by Rex Beach
I
The valley was very still. No breath of wind had stirred it for manydays. It was smothered so heavily in snow that the firs were bent; eventhe bare birch limbs carried precarious burdens, and when gravityrelieved some sagging branch the mass beneath welcomed the avalanche sosoftly that the only sound was a whisper as the bough returned to itsposition. The brooding cold had cleared the air of sound as it had ofmoisture. No birds piped, there was no murmur of running water, noevidence of animal life except an occasional wavering line etched intothe white by the feet of some tiny rodent.
The rolling hills were sparsely timbered, against an empty north sky ajumble of saw-toothed peaks were limned like carvings, and everywherewas the same unending hush of winter. The desolation was complete.
Yet there was life here, for spaced at regular intervals across thegulch were mounds of white, each forming the lips of a rectangularcavity resembling an open grave. They were perfectly aligned andseparated from each other by precisely thirty paces; surrounding eachwas a clearing out of which freshly cut stumps protruded bearing snowcaps fashioned like the chapeau of a drum-major. There were six of theseholes, and a seventh was in process of digging. Over the last one acrude windlass straddled and the heap of debris at its feet showed rawand dirty against the snow. Out of the aperture a thin vapor roselazily, coating the drum and rope with rime; from the clearing a narrowtrail wound to a cabin beside the creek-bank.
McGill came out into the morning and with him came his three giantmalamutes, wolf-gray, shaggy, and silent like their master. He eyed thedrooping, white-robed forest and the desolate ridges that shut him in,then said, in a voice harsh from disuse:
"Hello, people! Anything happened yet?"
He made it a practice to speak aloud whenever he thought of it, for thehush of an arctic winter plays pranks with a person's mind, and there isa certain effect of sanity in spoken words, senseless though they be.
After a moment he repeated his greeting: "Good morning, I said. Can'tyou answer?" Then his cheeks flamed above his heavy beard and he yelled,loudly, "_Good morning_, you ----! Can't you say anything?" He glaredreproachfully at a giant spruce from the lower limbs of which dependedthe quarters of several caribou. "Tom, you ain't gone back on me? Sayhello. You and me are friends. Speak up!" After a time he shook hishead, murmuring: "It's no use. I've got to make all the noise there is.If it would only blow--or something. I'd like to hear the wind."
He strode toward the prospect hole, the dogs following sedately, theirfeet making no sound in the snow. They, too, felt the weight ofisolation and never left his side. Arriving at the dump, McGill stoodmotionless beside the windlass for a long time, staring into nothingnesswith eyes that were strained and miserable. When the cold bit him heroused himself and addressed the steam-filled opening dispiritedly:
"So, you didn't freeze up on me. That's good. I'll get bed-rock to-dayand show you up for a dirty cheat. Pay! Bah! there ain't none!"
He descended a ladder at one end of the shaft, gathered the charredlogs, tied them into a bundle with the end of the windlass rope, then,mounting the ladder, hoisted them to the surface. Next, hooking on theungainly wooden bucket, he lowered it, after which he descended for asecond time.
There began a long and monotonous series of ascents and descents, forevery bucket of gravel meant two journeys the full depth of the pit. Itwas a tedious and primitive process, involving a tremendous waste ofeffort, but he was methodical, and each time the tub rose it carried aburden sufficient to tax the strength of two men. He handled it easily,however, and by midday had removed the thawed ground and scraped asample from close to frost. He laid a light fire, then took the heapinggold-pan under his arm and set off for his cabin, accompanied by themalamutes.
When he had prepared and eaten his lunch he seated himself before hispanning-tub, a square box half filled with water melted from the creekice, and began the process of testing his prospect.
Having worked down the gravel and sediment to a half-handful, he spreadit with a movement of his wrists, leaving stranded at the tail of theblack sand a few specks of yellow. These he eyed for a moment beforewashing them away.
"Too light--as usual," he said, aloud. The dogs stirred and raised theirheads. "Always pretty near, but not quite. But it's here, somewhere, andI'll get it if I can last out this damned silence. That rim-rock didn'tlie. And old Pitka didn't lie, either. Nobody lies except--women." Hescowled at some remembrance, his whole face retreated behind a bristlingmask of ferocity. He sat motionless over the tub of muddy water untilthe fire died out of the stove and the chill warned him that it was timeto resume work.
For many weeks--how many McGill neither knew nor cared--he had pursuedthe routine of his search. He had penetrated this valley alone, unseen,in the late autumn, and every day since then he had labored steadily,mechanically, almost without physical sensation, for all feeling wascentered in his memory, which never gave him time to consider hissurroundings. Spring was coming now--the sun was already peeping overthe southern hills in the middle of its daily journey--and during thistime there had been but two interruptions which had roused him from hisapathy. One had occurred when, in quest of fresh meat, he had discoveredthat he had neighbors ten miles to the west. He had seen their camp fromthe divide, then had turned and slunk away, cursing them for intrudingupon his privacy. The other was when a herd of caribou had crossed. Atthat time he had given brief rein to his desire to kill, seeing ahead ofhis sights the face of the man who had sent him into the wilderness. Hecould have bagged half the herd, but checked himself in time, realizingthat it was not Barclay at whom he leveled his rifle, but defenselessanimals, the carcasses of which were useless.
Barclay! The name maddened McGill. He wondered dully why he continued towork so steadily when Barclay had robbed him of the need for gold. Theanswer to this, he supposed, was easier than the answer to those otherquestions that forever troubled him--he had to do something or die ofhis thoughts, and he knew no other work than this. Even in his busiesthours memories of Barclay and the woman obtruded themselves.
It was after dark when he had fired the hole a second time and returnedto his cabin. He had not reached bed-rock and this fact irritatedhim--he was growing very irritable, it seemed. Lighting his pipe of rank"sheep-dip" tobacco when the supper-dishes were finally cleaned and thedogs fed, he once more prepared for the profitless process of panning.But he noticed that this sample of gravel was different to any he hadyet found, being of a peculiar ashen color. He felt it with practisedfingers and discovered it to be gritty and full of sediment.
"Feels good," he said, aloud, "but I'll bet it's barren."
He had panned so many samples that all eagerness, all curiosity as tothe outcome, had long since disappeared, therefore his movements werepurely perfunctory as he dissolved the clay lumps and washed the gravelsdown. He paused half-way through the operation to dry his hands andrelight his pipe, then fell to thinking of Barclay and the woman oncemore, and remained so for a long time. When he resumed his task it waswith glazed, unseeing eyes. He was about to dump the last dregscarelessly when something just slipping over the edge of the pan caughthis eye and caused him to tilt the receptacle abruptly.
The breath whistling in his throat roused the dogs. McGill closed hiseyes for an instant, then reached unsteadily for the candle. A movementof his wrist ran the water across the pan bottom and spread the blacksand thinly. Instantly there leaped out against the black metal a heapof bright, clean, yellow particles which lay as if glued together.
"Coarse gold! Coarse gold!" he whispered, then cursed in the weak,meaningless manner of men under great excitement. Not trusting himselfto hold the pan, he set it upon the table, but without removing his eyesfrom it. When his nerves had steadied he ran the prospect down, all thetime muttering in his beard. He dried it over the fire, blew the ironsand free with his breath, then pushed the particles into a heap,striving to estimate their value.
"There's half an ounce," he said, finally. "Eight dollars a pan! God!th
at's big! Big! It's another Klondike." He rose and ran bareheaded outinto the night, followed by the dogs, then stood staring at the smoke asit ascended vertically above his shaft, like a giant night-growing plantof some kind. He was tempted to descend the ladder and tear thecrackling logs apart, but thought better of it. Swinging his eyes alongthe valley rim that stood out black against the aurora, he lifted hislong arms. "It's mine, all mine! Understand?" He cried the words loudly,wildly, as if challenging the silence. "It's no good to me, but it'smine, and, by God, I'll keep it!"
McGill reached bed-rock the next evening and spent most of the nightpanning the pile of scrapings he had collected from the bottom of thepit. If the top of the streak had been rich, the lower concentration wasamazing. Every seam in the shattered limestone, which stood on end likesluice riffles, contained little flattened pumpkin-seeds of gold; theylay embedded in the clay stringers like plums in a pudding or as if somelavish hand had inserted them there, as coins are slipped into the slotof a child's savings-bank. He could see them before the dirt was halfwashed, but took a supreme pleasure, nevertheless, in watching theyellow pile grow as the sediment disappeared. A baking-powder can washalf filled when he had finished; it told him unmistakably the magnitudeof his riches. He was a wealthy man, wealthier than he had ever dreamedof being there was more where this came from and the gulch layunappropriated from end to end. Fortune had come in a day, and he wouldnever want so long as he lived. His thoughts were wild and chaotic, forhe was half mad from the silence.
But what use to make of his discovery he hardly knew, since he had slunkaway from the world, ablaze with hatred for his fellow-men, intending tolive alone for the rest of his days. His grudge was as bitter now asthen, and he determined, therefore, to keep his find a secret. Thatwould be a grim, if unsatisfactory, sort of revenge, he reflected. Hewould take what he wished, and let other men wear out their livessearching unsuccessfully. Those strangers to the westward, for instance,would toil and suffer through the long winter, then leave discouraged.There was money here for them and for hundreds--thousands--like them,but he decided to guard his secret and to let it die with him.
McGill pictured the result of this news if he gave it out; the stampede,the headlong rush that would bring men from every corner of the North.He saw this silent valley bared of its brooding forest and filled withpeople; he saw a log city in the flats down by the river; he heard thebass blasts of steamboats, the shrilling of saw-mills, the sound ofmusic from dance-halls, the click of checks and roulette-balls, thenoise of revelry--
"No! No! _No!_" He rose and shouted into the empty silence of his cabin."I won't do it! I won't! I won't!"
But the voices called to him all through the night.
He rose early, for they would not let him rest, and during the darknessa terrible hunger had grown upon him. It was the hunger forcompanionship, for speech. His secret was too great for imprisonment, itthreatened to burst the confines of the valley by its own tremendousforce; he knew he could never sleep with it, for it would smother him;vampire-like, it would suck the life from his veins and the reason fromhis brain.
When he had eaten he pocketed the baking-powder tin, slipped into hissnow-shoes and, crossing the gulch, climbed the westward hills that hidhis neighbors. The dogs went with him.