"It"s good to go pioneering, but it"s good to go home. Oh-h--!" the face on the pillow was convulsed for that swift pa.s.sing moment--"best of all to go home. And if you leave your home too long, your home leaves you."
"Home doesn"t seem so important as it did when I came up here."
The Colonel fastened one hand feverishly on his pardner"s arm.
"I"ve been afraid of that. It"s magic; break away. Promise me you"ll go back and stay. Lord, Lord!" he laughed feebly, "to think a fella should have to be urged to leave the North alone. Wonderful place, but there"s Black Magic in it. Or who"d ever come--who"d ever stay?"
He looked anxiously into the Boy"s set face.
"I"m not saying the time was wasted," he went on; "I reckon it was a good thing you came."
"Yes, it was a good thing I came."
"You"ve learned a thing or two."
"Several."
"Specially on the Long Trail."
"Most of all on the Long Trail."
The Colonel shut his eyes. Maudie came and held a cup to his lips.
"Thank you. I begin to feel a little foggy. What was it we learned on the Trail, pardner?" But the Boy had turned away. "Wasn"t it--didn"t we learn how near a tolerable decent man is to bein" a villain?"
"We learned that a man can"t be quite a brute as long as he sticks to another man."
"Oh, was that it?"
In the night Maudie went away to sleep. The Boy watched.
"Do you know what I"m thinking about?" the sick man said suddenly.
"About--that lady down at home?"
"Guess again."
"About--those fellas at Holy Cross?"
"No, I never was as taken up with the Jesuits as you were. No, Sah, I"m thinkin" about the Czar." (Poor old Colonel! he was wandering again.) "Did I ever tell you I saw him once?"
"No."
"Did--had a good look at him. Knew a fella in Petersburg, too, that--"
He rested a moment. "That Czar"s all right. Only he sends the wrong people to Siberia. Ought to go himself, and take his Ministers, for a winter on the Trail." On his face suddenly the old half-smiling, half-shrewd look. "But, Lord bless you! "tisn"t only the Czar. We all have times o" thinkin" we"re some punkins. Specially Kentuckians. I reckon most men have their days when they"re twelve feet high, and wouldn"t stoop to say "Thank ye" to a King. Let "em go on the Winter Trail."
"Yes," agreed the Boy, "they"d find out--" And he stopped.
"Plenty o" use for Head Men, though." The faint voice rang with an echo of the old authority. "No foolishness, but just plain: "I"m the one that"s doin" the leadin"--like Nig here--and it"s my business to lick the hind dog if he shirks."" He held out his hand and closed it over his friend"s. "I was Boss o" the Big Chimney, Boy, but you were Boss o"
the Trail."
The Colonel was buried in the old moose pasture, with people standing by who knew that the world had worn a friendlier face because he had been in it. That much was clear, even before it was found that he had left to each of the Big Chimney men five hundred dollars, not to be drawn except for the purpose of going home.
They thought it was the sense of that security that made them put off the day. They would "play the game up to the last moment, and see--"
September"s end brought no great change in fortune, but a change withal of deep significance. The ice had begun to run in the Yukon. No man needed telling it would "be a tuhble wintah, and dey"d better move down Souf." All the late boats by both routes had been packed. Those men who had failed, and yet, most tenacious, were hanging on for some last lucky turn of the wheel, knew the risk they ran. And now to-day the final boat of the year was going down the long way to the Behring Sea, and by the Canadian route, open a little longer, the Big Chimney men, by grace of that one left behind, would be on the last ship to shoot the rapids in "98.
Not only to the thousands who were going, to those who stayed behind there was something in the leaving of the last boat--something that knocked upon the heart. They, too, could still go home. They gathered at the docks and told one another they wouldn"t leave Dawson for fifty thousand dollars, then looked at the "failures" with home-sick eyes, remembering those months before the luckiest Klond.y.k.er could hear from the world outside. Between now and then, what would have come to pa.s.s up here, and what down there below!
The Boy had got a place for Muckluck in the A. C. Store. She was handy at repairing and working in fur, and said she was "all right" on this bright autumn morning when the Boy went in to say good-bye. With a white woman and an Indian boy, in a little room overlooking the water-front, Muckluck was working in the intervals of watching the crowds on the wharf. Eyes more experienced than hers might well stare.
Probably in no other place upon the globe was gathered as motley a crew: English, Indian, Scandinavian, French, German, Negroes, Chinese, Poles, j.a.ps, Finns. All the fine gentlemen had escaped by earlier boats. All the smart young women with their gold-nugget b.u.t.tons as big as your thumb, lucky miners from the creeks with heavy consignments of dust to take home, had been too wary to run any risk of the Never-Know-What closing inopportunely. The great majority here, on the wharf, dazed or excited, lugging miscellaneous possessions--things they had clung to in straits so desperate they knew no more how to relax their hold than dead fingers do--these were men whose last chance had been the Klond.y.k.e, and who here, as elsewhere, had failed. Many who came in young were going out old; but the odd thing was that those worst off went out game--no whining, none of the ostentatious pathos of those broken on the wheel of a great city.
A man under Muckluck"s window, dressed in a moose-skin shirt, straw hat, broadcloth trousers, and carpet slippers, in one hand a tin pail, in the other something tied in a handkerchief, called out l.u.s.tily to a ragged individual, cleaving a way through the throng, "Got your stuff aboard?"
"Yes, goin" to get it off. I ain"t goin" home till next year."
And the face above the moose-skin shirt was stricken with a sudden envy. Without any telling, he knew just how his pardner"s heart had failed him, when it came to turning his tattered back on the possibilities of the Klond.y.k.e.
"Oh, I"m comin" back soon"s I get a grub-stake."
"I ain"t," said another with a dazed expression--a Klond.y.k.er carrying home his frying-pan, the one thing, apparently, saved out of the wreck.
"You think you ain"t comin" back? Just wait! Once you"ve lived up here, the Outside ain"t good enough fur yer."
"Right!" said an old Forty-miler, "you can try it; but Lord! how you"ll miss this goll-darn Yukon."
Among the hundreds running about, talking, bustling, hauling heterogeneous luggage, sending last letters, doing last deals, a score of women either going by this boat or saying good-bye to those who were; and Potts, the O"Flynns, and Mac waiting to hand over Kaviak to Sister Winifred.
The Boy at the open window above, staring down on the tatterdemalion throng, remembered his first meeting with the Big Chimney men as the Washington City steamed out of San Francisco"s Golden Gate a year and a month before.
Of course, even in default of finding millions, something stirring might have happened, something heroic, rewarding to the spirit, if no other how; but (his own special revelation blurred, swamped for the moment in the common wreck) he said to himself that nothing of the sort had befallen the Big Chimney men any more than to the whipped and bankrupt crew struggling down there on the wharf. They simply had failed--all alike. And yet there was between them and the common failures of the world one abiding difference: these had greatly dared.
As long as the meanest in that crowd drew breath and held to memory, so long might he remember the brave and terrible days of the Klond.y.k.e Rush, and that he had borne in it his heavy share. No share in any mine save that--the knowledge that he was not among the vast majority who sit dully to the end beside what things they were born to--the earnings of other men, the savings of other women, afraid to go seeking after better lest they lose the good they have. They had failed, but it could never be said of a Klond.y.k.er that he had not tried. He might, in truth, look down upon the smug majority that smiles at unusual endeavour, unless success excuses, crowns it. No one there, after all, so poor but he had one possession treasured among kings. And he had risked it. What could a man do more?
"Good-bye, Muckluck."
"Goo"-bye? Boat Canada way no go till Thursday."
"Thursday, yes," he said absently, eyes still on the American ship.
"Then why you say goo"-bye to-day?"
"Lot to do. I just wanted to make sure you were all right."
Her creamy face was suddenly alight, but not with grat.i.tude.