Ah! there was the face of Dooley looking down on me. He saw me clinging there. He was anxiously shouting to me to come up. Mastering an overpowering nausea I raised myself. At last I felt his strong arm around me, and here I swear it on a stack of Bibles that brutish Slav seemed to me like one of God's own angels.
I was on firm ground once more. The Worm was lying stiff and rigid. Without a word the stalwart Slav took him on his brawny shoulder. The creek was downhill but fifty yards. Ere we reached it the Worm had begun to show signs of reviving consciousness. When we got to the edge of the icy water he was beginning to groan and open his eyes in a dazed way.
"Leave me alone," he says to Rileyvich; "you Slavonian swine, lemme go."
Not so the Slav. Holding the wriggling, writhing little man in his powerful arms he plunged him heels over head in the muddy current of the creek.
"I guess I cure dose fits anyway," he said grimly.
Struggling, spluttering, blaspheming, the little man freed himself at last and staggered ashore. He cursed Rileyvich most comprehensively. He had not yet seen me, and I heard him wailing:
"Sure de boy's a stiff. Just me luck; I've lost me job."
* * *
CHAPTER X
"You'd better quit," said the Prodigal.
It was the evening of my mishap, and he had arrived unexpectedly from town.
"Yes, I mean to," I answered. "I wouldn't go down there again for a farm. I feel as weak as a sick baby. I couldn't stay another day."
"Well, that goes," said he. "It just fits in with my plans. I'm getting Jim to come in, too. I've realised on that stuff I bought, made over three thousand clear profit, and with it I've made a dicker for a property on the bench above Bonanza, Gold Hill they call it. I've a notion it's all right. Anyway, we'll tunnel in and see. You and Jim will have a quarter share each for your work, while I'll have an extra quarter for the capital I've put in. Is it a go?"
I said it was.
"Thought it would be. I've had the papers made out; you can sign right now."
So I signed, and next day found us all three surveying our claim. We put up a tent, but the first thing to do was to build a cabin. Right away we began to level off the ground. The work was pleasant, and conducted in such friendship that the time passed most happily. Indeed, my only worry was about Berna. She had never ceased to be at the forefront of my mind. I schooled myself into the belief that she was all right, but, thank God, every moment was bringing her nearer to me.
One morning, when we were out in the woods cutting timber for the cabin, I said to Jim:
"Did you ever hear anything more about that man Mosely?"
He stopped chopping, and lowered the axe he had poised aloft.
"No, boy; I've had no mail at all. Wait awhile."
He swung his axe with viciously forceful strokes. His cheery face had become so downcast that I bitterly blamed myself for my want of tact. However, the cloud soon passed.
About two days after that the Prodigal said to me:
"I saw your little guttersnipe friend to-day."
"Indeed, where?" I asked; for I had often thought of the Worm, thought of him with fear and loathing.
"Well, sir, he was just getting the grandest dressing-down I ever saw a man get. And do you know who was handing it to himLocasto, no less."
He lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke.
"I was just coming along the trail from the Forks when I suddenly heard voices in the bush. The big man was saying:
"'Lookee here, Pat, you know if I just liked to say half a dozen words I could land you in the penitentiary for the rest of your days.'
"Then the little man's wheedling voice:
"'Well, I did me best, Jack. I know I bungled the job, but youse don't want to cast dem t'ings up to me. Dere's more dan me orter be in de pen. Dere's no good in de pot callin' de kettle black, is dere?'
"Then Black Jack flew off the handle. You know he's got a system of manhandling that's near the record in these parts. Well, he just landed on the little man. He got him down and started to lambast the Judas out of him. He gave him the 'leather,' and then some. I guess he'd have done him to a finish hadn't I been Johnnie on the spot. At sight of me he gives a curse, jumps on his horse and goes off at a canter. Well, I propped the little man against a tree, and then some fellows came along, and we got him some brandy. But he was badly done up. He kept saying: 'Oh, de devil, de big devil, sure I'll give him his before I get t'rough.' Funny, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it's strange;" and for some time I pondered over the remarkable strangeness of it.
"That reminds me," said Jim; "has any one seen the Jam-wagon?"
"Oh yes," answered the Prodigal; "poor beggar! he's down and out. After the fight he went to pieces, every one treating him, and so on. You remember Bullhammer?"
"Yes."
"Well, the last I saw of the Jam-wagonhe was cleaning cuspidors in Bullhammer's saloon."
* * *
We had hauled the logs for the cabin, and the foundation was laid. Now we were building up the walls, placing between every log a thick wadding of moss. Every day saw our future home nearer completion.
One evening I spied the saturnine Ribwood climbing the hill to our tent. He hailed me:
"Say, you're just the man I want."
"What for?" I asked; "not to go down that shaft again?"
"No. Say! we want a night watchman up at the claim to go on four hours a night at a dollar an hour. You see, there's been a lot of sluice-box robberies lately, and we're scared for our clean-up. We're running two ten-hour shifts now and cleaning up every three days; but there's four hours every night the place is deserted, and Hoofman proposed we should get you to keep watch."
"Yes," I said; "I'll run up every evening if the others don't object."
They did not; so the next night, and for about a dozen after that, I spent the darkest hours watching on the claim where previously I had worked.
There was never any real darkness down there in that narrow valley, but there was dusk of a kind that made everything grey and uncertain. It was a vague, nebulous atmosphere in which objects merged into each other confusedly. Bushes came down to within a few feet of where we were working, dense-growing alder and birch that would have concealed a whole regiment of sluice-robbers.
It was the dimmest and most uncertain hour of the four, and I was sitting at my post of guard. As the night was chilly I had brought along an old grey blanket, similar in colour to the mound of the pay-dirt. There had been quite a cavity dug in the dump during the day, and into this I crawled and wrapped myself in my blanket. From my position I could see the string of boxes containing the riffles. Over me brooded the vast silence of the night. By my side lay a loaded shot-gun.
"If the swine comes," said Ribwood, "let him have a clean-up of lead instead of gold."
Lying there, I got to thinking of the robberies. They were remarkable. All had been done by an expert. In some cases the riffles had been extracted and the gold scooped out; in others a quantity of mercury had been poured in at the upper end of the boxes, and, as it passed down, the "quick" had gathered up the dust. Each time the robbers had cleaned up from two to three thousand dollars, and all within the past month. There was some mysterious master-crook in our midst, one who operated swiftly and surely, and left absolutely no clue of his identity.
It was strange, I thought. What nerve, what cunning, what skill must this midnight thief be possessed of! What desperate chances was he taking! For, in the miners' eyes, cache-stealing and sluice-box robbing were in the same category, and the punishment waswell, a rope and the nearest tree of size. Among those strong, grim men justice would be stern and swift.
I was very quiet for a while, watching dreamily the dark shadows of the dusk.
Hist! What was that? Surely the bushes were moving over there by the hillside. I strained my eyes. I was right: they were.
I was all nerves and excitement now, my heart beating wildly, my eyes boring through the gl
oom. Very softly I put out my hand and grasped the shot-gun.
I watched and waited. A man was parting the bushes. Stealthily, very stealthily, he peered around. He hesitated, paused, peered again, crouched on all-fours, crept forward a little. Everything was quiet as a grave. Down in the cabins the tired men slept peacefully; stillness and solitude.
Cautiously the man, crawling like a snake, worked his way to the sluice-boxes. None but a keen watcher could have seen him. Again and again he paused, peered around, listened intently. Very carefully, with my eyes fixed on him, I lifted the gun.
Now he had gained the shadow of the nearest sluice-box. He clung to the trestle-work, clung so closely you could scarce tell him apart from it. He was like a rat, dark, furtive, sinister. Slowly I lifted the gun to my shoulder. I had him covered.
I waited. Somehow I was loath to shoot. My nerves were a-quiver. Proof, more proof, I said. I saw him working busily, lying flat alongside the boxes. How crafty, how skilful he was! He was disconnecting the boxes. He would let the water run to the ground; then, there in the exposed riffles, would be his harvest. Would I shoot ... now ... now....
Then, in the midnight hush, my gun blazed forth. With one scream the man tumbled down, carrying along with him the disconnected box. The water rushed over the ground in a deluge. I must capture him. There he lay in that pouring stream.... Now I had him.
In that torrent of icy water I grappled with my man. Over and over we rolled. He tried to gouge me. He was small, but oh, how strong! He held down his face. Fiercely I wrenched it up to the light. Heavens! it was the Worm.
I gave a cry of surprise, and my clutch on him must have weakened, for at that moment he gave a violent wrench, a cat-like twist, and tore himself free. Men were coming, were shouting, were running in from all directions.
"Catch him!" I cried. "Yonder he goes."
But the little man was shooting forward like a deer. He was in the bushes now, bursting through everything, dodging and twisting up the hill. Right and left ran his pursuers, mistaking each other for the robber in the semi-gloom, yelling frantically, mad with the excitement of a man-hunt. And in the midst of it all I lay in a pool of mud and water, with a sprained wrist and a bite on my leg.
"Why didn't you hold him?" shouted Ribwood.
"I couldn't," I answered. "I saved your clean-up, and he got some of the lead. Besides, I know who he is."
"You don't! Who is he?"
"Pat Doogan."
"You don't say. Well, I'm darned. You're sure?"
"Dead sure."
"Swear it in Court?"
"I will."
"Well, that's all right. We'll get him. I'll go into town first thing in the morning and get out a warrant for him."
He went, but the next evening back he returned, looking very surly and disgruntled.
"Well, what about the warrant?" said Hoofman.
"Didn't get it."
"Didn't get"
"No, didn't get it," snapped Ribwood. "Look here, Hoofman, I met Locasto. Black Jack says Pat was cached away, dead to all the world, in the backroom of the Omega Saloon all night. There's two loafers and the barkeeper to back him up. What can we do in the face of that? Say, young feller, I guess you mistook your man."
"I guess I did not," I protested stoutly.
They both looked at me for a moment and shrugged their shoulders.
* * *
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 gulc
hes, 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 manuvring-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.
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