Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER III

  It was Daylight's night. He was the centre and the head of the revel,unquenchably joyous, a contagion of fun. He multiplied himself, and inso doing multiplied the excitement. No prank he suggested was too wildfor his followers, and all followed save those that developed intosinging imbeciles and fell warbling by the wayside. Yet never didtrouble intrude. It was known on the Yukon that when Burning Daylightmade a night of it, wrath and evil were forbidden. On his nights mendared not quarrel. In the younger days such things had happened, andthen men had known what real wrath was, and been man-handled as onlyBurning Daylight could man-handle. On his nights men must laugh and behappy or go home. Daylight was inexhaustible. In between dances hepaid over to Kearns the twenty thousand in dust and transferred to himhis Moosehide claim. Likewise he arranged the taking over of BillyRawlins' mail contract, and made his preparations for the start. Hedespatched a messenger to rout out Kama, his dog-driver--a TananawIndian, far-wandered from his tribal home in the service of theinvading whites. Kama entered the Tivoli, tall, lean, muscular, andfur-clad, the pick of his barbaric race and barbaric still, unshakenand unabashed by the revellers that rioted about him while Daylightgave his orders. "Um," said Kama, tabling his instructions on hisfingers. "Get um letters from Rawlins. Load um on sled. Grub forSelkirk--you think um plenty dog-grub stop Selkirk?"

  "Plenty dog-grub, Kama."

  "Um, bring sled this place nine um clock. Bring um snowshoes. No bringum tent. Mebbe bring um fly? um little fly?"

  "No fly," Daylight answered decisively.

  "Um much cold."

  "We travel light--savvee? We carry plenty letters out, plenty lettersback. You are strong man. Plenty cold, plenty travel, all right."

  "Sure all right," Kama muttered, with resignation.

  "Much cold, no care a damn. Um ready nine um clock."

  He turned on his moccasined heel and walked out, imperturbable,sphinx-like, neither giving nor receiving greetings nor looking toright or left. The Virgin led Daylight away into a corner.

  "Look here, Daylight," she said, in a low voice, "you're busted."

  "Higher'n a kite."

  "I've eight thousand in Mac's safe--" she began.

  But Daylight interrupted. The apron-string loomed near and he shiedlike an unbroken colt.

  "It don't matter," he said. "Busted I came into the world, busted I goout, and I've been busted most of the time since I arrived. Come on;let's waltz."

  "But listen," she urged. "My money's doing nothing. I could lend itto you--a grub-stake," she added hurriedly, at sight of the alarm inhis face.

  "Nobody grub-stakes me," was the answer. "I stake myself, and when Imake a killing it's sure all mine. No thank you, old girl. Muchobliged. I'll get my stake by running the mail out and in."

  "Daylight," she murmured, in tender protest.

  But with a sudden well-assumed ebullition of spirits he drew her towardthe dancing-floor, and as they swung around and around in a waltz shepondered on the iron heart of the man who held her in his arms andresisted all her wiles.

  At six the next morning, scorching with whiskey, yet ever himself, hestood at the bar putting every man's hand down. The way of it was thattwo men faced each other across a corner, their right elbows resting onthe bar, their right hands gripped together, while each strove to pressthe other's hand down. Man after man came against him, but no man puthis hand down, even Olaf Henderson and French Louis failing despitetheir hugeness. When they contended it was a trick, a trained muscularknack, he challenged them to another test.

  "Look here, you-all" he cried. "I'm going to do two things: first,weigh my sack; and second, bet it that after you-all have lifted cleanfrom the floor all the sacks of flour you-all are able, I'll put on twomore sacks and lift the whole caboodle clean."

  "By Gar! Ah take dat!" French Louis rumbled above the cheers.

  "Hold on!" Olaf Henderson cried. "I ban yust as good as you, Louis. Iyump half that bet."

  Put on the scales, Daylight's sack was found to balance an even fourhundred dollars, and Louis and Olaf divided the bet between them.Fifty-pound sacks of flour were brought in from MacDonald's cache.Other men tested their strength first. They straddled on two chairs,the flour sacks beneath them on the floor and held together byrope-lashings. Many of the men were able, in this manner, to lift fouror five hundred pounds, while some succeeded with as high as sixhundred. Then the two giants took a hand, tying at seven hundred.French Louis then added another sack, and swung seven hundred and fiftyclear. Olaf duplicated the performance, whereupon both failed to cleareight hundred. Again and again they strove, their foreheads beadedwith sweat, their frames crackling with the effort. Both were able toshift the weight and to bump it, but clear the floor with it they couldnot.

  "By Gar! Daylight, dis tam you mek one beeg meestake," French Louissaid, straightening up and stepping down from the chairs. "Only onedamn iron man can do dat. One hundred pun' more--my frien', not tenpoun' more." The sacks were unlashed, but when two sacks were added,Kearns interfered. "Only one sack more."

  "Two!" some one cried. "Two was the bet."

  "They didn't lift that last sack," Kearns protested.

  "They only lifted seven hundred and fifty."

  But Daylight grandly brushed aside the confusion.

  "What's the good of you-all botherin' around that way? What's one moresack? If I can't lift three more, I sure can't lift two. Put 'em in."

  He stood upon the chairs, squatted, and bent his shoulders down tillhis hands closed on the rope. He shifted his feet slightly, tautenedhis muscles with a tentative pull, then relaxed again, questing for aperfect adjustment of all the levers of his body.

  French Louis, looking on sceptically, cried out,

  "Pool lak hell, Daylight! Pool lak hell!"

  Daylight's muscles tautened a second time, and this time in earnest,until steadily all the energy of his splendid body was applied, andquite imperceptibly, without jerk or strain, the bulky nine hundredpounds rose from the door and swung back and forth, pendulum like,between his legs.

  Olaf Henderson sighed a vast audible sigh. The Virgin, who had tensedunconsciously till her muscles hurt her, relaxed. While French Louismurmured reverently:--

  "M'sieu Daylight, salut! Ay am one beeg baby. You are one beeg man."

  Daylight dropped his burden, leaped to the floor, and headed for thebar.

  "Weigh in!" he cried, tossing his sack to the weigher, who transferredto it four hundred dollars from the sacks of the two losers.

  "Surge up, everybody!" Daylight went on. "Name your snake-juice! Thewinner pays!"

  "This is my night!" he was shouting, ten minutes later. "I'm the lonehe-wolf, and I've seen thirty winters. This is my birthday, my one dayin the year, and I can put any man on his back. Come on, you-all! I'mgoing to put you-all in the snow. Come on, you chechaquos [1] andsourdoughs[2], and get your baptism!"

  The rout streamed out of doors, all save the barkeepers and the singingBacchuses. Some fleeting thought of saving his own dignity enteredMacDonald's head, for he approached Daylight with outstretched hand.

  "What? You first?" Daylight laughed, clasping the other's hand as ifin greeting.

  "No, no," the other hurriedly disclaimed. "Just congratulations onyour birthday. Of course you can put me in the snow. What chance haveI against a man that lifts nine hundred pounds?"

  MacDonald weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, and Daylight had himgripped solely by his hand; yet, by a sheer abrupt jerk, he took thesaloon-keeper off his feet and flung him face downward in the snow. Inquick succession, seizing the men nearest him, he threw half a dozenmore. Resistance was useless. They flew helter-skelter out of hisgrips, landing in all manner of attitudes, grotesquely and harmlessly,in the soft snow. It soon became difficult, in the dim starlight, todistinguish between those thrown and those waiting their turn, and hebegan feeling their backs and shoulders, determining their status bywhethe
r or not he found them powdered with snow.

  "Baptized yet?" became his stereotyped question, as he reached out histerrible hands.

  Several score lay down in the snow in a long row, while many othersknelt in mock humility, scooping snow upon their heads and claiming therite accomplished. But a group of five stood upright, backwoodsmen andfrontiersmen, they, eager to contest any man's birthday.

  Graduates of the hardest of man-handling schools, veterans ofmultitudes of rough-and-tumble battles, men of blood and sweat andendurance, they nevertheless lacked one thing that Daylight possessedin high degree--namely, an almost perfect brain and muscularcoordination. It was simple, in its way, and no virtue of his. He hadbeen born with this endowment. His nerves carried messages morequickly than theirs; his mental processes, culminating in acts of will,were quicker than theirs; his muscles themselves, by some immediacy ofchemistry, obeyed the messages of his will quicker than theirs. He wasso made, his muscles were high-power explosives. The levers of hisbody snapped into play like the jaws of steel traps. And in additionto all this, his was that super-strength that is the dower of but onehuman in millions--a strength depending not on size but on degree, asupreme organic excellence residing in the stuff of the musclesthemselves. Thus, so swiftly could he apply a stress, that, before anopponent could become aware and resist, the aim of the stress had beenaccomplished. In turn, so swiftly did he become aware of a stressapplied to him, that he saved himself by resistance or by delivering alightning counter-stress.

  "It ain't no use you-all standing there," Daylight addressed thewaiting group. "You-all might as well get right down and take yourbaptizing. You-all might down me any other day in the year, but on mybirthday I want you-all to know I'm the best man. Is that PatHanrahan's mug looking hungry and willing? Come on, Pat." PatHanrahan, ex-bare-knuckle-prize fighter and roughhouse-expert, steppedforth. The two men came against each other in grips, and almost beforehe had exerted himself the Irishman found himself in the merciless viseof a half-Nelson that buried him head and shoulders in the snow. JoeHines, ex-lumber-jack, came down with an impact equal to a fall from atwo-story building--his overthrow accomplished by a cross-buttock,delivered, he claimed, before he was ready.

  There was nothing exhausting in all this to Daylight. He did not heaveand strain through long minutes. No time, practically, was occupied.His body exploded abruptly and terrifically in one instant, and on thenext instant was relaxed. Thus, Doc Watson, the gray-bearded, ironbodied man without a past, a fighting terror himself, was overthrown inthe fraction of a second preceding his own onslaught. As he was in theact of gathering himself for a spring, Daylight was upon him, and withsuch fearful suddenness as to crush him backward and down. OlafHenderson, receiving his cue from this, attempted to take Daylightunaware, rushing upon him from one side as he stooped with extendedhand to help Doc Watson up. Daylight dropped on his hands and knees,receiving in his side Olaf's knees. Olaf's momentum carried him clearover the obstruction in a long, flying fall. Before he could rise,Daylight had whirled him over on his back and was rubbing his face andears with snow and shoving handfuls down his neck. "Ay ban yust asgood a man as you ban, Daylight," Olaf spluttered, as he pulled himselfto his feet; "but by Yupiter, I ban navver see a grip like that."French Louis was the last of the five, and he had seen enough to makehim cautious. He circled and baffled for a full minute before comingto grips; and for another full minute they strained and reeled withouteither winning the advantage. And then, just as the contest wasbecoming interesting, Daylight effected one of his lightning shifts,changing all stresses and leverages and at the same time delivering oneof his muscular explosions. French Louis resisted till his huge framecrackled, and then, slowly, was forced over and under and downward.

  "The winner pays!" Daylight cried; as he sprang to his feet and led theway back into the Tivoli. "Surge along you-all! This way to thesnake-room!"

  They lined up against the long bar, in places two or three deep,stamping the frost from their moccasined feet, for outside thetemperature was sixty below. Bettles, himself one of the gamest of theold-timers in deeds and daring ceased from his drunken lay of the"Sassafras Root," and titubated over to congratulate Daylight. But inthe midst of it he felt impelled to make a speech, and raised his voiceoratorically.

  "I tell you fellers I'm plum proud to call Daylight my friend. We'vehit the trail together afore now, and he's eighteen carat from hismoccasins up, damn his mangy old hide, anyway. He was a shaver when hefirst hit this country. When you fellers was his age, you wa'n't drybehind the ears yet. He never was no kid. He was born a full-grownman. An' I tell you a man had to be a man in them days. This wa'n'tno effete civilization like it's come to be now." Bettles paused longenough to put his arm in a proper bear-hug around Daylight's neck."When you an' me mushed into the Yukon in the good ole days, it didn'train soup and they wa'n't no free-lunch joints. Our camp fires was litwhere we killed our game, and most of the time we lived onsalmon-tracks and rabbit-bellies--ain't I right?"

  But at the roar of laughter that greeted his inversion, Bettlesreleased the bear-hug and turned fiercely on them. "Laugh, you mangyshort-horns, laugh! But I tell you plain and simple, the best of youain't knee-high fit to tie Daylight's moccasin strings.

  "Ain't I right, Campbell? Ain't I right, Mac? Daylight's one of theold guard, one of the real sour-doughs. And in them days they wa'n'tary a steamboat or ary a trading-post, and we cusses had to live offensalmon-bellies and rabbit-tracks."

  He gazed triumphantly around, and in the applause that followed arosecries for a speech from Daylight. He signified his consent. A chairwas brought, and he was helped to stand upon it. He was no more soberthan the crowd above which he now towered--a wild crowd, uncouthlygarmented, every foot moccasined or muc-lucked[3], with mittensdangling from necks and with furry ear-flaps raised so that they tookon the seeming of the winged helmets of the Norsemen. Daylight's blackeyes were flashing, and the flush of strong drink flooded darkly underthe bronze of his cheeks. He was greeted with round on round ofaffectionate cheers, which brought a suspicious moisture to his eyes,albeit many of the voices were inarticulate and inebriate. And yet,men have so behaved since the world began, feasting, fighting, andcarousing, whether in the dark cave-mouth or by the fire of thesquatting-place, in the palaces of imperial Rome and the rockstrongholds of robber barons, or in the sky-aspiring hotels of moderntimes and in the boozing-dens of sailor-town. Just so were these men,empire-builders in the Arctic Light, boastful and drunken andclamorous, winning surcease for a few wild moments from the grimreality of their heroic toil. Modern heroes they, and in nowisedifferent from the heroes of old time. "Well, fellows, I don't knowwhat to say to you-all," Daylight began lamely, striving still tocontrol his whirling brain. "I think I'll tell you-all a story. I hada pardner wunst, down in Juneau. He come from North Caroliney, and heused to tell this same story to me. It was down in the mountains inhis country, and it was a wedding. There they was, the family and allthe friends. The parson was just puttin' on the last touches, and hesays, 'They as the Lord have joined let no man put asunder.'

  "'Parson,' says the bridegroom, 'I rises to question your grammar inthat there sentence. I want this weddin' done right.'

  "When the smoke clears away, the bride she looks around and sees a deadparson, a dead bridegroom, a dead brother, two dead uncles, and fivedead wedding-guests.

  "So she heaves a mighty strong sigh and says, 'Them new-fangled,self-cocking revolvers sure has played hell with my prospects.'

  "And so I say to you-all," Daylight added, as the roar of laughter dieddown, "that them four kings of Jack Kearns sure has played hell with myprospects. I'm busted higher'n a kite, and I'm hittin' the trail forDyea--"

  "Goin' out?" some one called. A spasm of anger wrought on his face fora flashing instant, but in the next his good-humor was back again.

  "I know you-all are only pokin' fun asking such a question," he said,with a smile. "Of course I ain't g
oing out."

  "Take the oath again, Daylight," the same voice cried.

  "I sure will. I first come over Chilcoot in '83. I went out over thePass in a fall blizzard, with a rag of a shirt and a cup of raw flour.I got my grub-stake in Juneau that winter, and in the spring I wentover the Pass once more. And once more the famine drew me out. Nextspring I went in again, and I swore then that I'd never come out till Imade my stake. Well, I ain't made it, and here I am. And I ain'tgoing out now. I get the mail and I come right back. I won't stop thenight at Dyea. I'll hit up Chilcoot soon as I change the dogs and getthe mail and grub. And so I swear once more, by the mill-tails of helland the head of John the Baptist, I'll never hit for the Outside till Imake my pile. And I tell you-all, here and now, it's got to be analmighty big pile."

  "How much might you call a pile?" Bettles demanded from beneath, hisarms clutched lovingly around Daylight's legs.

  "Yes, how much? What do you call a pile?" others cried.

  Daylight steadied himself for a moment and debated. "Four or fivemillions," he said slowly, and held up his hand for silence as hisstatement was received with derisive yells. "I'll be realconservative, and put the bottom notch at a million. And for not anounce less'n that will I go out of the country."

  Again his statement was received with an outburst of derision. Not onlyhad the total gold output of the Yukon up to date been below fivemillions, but no man had ever made a strike of a hundred thousand, muchless of a million.

  "You-all listen to me. You seen Jack Kearns get a hunch to-night. Wehad him sure beat before the draw. His ornery three kings was no good.But he just knew there was another king coming--that was his hunch--andhe got it. And I tell you-all I got a hunch. There's a big strikecoming on the Yukon, and it's just about due. I don't mean no orneryMoosehide, Birch-Creek kind of a strike. I mean a real rip-snorterhair-raiser. I tell you-all she's in the air and hell-bent forelection. Nothing can stop her, and she'll come up river. There'swhere you-all track my moccasins in the near future if you-all want tofind me--somewhere in the country around Stewart River, Indian River,and Klondike River. When I get back with the mail, I'll head that wayso fast you-all won't see my trail for smoke. She's a-coming, fellows,gold from the grass roots down, a hundred dollars to the pan, and astampede in from the Outside fifty thousand strong. You-all'll thinkall hell's busted loose when that strike is made."

  He raised his glass to his lips. "Here's kindness, and hoping you-allwill be in on it."

  He drank and stepped down from the chair, falling into another one ofBettles' bear-hugs.

  "If I was you, Daylight, I wouldn't mush to-day," Joe Hines counselled,coming in from consulting the spirit thermometer outside the door."We're in for a good cold snap. It's sixty-two below now, and stillgoin' down. Better wait till she breaks."

  Daylight laughed, and the old sour-doughs around him laughed.

  "Just like you short-horns," Bettles cried, "afeard of a little frost.And blamed little you know Daylight, if you think frost kin stop 'm."

  "Freeze his lungs if he travels in it," was the reply.

  "Freeze pap and lollypop! Look here, Hines, you only ben in this herecountry three years. You ain't seasoned yet. I've seen Daylight dofifty miles up on the Koyokuk on a day when the thermometer busted atseventy-two."

  Hines shook his head dolefully.

  "Them's the kind that does freeze their lungs," he lamented. "IfDaylight pulls out before this snap breaks, he'll never getthrough--an' him travelin' without tent or fly."

  "It's a thousand miles to Dyea," Bettles announced, climbing on thechair and supporting his swaying body by an arm passed aroundDaylight's neck. "It's a thousand miles, I'm sayin' an' most of thetrail unbroke, but I bet any chechaquo--anything he wants--thatDaylight makes Dyea in thirty days."

  "That's an average of over thirty-three miles a day," Doc Watsonwarned, "and I've travelled some myself. A blizzard on Chilcoot wouldtie him up for a week."

  "Yep," Bettles retorted, "an' Daylight'll do the second thousand backagain on end in thirty days more, and I got five hundred dollars thatsays so, and damn the blizzards."

  To emphasize his remarks, he pulled out a gold-sack the size of abologna sausage and thumped it down on the bar. Doc Watson thumped hisown sack alongside.

  "Hold on!" Daylight cried. "Bettles's right, and I want in on this. Ibet five hundred that sixty days from now I pull up at the Tivoli doorwith the Dyea mail."

  A sceptical roar went up, and a dozen men pulled out their sacks.

  Jack Kearns crowded in close and caught Daylight's attention.

  "I take you, Daylight," he cried. "Two to one you don't--not inseventy-five days."

  "No charity, Jack," was the reply. "The bettin's even, and the time issixty days."

  "Seventy-five days, and two to one you don't," Kearns insisted. "FiftyMile'll be wide open and the rim-ice rotten."

  "What you win from me is yours," Daylight went on. "And, by thunder,Jack, you can't give it back that way. I won't bet with you. You'retrying to give me money. But I tell you-all one thing, Jack, I gotanother hunch. I'm goin' to win it back some one of these days.You-all just wait till the big strike up river. Then you and me'lltake the roof off and sit in a game that'll be full man's size. Is ita go?"

  They shook hands.

  "Of course he'll make it," Kearns whispered in Bettles' ear. "Andthere's five hundred Daylight's back in sixty days," he added aloud.

  Billy Rawlins closed with the wager, and Bettles hugged Kearnsecstatically.

  "By Yupiter, I ban take that bet," Olaf Henderson said, draggingDaylight away from Bettles and Kearns.

  "Winner pays!" Daylight shouted, closing the wager.

  "And I'm sure going to win, and sixty days is a long time betweendrinks, so I pay now. Name your brand, you hoochinoos! Name yourbrand!"

  Bettles, a glass of whiskey in hand, climbed back on his chair, andswaying back and forth, sang the one song he knew:--

  "O, it's Henry Ward Beecher And Sunday-school teachers All sing of the sassafras-root; But you bet all the same, If it had its right name It's the juice of the forbidden fruit."

  The crowd roared out the chorus:--

  "But you bet all the same If it had its right name It's the juice of the forbidden fruit."

  Somebody opened the outer door. A vague gray light filtered in.

  "Burning daylight, burning daylight," some one called warningly.

  Daylight paused for nothing, heading for the door and pulling down hisear-flaps. Kama stood outside by the sled, a long, narrow affair,sixteen inches wide and seven and a half feet in length, its slattedbottom raised six inches above the steel-shod runners. On it, lashedwith thongs of moose-hide, were the light canvas bags that containedthe mail, and the food and gear for dogs and men. In front of it, in asingle line, lay curled five frost-rimed dogs. They were huskies,matched in size and color, all unusually large and all gray. Fromtheir cruel jaws to their bushy tails they were as like as peas intheir likeness to timber-wolves. Wolves they were, domesticated, itwas true, but wolves in appearance and in all their characteristics.On top the sled load, thrust under the lashings and ready for immediateuse, were two pairs of snowshoes.

  Bettles pointed to a robe of Arctic hare skins, the end of which showedin the mouth of a bag.

  "That's his bed," he said. "Six pounds of rabbit skins. Warmest thinghe ever slept under, but I'm damned if it could keep me warm, and I cango some myself. Daylight's a hell-fire furnace, that's what he is."

  "I'd hate to be that Indian," Doc Watson remarked.

  "He'll kill'm, he'll kill'm sure," Bettles chanted exultantly. "I know.I've ben with Daylight on trail. That man ain't never ben tired in hislife. Don't know what it means. I seen him travel all day with wetsocks at forty-five below. There ain't another man living can do that."

  While this talk went on, Daylight was saying good-by to those thatclustered around him. The Virgin wanted to kiss hi
m, and, fuddledslightly though he was with the whiskey, he saw his way out withoutcompromising with the apron-string. He kissed the Virgin, but hekissed the other three women with equal partiality. He pulled on hislong mittens, roused the dogs to their feet, and took his Place at thegee-pole.[4]

  "Mush, you beauties!" he cried.

  The animals threw their weights against their breastbands on theinstant, crouching low to the snow, and digging in their claws. Theywhined eagerly, and before the sled had gone half a dozen lengths bothDaylight and Kama (in the rear) were running to keep up. And so,running, man and dogs dipped over the bank and down to the frozen bedof the Yukon, and in the gray light were gone.

  [1] Tenderfeet.

  [2] Old-timers.

  [3] Muc-luc: a water-tight, Eskimo boot, made from walrus-hide andtrimmed with fur.

  [4] A gee-pole: stout pole projecting forward from one side of thefront end of the sled, by which the sled is steered.