The Colonel laughed a little ruefully.
"We used to say Minook."
"I said Minook, just to sound reasonable, but, of course, I meant Dawson."
And they sat there thinking, watching the ice-blocks meet, crash, go down in foam, and come up again on the lower reaches, the Boy idly swinging the great Katharine"s medal to and fro. In his buckskin pocket it has worn so bright it catches at the light like a coin fresh from the mint.
No doubt Muckluck is on the river-bank at Pymeut; the one-eyed Prince, the story-teller Yagorsha, even Ol" Chief--no one will be indoors to-day.
Sitting there together, they saw the last stand made by the ice, and shared that moment when the final barrier, somewhere far below, gave way with boom and thunder. The mighty flood ran free, tearing up trees by their roots as it ran, detaching ma.s.ses of rock, dissolving islands into swirling sand and drift, carving new channels, making and unmaking the land. The water began to fall. It had been a great time: it was ended.
"Pardner," says the Colonel, "we"ve seen the ice go out."
"No fella can call you and me cheechalkos after to-day."
"No, sah. We"ve travelled the Long Trail, we"ve seen the ice go out, and we"re friends yet."
The Kentuckian took his pardner"s brown hand with a gentle solemnity, seemed about to say something, but stopped, and turned his bronzed face to the flood, carried back upon some sudden tide within himself to those black days on the trail, that he wanted most in the world to forget. But in his heart he knew that all dear things, all things kind and precious--his home, a woman"s face--all, all would fade before he forgot those last days on the trail. The record of that journey was burnt into the brain of the men who had made it. On that stretch of the Long Trail the elder had grown old, and the younger had forever lost his youth. Not only had the roundness gone out of his face, not only was it scarred, but such lines were graven there as commonly takes the antique pencil half a score of years to trace.
"Something has happened," the Colonel said quite low. "We aren"t the same men who left the Big Chimney."
"Right!" said the Boy, with a laugh, unwilling as yet to accept his own personal revelation, preferring to put a superficial interpretation on his companion"s words. He glanced at the Colonel, and his face changed a little. But still he would not understand. Looking down at the chaparejos that he had been so proud of, sadly abbreviated to make boots for Nig, jagged here and there, and with fringes now not all intentional, it suited him to pretend that the "shaps" had suffered most.
"Yes, the ice takes the kinks out."
"Whether the thing that"s happened is good or evil, I don"t pretend to say," the other went on gravely, staring at the river. "I only know something"s happened. There were possibilities--in me, anyhow--that have been frozen to death. Yes, we"re different."
The Boy roused himself, but only to persist in his misinterpretation.
"You ain"t different to hurt. If I started out again tomorrow----"
"The Lord forbid!"
"Amen. But if I had to, you"re the only man in Alaska--in the world--I"d want for my pardner."
"Boy----!" he wrestled with a slight bronchial huskiness, cleared his throat, tried again, and gave it up, contenting himself with, "Beg your pardon for callin" you "Boy." You"re a seasoned old-timer, sah." And the Boy felt as if some Sovereign had dubbed him Knight.
In a day or two now, from north or south, the first boat must appear.
The willows were unfolding their silver leaves. The alder-buds were bursting; geese and teal and mallard swarmed about the river margin.
Especially where the equisetae showed the tips of their feathery green tails above the mud, ducks flocked and feasted. People were too excited, "too busy," they said, looking for the boats, to do much shooting. The shy birds waxed daring. Keith, standing by his shack, knocked over a mallard within forty paces of his door.
It was eight days after that first cry, "The ice is going out!" four since the final jam gave way and let the floes run free, that at one o"clock in the afternoon the shout went up, "A boat! a boat!"
Only a lumberman"s bateau, but two men were poling her down the current with a skill that matched the speed. They swung her in. A dozen hands caught at the painter and made fast. A young man stepped ash.o.r.e and introduced himself as Van Alen, Benham"s "Upper River pardner, on the way to Anvik."
His companion, Donovan, was from Circle City, and brought appalling news. The boats depended on for the early summer traffic, Bella, and three other N.A.T. and T. steamers, as well as the A.C."s Victoria and the St. Michael, had been lifted up by the ice "like so many feathers,"
forced clean out of the channel, and left high and dry on a sandy ridge, with an ice wall eighty feet wide and fifteen high between them and open water.
"All the crews hard at work with jackscrews," said Donovan; "and if they can get skids under, and a channel blasted through the ice, they may get the boats down here in fifteen or twenty days."
A heavy blow. But instantly everyone began to talk of the May West and the Muckluck as though all along they had looked for succour to come up-stream rather than down. But as the precious hours pa.s.sed, a deep dejection fastened on the camp. There had been a year when, through one disaster after another, no boats had got to the Upper River. Not even the arrival from Dawson of the Montana Kid, pugilist and gambler, could raise spirits so cast down, not even though he was said to bring strange news from outside.
There was war in the world down yonder--war had been formally declared between America and Spain.
Windy slapped his thigh in humourous despair.
"Why hadn"t he thought o" gettin" off a josh like that?"
To those who listened to the Montana Kid, to the fretted spirits of men eight months imprisoned, the States and her foreign affairs were far away indeed, and as for the other party to the rumoured war--Spain?
They clutched at school memories of Columbus, Americans finding through him the way to Spain, as through him Spaniards had found the way to America. So Spain was not merely a State historic! She was still in the active world. But what did these things matter? Boats mattered: the place where the Klond.y.k.ers were caught, this Minook, mattered. And so did the place they wanted to reach--Dawson mattered most of all. By the narrowed habit of long months, Dawson was the centre of the universe.
More little boats going down, and still nothing going up. Men said gloomily:
"We"re done for! The fellows who go by the Canadian route will get everything. The Dawson season will be half over before we"re in the field--if we ever are!"
The 28th of May! Still no steamer had come, but the mosquitoes had--bloodthirsty beyond any the temperate climates know. It was clear that some catastrophe had befallen the Woodworth boats. And Nig had been lured away by his quondam master! No, they had not gone back to the gulch--that was too easy. The man had a mind to keep the dog, and, since he was not allowed to buy him, he would do the other thing.
He had not been gone an hour, rumour said--had taken a scow and provisions, and dropped down the river. Utterly desperate, the Boy seized his new Nulato gun and somebody else"s canoe. Without so much as inquiring whose, he shot down the swift current after the dog-thief. He roared back to the remonstrating Colonel that he didn"t care if an up-river steamer did come while he was gone--he was goin" gunnin".
At the same time he shared the now general opinion that a Lower River boat would reach them first, and he was only going to meet her, meting justice by the way.
He had gone safely more than ten miles down, when suddenly, as he was pa.s.sing an island, he stood up in his boat, balanced himself, and c.o.c.ked his gun.
Down there, on the left, a man was standing knee-deep in the water, trying to free his boat from a fallen tree; a Siwash dog watched him from the bank.
The Boy whistled. The dog threw up his nose, yapped and whined. The man had turned sharply, saw his enemy and the levelled gun. He jumped into the boat, but she was filling while he bailed; the dog ran along the island, howling fit to raise the dead. When he was a little above the Boy"s boat he plunged into the river. Nig was a good swimmer, but the current here would tax the best. The Boy found himself so occupied with saving Nig from a watery grave, while he kept the canoe from capsizing, that he forgot all about the thief till a turn in the river shut him out of sight.
The canoe was moored, and while trying to restrain Nig"s dripping caresses, his master looked up, and saw something queer off there, above the tops of the cottonwoods. As he looked he forgot the dog--forgot everything in earth or heaven except that narrow cloud wavering along the sky. He sat immovable in the round-shouldered att.i.tude learned in pulling a hand-sled against a gale from the Pole.
If you are moderately excited you may start, but there is an excitement that "nails you."
Nig shook his wolf"s coat and sprayed the water far and wide, made little joyful noises, and licked the face that was so still. But his master, like a man of stone, stared at that long gray pennon in the sky. If it isn"t a steamer, what is it? Like an echo out of some lesson he had learned and long forgot, "Up-bound boats don"t run the channel: they have to hunt for easy water." Suddenly he leaped up. The canoe tipped, and Nig went a second time into the water. Well for him that they were near the sh.o.r.e; he could jump in without help this time. No hand held out, no eye for him. His master had dragged the painter free, seized the oars, and, saying harshly, "Lie down, you black devil!" he pulled back against the current with every ounce he had in him. For the gray pennon was going round the other side of the island, and the Boy was losing the boat to Dawson.
Nig sat perkily in the bow, never budging till his master, running into the head of the island, caught up a handful of tough root fringes, and, holding fast by them, waved his cap, and shouted like one possessed, let go the fringes, caught up his gun, and fired. Then Nig, realising that for once in a way noise seemed to be popular, pointed his nose at the big object hugging the farther sh.o.r.e, and howled with a right goodwill.
"They see! They see! Hooray!"
The Boy waved his arms, embraced Nig, then s.n.a.t.c.hed up the oars. The steamer"s engines were reversed; now she was still. The Boy pulled l.u.s.tily. A crowded ship. Crew and pa.s.sengers pressed to the rails. The steamer canted, and the Captain"s orders rang out clear. Several cheechalkos laid their hands on their guns as the wild fellow in the ragged buckskins shot round the motionless wheel, and brought his canoe "long-side, while his savage-looking dog still kept the echoes of the Lower Ramparts calling.
"Three cheers for the Oklahoma!"
At the sound of the Boy"s voice a red face hanging over the stern broke into a broad grin.
"Be the Siven! Air ye the little divvle himself, or air ye the divvle"s gran"fatherr?"
The apparition in the canoe was making fast and preparing to board the ship.
"Can"t take another pa.s.senger. Full up!" said the Captain. He couldn"t hear what was said in reply, but he shook his head. "Been refusin" "em right along." Then, as if reproached by the look in the wild young face, "We thought you were in trouble."