CHAPTER III
Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman"s man. He admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or die for them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his sentiment was entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born and bred of the mountains and the open and had nothing in common with the insincere brand which develops in the softer and more luxurious laps of civilization. Years of aloneness had put their mark upon him. Men of the north, reading the lines, understood what they meant. But only now and then could a woman possibly understand. Yet if in any given moment a supreme physical crisis had come, women would have turned instinctively in their helplessness to such a man as Alan Holt.
He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover.
The mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle meant as much as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he could enjoy greatly without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his face. And not always was his smile a reflection of humorous thought.
There were times when it betrayed another kind of thought more forcefully than speech.
Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present situation amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment Miss Standish had made in selecting him, when compared with the intoxicating thrill she could easily have aroused by choosing one of the young engineers as a companion in her evening adventure. He chuckled.
And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered note of amus.e.m.e.nt, gave to her head that swift little birdlike tilt which he had observed once before, in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said nothing. As if challenged, she calmly took possession of his arm.
Halfway round the deck, Alan began to sense the fact that there was a decidedly pleasant flavor to the whole thing. The girl"s hand did not merely touch his arm; it was snuggled there confidently, and she was necessarily so close to him that when he looked down, the glossy coils of her hair were within a few inches of his face. His nearness to her, together with the soft pressure of her hand on his arm, was a jolt to his stoicism.
"It"s not half bad," he expressed himself frankly. "I really believe I am going to enjoy answering your questions, Miss Standish."
"Oh!" He felt the slim, little figure stiffen for an instant. "You thought--possibly--I might be dangerous?"
"A little. I don"t understand women. Collectively I think they are G.o.d"s most wonderful handiwork. Individually I don"t care much about them.
But you--"
She nodded approvingly. "That is very nice of you. But you needn"t say I am different from the others. I am not. All women are alike."
"Possibly--except in the way they dress their hair."
"You like mine?"
"Very much."
He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge cloud of smoke from his cigar in mental protest.
They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard the _Nome_. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its luxurious s.p.a.ce, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation parlor built at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their husbands while they smoked their after-dinner cigars.
"If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up, let"s go in," he suggested. "I know; of no better place. Are you afraid of smoke?"
"No. If I were a man, I would smoke."
"Perhaps you do?"
"I do not. When I begin that, if you please, I shall bob my hair."
"Which would be a crime," he replied so earnestly that again he was surprised at himself.
Two or three ladies, with their escorts, were in the parlor when they entered. The huge main room, covering a third of the aft deck, was blue with smoke. A score of men were playing cards at round tables. Twice as many were gathered in groups, talking, while others walked aimlessly up and down the carpeted floor. Here and there were men who sat alone. A few were asleep, which made Alan look at his watch. Then he observed Mary Standish studying the innumerable bundles of neatly rolled blankets that lay about. One of them was at her feet. She touched it with her toe.
"What do they mean?" she asked.
"We are overloaded," he explained. "Alaskan steam-ships have no steerage pa.s.sengers as we generally know them. It isn"t poverty that rides steerage when you go north. You can always find a millionaire or two on the lower deck. When they get sleepy, most of the men you see in there will unroll blankets and sleep on the floor. Did you ever see an earl?"
He felt it his duty to make explanations now that he had brought her in, and directed her attention to the third table on their left. Three men were seated at this table.
"The man facing us, the one with a flabby face and pale mustache, is an earl--I forget his name," he said. "He doesn"t look it, but he is a real sport. He is going up to shoot Kadiak bears, and sleeps on the floor.
The group beyond them, at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men, and that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with whiskers nearly to his waist, is Stampede Smith, an old-time partner of George Carmack, who discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The thud of Carmack"s spade, as it hit first pay, was the "sound heard round the world," Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled whiskers was the second-best man at Bonanza, excepting Skook.u.m Jim and Taglish Charlie, two Siwah Indians who were with Carmack when the strike was made. Also, if you care for the romantic, he was in love with Belinda Mulrooney, the most courageous woman who ever came into the north."
"Why was she courageous?"
"Because she came alone into a man"s land, without a soul to fight for her, determined to make a fortune along with the others. And she did. As long as there is a Dawson sour-dough alive, he will remember Belinda Mulrooney."
"She proved what a woman could do, Mr. Holt."
"Yes, and a little later she proved how foolish a woman can be, Miss Standish. She became the richest woman in Dawson. Then came a man who posed as a count, Belinda married him, and they went to Paris. _Finis_, I think. Now, if she had married Stampede Smith over there, with his big whiskers--"
He did not finish. Half a dozen paces from them a man had risen from a table and was facing them. There was nothing unusual about him, except his boldness as he looked at Mary Standish. It was as if he knew her and was deliberately insulting her in a stare that was more than impudent in its directness. Then a sudden twist came to his lips; he shrugged his shoulders slightly and turned away.
Alan glanced swiftly at his companion. Her lips were compressed, and her cheeks were flaming hotly. Even then, as his own blood boiled, he could not but observe how beautiful anger made her.
"If you will pardon me a moment," he said quietly, "I shall demand an explanation."
Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.
"Please don"t," she entreated. "It is kind of you, and you are just the sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But it would be absurd to notice it. Don"t you think so?"
In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her voice, and Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went from her face, leaving it strangely white.
"I am at your service," he replied with a rather cold inclination of his head. "But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow anything like that to go unchallenged."
He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon the deck.
"One of John Graham"s men," he said. "A fellow named Rossland, going up to get a final grip on the salmon fishing, I understand. They"ll choke the life out of it in another two years. Funny what this filthy stuff we call money can do, isn"t it? Two winters ago I saw whole Indian villages starving, and women and little children dying by the score because of this John Graham"s money. Over-fishing did it, you understand. If you could have seen some of those poor little devils, just skin and bones, crying for a rag to eat--"
Her hand clutched at his arm. "How could John Graham--do that?" she whispered.
He laughed unpleasantly. "When you have been a year in Alaska you won"t ask that question, Miss Standish. _How_? Why, simply by glutting his canneries and taking from the streams the food supply which the natives have depended upon for generations. In other words, the money he handles represents the fish trust--and many other things. Please don"t misunderstand me. Alaska needs capital for its development. Without it we will not only cease to progress; we will die. No territory on the face of the earth offers greater opportunities for capital than Alaska does today. Ten thousand fortunes are waiting to be made here by men who have money to invest.
"But John Graham does not represent the type we want. He is a despoiler, one of those whose only desire is to turn original resource into dollars as fast as he can, even though those operations make both land and water barren. You must remember until recently the government of Alaska as manipulated by Washington politicians was little better than that against which the American colonies rebelled in 1776. A hard thing for one to say about the country he loves, isn"t it? And John Graham stands for the worst--he and the money which guarantees his power.
"As a matter of fact, big and legitimate capital is fighting shy of Alaska. Conditions are such, thanks to red-tapeism and bad politics, that capital, big and little, looks askance at Alaska and cannot be interested. Think of it, Miss Standish! There are thirty-eight separate bureaus at Washington operating on Alaska, five thousand miles away. Is it a wonder the patient is sick? And is it a wonder that a man like John Graham, dishonest and corrupt to the soul, has a fertile field to work in?
"But we are progressing. We are slowly coming out from under the shadow which has so long clouded Alaska"s interests. There is now a growing concentration of authority and responsibility. Both the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture now realize that Alaska is a mighty empire in itself, and with their help we are bound to go ahead in spite of all our handicaps. It is men like John Graham I fear.
Some day--"
Suddenly he caught himself. "There--I"m talking politics, and I should entertain you with pleasanter and more interesting things," he apologized. "Shall we go to the lower decks?"
"Or the open air," she suggested. "I am afraid this smoke is upsetting me."
He could feel the change in her and did not attribute it entirely to the thickness of the air. Rossland"s inexplicable rudeness had disturbed her more deeply than she had admitted, he believed.
"There are a number of Thlinkit Indians and a tame bear down in what we should ordinarily call the steerage. Would you like to see them?" he asked, when they were outside. "The Thlinkit girls are the prettiest Indian women in the world, and there are two among those below who are--well--unusually good-looking, the Captain says."
"And he has already made me acquainted with them," she laughed softly.
"Kolo and Haidah are the girls. They are sweet, and I love them. I had breakfast with them this morning long before you were awake."