There being no priest nearer than Nulato, it was, perforce, a contract marriage. A lawyer in the party attended to the papers, and it pleased the woman to have Barclay sign as a witness. Then she and McGill set out for Ophir, a trip he never forgot. The sled was laden with things to make a bride comfortable, so they were forced to walk, but they might have been flying, for all he knew. Alice was very ignorant of northern ways, childishly so, and it afforded him the keenest delight to initiate her into the mysteries of trail life. And when night drew near and they made camp, what joy it was to hear her exclamations of wonder at his adeptness! She loved to see his ax sink to the eye in the frozen fir trunks and to join his shout when the tree fell crashing in a great upheaval of white. Then when their tiny tent, nestling in some sheltered grove, was glowing from the candle-light, and the red-hot stove had routed the cold, he would make her lie back on the fragrant springy couch of boughs while he smoked and did the dishes and told her shyly of the happiness that had come upon him. He waited upon her hand and foot; he stood between her and every peril of the wilds.
And while it was all delightfully bewildering to him, it was likewise very strange and exciting to his bride. The deathly silence of the bitter nights, illumined only by the awesome aurora borealis; the terrific immensity of the solitudes, with their white-burdened forests of fir that ran up and over the mountains and away to the ends of the world; the wild wolf-dogs that feared nothing except the voice of their master, and yet fawned upon him with a pa.s.sion that approached ferocity--it all played upon the woman"s fancy strangely. For the first time in her tempestuous career she was nearly happy. It was worth some sacrifice to possess the devotion of a man like McGill; it was worth even more to know that her years of uncertainty and strife were over.
His gentleness annoyed her at times, but, on the other hand, she was grateful for the shyness that handicapped him as a lover. On the whole, however, it was a good bargain, and she was fairly well content.
As for McGill, he expanded, he effloresced, if such a nature as his could be said to bloom. He explored the hindermost recesses of his being, and brought forth his secrets for her to share. He told her all about himself, without the slightest reservation, and when he was done she knew him clear to his last, least thought. It was an unwise thing to do, but McGill was not a wise man, and the stories seemed to please her.
Above all, she took an interest in his business affairs, which was gratifying. Time and again she questioned him shrewdly about his mining properties, which made him think that here was a woman who would prove a helpmate.
Their arrival at Ophir was the occasion for a rough, spontaneous welcome that further turned her head. McGill was loved, and, once his townsmen had recovered from their amazement, they did their best to show his wife courtesies, which all went to strengthen her belief in his importance and to add to her complacence.
McGill was ashamed of his cabin at first, but she surprised him with the business-like manner in which she went about fixing it up. Before his admiring eyes she transformed it by a few deft touches into what seemed to him a paradise. Heretofore he had witnessed women"s handiwork only from a distance, and had never possessed a real home, so this was another wonder that it took time to appreciate. Eventually he pulled himself together and settled down to his affairs, but in the midst of his tasks it would sometimes come over him with a blinding rush that he was married, that he had a wife who was no squaw, but a white woman, more beautiful than any dream-creature, and so young that he might have been her father. The amazing strangeness of it never left him.
But the adolescence of Ophir was short. It quickly outgrew its age of fict.i.tious values, and its rapturous delusions vanished as hole after hole was put to bed-rock and betrayed no pay. Entire valleys that were formerly considered rich were abandoned, and the driving snows erased the signs of human effort. Men came in out of the hills cursing the luck that had brought them there. The gold-bearing area narrowed to a proved creek or two where the ground was taken and where there were ten men for every job; the saloons began to fill with idlers who talked much, but spent nothing. One day the camp awakened to the fact that it was a failure. There is nothing more ghastly than a broken mining-town, for in place of the first feverish exhilaration there is naught but the wreck of hopes and the ruin of ambitions.
McGill"s wife was not the last to appreciate the truth; she saw it coming even earlier than the rest. Once she had lost the first glamour and fully attuned herself to the new life she was sufficiently perceptive to realize her great mistake. But McGill did not notice the change and saw nothing to worry about in the town"s affairs. He had been poor most of his life, and his rare periods of opulence had ended briefly, therefore this failure meant merely another trial. Ophir had given him his prize, greater than all the riches of its namesake, and who could be other than happy with a wife like his? His very optimism, combined with her own fierce disappointment, drove the woman nearly frantic. She felt abused, she reasoned that McGill had betrayed her, and at last owned to the hunger she had been striving vainly to stifle for months past. Now that there was nothing to gain, why blind herself to the truth? She hated McGill, and she loved another! There had never been an instant when her heart had not called.
And then, to make matters worse, Barclay came. He had spent most of the long winter at the steamboat landing, being too angry to show himself in Ophir, but the woman-hunger had grown upon him, as upon all men in the North, and it finally drew him to her with a strength that would have snapped iron chains. Hearing, shortly after his arrival, that McGill was out on the creeks and never returned until dark, he went to the cabin.
Alice opened the door at his knock, then fell back with a cry. He shut out the cold air behind him and stood looking at her until she gasped:
"Why have you come here?"
"Why? Because I couldn"t stay away. You knew I"d have to come, didn"t you?"
"McGill!" she whispered, and cast a frightened look over her shoulder.
"Does he know?"
She shook her head.
"I hear he"s broke--like the rest." Barclay laughed mockingly, and she nodded. "Have you had enough?"
"Yes, yes! Oh yes!" she wailed, suddenly. "Take me away, Bob. Oh, take me away!"
She was in his arms with the words, her breast to his, her arms about his neck, her hot tears starting. She clutched him wildly, while he covered her face with kisses.
"Don"t scold me," she sobbed. "Don"t! I"m sorry, I"m sorry. You"ll take me away, won"t you?"
"Hush!" he commanded. "I can"t take you away; there"s no place to go to.
That"s the worst of this d.a.m.ned country. He"d follow--and he"d get us."
"You must, Bob! You _must_! I"ll die here with him. I"ve stood it as long as I can--"
"Don"t be a fool. You"ll have to go through with it now until spring.
Once the river is open--"
"No, no, no!" she cried, pa.s.sionately.
"Do you want us to get killed?"
Mrs. McGill shivered as if some wintry blast had searched out her marrow, then freed herself from his embrace and said, slowly: "You"re right, Bob. We must be very careful. I--I don"t know what he might do."
That evening she met McGill with a smile, the first she had worn for some time, and she was particularly affectionate.
Instead of returning down-river, Barclay found lodgings and remained in Ophir. He was not the most industrious of men, and before long became a familiar figure around the few public places. McGill met him frequently, seeing which Barclay"s fellow-pa.s.sengers from below raised their eyebrows and muttered meaningless commonplaces; then, when the younger man took to spending more and more of his time at the miner"s cabin, they ceased making any comment whatever. These are things that wise men avoid, and a loose tongue often leads to an early grave when fellows like McGill are about. Some of the old-timers who had wintered with the miner in the "upper country" shook their heads and acknowledged that young Barclay was a braver man than they gave him credit for being.
Of course McGill was the last to hear of it, for he was of the simple sort who have faith in G.o.d and women and such things, and he might have gone on indefinitely in ignorance but for Hopper, who did not care much for the Barclay person. The saloon-man, being himself uneducated and rough, like McGill, cherished certain illusions regarding virtue, and let drop a hint his friend could not help but heed. The husband paid for his drink, then went back to the rear of the room, where he sat for an hour or more. When he went home he was more gentle to his wife than ever. He brooded for a number of days, trying to down his suspicion, but the poison was sown, and he finally spoke to her.
"Barclay was here again this afternoon, wasn"t he?"
She turned her face away to hide its pallor. "Yes. He dropped in."
"He was here yesterday, and the day before, too, wasn"t he?"
"Well?"
"He"d ought to stay away; people are talking."
She turned on him defiantly. "What of it? What do I care? I"m lonesome.
I want company. Mr. Barclay and I were good friends."
"You"re my wife now."
"Your wife? Ha! ha! Your wife!" She laughed hysterically.
"Yes. Don"t you love me any more, Alice?"
She said nothing.
"I"ve noticed a change, lately, and--I can"t blame you none, but if you loved me just a little, if I had even that much to start on, I wouldn"t mind. I"d take you away somewhere and try to make you love me more."
"You"d take me away, would you?" the woman cried, gaining confidence from his lack of heat. "Away, where I"d be all alone with you? Don"t you see I"m dying of lonesomeness now? That"s what"s the matter. I"m half mad with the monotony. I want to see people, and live, and be amused.
I"m young, and pretty, and men like me. You"re old, McGill. You"re old, and I"m young."
Her husband withered beneath her words; his whole big frame sagged together as if the life had ebbed out of it; he felt weary and sick and burned out. His brain held but one thought--Alice did not love him, because he was old.
"Don"t go on this way," he said, finally, to check her. "I suppose it"s true, but I"ve felt like a daddy and a mother to you, along with the other feeling, and I hoped you wouldn"t notice it. I don"t reckon any young man could care for you like that. You see, it"s all the loves of my whole life wrapped up together, and I don"t see, I don"t see what we can do about it. We"re married!" It was characteristic of him that he could devise no way out of the difficulty. A calamity had befallen them, and they must adjust themselves to it as best they could. In his eyes marriage was a holy thing, an inst.i.tution of G.o.d, with which no human hands might trifle.
"No," he continued, "you"re my wife, and so we"ve got to get along the best way we can. I know you couldn"t do anything wrong--you ain"t that kind." His eyes roved over the homely little nest and the evidences of their married intimacy. "No, you couldn"t do that."
"Then you won"t make it any harder for me than you can help?"
"No." He rose stiffly. "You"re ent.i.tled to a fair show at anything you want. I don"t like Barclay, but if you want him around, I won"t object.
Try to be as happy as you can, Alice; maybe it"ll all come out right.
Only--I wish you"d known it wasn"t love before you married me." He put on his cap and went out into the cold.
During the ensuing week or two he devoted himself to his work, spending every daylight hour on his claim, in this way more than satisfying Barclay and the woman, who felt that a great menace had been removed.
But Hopper determined that his friend should know all and not part of the truth, for good men are rare and weak women in the way, so he put on his parka and walked out to the place where McGill was working, and there, under a bleak March sky, with the snow-flurries wrapping their legs about, he told what he had learned. Hopper was a little man, but he had courage.
"I"ve heard it from half a dozen fellers," he concluded, "and they"d ought to know, because they come up on the same boat with them. Anyhow, you can satisfy yourself easy enough."