"At first we found nothing, for, as I say, when you left me my luck departed. For months we wandered, finding only pay and colours, till we entered the Squaw River and discovered what we wanted at Gold Bug Bend. We stayed there working and testing the dirt till well into January; then one day we drifted into a streak which panned out twenty dollars to the pan, and so we knew at last that we had struck it. We eyed one another suspiciously, for we each of us remembered how you had been treated, and we began to talk about the necessity of recording our claims and discovery. Neither of us would trust the other to go alone, for we both wanted the claim on which we had been working, where the rich streak had been located, so we set out together. At first we travelled leisurely, speaking to one another; but soon we grew silent, and began to race. My partner was a lighter built man than I, and had the better team of dogs, and carried no gun.
Very soon he began to draw away from me; but I relied on my superior strength to catch him up, for the journey was long. Then, somehow, as he ran farther and farther ahead, the belief grew up within me, that, whatever I might do, G.o.d meant him to get there first as a punishment to me for what I had done to you. At that thought all my l.u.s.t after power, and the memory of the mastery which I had lost, came back, and I said, "I will outwit G.o.d this time, however."
"Mechanically, almost without thinking, I levelled my gun and fired--and saw my partner drop. When I came up with him, he was lying face-downwards, with his arms stretched out before him along the ground. I turned him over and called on him to rouse. I kicked him with the toe of my snowshoe, and tried to get angry, pretending to myself that he was shamming. Then I knelt down beside him and covered him with a robe, deceiving myself that he had fainted and would presently awake. After I had waited for what seemed to be ages, I called him by name, and, when he did not stir, I laid my finger on his eyeb.a.l.l.s--and so I knew that he was dead. When I knew that, fear got hold upon me; at every crack of the ice I persuaded myself that someone was coming up or down the frozen river, or had already seen me, and lay hidden behind a snow-ridge, watching all my doings. So I took up my comrade, and thrust him upright into a hole in the ice, trusting that because he had been my friend he would understand, and never tell. But his arms, which he had extended in falling, stuck out above the surface, as if signing my secret to all the world. They had grown stiff and frozen, and I could not bend them, so I knocked off, and piled up around and above them, blocks of ice.
"Then, because I was fearful lest my coming alone without my partner into Dawson to record a claim might arouse suspicion, I turned back to the Gold Bug Bend. There I stayed and drifted with the streak for three months, and thawed out at least sixty thousand dollars" worth of muck. I had time to think things over. I came to the conclusion that I could not record my claim, since that might bring the miners up who would notice that my partner was missing; neither could I take down my dust to Dawson to express it to the outside, since that also would lead to questions being asked as to where I"d got it, seeing that it was so great in amount. So I determined to lie quiet until the summer time, and then to wash out only so much gold as I could carry about myself.
"There was little chance of my being discovered on the Squaw River, for it is seldom travelled, and I calculated that in four months" time when the spring had come, the river would float the body far away to where it never would be found, or if found, then at a time when it would be unrecognisable. But in my first calculation I had not reckoned with my loneliness, and the horror which comes of knowledge of hidden crime. By the end of March I could stand it no longer and set out for Dawson, where there were men in whose company I could forget.
"Soon after I got there the winter broke up and, by the first of May, though the Klondike itself was still frozen solid to its river-bed, the snow and ice from the country and rivers to the south, which had been exposed to the rays of the sun, had thawed and, draining into it, had created a shallow torrent which, running between the banks above the ground-ice, gave an appearance of the Klondike in full flood. Very soon the water over-flowed, so that houses were deluged and men had to take to boats and the roofs of their cabins for safety; it looked as though Dawson would be washed away. The drifting ice commenced to pack and pile against the bridge above the town; unless the jam could be broken before the ground-ice loosened, the bridge must collapse. Some men volunteered to blow it up with dynamite. In so doing they caused the ground-ice to tear itself free from the bottom so that, the water getting underneath, it floated up and pressed the pack against the floor of the bridge, forming, for a half-minute, an impa.s.sable barrier against the torrent rushing down. The flood rose behind it like a tidal wave, tossing on its crest a gigantic floe, standing waist-deep in which I saw, for the second during which it flashed in the sun, a frozen man, whom I recognised, who gazed upright towards me with his arms upstretched--only for a second, then the bridge went down and the water leapt over it, driving timbers, and floe, and man below the surface, carrying them northwards pa.s.sed the city, out of sight.
"The thing had been so sudden that only a few of those who were watching had realised what had happened; of these still fewer had seen the man; and of these only one had known and recognised my partner, as I had done. None of them could say for certain whether the man they had seen upon the floe had been alive or dead. In the confusion which followed the catastrophe this rumour was at first regarded as an idle tale to which no one paid much attention. But, when that one man who had seen and recognised came to me and inquired as to my partner"s whereabouts, and I could give him no satisfactory answers, curiosity was aroused.
"The Mounted Police inst.i.tuted a search for the body, but as yet it was not found.
"I was half-minded to leave the country and go outside. Would to G.o.d I had! But I was afraid that such conduct, following immediately upon this occurrence, would attract attention. I returned to the Squaw River and spent the half of another year up there. Then one day in November an Indian, who was pa.s.sing up-river, stepped into my cabin and told me that the Mounted Police were searching for me. When I asked him why, he said that the English friends of my partner had been inquiring for him, and that I was known to have been the last man to be seen in his company. When that had been said, I knew the meaning of the sight I had witnessed when the bridge gave--my partner had sent his body down river on the first of the flood to warn me of my danger, as if he would say, "_Escape while you can; it will soon be discovered_."
"I gathered together what gold I could carry and, travelling by night only that I might not be noticed (and you know how long November nights can be in the Yukon), I struck the trail for Skaguay--the route by which two and a half years before you had fled. I got out undetected, as I thought, and arrived at Vancouver. There I read in a paper that at Forty-Mile the body had been found. I was seized with panic and hurried on to Winnipeg; on the way I was alarmed to find that I was being shadowed. I escaped my follower on my arrival there and sought out Wrath, the only man I knew in town. I was sure that I could trust him if he were sufficiently heavily bribed; so I gave him all the gold I had, and told him the truth, and offered to furnish him with such information as would enable him to go up and stake the rich bonanza which I had left behind on the Squaw River--all this if he would only help me to escape. He agreed to accept my terms, despite the risks he was taking in helping to conceal a criminal. He told me that you were up here, and said that it was no good going East, or striking down to the States, since all the railroads would be watched, and that my only chance lay in making a dash due north for Keewatin.
He gave me a guide for the first three hundred miles of the journey, and the swiftest team of huskies he had. He smuggled me out to Selkirk, and gave me introductions to such men as could be trusted on the way. Before I left, I heard that they had made me an outlaw by placing a thousand dollars on my head.
"I"ve travelled day and night since then, only halting when my strength gave out, or when I had to hide till darkness came that I might pa.s.s un.o.bserved by a Company"s outpost.
"And I"m followed; I know that. I have not seen him, but I can feel that he is drawing nearer, and now is not far behind. I knew that if I could reach you, in spite of what has happened between us, you would save me. Granger, you must save me, if not for the sake of what I am, then because of what I once was to you in our London days. I know that I"ve deteriorated and have become bad; but it was more the fault of the country than of the man. You know what happens to a fellow who lives up there, how greedy and gloomy he gets, always feeling that the gold is underground and that he must get to it even at the expense of his honour and his life. You"ve felt it, you came near doing what I have done. If Mordaunt hadn"t stopped you, you would have stood where I now stand."
Granger broke in upon the frenzy of his appeal, asking abruptly, "Where is Mordaunt now?"
If his face had not been in the shadow, Granger would have seen how Spurling"s lips tightened as to withstand sudden pain, and his body shuddered at that question. "Oh, Mordaunt is all right," he said. "He left the Yukon soon after you left--he said that the fun was spoilt without you. I daresay he"s seeking for El Dorado or else is married."
"You are sure of that?" asked Granger.
"Sure of what? All I know is that he quarrelled with me over your affair because he thought that I had not used you justly; shortly afterwards we broke up our partnership, and I was told that he had gone out through Alaska, via Michael to Seattle."
When the man at the back of the room said nothing, Spurling asked in a tone of horror, "Why, you don"t think that I killed him too, do you,--just because I have owned to shooting one man?"
"I don"t know what to think," replied Granger, speaking slowly; "no, certainly I do not think that you killed him, _too_."
"Then, what?"
"Never mind, since the matter"s in doubt I will help you. What do you propose to do?"
"Go on till I come to the Forbidden River, and hide there till the hunt for me is over, and they think that I am dead."
"And then, if you survive?"
"Creep back into the world and begin life all afresh."
"And how can I help you?"
"By lending me a fresh team, for mine is all tired out, and giving me provisions for my journey, and delaying my pursuer when he arrives."
"How shall I delay him!"
"Oh, you will know when you see him--there are many ways, some of which are very effectual." Spurling played with the b.u.t.t of his revolver as he said these words, and looked at Granger tentatively, then looked aside. "For instance, the winter is breaking up and he might fall through the ice; or while he is staying here several of his dogs might die; or, at the least, you can tell him that you have not seen me and persuade him that he has pa.s.sed me by. If he refuses to believe that, you can suggest that I have left the river and gone into the forest, and so put him off my track--anything to give me time."
"He would scarcely believe the last," said Granger, "for on the Last Chance there is only one trail--by the river up and down. And I want you to understand Spurling, that if I do help you it will be by clean means; I intend to play fair all round."
"Play fair! Do you call it fair play when a nation sets out to hunt one man? I have only done what thousands have thought and intended.
What better is the man who effects my capture, and gets the thousand dollars which they have set upon my head, and sends me to the scaffold, than I myself who without premeditation shot a man. You"re a nice one to talk about playing fair to the fellow who gave you your chance, and was your friend, and whom you tried to murder! Which of us, do you suppose, is the cleaner man?"
Granger did not answer; through the last few hours he had been asking himself that same question. Spurling, thinking he had offended, began to plead afresh. "Oh, John, if you knew all that I have suffered you would pity me. G.o.d knows I"ve repented for what I did with drops of blood. If I"d only thought before I acted, I might have known that I stood to gain nothing by it. What good was the gold to me when I got it? I could only hide it, and wealth is not wealth when you have to keep it secret to yourself."
He paused exhausted, and fell back drooping in his chair. Granger"s pity had been aroused. "Druce," he said, "I have promised that I will help you; you must be content with that."
Spurting clutched at his hand and pressed it to his lips. "And there are things which you need not tell him?" he questioned. "Say that there are things that you will not tell."
"There are things that I will not tell," Granger repeated. "I will not tell him that I have seen you, and will refuse to give him help."
Spurling"s eyes had again sought out the west and the intervening stretch of sky, where from the east the reflected light of dawn had already begun to spread.
"I don"t like the look of it," he muttered; "I can feel that he is not far behind. Every time I look up-river I expect to see him, a dull brown shadow, hurrying down between the banks of white. I must be going; while I stay I cannot rest."
So, when all had been got ready and Granger had supplied him with a new outfit and an untired team of dogs, he accompanied him out on to the Point where the dawn was breaking. Then he told him of a cache which Beorn had made at the mouth of the Forbidden River, which he might open, and from which he could get supplies if his own ran short.
He went with him a mile down the ice, that he might guide him round a part of the trail which was rotten and unsafe to travel. At parting, Spurling grasped his hand; pointing back to the danger spot he whispered, "That is one of the things which you need not tell." Before he could answer him, he had lashed up his dogs and was on his way northwards. It was then that the thought of a final test flashed through Granger"s mind. "Spurling, Spurling," he called, "did you know that Mordaunt was a woman and not a man?"
Whether he had heard Granger could not tell, for he did not halt or turn his head; driving yet more furiously, urging his huskies forward with the whip and shouting them on, he vanished round the bend.
Granger stood gazing after him, listening to the last faint echo of his cries; then he turned slowly and walked through the half-light back to his lonely store. Over to his right, above the horizon the red sun leapt. He did not raise his eyes; but, as he walked, he whispered over and over to himself words which seemed incredible, "And, if it had not been for her, _I_ should have been like that."
CHAPTER V
CITIES OUT OF SIGHT
In Keewatin the human intellect stands forever at a halt, awed in the presence of a limitless serenity for which it can find no better name than G.o.d, since, of all things which are incalculable, He seems most infinite.
In this land of rivers and solitude Man is unnecessary, disregarded, and plays no part; if, after two hundred odd years of white, and many centuries of Indian habitation, Man were to withdraw himself to-morrow, he would leave no permanent record of his sojourn there--only a few outposts and forts, several far-scattered independent traders" stores, one or two missions and fishing-stations, all of them built of wood, which within a decade would have crumbled to decay, over which the tangled forest would silently close up.
Instinctively he knows himself for an impudent intruder on something which is sacred; he hears continually what Adam heard when he stole of the fruit which was forbidden, G.o.d walking in the garden in the cool of the day--the accusing footsteps of G.o.d. His brain is staggered by an unchartered immensity in which he has no portion, which he can only watch. His individual worth to the universe is dwarfed by the imminence of the All: so nothing seems very serious which is only personal and, since all things which we apprehend must become in some sense personal, nothing is very important. The procession of human effort becomes a spectacle at sight of which Homeric laughter may sometimes be permissible, but tears never. If a man once gives way to weeping in Keewatin, he will weep always. Only by the exercise of a self-restraint which at first seems brutal can life be endured there.
Granger, as he walked toward his store under the shadow of the dawn, was conscious of all this. The land was wrapped in the intensest quiet; the very crunch of his snowshoes seemed a profanation, though he trod lightly. When he had ascended the Point, he paused and gazed back. Already the thaw had commenced; down the still white face of the country, which lay at his feet like a shrouded corpse, the tears had begun to trinkle, though the eyes were tranquil and fast shut; the sight was as astounding to him as if a man six months dead should be seen to stir within his coffin of gla.s.s. Here and there in the expanse of forest he could see flashes of green and brown, of tree-tops from which the snow had fallen. The river-banks, which yesterday had seemed chiselled out of solid marble, were to-day tunnelled and scarred with tiny rills and watercourses which groped their way feebly riverwards.
As he stood in silence meditating, he was startled by the whirr of wings, and looking southward descried the advance-guard of the first flock of ducks. "Ha, the spring has come," he cried; but immediately he checked his ecstasy, for his eyes had again caught sight of the emotionless expression on that great white face with its closed eyes turned toward the sun. Though no voice spoke it seemed to him to say, making by its silence its meaning plain, "There is nothing of which the importance is so great that we should forsake our calm."
He felt rebuked for vulgarity, as though he had been found shouting in a cathedral-nave where priests were praying for the peace of souls of the departed. He desired to hide himself; entering his shack, he pushed to the door. He was tired; his brain ached with thought, and his thought was disjointed. He could not believe that Spurling had ever come; it was all an hallucination. Thinking about the past had made him imagine all that, or else he had dreamed it in the night. He went over detail by detail all that had seemed to him to happen; and even then, when it fitted reasonably together, he could not be certain. It was too monstrous that Spurling should have become like that! He would not believe it. Then his anxiety for Mordaunt sprang up and commenced to craze him. The terrible question throbbed through his mind, "Is Mordaunt dead?"
The mania for questions grew upon him. Three separate voices spoke clamorously at once: "Is Mordaunt dead?"
"Did Spurling murder him?"