"If the evidence is strong enough--yes, suh."
"An" the evidence in this here case is strong enough to hang a dozen men, Jan," broke in Red Bill.
"Nefer you mind, Bill. I talk mit you next. Now von anodder ding I ask Kentucky. If Shudge Lynch hang not der man, vot den?"
"If Judge Lynch does not hang the man, then the man goes free, and his hands are washed clean of blood. And further, suh, our great and glorious const.i.tution has said, to wit: that no man may twice be placed in jeopardy of his life for one and the same crime, or words to that effect."
"Unt dey can"t shoot him, or hit him mit a club over der head alongside, or do nodings more mit him?"
"No, suh."
"Goot! You hear vot Kentucky speaks, all you noddleheads? Now I talk mit Bill. You know der piziness, Bill, und you hang me up brown, eh? Vot you say?"
""Betcher life, an", Jan, if yeh don"t give no more trouble ye"ll be almighty proud of the job. I"m a connesoor."
"You haf der great head, Bill, und know somedings or two. Und you know two und one makes tree--ain"t it?"
Bill nodded.
"Und when you haf two dings, you haf not tree dings--ain"t it? Now you follow mit me close und I show you. It takes tree dings to hang. First ding, you haf to haf der man. Goot! I am der man. Second ding, you haf to haf der rope. Lawson haf der rope. Goot! Und tird ding, you haf to haf someding to tie der rope to. Sling your eyes over der landscape und find der tird ding to tie der rope to? Eh? Vot you say?"
Mechanically they swept the ice and snow with their eyes. It was a h.o.m.ogeneous scene, devoid of contrasts or bold contours, dreary, desolate, and monotonous,--the ice-packed sea, the slow slope of the beach, the background of low-lying hills, and over all thrown the endless mantle of snow. "No trees, no bluffs, no cabins, no telegraph poles, nothin"," moaned Red Bill; "nothin" respectable enough nor big enough to swing the toes of a five-foot man clear o" the ground. I give it up." He looked yearningly at that portion of Jan"s anatomy which joins the head and shoulders. "Give it up," he repeated sadly to Lawson. "Throw the rope down. Gawd never intended this here country for livin" purposes, an" that"s a cold frozen fact."
Jan grinned triumphantly. "I tank I go mit der tent und haf a smoke."
"Ostensiblee y"r correct, Bill, me son," spoke up Lawson; "but y"r a dummy, and you can lay to that for another cold frozen fact. Takes a sea farmer to learn you landsmen things. Ever hear of a pair of shears? Then clap y"r eyes to this."
The sailor worked rapidly. From the pile of dunnage where they had pulled up the boat the preceding fall, he unearthed a pair of long oars.
These he lashed together, at nearly right angles, close to the ends of the blades. Where the handles rested he kicked holes through the snow to the sand. At the point of intersection he attached two guy-ropes, making the end of one fast to a cake of beach-ice. The other guy he pa.s.sed over to Red Bill. "Here, me son, lay holt o" that and run it out."
And to his horror, Jan saw his gallows rise in the air. "No! no!" he cried, recoiling and putting up his fists. "It is not goot! I vill not hang! Come, you noddleheads! I vill lick you, all together, von after der odder! I vill blay h.e.l.l! I vill do eferydings! Und I vill die pefore I hang!"
The sailor permitted the two other men to clinch with the mad creature.
They rolled and tossed about furiously, tearing up snow and tundra, their fierce struggle writing a tragedy of human pa.s.sion on the white sheet spread by nature. And ever and anon a hand or foot of Jan emerged from the tangle, to be gripped by Lawson and lashed fast with rope-yarns.
Pawing, clawing, blaspheming, he was conquered and bound, inch by inch, and drawn to where the inexorable shears lay like a pair of gigantic dividers on the snow. Red Bill adjusted the noose, placing the hangman"s knot properly under the left ear. Mr. Taylor and Lawson tailed onto the running-guy, ready at the word to elevate the gallows. Bill lingered, contemplating his work with artistic appreciation.
"Herr Gott! Vood you look at it!"
The horror in Jan"s voice caused the rest to desist. The fallen tent had uprisen, and in the gathering twilight it flapped ghostly arms about and t.i.tubated toward them drunkenly. But the next instant John Gordon found the opening and crawled forth.
"What the flaming--!" For the moment his voice died away in his throat as his eyes took in the tableau. "Hold on! I"m not dead!" he cried out, coming up to the group with stormy countenance.
"Allow me, Mistah Gordon, to congratulate you upon youah escape," Mr.
Taylor ventured. "A close shave, suh, a powahful close shave."
" Congratulate h.e.l.l! I might have been dead and rotten and no thanks to you, you--!" And thereat John Gordon delivered himself of a vigorous flood of English, terse, intensive, denunciative, and composed solely of expletives and adjectives.
"Simply creased me," he went on when he had eased himself sufficiently.
"Ever crease cattle, Taylor?"
"Yes, suh, many a time down in G.o.d"s country."
"Just so. That"s what happened to me. Bullet just grazed the base of my skull at the top of the neck. Stunned me but no harm done." He turned to the bound man. "Get up, Jan. I"m going to lick you to a standstill or you"re going to apologize. The rest of you lads stand clear."
"I tank not. Shust tie me loose und you see," replied Jan, the Unrepentant, the devil within him still unconquered. "Und after as I lick you, I take der rest of der noddleheads, von after der odder, altogedder!"
GRIT OF WOMEN
A wolfish head, wistful-eyed and frost-rimed, thrust aside the tent-flaps.
"Hi! Chook! Siwash! Chook, you limb of Satan!" chorused the protesting inmates. Bettles rapped the dog sharply with a tin plate, and it withdrew hastily. Louis Savoy refastened the flaps, kicked a frying-pan over against the bottom, and warmed his hands. It was very cold without.
Forty-eight hours gone, the spirit thermometer had burst at sixty-eight below, and since that time it had grown steadily and bitterly colder.
There was no telling when the snap would end. And it is poor policy, unless the G.o.ds will it, to venture far from a stove at such times, or to increase the quant.i.ty of cold atmosphere one must breathe. Men sometimes do it, and sometimes they chill their lungs. This leads up to a dry, hacking cough, noticeably irritable when bacon is being fried. After that, somewhere along in the spring or summer, a hole is burned in the frozen muck. Into this a man"s carca.s.s is dumped, covered over with moss, and left with the a.s.surance that it will rise on the crack of Doom, wholly and frigidly intact. For those of little faith, sceptical of material integration on that fateful day, no fitter country than the Klondike can be recommended to die in. But it is not to be inferred from this that it is a fit country for living purposes.
It was very cold without, but it was not over-warm within. The only article which might be designated furniture was the stove, and for this the men were frank in displaying their preference. Upon half of the floor pine boughs had been cast; above this were spread the sleeping-furs, beneath lay the winter"s snowfall. The remainder of the floor was moccasin-packed snow, littered with pots and pans and the general _impedimenta_ of an Arctic camp. The stove was red and roaring hot, but only a bare three feet away lay a block of ice, as sharp-edged and dry as when first quarried from the creek bottom. The pressure of the outside cold forced the inner heat upward. Just above the stove, where the pipe penetrated the roof, was a tiny circle of dry canvas; next, with the pipe always as centre, a circle of steaming canvas; next a damp and moisture-exuding ring; and finally, the rest of the tent, sidewalls and top, coated with a half-inch of dry, white, crystal-encrusted frost.
"_Oh_! OH! OH!" A young fellow, lying asleep in the furs, bearded and wan and weary, raised a moan of pain, and without waking increased the pitch and intensity of his anguish. His body half-lifted from the blankets, and quivered and shrank spasmodically, as though drawing away from a bed of nettles.
"Roll"m over!" ordered Bettles. "He"s crampin"."
And thereat, with pitiless good-will, he was pitched upon and rolled and thumped and pounded by half-a-dozen willing comrades.
"d.a.m.n the trail," he muttered softly, as he threw off the robes and sat up. "I"ve run across country, played quarter three seasons hand-running, and hardened myself in all manner of ways; and then I pilgrim it into this G.o.d-forsaken land and find myself an effeminate Athenian without the simplest rudiments of manhood!" He hunched up to the fire and rolled a cigarette. "Oh, I"m not whining. I can take my medicine all right, all right; but I"m just decently ashamed of myself, that"s all. Here I am, on top of a dirty thirty miles, as knocked up and stiff and sore as a pink-tea degenerate after a five-mile walk on a country turn-pike. Bah!
It makes me sick! Got a match?" "Don"t git the tantrums, youngster."
Bettles pa.s.sed over the required fire-stick and waxed patriarchal. "Ye"ve gotter "low some for the breakin"-in. Sufferin" cracky! don"t I recollect the first time I hit the trail! Stiff? I"ve seen the time it"d take me ten minutes to git my mouth from the water-hole an" come to my feet--every jint crackin" an" kickin" fit to kill. Cramp? In sech knots it"d take the camp half a day to untangle me. You"re all right, for a cub, any ye"ve the true sperrit. Come this day year, you"ll walk all us old bucks into the ground any time. An" best in your favor, you hain"t got that streak of fat in your make-up which has sent many a husky man to the bosom of Abraham afore his right and proper time."
"Streak of fat?"
"Yep. Comes along of bulk. "T ain"t the big men as is the best when it comes to the trail."
"Never heard of it."
"Never heered of it, eh? Well, it"s a dead straight, open-an"-shut fact, an" no gittin" round. Bulk"s all well enough for a mighty big effort, but "thout stayin" powers it ain"t worth a continental whoop; an" stayin"
powers an" bulk ain"t runnin" mates. Takes the small, wiry fellows when it comes to gittin" right down an" hangin" on like a lean-jowled dog to a bone. Why, h.e.l.l"s fire, the big men they ain"t in it!"
"By gar!" broke in Louis Savoy, "dat is no, vot you call, josh! I know one mans, so vaire beeg like ze buffalo. Wit him, on ze Sulphur Creek stampede, go one small mans, Lon McFane. You know dat Lon McFane, dat leetle Irisher wit ze red hair and ze grin. An" dey walk an" walk an"
walk, all ze day long an" ze night long. And beeg mans, him become vaire tired, an" lay down mooch in ze snow. And leetle mans keek beeg mans, an" him cry like, vot you call--ah! vot you call ze kid. And leetle mans keek an" keek an" keek, an" bime by, long time, long way, keek beeg mans into my cabin. Tree days "fore him crawl out my blankets. Nevaire I see beeg squaw like him. No nevaire. Him haf vot you call ze streak of fat.
You bet."
"But there was Axel Gunderson," Prince spoke up. The great Scandinavian, with the tragic events which shadowed his pa.s.sing, had made a deep mark on the mining engineer. "He lies up there, somewhere." He swept his hand in the vague direction of the mysterious east.
"Biggest man that ever turned his heels to Salt Water, or run a moose down with sheer grit," supplemented Bettles; "but he"s the prove-the-rule exception. Look at his woman, Unga,--tip the scales at a hundred an"
ten, clean meat an" nary ounce to spare. She"d bank grit "gainst his for all there was in him, an" see him, an" go him better if it was possible.
Nothing over the earth, or in it, or under it, she wouldn"t "a" done."