Almighty. So I sticks to my old flat-iron."

  He looked at us with a twinkle in his eye and then went on.

  "Well, it seems there's only three more flat-irons in camp, an' all the hot sports wantin' boiled shirts done up, an' all the painted Jezebels hollerin' to have their lingery fixed, an' the wash-ladies just goin' round crazy for flat-irons. Well, I didn't want to sell mine, but the old coloured lady that runs the Bong Tong Laundry (an' a sister in the Lord) came to me with tears in her eyes, an' at last I was prevailed on to separate from it."

  "How much, Jim?"

  "Well, I didn't want to be too hard on the old girl, so I let her down easy."

  "How much?"

  "Well, you see there's only three or four of them flat-irons in camp, so I asked a hundred an' fifty dollars, an' quick's a flash, she took me into a store an' paid me in gold-dust."

  He flourished a little poke of dust in our laughing faces.

  "That's pretty good," I said; "everything seems topsy-turvy up here. Why, to-day I saw a man come in with a box of apples which the crowd begged him to open. He was selling those apples at a dollar apiece, and the folks were just fighting to get them."

  It was so with everything. Extraordinary prices ruled. Eggs and candles had been sold for a dollar each, and potatoes for a dollar a pound; while on the trail in '97 horse-shoe nails were selling at a dollar a nail.

  Once more I roamed the long street with that awful restless agony in my heart. Where was she, my girl, so precious now it seemed I had lost her? Why does love mean so much to some, so little to others? Perhaps I am the victim of an intensity of temperament, but I craved for her; I visioned evils befalling her; I pierced my heart with dagger-thrusts of fear for her. Oh, if I only knew she was safe and well! Every slim woman I saw in the distance looked to be her, and made my heart leap with emotion. Yet always I chewed on the rind of disappointment. There was never a sign of Berna.

  In the agitation and unrest of my mind I climbed the hill that overshadows the gold-born city. The Dome they call it, and the face of it is vastly scarred, blanched as by a cosmic blow. There on its topmost height by a cairn of stone I stood at gaze, greatly awestruck.

  The view was a spacious one, and of an overwhelming grandeur. Below me lay the mighty Yukon, here like a silken ribbon, there broadening out to a pool of quicksilver. It seemed motionless, dead, like a piece of tinfoil lying on a sable shroud.

  The great valley was preternaturally still, and pall-like as if steeped in the colours of the long, long night. The land so vast, so silent, so lifeless, was round in its contours, full of fat creases and bold curves. The mountains were like sleeping giants; here was the swell of a woman's breast, there the sweep of a man's thigh. And beyond that huddle of sprawling Titans, far, far beyond, as if it were an enclosing stockade, was the jagged outline of the Rockies.

  Quite suddenly they seemed to stand up against the blazing sky, monstrous, horrific, smiting the senses like a blow. Their primordial faces were hacked and hewed fantastically, and there they posed in their immemorial isolation, virgin peaks, inviolate valleys, impregnably desolate and savagely sublime.

  And beyond their stormy crests, surely a world was consuming in the kilns of chaos. Was ever anything so insufferably bright as the incandescent glow that brimmed those jagged clefts? That fierce crimson, was it not the hue of a cooling crucible, that deep vermillion the rich glory of a rose's heart? Did not that tawny orange mind you of ripe wheat-fields and the exquisite intrusion of poppies? That pure,
clear gold, was it not a bank of primroses new washed in April rain? What was that luminous opal but a lagoon, a pearly lagoon, with floating in it islands of amber, their beaches crisped with ruby foam? And, over all the riot of colour, that shimmering chrysoprase so tenderly luminousmight it not fitly veil the splendours of paradise?

  I looked to where gulped the mouth of Bonanza, cavernously wide and filled with the purple smoke of many fires. There was the golden valley, silent for centuries, now strident with human cries, vehement with human strife. There was the timbered basin of the Klondike bleakly rising to mountains eloquent of death. It was dominating, appalling, this vastness without end, this unappeasable loneliness. Glad was I to turn again to where, like white pebbles on a beach, gleamed the tents of the gold-born city.

  Somewhere amid that confusion of canvas, that muddle of cabins, was Berna, maybe lying in some wide-eyed vigil of fear, maybe staining with hopeless tears her restless pillow. Somewhere down thereOh, I must find her!

  I returned to the town. I was tramping its long street once more, that street with its hundreds of canvas signs. It was a city of signs. Every place of business seemed to have its fluttering banner, and beneath these banners moved the ever restless throng. There were men from the mines in their flannel shirts and corduroys, their Stetsons and high boots. There were men from the trail in sweaters and mackinaws, German socks and caps with ear-flaps. But all were bronzed and bearded, fleshless and clean-limbed. I marvelled at the seriousness of their faces, till I remembered that here was no problem of a languorous sunland, but one of grim emergency. It was a man's game up here in the North, a man's game in a man's land, where the sunlight of the long, long day is ever haunted by the shadow of the long, long night.

  Oh, if I could only find her! The land was a great symphony; she the haunting theme of it.

  I bought a copy of the "Nugget" and went into the Sourdough Restaurant to read it. As I lingered there sipping my coffee and perusing the paper indifferently, a paragraph caught my eye and made my heart glow with sudden hope.

  * * *

  CHAPTER II

  Here was the item:

  Jack Locasto loses $19,000.

  "One of the largest gambling plays that ever occurred in Dawson came off last night in the Malamute Saloon. Jack Locasto of Eldorado, well known as one of the Klondike's wealthiest claim-owners, Claude Terry and Charlie Haw were the chief actors in the game, which cost the first-named the sum of $19,000.

  "Locasto came to Dawson from his claim yesterday. It is said that before leaving the Forks he lost a sum ranging in the neighbourhood of $5,000. Last night he began playing in the Malamute with Haw and Terry in an effort, it is supposed, to recoup his losses at the Forks. The play continued nearly all night, and at the wind-up, Locasto, as stated above, was loser to the amount of $19,000. This is probably the largest individual loss ever sustained at one sitting in the history of Klondike poker playing."

  Jack Locasto! Why had I not thought of him before? Surely if any one knew of the girl's whereabouts, it would be he. I determined I would ask him at once.

  So I hastily finished my coffee and inquired of the emasculated-looking waiter where I might find the Klondike King.

  "Oh, Black Jack," he said: "well, at the Green Bay Tree, or the Tivoli, or the Monte Carlo. But there's a big poker game on and he's liable to be in it."

  Once more I paraded the seething street. It was long after midnight, but the wondrous glow, still burning in the Northern sky, filled the land with strange enchantment. In spite of the hour the town seemed to be more alive than ever. Parties with pack-laden mules were starting off for the creeks, travelling at night to avoid the heat and mosquitoes. Men with lean brown faces trudged sturdily along carrying extraordinary loads on their stalwart shoulders. A stove, blankets, cooking utensils, axe and shovel usually formed but a part of their varied accoutrement.

  Constables of the Mounted Police were patrolling the streets. In the drab confusion their scarlet tunics were a piercing note of colour. They walked very stiffly, with grim mouths and eyes sternly vigilant under the brims of their Stetsons. Women were everywhere, smoking cigarettes, laughing, chaffing, strolling in and out of the wide-open saloons. Their cheeks were rouged, their eye-lashes painted, their eyes bright with wine. They gazed at the men like sleek animals, with looks that were wanton and alluring. A libertine spirit was in the air, a madcap freedom, an effluence of disdainful sin.

  I found myself by the stockade that surrounded the Police reservation. On every hand I saw traces of a recent overflow of the river that had transformed the street into a navigable canal. Now in places there were mudholes in which horses would flounder to their bellies. One of the Police constables, a tall, slim Englishman with a refined manner, proved to me a friend in need.

  "Yes," he said, in answer to my query, "I think I can find your man. He's downtown somewhere with some of the big sporting guns. Come on, we'll run him to earth."

  As we walked along we compared notes, and he talked of himself in a frank, friendly way.

  "You're not long out from the old country? Thought not. Left there myself about four years agoI joined the Force in Regina. It's altogether different 'outside,' patrol work, a free life on the open prairie. Here they keep one choring round barracks most of the time. I've been for six months now on the town station. I'm not sorry, though. It's all devilish interesting. Wouldn't have missed it for a farm. When I write the people at home about it they think I'm yarningstringing them, as they say here. The governor's a clergyman. Sent me to Harrow, and wanted to make a Bishop out of me. But I'm restless; never could study; don't seem to fit in, don't you know."

  I recognised his type, the clean, frank, breezy Englishman that has helped to make an Empire. He went on:

  "Yes, how the old dad would stare if I could only have him in Dawson for a day. He'd never be able to get things just in focus any more. He would be knocked clean off the pivot on which he's revolved these thirty years. Seems to me every one's travelling on a pivot in the old country. It's no use trying to hammer it into their heads there are more points of view than one. If you don't just see things as they see them, you're troubled with astigmatism. Come, let's go in here."

  He pushed his way through a crowded doorway and I followed. It was the ordinary type of combined saloon and gambling-joint. In one corner was a very ornate bar, and all around the capacious room were gambling devices of every kind. There were crap-tables, wheel of fortune, the Klondike game, Keno, stud poker, roulette and faro outfits. The place was chock-a-block with rough-looking men, either looking on or playing the games. The men who were running the tables wore shades of green over their eyes, and their strident cries of "Come on, boys," pierced the smoky air.

  In a corner, presiding over a stud-poker game, I was surprised to see our old friend Mosher. He was dealing with one hand, holding the pack delicately and sending the cards with a dexterous flip to each player. Miners were buying chips from a man at the bar, who with a pair of gold scales was weighing out dust in payment.

  My companion pointed to an inner room with a closed door.

  "The Klondike Kings are in there, hard at it. They've been playing now for twenty-four hours, and goodness knows when they'll let up."

  At that moment a peremptory bell rang from the room and a waiter hurried up.

  "There they are," said my friend, as the door opened. "There's Black Jack and Stillwater Willie and Claude Terry and Charlie Haw."

  Eagerly I looked in. The men were wearied, their faces haggard and ghastly pale. Quickly and coolly they fingered the cards, but in their hollow eyes burned the fever of the game, a game where golden eagles were the chips and thousand-dollar jack-pots were unremarkable. No doubt they had lost and won greatly, but they gave no sign. What did it matter? In the dumps waiting to be cleaned up were hundreds of thousands more; while in the ground were millions, millions.

  All but Locasto were medium-sized men. Stillwater Willie was in evening-dress. He wore a red tie in
which glittered a huge diamond pin, and yellow tan boots covered with mud.

  "How did he get his name?" I asked.

  "Well, you see, they say he was the only one that funked the Whitehorse Rapids. He's a high flier, all right."

  The other two were less striking. Haw was a sandy-haired man with shifty, uneasy eyes; Terry of a bulldog type, stocky and powerful. But it was Locasto who gripped and riveted my attention.

  He was a massive man, heavy of limb and brutal in strength. There was a great spread to his shoulders and a conscious power in his every movement. He had a square, heavy chin, a grim, sneering mouth, a falcon nose, black eyes that were as cold as the water in a deserted shaft. His hair was raven dark, and his skin betrayed the Mexican strain in his blood. Above the others he towered, strikingly masterful, and I felt somehow the power that emanated from the man, the brute force, the remorseless purpose.

  Then the waiter returned with a tray of drinks and the door was closed.

  "Well, you've seen him now," said Chester of the Police. "Your only plan, if you want to speak to him, is to wait till the game breaks up. When poker interferes with your business, to the devil with your business. They won't be interrupted. Well, old man, if you can't be good, be careful; and if you want me any time, ring up the town station. Bye, bye."

  He sauntered off. For a time I strolled from game to game, watching the expressions on the faces of the players, and trying to take an interest in the play. Yet my mind was ever on the closed door and my ear strained to hear the click of chips. I heard the hoarse murmurs of their voices, an occasional oath or a yawn of fatigue. How I wished they would come out! Women went to the door, peered in cautiously, and beat a hasty retreat to the tune of reverberated curses. The big guns were busy; even the ladies must await their pleasure.