The Magnetic North Part 82

In the biggest of the huts, nearly full of men, women, and children, coughing, sickly-looking, dejected, the natives made room for the strangers. When the white men had supped they handed over the remains of their meal (as is expected) to the head of the house. This and a few matches or a little tobacco on parting, is all he looks for in return for shelter, room for beds on the floor, snow-water laboriously melted, use of the fire, and as much wood as they like to burn, even if it is a barren place, and fuel is the precious far-travelled "drift."

It is curious to see how soon travellers get past that first cheeckalko feeling that it is a little "nervy," as the Boy had said, to walk into another man's house uninvited, an absolute stranger, and take possession of everything you want without so much as "by your leave."

You soon learn it is the Siwash[*] custom.

[Footnote: Siwash, corruption of French-Canadian _sauvage_, applied all over the North to the natives, their possessions and their customs.]

Nothing would have seemed stranger now, or more inhuman, than the civilized point of view.

The Indians trailed out one by one, all except the old buck to whom the hut belonged. He hung about for a bit till he was satisfied the travellers had no hootch, not even a little for the head of the house, and yet they seemed to be fairly decent fellows. Then he rolls up his blankets, for there is a premium on sleeping-s.p.a.ce, and goes out, with never a notion that he is doing more than any man would, anywhere in the world, to find a place in some neighbour's hut to pa.s.s the night.

He leaves the two strangers, as Indian hospitality ordains, to the warmest places in the best hut, with two young squaws, one old one, and five children, all sleeping together on the floor, as a matter of course.

The Colonel and the Boy had flung themselves down on top of their sleeping-bag, fed and warmed and comforted. Only the old squaw was still up. She had been looking over the travellers' boots and "mitts,"

and now, without a word or even a look being exchanged upon the subject, she sat there in the corner, by the dim, seal-oil light, sewing on new thongs, patching up holes, and making the strange men tidy--men she had never seen before and would never see again. And this, no tribute to the Colonel's generosity or the youth and friendly manners of the Boy. They knew the old squaw would have done just the same had the mucklucks and the mitts belonged to "the tramp of the Yukon," with nothing to barter and not a cent in his pocket. This, again, is a Siwash custom.

The old squaw coughed and wiped her eyes. The children coughed in their sleep.

The dogs outside were howling like human beings put to torture. But the sound no longer had power to freeze the blood of the trail-men.

The Colonel merely d.a.m.ned them. The Boy lifted his head, and listened for Nig's note. The battle raged nearer; a great scampering went by the tent.

"Nig!"

A scuffling and snuffing round the bottom of the tent. The Boy, on a sudden impulse, reached out and lifted the flap.

"Got your bandage on? Come here."

Nig brisked in with the air of one having very little time to waste.

"Lord! I should think you'd be glad to lie down. _I_ am. Let's see your paw. Here, come over to the light." He stepped very carefully over the feet of the other inhabitants till he reached the old woman's corner.

Nig, following calmly, walked on prostrate bodies till he reached his friend.

"Now, your paw, pardner. F-ith! Bad, ain't it?" he appealed to the toothless squaw. Her best friend could not have said her wizened regard was exactly sympathetic, but it was attentive. She seemed intelligent as well as kind.

"Look here," whispered the Boy, "let that muckluck string o' mine alone." He drew it away, and dropped it between his knees. "Haven't you got something or other to make some shoes for Nig? Hein?" He pantomimed, but she only stared. "Like this." He pulled out his knife, and cut off the end of one leg of his "shaps," and gathered it gently round Nig's nearest foot. "Little dog-boots. See? Give you some bully tabak if you'll do that for Nig. Hein?"

She nodded at last, and made a queer wheezy sound, whether friendly laughing or pure scorn, the Boy wasn't sure. But she set about the task.

"Come 'long, Nig," he whispered. "You just see if I don't shoe my little horse." And he sneaked back to bed, comfortable in the a.s.surance that the Colonel was asleep. Nig came walking after his friend straight over people's heads.

One of the children sat up and whimpered. The Colonel growled sleepily.

"You black devil!" admonished the Boy under his breath. "Look what you're about. Come here, sir." He pushed the devil down between the sleeping-bag and the nearest baby.

The Colonel gave a distinct grunt of disapproval, and then, "Keepin'

that brute in here?"

"He's a lot cleaner than our two-legged friends," said the Boy sharply, as if answering an insult.

"Right," said the Colonel with conviction.

His pardner was instantly mollified. "If you wake another baby, you'll get a lickin'," he said genially to the dog; and then he stretched out his feet till they reached Nig's back, and a feeling of great comfort came over the Boy.

"Say, Colonel," he yawned luxuriously, "did you know that--a--to-night--when Nig flared up, did you know you'd trodden on his paw?"

"Didn't know it till you told me," growled the Colonel.

"I thought you didn't. Makes a difference, doesn't it?"

"You needn't think," says the Colonel a little defiantly, "that I've weakened on the main point just because I choose to give Nig a few cracker crumbs. If it's a question between a man's life and a dog's life, only a sentimental fool would hesitate."

"I'm not talking about that; we can get fish now. What I'm pointin' out is that Nig didn't fly at you for nothin'."

"He's got a devil of a temper, that dog."

"It's just like Nicholas of Pymeut said." The Boy sat up, eager in his advocacy and earnest as a judge. "Nicholas of Pymeut said: 'You treat a Siwash like a heathen, and he'll show you what a h.e.l.l of a heathen he can be.'"

"Oh, go to sleep."

"I'm goin', Colonel."

CHAPTER XVI

MINoOK

"For whatever... may come to pa.s.s, it lies with me to have it serve me."--EPICTETUS.

The Indians guided them back to the trail. The Colonel and the Boy made good speed to Novikakat, laid in supplies at Korkorines, heard the first doubtful account of Minook at Tanana, and pushed on. Past camps Stoneman and Woodworth, where the great Klond.y.k.e Expeditions lay fast in the ice; along the white strip of the narrowing river, pent in now between mountains black with scant, subarctic timber, or gray with fantastic weather-worn rock--on and on, till they reached the bluffs of the Lower Ramparts.

Here, at last, between the ranks of the many-gabled heights, Big Minook Creek meets Father Yukon. Just below the junction, perched jauntily on a long terrace, up above the frozen riverbed, high and dry, and out of the coming trouble when river and creek should wake--here was the long, log-built mining town, Minook, or Rampart, for the name was still undetermined in the spring of 1898.

It was a great moment.

"Shake, pardner," said the Boy. The Colonel and he grasped hands. Only towering good spirits prevented their being haughty, for they felt like conquerors, and cared not a jot that they looked like gaol-birds.

It was two o'clock in the morning. The Gold Nugget Saloon was flaring with light, and a pianola was perforating a tune. The travellers pushed open a frosted door, and looked into a long, low, smoke-veiled room, hung with many kerosene lamps, and heated by a great red-hot iron stove.

"h.e.l.lo!" said a middle-aged man in mackinaws, smoking near the door-end of the bar.

"h.e.l.lo! Is Blandford Keith here? There are some letters for him."

"Say, boys!" the man in mackinaws shouted above the pianola, "Windy Jim's got in with the mail."

The miners lounging at the bar and sitting at the faro-tables looked up laughing, and seeing the strangers through the smoke-haze, stopped laughing to stare.