No one answered, so he strode forward, only to have the weakened traveler raise his head and say:
"No, I"m not dead, McGill. But we had to come back."
The wife was calling to her husband, wretchedly: "Don"t do it, Dan. We couldn"t help it. We"ll go to-morrow. We"ll go. Please don"t! We"ll go."
The onlookers, knowing something of the tragedy, drew back, watching McGill, who still stared into the face of the man who had robbed him of everything.
"Do you remember what I told you?" he questioned, inflexibly.
Barclay nodded, and the woman shrilled again:
"Don"t let him do it, men. _Don"t!_"
"There ain"t room for us here," went on McGill.
"Only to-night," supplicated his wife, the frost-bitten spots in her cheeks no more pallid than the rest of her countenance. "He _can"t_ go.
Don"t you see he isn"t able? Wait, Dan; I"ll go if you want me to"--she struggled forward. "I"ll go, but he"ll die if you send him out."
"It"s always him, ain"t it?" said the miner, slowly. "You seem to want him pretty bad, Alice. Well, you can have him. And you can stay, both of you." He drew his cap down over his grizzled hair and turned toward the door, but Hopper saw the light in his eye and intercepted him.
"I"ll go home with you, Dan," said he.
"I ain"t going home."
"You mean--"
"There ain"t room enough in Ophir for Barclay and me and the woman."
"My G.o.d, man, listen to that blizzard! It"s suicide!"
But McGill only repeated, dully: "There ain"t room, Hopper. There ain"t room!" and with the gait of an old man shambled to the door. When he opened it the storm shrieked in glee and rushed in, wrapping him up to the middle in its embrace. He closed the door behind him, then went stumbling off into the night, and as he crept blindly forth upon the frozen bosom of the river the bellowing wind wiped out his footprints an arm"s-length at his back.
THE BRAND
I
The valley was very still. No breath of wind had stirred it for many days. It was smothered so heavily in snow that the firs were bent; even the bare birch limbs carried precarious burdens, and when gravity relieved some sagging branch the ma.s.s beneath welcomed the avalanche so softly that the only sound was a whisper as the bough returned to its position. The brooding cold had cleared the air of sound as it had of moisture. No birds piped, there was no murmur of running water, no evidence of animal life except an occasional wavering line etched into the white by the feet of some tiny rodent.
The rolling hills were spa.r.s.ely timbered, against an empty north sky a jumble of saw-toothed peaks were limned like carvings, and everywhere was the same unending hush of winter. The desolation was complete.
Yet there was life here, for s.p.a.ced at regular intervals across the gulch were mounds of white, each forming the lips of a rectangular cavity resembling an open grave. They were perfectly aligned and separated from each other by precisely thirty paces; surrounding each was a clearing out of which freshly cut stumps protruded bearing snow caps fashioned like the chapeau of a drum-major. There were six of these holes, and a seventh was in process of digging. Over the last one a crude windla.s.s straddled and the heap of debris at its feet showed raw and dirty against the snow. Out of the aperture a thin vapor rose lazily, coating the drum and rope with rime; from the clearing a narrow trail wound to a cabin beside the creek-bank.
McGill came out into the morning and with him came his three giant malamutes, wolf-gray, s.h.a.ggy, and silent like their master. He eyed the drooping, white-robed forest and the desolate ridges that shut him in, then said, in a voice harsh from disuse:
"h.e.l.lo, people! Anything happened yet?"
He made it a practice to speak aloud whenever he thought of it, for the hush of an arctic winter plays pranks with a person"s mind, and there is a certain effect of sanity in spoken words, senseless though they be.
After a moment he repeated his greeting: "Good morning, I said. Can"t you answer?" Then his cheeks flamed above his heavy beard and he yelled, loudly, "_Good morning_, you ----! Can"t you say anything?" He glared reproachfully at a giant spruce from the lower limbs of which depended the quarters of several caribou. "Tom, you ain"t gone back on me? Say h.e.l.lo. You and me are friends. Speak up!" After a time he shook his head, murmuring: "It"s no use. I"ve got to make all the noise there is.
If it would only blow--or something. I"d like to hear the wind."
He strode toward the prospect hole, the dogs following sedately, their feet making no sound in the snow. They, too, felt the weight of isolation and never left his side. Arriving at the dump, McGill stood motionless beside the windla.s.s for a long time, staring into nothingness with eyes that were strained and miserable. When the cold bit him he roused himself and addressed the steam-filled opening dispiritedly:
"So, you didn"t freeze up on me. That"s good. I"ll get bed-rock to-day and show you up for a dirty cheat. Pay! Bah! there ain"t none!"
He descended a ladder at one end of the shaft, gathered the charred logs, tied them into a bundle with the end of the windla.s.s rope, then, mounting the ladder, hoisted them to the surface. Next, hooking on the ungainly wooden bucket, he lowered it, after which he descended for a second time.
There began a long and monotonous series of ascents and descents, for every bucket of gravel meant two journeys the full depth of the pit. It was a tedious and primitive process, involving a tremendous waste of effort, but he was methodical, and each time the tub rose it carried a burden sufficient to tax the strength of two men. He handled it easily, however, and by midday had removed the thawed ground and sc.r.a.ped a sample from close to frost. He laid a light fire, then took the heaping gold-pan under his arm and set off for his cabin, accompanied by the malamutes.
When he had prepared and eaten his lunch he seated himself before his panning-tub, a square box half filled with water melted from the creek ice, and began the process of testing his prospect.
Having worked down the gravel and sediment to a half-handful, he spread it with a movement of his wrists, leaving stranded at the tail of the black sand a few specks of yellow. These he eyed for a moment before washing them away.
"Too light--as usual," he said, aloud. The dogs stirred and raised their heads. "Always pretty near, but not quite. But it"s here, somewhere, and I"ll get it if I can last out this d.a.m.ned silence. That rim-rock didn"t lie. And old Pitka didn"t lie, either. n.o.body lies except--women." He scowled at some remembrance, his whole face retreated behind a bristling mask of ferocity. He sat motionless over the tub of muddy water until the fire died out of the stove and the chill warned him that it was time to resume work.
For many weeks--how many McGill neither knew nor cared--he had pursued the routine of his search. He had penetrated this valley alone, unseen, in the late autumn, and every day since then he had labored steadily, mechanically, almost without physical sensation, for all feeling was centered in his memory, which never gave him time to consider his surroundings. Spring was coming now--the sun was already peeping over the southern hills in the middle of its daily journey--and during this time there had been but two interruptions which had roused him from his apathy. One had occurred when, in quest of fresh meat, he had discovered that he had neighbors ten miles to the west. He had seen their camp from the divide, then had turned and slunk away, cursing them for intruding upon his privacy. The other was when a herd of caribou had crossed. At that time he had given brief rein to his desire to kill, seeing ahead of his sights the face of the man who had sent him into the wilderness. He could have bagged half the herd, but checked himself in time, realizing that it was not Barclay at whom he leveled his rifle, but defenseless animals, the carca.s.ses of which were useless.
Barclay! The name maddened McGill. He wondered dully why he continued to work so steadily when Barclay had robbed him of the need for gold. The answer to this, he supposed, was easier than the answer to those other questions that forever troubled him--he had to do something or die of his thoughts, and he knew no other work than this. Even in his busiest hours memories of Barclay and the woman obtruded themselves.
It was after dark when he had fired the hole a second time and returned to his cabin. He had not reached bed-rock and this fact irritated him--he was growing very irritable, it seemed. Lighting his pipe of rank "sheep-dip" tobacco when the supper-dishes were finally cleaned and the dogs fed, he once more prepared for the profitless process of panning.
But he noticed that this sample of gravel was different to any he had yet found, being of a peculiar ashen color. He felt it with practised fingers and discovered it to be gritty and full of sediment.
"Feels good," he said, aloud, "but I"ll bet it"s barren."
He had panned so many samples that all eagerness, all curiosity as to the outcome, had long since disappeared, therefore his movements were purely perfunctory as he dissolved the clay lumps and washed the gravels down. He paused half-way through the operation to dry his hands and relight his pipe, then fell to thinking of Barclay and the woman once more, and remained so for a long time. When he resumed his task it was with glazed, unseeing eyes. He was about to dump the last dregs carelessly when something just slipping over the edge of the pan caught his eye and caused him to tilt the receptacle abruptly.
The breath whistling in his throat roused the dogs. McGill closed his eyes for an instant, then reached unsteadily for the candle. A movement of his wrist ran the water across the pan bottom and spread the black sand thinly. Instantly there leaped out against the black metal a heap of bright, clean, yellow particles which lay as if glued together.
"Coa.r.s.e gold! Coa.r.s.e gold!" he whispered, then cursed in the weak, meaningless manner of men under great excitement. Not trusting himself to hold the pan, he set it upon the table, but without removing his eyes from it. When his nerves had steadied he ran the prospect down, all the time muttering in his beard. He dried it over the fire, blew the iron sand free with his breath, then pushed the particles into a heap, striving to estimate their value.
"There"s half an ounce," he said, finally. "Eight dollars a pan! G.o.d!
that"s big! Big! It"s another Klondike." He rose and ran bareheaded out into the night, followed by the dogs, then stood staring at the smoke as it ascended vertically above his shaft, like a giant night-growing plant of some kind. He was tempted to descend the ladder and tear the crackling logs apart, but thought better of it. Swinging his eyes along the valley rim that stood out black against the aurora, he lifted his long arms. "It"s mine, all mine! Understand?" He cried the words loudly, wildly, as if challenging the silence. "It"s no good to me, but it"s mine, and, by G.o.d, I"ll keep it!"
McGill reached bed-rock the next evening and spent most of the night panning the pile of sc.r.a.pings he had collected from the bottom of the pit. If the top of the streak had been rich, the lower concentration was amazing. Every seam in the shattered limestone, which stood on end like sluice riffles, contained little flattened pumpkin-seeds of gold; they lay embedded in the clay stringers like plums in a pudding or as if some lavish hand had inserted them there, as coins are slipped into the slot of a child"s savings-bank. He could see them before the dirt was half washed, but took a supreme pleasure, nevertheless, in watching the yellow pile grow as the sediment disappeared. A baking-powder can was half filled when he had finished; it told him unmistakably the magnitude of his riches. He was a wealthy man, wealthier than he had ever dreamed of being there was more where this came from and the gulch lay unappropriated from end to end. Fortune had come in a day, and he would never want so long as he lived. His thoughts were wild and chaotic, for he was half mad from the silence.
But what use to make of his discovery he hardly knew, since he had slunk away from the world, ablaze with hatred for his fellow-men, intending to live alone for the rest of his days. His grudge was as bitter now as then, and he determined, therefore, to keep his find a secret. That would be a grim, if unsatisfactory, sort of revenge, he reflected. He would take what he wished, and let other men wear out their lives searching unsuccessfully. Those strangers to the westward, for instance, would toil and suffer through the long winter, then leave discouraged.
There was money here for them and for hundreds--thousands--like them, but he decided to guard his secret and to let it die with him.
McGill pictured the result of this news if he gave it out; the stampede, the headlong rush that would bring men from every corner of the North.
He saw this silent valley bared of its brooding forest and filled with people; he saw a log city in the flats down by the river; he heard the ba.s.s blasts of steamboats, the shrilling of saw-mills, the sound of music from dance-halls, the click of checks and roulette-b.a.l.l.s, the noise of revelry--
"No! No! _No!_" He rose and shouted into the empty silence of his cabin.