_ BOOK III. THE CAMP
CHAPTER XI
Time went on and the cabin was quietly nearing completion. The roof of poles was in place. It only remained to cover it with moss and thawed-out earth to make it our future home. I think these were the happiest days I spent in the North. We were such a united trio. Each was eager to do more than the other, and we vied in little acts of mutual consideration.
Once again I congratulated myself on my partners. Jim, though sometimes bellicosely evangelical, was the soul of kindly goodness, cheerfulness and patience. It was refreshing to know among so many sin-calloused men one who always rang true, true as the gold in the pan. As for the Prodigal, he was a Prince. I often thought that God at the birth of him must have reached out to the sunshine and crammed a mighty handful of it into the boy. Surely it is better than all the riches in the world to have a temperament of eternal cheer.
As for me, I have ever been at the mercy of my moods, easily elated, quickly cast down. I have always been abnormally sensitive, affected by sunshine and by shadows, vacillating, intense in my feelings. I was truly happy in those days, finding time in the long evenings to think of the scenes of stress and sorrow I had witnessed, reconstructing the past, and having importune me again and again the many characters in my life drama.
Always and always I saw the Girl, elusively sweet, almost unreal, a thing to enshrine in that ideal alcove of our hearts we keep for our saints. (And God help us always to keep shining there a great light.)
Many others importuned me: Pinklove, Globstock, Pondersby, Marks, old Wilovich, all dead; Bullhammer, the Jam-wagon, Mosher, the Winklesteins, plunged in the vortex of the gold-born city; and lastly, looming over all, dark and ominous, the handsome, bold, sinister face of Locasto. Well, maybe I would never see any of them again.
Yet more and more my dream hours were jealously consecrated to Berna. How ineffably sweet were they! How full of delicious imaginings! How pregnant of high hope! O, I was born to love, I think, and I never loved but one. This story of my life is the story of Berna. It is a thing of words and words and words, yet every word is Berna, Berna. Feel the heartache behind it all. Read between the lines, Berna, Berna.
Often in the evenings we went to the Forks, which was a lively place indeed. Here was all the recklessness and revel of Dawson on a smaller scale, and infinitely more gross. Here were the dance-hall girls, not the dazzling creatures in diamonds and Paris gowns, the belles of the Monte Carlo and the Tivoli, but drabs self-convicted by their coarse, puffy faces. Here the men, fresh from their day's work, the mud of the claim hardly dry on their boot-tops, were buying wine with nuggets they had filched from sluice-box, dump and drift.
There was wholesale robbery going on in the gold-camp. On many claims where the owners were known to be unsuspicious, men would work for small wages because of the gold they were able to filch. On the other hand, many of the operators were paying their men in trade-dust valued at sixteen dollars an ounce, yet so adulterated with black sand as to be really worth about fourteen. All these things contributed to the low morale of the camp. Easy come, easy go with money, a wild intoxication of success in the air; gold gouged in glittering heaps from the ground during the day, and at night squandered in a carnival of lust and sin.
The Prodigal was always "snooping" around and gleaning information from most mysterious sources. One evening he came to us.
"Boys, get ready, quick. There's a rumour of a stampede for a new creek, Ophir Creek they call it, away on the other side of the divide somewhere. A prospector went down ten feet and got fifty-cent dirt. We've got to get in on this. There's a mob coming from Dawson, but we'll get there before the rush."
Quickly we got together blankets and a little grub, and, keeping out of sight, we crawled up the hill under cover of the brush. Soon we came to a place from which we could command a full view of the valley. Here we lay down, awaiting developments.
It was at the hour of dusk. Scarfs of smoke wavered over the cabins down in the valley. On the far slope of Eldorado I saw a hawk soar upwards. Surely a man was moving amid the brush, two men, a dozen men, moving in single file very stealthily. I pointed them out.
"It's the stampede," whispered Jim. "We've got to get on to the trail of that crowd. Travel like blazes. We can cut them off at the head of the valley."
So we struck into the stampede gait, a wild, jolting, desperate pace, that made the wind pant in our lungs like bellows, and jarred our bones in their sockets. Through brush and scrub timber we burst. Thorny vines tore at us detainingly, swampy niggerheads impeded us; but the excitement of the stampede was in our blood, and we plunged down gulches, floundered over marshes, climbed steep ridges and crashed through dense masses of underwood.
"Throw away your blankets, boys," said the Prodigal. "Just keep a little grub. Eldorado was staked on a stampede. Maybe we're in on another Eldorado. We must connect with that bunch if we break our necks."
It was hours after when we overtook them, about a dozen men, all in the maddest hurry, and casting behind them glances of furtive apprehension. When they saw us they were hugely surprised. Ribwood was one of the party.
"Hello," he says roughly; "any more coming after you boys?"
"Don't see them," said the Prodigal breathlessly. "We spied you and cottoned on to what was up, so we made a fierce hike to get in on it. Gee, I'm all tuckered out."
"All right, get in line. I guess there's lots for us all. You're in on a good thing, all right. Come along."
So off we started again. The leader was going like one possessed. We blundered on behind. We were on the other side of the divide looking into another vast valley. What a magnificent country it was! What a great manoeuvring-ground it would make for an army! What splendid open spaces, and round smooth hills, and dimly blue valleys, and silvery winding creeks! It was veritably a park of the Gods, and enclosing it was the monstrous, corrugated palisade of the Rockies.
But there was small time to look around. On we went in the same mad, heart-breaking hurry, mile after mile, hour after hour.
"This is going to be a banner creek, boys," the whisper ran down the line. "We're in luck. We'll all be Klondike Kings yet."
Cheering, wasn't it? So on we went, hotter than ever, content to follow the man of iron who was guiding us to the virgin treasure.
We had been pounding along all night, up hill and down dale. The sun rose, the dawn blossomed, the dew dried on the blueberry; it was morning. Still we kept up our fierce gait. Would our leader never come to his destination? By what roundabout route was he guiding us? The sun climbed up in the blue sky, the heat quivered; it was noon. We panted as we pelted on, parched and weary, faint and footsore. The excitement of the stampede had sustained us, and we scarcely had noted the flight of time. We had been walking for fourteen hours, yet not a man faltered. I was ready to drop with fatigue; my feet were a mass of blisters, and every step was intolerable pain to me. But still our leader kept on.
"I guess we'll fool those trying to follow us," snapped Ribwood grimly.
Suddenly the Prodigal said to me: "Say, you boys will have to go on without me. I'm all in. Go ahead, I'll follow after I'm rested up."
He dropped in a limp heap on the ground and instantly fell asleep. Several of the others had dropped out too. They fell asleep where they gave up, utterly exhausted. We had now been going sixteen hours, and still our leader kept on.
"You're pretty tough for a youngster," growled one of them to me. "Keep it up, we're almost there."
So I hobbled along painfully, though the desire to throw myself down was becoming imperative. Just ahead was Jim, sturdily holding his own. The others were reduced to a bare half-dozen.
It was about four in the afternoon when we reached the creek. Up it our leader plunged, till he came to a place where a rude shaft had been dug. We gathered around him. He was a typical prospector, a child of hope, lean, swarthy, clear-eyed.
"Here it is, boys," he said. "Here's my discovery stake. Now you fellows go up or down, anywhere you've a notion to, and put in your stakes. You all know what a lottery it is. Maybe you'll stake a million-dollar claim, maybe a blank. Mining's all a gamble. But go ahead, boys. I wish you luck."
So we strung out, and, coming in rotation, Jim and I staked seven and eight below discovery.
"Seven's a lucky number for me," said Jim; "I've a notion this claim's a good one."
"I don't care," I said, "for all the gold in the world. What I want is sleep, sleep, rest and sleep."
So I threw myself down on a bit of moss, and, covering my head with my coat to ward off the mosquitoes, in a few minutes I was dead to the world. _