The Magnetic North Part 84

"Oh, well; you were sayin' that gold o' yours came from--"

"Poor old b.u.t.ts! Bright feller, too."

"How far off is your--"

"I tell you, sir, b.u.t.ts is brains to his boots. Course you know Jack McQuestion?"

"No, but I'd like to hear a little about your--"

"Y' don' know Jack McQuestion? Well, sir, Jack's the biggest man in the Yukon. Why, he built Fort Reliance six miles below the mouth of the Klond.y.k.e in '73; he discovered gold on the Stewart in '85, and established a post there. _Everybody_ knows Jack McQuestion; an"--quickly, as he saw he was about to be interrupted--"you heard about that swell watch we all clubbed together and give him? No? Well, sir, there ain't an eleganter watch in the world. Is there?"

"Guess not," said the bartender.

"Repeater, you know. Got twenty-seven di'mon's in the case. One of 'em's this size." He presented the end of a gnarled and muscular thumb.

"And inside, the case is all wrote in--a lot of soft sawder; but Jack ain't got _any_thing he cares for so much. You can see he's always tickled to death when anybody asks him the time. But do you think he ever lets that watch out'n his own hands? Not _much_. Let's anybody _look_ at it, and keeps a holt o' the stem-winder. Well, sir, we was all in a saloon up at Circle, and that feller over there--b.u.t.ts--he bet me fifty dollars that he'd git McQuestion's watch away from him before he left the saloon. An' it was late. McQuestion was thinkin' a'ready about goin' home to that squaw wife that keeps him so straight. Well, sir, b.u.t.ts went over and began to gas about outfittin', and McQuestion answers and figures up the estimates on the counter, and, by Gawd! in less 'n quarter of an hour b.u.t.ts, just standin' there and listenin', as you'd think--he'd got that di'mon' watch off'n the chain an' had it in his pocket. I knew he done it, though I ain't exactly seen _how_ he done it. The others who were in the game, they swore he hadn't got it yet, but, by Gawd, b.u.t.ts says he'll think over McQuestion's terms, and wonders what time it is. He takes that di'mon' watch out of his pocket, glances at it, and goes off smooth as cream, sayin' 'Good-night.' Then he come a grinnin' over to us. 'Jest you go an' ask the Father o' the Yukon Pioneers what time it is, will yer?' An' I done it. Well, sir, when he put his hand in his pocket, by Gawd! I wish y' could a' saw McQuestion's face. Yes, sir, b.u.t.ts is brains to his boots."

"How far out are the diggin's?"

"What diggin's?"

"Yours."

"Oh--a--my gulch ain't fur."

There was a noise about the door. Someone bustled in with a torrent of talk, and the pianola was drowned in a pandemonium of shouts and laughter.

"Windy Jim's reely got back!"

Everybody crowded forward. Maudie was at the Colonel's elbow explaining that the little yellow-bearded man with the red nose was the letter-carrier. He had made a contract early in the winter to go to Dawson and bring down the mail for Minook. His agreement was to make the round trip and be back by the middle of February. Since early March the standing gag in the camp had been: "Well, Windy Jim got in last night."

The mild jest had grown stale, and the denizens of Minook had given up the hope of ever laying eyes on Windy again, when lo! here he was with twenty-two hundred letters in his sack. The patrons of the Gold Nugget crowded round him like flies round a lump of sugar, glad to pay a dollar apiece on each letter he handed out. "And you take _all_ that's addressed to yer at that price or you get none." Every letter there had come over the terrible Pa.s.s. Every one had travelled twelve hundred miles by dog-team, and some had been on the trail seven months.

"Here, Maudie, me dear." The postman handed her two letters. "See how he dotes on yer."

"Got anything fur--what's yer names?" says the mackinaw man, who seemed to have adopted the Colonel and the Boy.

He presented them without embarra.s.sment to "Windy Jim Wilson, of Hog'em Junction, the best trail mail-carrier in the 'nited States."

Those who had already got letters were gathered in groups under the bracket-lights reading eagerly. In the midst of the lull of satisfaction or expectancy someone cried out in disgust, and another threw down a letter with a shower of objurgation.

"Guess you got the mate to mine, Bonsor," said a bystander with a laugh, slowly tearing up the communication he had opened with fingers so eager that they shook.

"You pay a dollar apiece for letters from folks you never heard of, asking you what you think of the country, and whether you'd advise 'em to come out."

"Huh! don't I wish they would!"

"It's all right. _They will._"

"And then trust Bonsor to git even."

Salaman, "the luckiest man in camp," who had come in from his valuable Little Minook property for the night only, had to pay fifteen dollars for his mail. When he opened it, he found he had one home letter, written seven months before, eight notes of inquiry, and six advertis.e.m.e.nts.

Maudie had put her letters unopened in her pocket, and told the man at the scales to weigh out two dollars to Windy, and charge to her. Then she began to talk to the Colonel.

The Boy observed with scant patience that his pardner treated Maudie with a consideration he could hardly have bettered had she been the first lady in the land. "Must be because she's little and cute-lookin'.

The Colonel's a sentimental ol' goslin'."

"What makes you so polite to that dance-hall girl?" muttered the Boy aside. "She's no good."

"Reckon it won't make her any better for me to be impolite to her,"

returned the Colonel calmly.

But finding she could not detach the Kentuckian from his pardner, Maudie bestowed her attention elsewhere. French Charlie was leaning back against the wall, his hands jammed in his pockets, and his big slouch-hat pulled over his brows. Under the shadow of the wide brim furtively he watched the girl. Another woman came up and asked him to dance. He shook his head.

"Reckon we'd better go and knock up Blandford Keith and get a bed,"

suggested the Boy regretfully, looking round for the man who had a cinch up on Glory Hallelujah, and wouldn't tell you how to get there.

"Reckon we'd better," agreed the Colonel.

But they halted near Windy Jim, who was refres.h.i.+ng himself, and at the same time telling Dawson news, or Dawson lies, as the company evidently thought. And still the men crowded round, listening greedily, just as everybody devours certain public prints without ceasing to impeach their veracity. Lacking newspapers at which to pis.h.!.+ and pshaw! they listened to Windy Jim, disbelieving the only unvarnished tale that gentleman had ever told. For Windy, with the story-teller's instinct, knew marvellous enough would sound the bare recital of those awful Dawson days when the unprecedented early winter stopped the provision boats at Circle, and starvation stared the over-populated Klond.y.k.e in the face.

Having disposed of their letters, the miners crowded round the courier to hear how the black business ended--matter of special interest to Minook, for the population here was composed chiefly of men who, by the Canadian route, had managed to get to Dawson in the autumn, in the early days of the famine scare, and who, after someone's panic-proposal to raid the great Stores, were given free pa.s.sage down the river on the last two steamers to run.

When the ice stopped them (one party at Circle, the other at Fort Yukon), they had held up the supply boats and helped themselves under the noses of Captain Ray and Lieutenant Richardson, U. S. A.

"Yes, sir," McGinty had explained, "we Minook boys was all in that picnic. But we give our bond to pay up at mid-summer, and after the fun was over we dropped down here."

He pushed nearer to Windy to hear how it had fared with the men who had stayed behind in the Klond.y.k.e--how the excitement flamed and menaced; how Agent Hansen of the Alaska Commercial Company, greatest of the importers of provisions and Arctic equipment, rushed about, half crazy, making speeches all along the Dawson River front, urging the men to fly for their lives, back to the States or up to Circle, before the ice stopped moving!

But too many of these men had put everything they had on earth into getting here; too many had abandoned costly outfits on the awful Pa.s.s, or in the boiling eddies of the White Horse Rapids, paying any price in money or in pain to get to the goldfields before navigation closed. And now! here was Hansen, with all the authority of the A. C., shouting wildly: "Quick, quick! go up or down. It's a race for life!"

Windy went on to tell how the horror of the thing dulled the men, how they stood about the Dawson streets helpless as cattle, paralysed by the misery that had overtaken them. All very well for Hansen to try to relieve the congestion at the Klond.y.k.e--the poor devils knew that to go either way, up or down, as late as this meant death. Then it was whispered how Captain Constantine of the Mounted Police was getting ready to drive every man out of the Klond.y.k.e, at the point of the bayonet, who couldn't show a thousand pounds of provisions. Yet most of the Klond.y.k.ers still stood about dazed, silent, waiting for the final stroke.

A few went up, over the way they had come, to die after all on the Pa.s.s, and some went down, their white, despairing faces disappearing round the Klond.y.k.e bend as they drifted with the grinding ice towards the Arctic Circle, where the food was caught in the floes. And how one came back, going by without ever turning his head, caring not a jot for Golden Dawson, serene as a king in his capital, solitary, stark on a little island of ice.

"Lord! it was better, after all, at the Big Chimney."

"Oh, it wasn't so bad," said Windy cheerfully. "About the time one o'

the big companies announced they was sold out o' everything but sugar and axe-handles, a couple o' steamers pushed their way in through the ice. After all, just as old J. J. Healy said, it was only a question of rations and proper distribution. Why, flour's fell from one hundred and twenty dollars a sack to fifty! And there's a big new strike on the island opposite Ensley Creek. They call it Monte Cristo; pay runs eight dollars to the pan. Lord! Dawson's the greatest gold camp on the globe."

But no matter what befell at Dawson, business must be kept brisk at Minook. The pianola started up, and Buckin' Billy, who called the dances, began to bawl invitations to the company to come and waltz.

Windy interrupted his own music for further refreshment, pausing an instant, with his mouth full of dried-apple pie to say:

"Congress has sent out a relief expedition to Dawson."

"No!"

"Fact! Reindeer."