"Did he beat?"
She laughed. "b.u.t.ts had the start. They got there together at nine o"clock!"
"Three hours before jumpin" time?"
Again she nodded. "And found four more waitin" on the same fool errand."
"What did they do?"
"Called a meetin". Couldn"t agree. It looked like there"d be a fight, and a fast race to the Recorder among the survivors. But before the meetin" was adjourned, those four that had got there first (they were pretty gay a"ready), they opened some hootch, so b.u.t.ts and Charlie knew they"d nothing to fear except from one another."
On the top of the divide that gave them their last glimpse of Rampart she stopped an instant and looked back. The quick flash of anxiety deepening to defiance made the others turn. The bit they could see of the water-front thoroughfare was alive. The inhabitants were rushing about like a swarm of agitated ants.
"What"s happening?"
"It"s got out," she exploded indignantly. "They"re comin", too!"
She turned, flew down the steep incline, and then settled into a steady, determined gait, that made her gain on the men who had got so long a start. Her late companions stood looking back in sheer amazement, for the town end of the trail was black with figures. The Boy began to laugh.
"Look! if there isn"t old Jansen and his squaw wife."
The rheumatic cripple, huddled on a sled, was drawn by a native man and pushed by a native woman. They could hear him swearing at both impartially in broken English and Chinook.
The Colonel and the Boy hurried after Maudie. It was some minutes before they caught up. The Boy, feeling that he couldn"t be stand-offish in the very act of profiting by her acquaintance, began to tell her about the crippled but undaunted Swede. She made no answer, just trotted steadily on. The Boy hazarded another remark--an opinion that she was making uncommon good time for a woman.
"You"ll want all the wind you got before you get back," she said shortly, and silence fell on the stampeders.
Some of the young men behind were catching up. Maudie set her mouth very firm and quickened her pace. This spectacle touched up those that followed; they broke into a canter, floundered in a drift, recovered, and pa.s.sed on. Maudie pulled up.
"That"s all right! Let "em get good and tired, half-way. We got to save all the run we got in us for the last lap."
The sun was hotter, the surface less good.
She loosened her shoulder-straps, released her snow-shoes, and put them on. As she tightened her little pack the ex-Governor came puffing up with apoplectic face.
"Why, she can throw the diamond hitch!" he gasped with admiration.
"S"pose you thought the squaw hitch would be good enough for me."
"Well, it is for me," he laughed breathlessly.
"That"s "cause you"re an ex-Governor"; and steadily she tramped along.
In twenty minutes Maudie"s party came upon those same young men who had pa.s.sed running. They sat in a row on a fallen spruce. One had no rubber boots, the other had come off in such a hurry he had forgotten his snow-shoes. Already they were wet to the waist.
"Step out, Maudie," said one with short-breathed hilarity; "we"ll be treadin" on your heels in a minute;" but they were badly blown.
Maudie wasted not a syllable. Her mouth began to look drawn. There were violet shadows under the straight-looking eyes.
The Colonel glanced at her now and then. Is she thinking about that four-year-old? Is Maudie stampedin" through the snow so that other little woman need never dance at the Alcazar? No, the Colonel knew well enough that Maudie rather liked this stampedin" business.
She had pa.s.sed one of those men who had got the long start of her. He carried a pack. Once in a while she would turn her strained-looking face over her shoulder, glancing back, with the frank eyes of an enemy, at her fellow-citizens labouring along the trail.
"Come on, Colonel!" she commanded, with a new sharpness. "Keep up your lick."
But the Colonel had had about enough of this gait. From now on he fell more and more behind. But the Boy was with her neck and neck.
"Guess you"re goin" to get there."
"Guess I am."
Some men behind them began to run. They pa.s.sed. They had pulled off their parkis, and left them where they fell. They threw off their caps now, and the sweat rolled down their faces. Not a countenance but wore that immobile look, the fixed, unseeing eye of the spent runner, who is overtaxing heart and lungs. Not only Maudie now, but everyone was silent. Occasionally a man would rouse himself out of a walk, as if out of sleep, and run a few yards, going the more weakly after. Several of the men who had been behind caught up.
Where was Kentucky?
If Maudie wondered, she wasted no time over the speculation. For his own good she had admonished him to keep up his lick, but of course the main thing was that Maudie should keep up hers.
"What if this is the great day of my life!" thought the Boy. "Shall I always look back to this? Why, it"s Sunday. Wonder if Kentucky remembers?" Never pausing, the Boy glanced back, vaguely amused, and saw the Colonel plunging heavily along in front of half a dozen, who were obviously out of condition for such an expedition--eyes bloodshot, lumbering on with nervous "whisky gait," now whipped into a breathless gallop, now half falling by the way. Another of the Gold Nugget women with two groggy-looking men, and somewhere down the trail, the crippled Swede swearing at his squaw. A dreamy feeling came over the Boy. Where in the gold basins of the North was this kind of thing not happening--finished yesterday, or planned for to-morrow? Yes, it was typical. Between patches of ragged black spruce, wide stretches of snow-covered moss, under a lowering sky, and a mob of men floundering through the drifts to find a fortune. "See how they run!"--mad mice.
They"d been going on stampedes all winter, and would go year in, year out, until they died. The prizes were not for such as they. As for himself--ah, it was a great day for him! He was going at last to claim that gold-mine he had come so far to find. This was the decisive moment of his life. At the thought he straightened up, and pa.s.sed Maudie. She gave him a single sidelong look, unfriendly, even fierce. That was because he could run like sixty, and keep it up. "When I"m a millionaire I shall always remember that I"m rich because I won the race." A dizzy feeling came over him. He seemed to be running through some softly resisting medium like water--no, like wine jelly. His heart was pounding up in his throat. "What if something"s wrong, and I drop dead on the way to my mine? Well, Kentucky"ll look after things."
Maudie had caught up again, and here was Little Minook at last! A couple of men, who from the beginning had been well in advance of everyone else, and often out of sight, had seemed for the last five minutes to be losing ground. But now they put on steam, Maudie too. She stepped out of her snowshoes, and flung them up on the low roof of the first cabin. Then she ducked her head, crooked her arms at the elbow, and, with fists uplifted, she broke into a run, jumping from pile to pile of frozen pay, gliding under sluice-boxes, scrambling up the bank, slipping on the rotting ice, recovering, dashing on over fallen timber and through waist-deep drifts, on beyond No. 10 up to the bench above.
When the Boy got to Pitcairn"s prospect hole, there were already six claims gone. He proceeded to stake the seventh, next to Maudie"s. That person, with flaming cheeks, was driving her last location-post into a snow-drift with a piece of water-worn obsidian.
The Colonel came along in time to stake No. 14 Below, under Maudie"s personal supervision.
Not much use, in her opinion, "except that with gold, it"s where you find it, and that"s all any man can tell you."
As she was returning alone to her own claim, behold two brawny Circle City miners pulling out her stakes and putting in their own. She flew at them with remarks unprintable.
"You keep your head shut," advised one of the men, a big, evil-looking fellow. "This was our claim first. We was here with Pitcairn yesterday.
Somebody"s took away our location-posts."
"You take me for a cheechalko?" she screamed, and her blue eyes flashed like smitten steel. She pulled up her sweater and felt in her belt.
"You--take your stakes out! Put mine back, unless you want----" A murderous-looking revolver gleamed in her hand.
"Hold on!" said the spokesman hurriedly. "Can"t you take a joke?"
"No; this ain"t my day for jokin". You want to put them stakes o" mine back." She stood on guard till it was done. "And now I"d advise you, like a mother, to back-track home. You"ll find this climate very tryin"
to your health."
They went farther up the slope and marked out a claim on the incline above the bench.
In a few hours the mountain-side was staked to the very top, and still the stream of people struggled out from Rampart to the scene of the new strike. All day long, and all the night, the trail was alive with the coming or the going of the five hundred and odd souls that made up the population. In the town itself the excitement grew rather than waned.
Men talked themselves into a fever, others took fire, and the epidemic spread like some obscure nervous disease. n.o.body slept, everybody drank and hurrahed, and said it was the greatest night in the history of Minook. In the Gold Nugget saloon, crowded to suffocation, Pitcairn organized the new mining district, and named it the Idaho Bar. French Charlie and Keith had gone out late in the day. On their return, Keith sold his stake to a woman for twenty-five dollars, and Charlie advertised a half-interest in his for five thousand. Between these two extremes you could hear Idaho Bar quoted at any figure you liked.
Maudie was in towering spirits. She drank several c.o.c.ktails, and in her knee-length "stampedin" skirt" and her scarlet sweater she danced the most audacious jig even Maudie had ever presented to the Gold Nugget patrons. The miners yelled with delight. One of them caught her up and put her on the counter of the bar, where, no whit at a loss, she curveted and spun among the bottles and the gla.s.ses as lightly as a dragonfly dips and whirls along a summer brook. The enthusiasm grew delirious. The men began to throw nuggets at her, and Maudie, never pausing in the dance, caught them on the fly.