The Winds of Chance Part 5

Michael's are uncertain at best. Naturally I came up against the stream. I've been working 'up-stream' all my life." She flashed him a smile at this latter statement. "As for a chaperon--I've never felt the need of one. Do you think they're necessary in this country?"

"Does your husband, Count--"

"My husband doesn't count. That's the trouble." The speaker laughed again and without the faintest trace of embarra.s.sment. "He has been out of the picture for years." She turned to Phillips and inquired, abruptly, "What is the packing price to Sheep Camp?"

"Fifty cents a pound, coming this way. Going back it is nothing,"

he told her, gallantly.

"I haven't much to carry, but if you'll take it I'll pay you the regular price. I'd like to leave at daylight."

"You seem to be in a rush," Mr. Linton hazarded, mildly.

"I am. Now, then, if you don't mind I'll turn in, for I must be in Dyea to-morrow night."

Pierce Phillips had said little during the meal or thereafter, to be sure, nevertheless, he had thought much. He had indeed used his eyes to good purpose, and now he regretted exceedingly that the evening promised to be so short. The more he saw of this unconventional countess the more she intrigued his interest. She was the most unusual woman he had ever met and he was eager to learn all about her. His knowledge of women was peculiarly elemental; his acquaintance with the s.e.x was extremely limited.

Those he had known in his home town were one kind, a familiar kind; those he had encountered since leaving home were, for the most part, of a totally different cla.s.s and of a type that awoke his disapproval. To a youth of his training and of his worldly experience the genus woman is divided into two species--old women and young women. The former are interesting only in a motherly way, and demand nothing more than abstract courtesy. They do not matter. The latter, on the contrary, separate themselves again into two families or suborders--viz., good women and bad women.

The demarcation between the two branches of the suborder is distinct; there is nothing common to the two. Good women are good through and through--bad ones are likewise thoroughly bad. There are no intermediate types, no troublesome variations, no hybrids nor crosses.

The Countess Courteau, it seemed to him, was a unique specimen and extremely hard to cla.s.sify, in that she was neither old nor young- -or, what was even more puzzling, in that she was both. In years she was not far advanced--little older than he, in fact--but in experience, in wisdom, in self-reliance she was vastly his superior; and experience, he believed, is what makes women old. As to the family, the suborder to which she belonged, he was at an utter loss to decide. For instance, she accepted her present situation with a sang-froid equaling that of a camp harpy, a few of whom Pierce had seen; then, too, she was, or had been, married to a no-account foreigner to whom she referred with a calloused and most unwifely flippancy; moreover, she bore herself with a freedom, a boldness, quite irreconcilable to the modesty of so- called "good women." Those facts were enough to cla.s.sify her definitely, and yet despite them she was anything but common, and it would have taken rare courage indeed to transgress that indefinable barrier of decorum with which she managed to surround herself. There was something about her as cold and as pure as blue ice, and she gave the same impression of crystal clarity. All in all, hers was a baffling personality and Phillips fell asleep with the riddle of it unanswered. He awoke in the morning with it still upon his mind.

The Countess Courteau had been first to arise; she was fully dressed and the sheet-iron stove was glowing when her companions roused themselves. By the time they had returned from the lake she had breakfast ready.

"Old Jerry is going to be awful sore at missing this court function," Mr. Linton told her during the meal. "He's a great ladies' man, Old Jerry is."

"Perhaps I shall meet him."

"You wouldn't like him if you did; n.o.body likes him, except me, and I hate him." Linton sighed. "He's a handicap to a young man like me."

"Why don't you send him home?"

"Home? Old Jerry would die before he'd turn back. He'd lift his muzzle and bay at the very idea until some stranger terminated him. Well, he's my cross; I s'pose I've got to bear him."

"Who is Mr. Linton?" the Countess inquired, as she and Pierce left the village behind them.

"Just an ordinary stampeder, like the rest of us. I think."

"He's more than that. He's the kind who'll go through and make good. I dare say his partner is just like him."

Phillips approved of the Countess Courteau this morning even more thoroughly than he had on the evening previous, and they had not walked far before he realized that as a traveler she was the equal of him or of any man. She was lithe and strong and light of foot; the way she covered ground awoke his sincere admiration. She did not trouble to talk much and she dispensed with small talk in others; she appeared to be absorbed in her own affairs, and only when they rested did she engage in conversation. The more Phillips studied her and the better acquainted he became with her the larger proportions did she a.s.sume. Not only was she completely mistress of herself, but she had a forceful, compelling way with others; there was a natural air of authority about her, and she managed in some subtle manner to invest herself and her words with importance. She was quite remarkable.

Now, the trail breeds its own peculiar intimacy; although the two talked little, they nevertheless got to know each other quite well, and when they reached the Summit, about midday, Phillips felt a keen regret that their journey was so near its end.

A mist was drifting up from the sea; it obscured the valley below and clung to the peaks like ragged garments. Up and out of this fog came the interminable procession of burden-bearers. The Countess paused to observe them and to survey the acc.u.mulation of stores which crowned the watershed.

"I didn't dream so many were coming," said she.

"It's getting worse daily," Pierce told her. "Dyea is jammed, and so is Skagway. The trails are alive with men."

"How many do you think will come?"

"There's no telling. Twenty, thirty, fifty thousand, perhaps.

About half of them turn back when they see the Chilkoot."

"And the rest will wish they had. It's a hard country; not one in a hundred will prosper."

They picked their way down the drunken descent to the Scales, then breasted the sluggish human current to Sheep Camp.

A group of men were reading a notice newly posted upon the wall of the log building which served as restaurant and hotel, and after scanning it Pierce explained:

"It's another call for a miners' meeting. We're having quite a time with cache-robbers. If we catch them we'll hang them."

The Countess nodded. "Right! They deserve it. You know we don't have any stealing on the 'inside.' Now, then, I'll say good-by."

She paid Pierce and extended her hand to him. "Thank you for helping me across. I'll be in Dyea by dark."

"I hope we'll meet again," he said, with a slight flush.

The woman favored him with one of her generous, friendly smiles.

"I hope so, too. You're a nice boy. I like you." Then she stepped into the building and was gone.

"A nice boy!" Phillips was pained. A boy! And he the st.u.r.diest packer on the pa.s.s, with perhaps one exception! That was hardly just to him. If they did meet again--and he vowed they would--he'd show her he was more than a boy. He experienced a keen desire to appear well in her eyes, to appear mature and forceful. He asked himself what kind of man Count Courteau could be; he wondered if he, Pierce Phillips, could fall in love with such a woman as this, an older woman, a woman who had been married. It would be queer to marry a countess, he reflected.

As he walked toward his temporary home he beheld quite a gathering of citizens, and paused long enough to note that they were being harangued by the confidence-man who had first initiated him into the subtleties of the three-sh.e.l.l game. Mr. Broad had climbed upon a raised tent platform and was presenting an earnest argument against capital punishment. Two strangers upon the fringe of the crowd were talking, and Pierce heard one of them say:

"Of course he wants the law to take its course, inasmuch as there isn't any law. He's one of the gang."

"The surest way to flush a covey of crooks is to whistle for old Judge Lynch," the other man agreed. "Listen to him!"

"Have they caught the cache-robbers?" Phillips made bold to inquire.

"No, and they won't catch them, with fellows like that on the committee. The crooks hang together and we don't. If I had my way that's just what they'd do--hang together. I'd start in by bending a limb over that rascal."

Phillips had attended several of these indignation meetings and, remembering that all of them bad proved purposeless, he went on toward the McCaskey brothers' tent. He and the McCaskeys were not the closest of friends, in spite of the fact that they had done him a favor--a favor, by the way. for which he had paid many times over--nevertheless, they were his most intimate acquaintances and he felt an urgent desire to tell them about his unusual experience. His desire to talk about the Countess Courteau was irresistible.

But when he entered the tent his greeting fell flat, for Joe, the elder McCaskey, addressed him sharply, almost accusingly:

"Say, it's about time you showed up!"

"What's the matter?" Pierce saw that the other brother was stretched out in his blankets and that his head was bandaged.

"h.e.l.lo!" he cried. "What ails Jim? Is he sick?"

"Sick? Worse than sick," Joe grumbled. "That money of yours is to blame for it. It's a wonder he isn't dead."

"My money? How?" Phillips was both mystified and alarmed.

Jim raised himself in his blankets and said, irritably: "After this you can run your own pay-car, kid. I'm through, d'you hear?"

"Speak out. What's wrong?"

"Jim was stuck up, that's what's wrong. That's enough, isn't it?