The correspondent"s trigger-finger moved and there was a warning click.
"Now pull it. Pull it, I say. As though ye cud, with that flutter to yer eye."
St. Vincent attempted to turn his head aside.
"Look at me, man!" McCarthy commanded. "Kape yer eyes on me when ye do it."
Unwillingly the sideward movement was arrested, and his eyes returned and met the Irishman"s.
"Now!"
St. Vincent ground his teeth and pulled the trigger--at least he thought he did, as men think they do things in dreams. He willed the deed, flashed the order forth; but the flutter of his soul stopped it.
""Tis paralyzed, is it, that shaky little finger?" Matt grinned into the face of the tortured man. "Now turn it aside, so, an" drop it, gently . . . gently . . . gently." His voice crooned away in soothing diminuendo.
When the trigger was safely down, St. Vincent let the revolver fall from his hand, and with a slight audible sigh sank nervelessly upon a stool. He tried to straighten himself, but instead dropped down upon the table and buried his face in his palsied hands. Matt drew on his mittens, looking down upon him pityingly the while, and went out, closing the door softly behind him.
CHAPTER XX
Where nature shows the rough hand, the sons of men are apt to respond with kindred roughness. The amenities of life spring up only in mellow lands, where the sun is warm and the earth fat. The damp and soggy climate of Britain drives men to strong drink; the rosy Orient lures to the dream splendors of the lotus. The big-bodied, white-skinned northern dweller, rude and ferocious, bellows his anger uncouthly and drives a gross fist into the face of his foe. The supple south-sojourner, silken of smile and lazy of gesture, waits, and does his work from behind, when no man looketh, gracefully and without offence. Their ends are one; the difference lies in their ways, and therein the climate, and the c.u.mulative effect thereof, is the determining factor. Both are sinners, as men born of women have ever been; but the one does his sin openly, in the clear sight of G.o.d; the other--as though G.o.d could not see--veils his iniquity with shimmering fancies, hiding it like it were some splendid mystery.
These be the ways of men, each as the sun shines upon him and the wind blows against him, according to his kind, and the seed of his father, and the milk of his mother. Each is the resultant of many forces which go to make a pressure mightier than he, and which moulds him in the predestined shape. But, with sound legs under him, he may run away, and meet with a new pressure. He may continue running, each new pressure prodding him as he goes, until he dies and his final form will be that predestined of the many pressures. An exchange of cradle-babes, and the base-born slave may wear the purple imperially, and the royal infant begs an alms as wheedlingly or cringe to the lash as abjectly as his meanest subject. A Chesterfield, with an empty belly, chancing upon good fare, will gorge as faithfully as the swine in the next sty. And an Epicurus, in the dirt-igloo of the Eskimos, will wax eloquent over the whale oil and walrus blubber, or die.
Thus, in the young Northland, frosty and grim and menacing, men stripped off the sloth of the south and gave battle greatly. And they stripped likewise much of the veneer of civilization--all of its follies, most of its foibles, and perhaps a few of its virtues. Maybe so; but they reserved the great traditions and at least lived frankly, laughed honestly, and looked one another in the eyes.
And so it is not well for women, born south of fifty-three and reared gently, to knock loosely about the Northland, unless they be great of heart. They may be soft and tender and sensitive, possessed of eyes which have not lost the l.u.s.tre and the wonder, and of ears used only to sweet sounds; but if their philosophy is sane and stable, large enough to understand and to forgive, they will come to no harm and attain comprehension. If not, they will see things and hear things which hurt, and they will suffer greatly, and lose faith in man--which is the greatest evil that may happen them. Such should be sedulously cherished, and it were well to depute this to their men-folk, the nearer of kin the better. In line, it were good policy to seek out a cabin on the hill overlooking Dawson, or--best of all--across the Yukon on the western bank. Let them not move abroad unheralded and unaccompanied; and the hillside back of the cabin may be recommended as a fit field for stretching muscles and breathing deeply, a place where their ears may remain undefiled by the harsh words of men who strive to the utmost.
Vance Corliss wiped the last tin dish and filed it away on the shelf, lighted his pipe, and rolled over on his back on the bunk to contemplate the moss-c.h.i.n.ked roof of his French Hill cabin. This French Hill cabin stood on the last dip of the hill into Eldorado Creek, close to the main-travelled trail; and its one window blinked cheerily of nights at those who journeyed late.
The door was kicked open, and Del Bishop staggered in with a load of fire-wood. His breath had so settled on his face in a white rime that he could not speak. Such a condition was ever a hardship with the man, so he thrust his face forthwith into the quivering heat above the stove. In a trice the frost was started and the thawed streamlets dancing madly on the white-hot surface beneath. Then the ice began to fall from is beard in chunks, rattling on the lid-tops and simmering spitefully till spurted upward in clouds of steam.
"And so you witness an actual phenomenon, ill.u.s.trative of the three forms of matter," Vance laughed, mimicking the monotonous tones of the demonstrator; "solid, liquid, and vapor. In another moment you will have the gas."
"Th--th--that"s all very well," Bishop spluttered, wrestling with an obstructing piece of ice until it was wrenched from his upper lip and slammed stoveward with a bang.
"How cold do you make it, Del? Fifty?"
"Fifty?" the pocket-miner demanded with unutterable scorn, wiping his face. "Quicksilver"s been solid for hours, and it"s been gittin"
colder an" colder ever since. Fifty? I"ll bet my new mittens against your old moccasins that it ain"t a notch below seventy."
"Think so?"
"D"ye want to bet?"
Vance nodded laughingly.
"Centigrade or Fahrenheit?" Bishop asked, suddenly suspicious.
"Oh, well, if you want my old moccasins so badly," Vance rejoined, feigning to be hurt by the other"s lack of faith, "why, you can have them without betting."
Del snorted and flung himself down on the opposite bunk. "Think yer funny, don"t you?" No answer forthcoming, he deemed the retort conclusive, rolled over, and fell to studying the moss c.h.i.n.ks.
Fifteen minutes of this diversion sufficed. "Play you a rubber of crib before bed," he challenged across to the other bunk.
"I"ll go you." Corliss got up, stretched, and moved the kerosene lamp from the shelf to the table, "Think it will hold out?" he asked, surveying the oil-level through the cheap gla.s.s.
Bishop threw down the crib-board and cards, and measured the contents of the lamp with his eye. "Forgot to fill it, didn"t I? Too late now.
Do it to-morrow. It"ll last the rubber out, sure."
Corliss took up the cards, but paused in the shuffling. "We"ve a big trip before us, Del, about a month from now, the middle of March as near as I can plan it,--up the Stuart River to McQuestion; up McQuestion and back again down the Mayo; then across country to Mazy May, winding up at Henderson Creek--"
"On the Indian River?"
"No," Corliss replied, as he dealt the hands; "just below where the Stuart taps the Yukon. And then back to Dawson before the ice breaks."
The pocket-miner"s eyes sparkled. "Keep us hustlin"; but, say, it"s a trip, isn"t it! Hunch?"
"I"ve received word from the Parker outfit on the Mayo, and McPherson isn"t asleep on Henderson--you don"t know him. They"re keeping quiet, and of course one can"t tell, but . . ."
Bishop nodded his head sagely, while Corliss turned the trump he had cut. A sure vision of a "twenty-four" hand was dazzling him, when there was a sound of voices without and the door shook to a heavy knock.
"Come in!" he bawled. "An" don"t make such a row about it! Look at that"--to Corliss, at the same time facing his hand--"fifteen-eight, fifteen-sixteen, and eight are twenty-four. Just my luck!"
Corliss started swiftly to his feet. Bishop jerked his head about.
Two women and a man had staggered clumsily in through the door, and were standing just inside, momentarily blinded by the light.
"By all the Prophets! Cornell!" The pocket-miner wrung the man"s hand and led him forward. "You recollect Cornell, Corliss? Jake Cornell, Thirty-Seven and a Half Eldorado."
"How could I forget?" the engineer acknowledged warmly, shaking his hand. "That was a miserable night you put us up last fall, about as miserable as the moose-steak was good that you gave us for breakfast."
Jake Cornell, hirsute and cadaverous of aspect, nodded his head with emphasis and deposited a corpulent demijohn on the table. Again he nodded his head, and glared wildly about him. The stove caught his eye and he strode over to it, lifted a lid, and spat out a mouthful of amber-colored juice. Another stride and he was back.
""Course I recollect the night," he rumbled, the ice clattering from his hairy jaws. "And I"m danged glad to see you, that"s a fact." He seemed suddenly to remember himself, and added a little sheepishly, "The fact is, we"re all danged glad to see you, ain"t we, girls?" He twisted his head about and nodded his companions up. "Blanche, my dear, Mr. Corliss--hem--it gives me . . . hem . . . it gives me pleasure to make you acquainted. Cariboo Blanche, sir. Cariboo Blanche."
"Pleased to meet you." Cariboo Blanche put out a frank hand and looked him over keenly. She was a fair-featured, blondish woman, originally not unpleasing of appearance, but now with lines all deepened and hardened as on the faces of men who have endured much weather-beat.
Congratulating himself upon his social proficiency, Jake Cornell cleared his throat and marshalled the second woman to the front. "Mr.
Corliss, the Virgin; I make you both acquainted. Hem!" in response to the query in Vance"s eyes--"Yes, the Virgin. That"s all, just the Virgin."
She smiled and bowed, but did not shake hands. "A toff" was her secret comment upon the engineer; and from her limited experience she had been led to understand that it was not good form among "toffs" to shake hands.
Corliss fumbled his hand, then bowed, and looked at her curiously. She was a pretty, low-browed creature; darkly pretty, with a well-favored body, and for all that the type was mean, he could not escape the charm of her over-br.i.m.m.i.n.g vitality. She seemed bursting with it, and every quick, spontaneous movement appeared to spring from very excess of red blood and superabundant energy.
"Pretty healthy proposition, ain"t she?" Jake Cornell demanded, following his host"s gaze with approval.