Then the roystering throng. The Elysian Fields. It was the beach about which the tide ebbed and flowed. It was a rough rock-bound beach upon which the waters of life beat themselves into a fury of excess.
Its lights were the beacons of the wreckers set up for the destruction of the human soul.
Chief amongst the wreckers was Pap Shaunbaum, a Hebrew of doubtful nationality, and without scruple. He prided himself that he was a caterer for the needs of the people. His thesis was that the northland battle needed alleviation in the narrow lap of luxury where vice ruled supreme. He had spent his life in searching the best means of personal profit out of the broad field of human weakness, and discovered the Elysian Fields.
He had labored with care and infinite thought. He had built on a credit from the vast bank of experience, and owned in the Elysian Fields the finest machine in the world for wrecking the soul and pocket of the human race.
Every attraction lay to hand. The dance hall was aglitter, the floor perfect, and the stage equipped to foster all that appealed to the senses. The hotel with its splendid accommodation, its bars, its gaming rooms, its dining hall, its supper rooms, its bustle of elaborate service. There was nothing forgotten that ingenuity could devise to loosen the bank rolls of its clientele, and direct the flow of gold into the proprietor"s coffers--not even women. As Dr. Bill declared in one of his infrequent outbursts of pa.s.sionate protest: "The place is one darnation public brothel; a scandal to the northland, a shame on humanity."
It was here, gazing down on the crowded dance hall, from one of the curtained boxes adjacent to the stage, on which a vaudeville programme was being performed, that two men sat screened from the chance glance of the throng below them.
A table stood between them, and an uncorked bottle of wine and two gla.s.ses were placed to their hand. But the wine stood untouched, and was rapidly becoming flat. It had been ordered as a custom of the place. But neither had the least desire for its artificial stimulation.
They had been talking in a desultory fashion. Talking in the pleasant intimate fashion of men who know each other through and through. Of men who look upon life with a vision adjusted to a single focus.
They were watching the comings and goings of familiar faces in the glittering overdressed throng below. The women, splendid creatures in gowns whose cost ran into hundreds of dollars, and bejeweled almost at any price. Beautiful faces, many of them already displaying the ravages of a life that moved at the swiftest gait. Others again bloated and aging long before the years a.s.serted their claims, and still others, fresh with all the beauty of extreme youth and a life only at the beginning of the downward course.
The men, too, were no less interesting to the student of psychology.
Here was every type from the illiterate human mechanism whose muscles dominated his whole process of life, to the cultured son of civilization who had never known before the meaning of life beyond the portals of the temples of refinement. Here they were all on the same highway of pleasure. Here they were all full to the brim of a wonderful joy of life. Care was for the daylight, when the secrets of their bank roll would be revealed, and the draft on the exchequer of health would have to be met.
There was displayed no element of the soil from which these people drew their wealth, except for the talk. They had long since risen from the moleskin and top-boot stage in Leaping Horse. The Elysian Fields demanded outward signs of respectability in the habiliments of its customers, and the garish display of the women was there to enforce it.
Broadcloth alone was the mode, and conformity with this rule drew forth many delights for the observing eye.
But the people thus disguised remained the same. Every type was gathered, from the sound, reasonable acc.u.mulator of wealth to the "hold-up," the gambler, the fugitive from the law. It was said of Leaping Horse that it only required the "dust" to buy any crime known to the penal code. And here, here at the Elysian Fields, on any night in the week, could be found the man or woman to perpetrate it at a moment"s notice.
Dr. Bill laughed without mirth.
"Gee, it leaves the Bell River outfit saints beside them," he said.
Kars" contemplative eyes were following the movements of a handsome blond woman with red-gold hair, which was aglitter with a half circle band of jewels supporting an aigrette, which must have cost five thousand dollars. She was obviously young, extremely young. To his mind she could not have been more than twenty--if that. Her eyes were deep blue, with unusually large pupils. Her lips were ripe with a freshness which owed nothing to any salve. Her nose was almost patrician, and her cheeks were tinted with the bloom of exquisite fruit. Her gown was extremely decollete, revealing shoulders and arms of perfect ivory beauty. She was dancing a waltz with a man in elaborate evening dress, who had discarded orthodox sobriety for crude embellishments. The string band in the orchestra was playing with seductive skill.
"Who"s that dame with the guy who guesses he"s a parakeet?" he demanded, without reply to the other"s statement.
"You mean the feller with the sky blue lapels to his swallow-tails?"
"Sure. That"s the guy."
"Maude. Chesapeake Maude. She"s Pap Shaunbaum"s piece. Quite a girl.
She"s only been along since we quit here last spring. Pap"s crazy on her. Folks say he dopes out thousands a week on her. He brought her from the East on a specially chartered vessel he had fitted up to suit her fancy. They figger he"s raised his pool here by fifty per cent since she came."
"She plays the old game for him right here?"
"Sure."
Both men were absorbed in the girl"s perfect grace of movement, as she and her partner glided in and out through the dancing crowd. Her attraction was immense even to these men, who were only onlookers of the Leaping Horse riot.
Bill touched his friend"s arm. He indicated the bar at the far end of the hall.
"There"s Pap. He"s watching her. Gee, he"s watching her."
A slim iron gray man, with a dark, keen face was standing beside one of the pillars which supported the gallery above. He was dressed in evening clothes of perfect cut, which displayed a clean-cut figure. He was a handsome man of perhaps forty, without a sign of the dissipation about his dark face that was to be seen in dozens of younger men about him. As Dr. Bill once said of him, "One of h.e.l.l"s gentle-folk."
A better description of him could not have been found. Under a well-nigh perfect exterior he concealed a depth of infamy beyond description. A confidential police report to the authorities in the East once contained this paragraph:
"Pap Shaunbaum has set up a big hotel in Leaping Horse. It will be necessary to keep a "special" at work watching him. We should like authority to develop this further from time to time. His record both here, and confidential from the States, leaves him more than undesirable. Half the toughs in Leaping Horse are in his pay."
That was written five years before. Since then the "special" had been developed till a large staff was employed in the observation of the Elysian Fields. And still under all this espionage "Pap," as he was familiarly dubbed, moved about without any apparent concern, carrying on his underground schemes with every outward aspect of inoffensive honesty. All Leaping Horse knew him as a crook, but accepted him as he posed. He was on intimate terms with all the gold magnates, and never failed to keep on good terms with the struggling element of the community. But he was a "gunman." He had been a "gunman" all his life, and made small secret of it. The only change in him now was that his gun was loaded with a different charge.
"You figger he"s dopey on her?"
"Crazy. G.o.d help the feller that monkeys around that hen roost."
"Yet he uses her for this play?"
"With reserve."
"How?"
Dr. Bill again gave a short hard laugh.
"You won"t see her around with folk, except on that floor. Say, get a peek at the boxes across the way, with the curtains half drawn.
They"re all--occupied. You won"t see Maude in those boxes, unless it"s with Pap. She"s down on that floor because she loves dancing, and for Pap"s business. She"s there for loot, sure, and she gets it plenty.
She"s there with her dandy smile to see the rest of the women get busy.
Playing that feller"s dirty game for all it"s worth. And she"s just a gal full to the brim of life. He"s bought her body and soul, and I guess it"s just for folks like us to sit around and watch for what"s coming. If I"ve got horse sense there"s coming a big shriek one day, and you"ll see Pap clear through to his soul--if he"s got one. He"s fallen for that dame bad. But I guess he"s done the falling. I don"t guess any feller can gamble on a woman till she"s in love, then I"d say the gamble is she"ll act foolish."
Kars had no comment to offer. He was no longer watching Maude. The dancing had ceased, and the floor had cleared. The orchestra had already commenced the prelude to a vaudeville turn, and the drop curtain had revealed the stage.
His interest was centred on Pap Shaunbaum. The man was moving about amongst his customers, exchanging a word here and there, his dark, saturnine face smiling his carefully amiable business smile. To the elemental man of the trail there was something very fascinating in the way this one brain was pitting itself to plunder through the senses of the rest of his world.
But Dr. Bill knew it all with an intimacy that robbed it of any charm.
He had only repulsion, but repulsion that failed to deny a certain attraction. His hot words broke through the noisy strumming of vaudeville accompaniment.
"For G.o.d"s sake," he said, "why do we stop around this sink? You! Why do you? The long trail? And at the end of it you got to come back to this--every trip. I hate the place, I loathe it like a hobo hates water. But I"m bound to it. It"s up to me to help mend the poor darn fools who haven"t sense but to squander the good life Providence handed them. But you--you with your great pile, Pap, here, would love to dip his claws into, there"s no call for you acting like some gold-crazed lunatic. Get out, man. Get right out and breathe the wholesome air Providence meant for you. Oh, I guess you"ll say it"s all on the long trail in the northland. There isn"t a thing to keep you here."
"Isn"t there?"
Kars leaned back in his chair. He stretched his great arms above his head, and clasped his hands behind his muscular neck.
"There"s so much to keep me here that life"s not long enough to see it through. Time was, Bill, when I guessed it was the north that had got into my bones. But I didn"t know. The long trail. The search. It was gold--gold--gold. Same as it is with any of the other fools that get around here. But I didn"t just understand. That gold. No. I"ve been searching, and the search for new ground has been one long dream of life. But the gold I"ve been chasing wasn"t the gold I thought it.
It wasn"t the yellow stuff these folks here are ready to sell their souls--and bodies--for. It was different. You guessed I had all the gold I needed. But I hadn"t, not of the gold I"ve been chasing. I hadn"t any of it. I--didn"t even know its color when I saw it. I do now. And it"s the color I"ve seen looking out of a pair of wonderful--wonderful gray eyes. Say, I don"t quit the northland till I can take it all with me. All there is of that gold I"ve found on the long trail."
"Jessie?"
"Sure."
"Then why not take her?"
The vaudeville turn was in full swing and the folks below were standing around talking and drinking, and gazing with only partial interest at the feats of a woman acrobatic dancer. Bill was looking at her, too.