"Sure," answered Gale. "Poleon has been here two hours."
"That"s good; I don"t want n.o.body taggin" along."
"We came right through the town boldly," announced Stark; "but if they had seen you two they would have suspected something, sure."
Runnion volunteered nothing except oaths at the mosquitoes and at his pack-straps, which were new and cut him already. As no explanation of his presence was offered, neither the trader nor Doret made any comment then, but it came out later, when the old miner dropped far enough behind the others to render conversation possible.
"You decided to take in another one, eh?" Gale asked Lee.
"It wasn"t exactly my doin"s," replied the miner. "Stark asked me to let Runnion come "long, bein" as he had grub-staked him, and he seemed so set on it that I ackeressed. You see, it"s the first chance I ever had to pay him back for a favor he done me in the Ca.s.siar country.
There"s plenty of land to go around."
It was Lee"s affair, thought the trader, and he might tell whom he liked, so he said no more, but fell to studying the back of the man next in front, who happened to be Stark, observing every move and trick of him, and, during the frequent pauses, making a point of listening and watching him guardedly.
All through the afternoon the five men wound up the valley, following one another"s footsteps, emerging from sombre thickets of fir to flounder across wide pastures of "n.i.g.g.e.r-heads," that wobbled and wriggled and bowed beneath their feet, until at cost of much effort and profanity they gained the firmer footing of the forest. Occasionally they came upon the stream, and found easier going along its gravel bars, till a bend threw them again into the meadows and mesas on either hand. Their course led them far up the big valley to another stream that entered from the right, bearing backward in a great bow towards the Yukon, and always there were dense clouds of mosquitoes above their heads. At one point Stark, hot and irritable, remarked:
"There must be a shorter cut than this, Lee?"
"I reckon there is," the miner replied, "but I"ve always had a pack to carry, so I chose the level ground ruther than climb the divides."
"S"pose dose people at camp hear "bout dis strike an" beat us in?"
suggested Poleon.
"It wouldn"t be easy going for them after they got there," Stark said, sourly. "I, for one, wouldn"t stand for it."
"Nor I," agreed Runnion.
"I don"t see how you"d help yourself," the trader remarked. "One man"s got as good a right as another."
"I guess I"d help myself, all right," Stark laughed, significantly, as did Runnion, who added:
"Lee is ent.i.tled to put in anybody he wants on his own discovery, and if anybody tries to get ahead of us there"s liable to be trouble."
"I reckon if I don"t know no short-cut, n.o.body else does," Lee remarked, whereupon Doret spoke up rea.s.suringly:
"Dere"s no use gettin" scare" lak" dat, biccause n.o.body knows w"ere Lee"s creek she"s locate" but John an" me, an" dere"s n.o.body w"at knows he mak" de strike but us four."
"That"s right," said Gale; "the only other way across is by Black Bear Creek, and there ain"t a half-dozen men ever been up to the head of that stream, much less over the divide, so I don"t allow there"s any use to fret ourselves."
They went on their way, travelling leisurely until late evening, when they camped at the mouth of the valley up which the miner"s cabin lay.
They chose a long gravel bar, that curved like a scimitar, and made down upon its outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of insects. They were all old-stagers in the ways of camplife, so there was no lost motion or bickering as to their respective duties. Their preparations were simple. First they built a circle of smudges out of wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks, upon which he cooked, protected by the smoke of the others, while Gale went back to the edge of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the branches of which he clipped. These Poleon and Runnion bore down to the end of the spit for bedding, while Stark chopped a pile of dry wood for the night. Gale noted that the new man swung an axe with the free dexterity of one to whom its feel was familiar, also that he never made a slip nor dulled it on the gravel of the bar, displaying an all-round completeness and a knack of doing things efficiently that won reluctant approval from the trader despite the unreasoning dislike he had taken to him.
Lee was ready for them by the time they had finished their tasks, and, fanned by the breeze that sucked up the stream and lulled by the waters, they ate their scanty supper. Their one-eyed guide had lived so long among mosquitoes and had become so inoculated with their poison that he was in a measure impervious to their sting, hence the insects gathered on his wrinkled, hair-grown hide only to give up in melancholy disgust and fly to other and fuller-blooded feeding-grounds. Camp had been made early, at Gale"s suggestion, instead of pushing on a few miles farther, as Lee had intended; and now, when the cool evening fell and the draught quickened, it became possible to lay off gloves and head-gear; so they sat about the fire, talking, smoking, and rubbing their tired feet.
It is at such hours and in the smoke of such fires that men hark backward and bring forth the sacred, time-worn memories they have treasured, to turn them over fondly by the glow of dying embers. It is at such times that men"s garrulity a.s.serts itself, for the barriers of caution are let down, as are the gates of remembrance, and it is then that friends and enemies are made, for there are those who cannot listen and others who cannot understand.
"No Creek" Lee, the one-eyed miner who had made this lucky strike, told in simple words of his long and solitary quest, when ill-luck had risen with him at the dawn and misfortune had stalked beside him as he drifted and drank from camp to camp, while the gloom of a settled pessimism soured him, and men began to shun him because of the evil that seemed to follow in his steps.
"I"ve been rainbow-chasin" forty years," he said, "and never caught nothin" but cramps and epidemics and inflammations. I"m the only miner in Alaska that never made a discovery of gold and never had a creek named after him."
"Is that how you got your name?" asked Runnion.
"It is. I never was no good to myself nor n.o.body else. I just occupied s.p.a.ce. I"ve been the vermifuge appendix of the body politic; yes, worse"n that--I"ve been an appendix with a seed in it. I made myself sore, and everybody around me, but I"m at the bat now, and don"t you never let that fact escape you."
"How are you going to spend your money?" inquired Stark.
"I"m goin" to eat it up! I"ve fed on dried and desiccated and other disastrous and dissatisfactory diets till I"m all shrivelled up inside like a dead puff-ball; now it"s me for the big feed and the long drink.
I"m goin" to "Frisco and get full of wasteful and exorbitant grub, of one kind and another, like tomatters and French vicious water."
Poleon Doret laughed with the others; he was bubbling with the spirits of a boy whose life is clean, for whom there are no eyes in the black dark that lies beyond a camp-fire, and for whom there are no unforgettable faces in its smoke. When Lee fell silent the trader and Stark resumed their talk, which was mainly of California, it seemed to the Frenchman, who also noted that it was his friend who subtly shaped the topics. In time their stories revived his memory of the conversation in the birch grove that morning, and when there occurred a lapse in the talk he said:
"Say, John, w"at happen" to dat gal we was talkin" "bout dis mornin"?"
Gale shook his head and turned again to his companion, but the young man"s mind was bent on its quest, and he continued:
"Dat was strange tale, for sure."
"What was it?" questioned Runnion.
"John was tell "bout a feller he knowed w"at marry a good gal jus" to mak" her bad lak" hese"f."
"How"s that?" inquired Stark, turning curiously upon the old man; but Gale knocked the ashes from his pipe and replied:
"Oh, it"s a long story--happened when I was in Washington State."
Poleon was about to correct him--it was California, he had said--when Gale arose, remarking sleepily that it was time to turn in if they wished to get any rest before the mosquitoes got bad again, then sauntered away from the fire and spread his blanket. The rest followed and made down their beds; then, drawing on gloves and hat-nets, and rolling themselves up in their coverings, fell to snoring. All except the trader, who lay for hours on his back staring up at the stars, as if trying to solve some riddle that baffled him.
They awoke early, and in half an hour had eaten, remade their packs, and were ready to resume their march. As they were about to start, Gale said:
"I reckon we"d better settle right now who has the choice of locations when we get up yonder. I"ve been on stampedes where it saved a heap of hard feeling."
"I"m agreeable," said Stark. "Then there won"t be any misunderstanding."
The others, being likewise old at the game, acquiesced. They knew that in such cases grave trouble has often occurred when two men have cast eyes on the same claim, and have felt the miner"s causeless "hunch"
that gold lies here or there, or that the ground one of them covets is wanted by the other.
"I"ll hold the straws," said Lee, "and every feller will have an even break." Turning his back on the others, he cut four splinters of varying lengths, and, arranging them so that the ends peeped evenly from his big hand, he held them out.
"The longest one has the first choice, and so on," he said, presenting them to Gale, who promptly drew the longest of the four. He turned to Doret, but the Frenchman waved him courteously to Stark, and, when both he and Runnion had made their choice, Lee handed him the remaining one, which was next in length to that of the trader. Stark and Runnion qualified in the order they drew, the latter cursing his evil luck.
"Never min", ole man," laughed Poleon, "de las" shot she"s de sure wan."
They took up their burdens again, and filed towards the narrow valley that stretched away into the hazy distances.
CHAPTER VI