The Silver Horde Part 10

Cherry left the two of them there, and long after she had gone to bed she heard the murmur of their voices.

"It's all arranged," they advised her at the breakfast-table. "We leave to-morrow."

"To-morrow?" she echoed, blankly.

"To-morrow?" likewise questioned Fraser, in alarm. "Oh, say! You can't do that. My feet are too sore to travel. I've certainly got a bad pair of 'dogs.'"

"We start in the morning. We have no time to waste."

Cherry turned to the fisherman. "You can't get ready so soon, George."

"I'm ready now," answered the big fellow.

She felt a sudden dread at her heart. What if they failed and did not return? What if some untoward peril should overtake them on the outward trip? It was a hazardous journey, and George Balt was the most reckless man on the Behring coast. She cast a frightened glance at Emerson, but none of the men noticed it. Even if they had observed the light that had come into those clear eyes, they would not have known it for the dawn of a new love any more than she herself realized what her reasonless fears betokened. She had little time to ponder, however, for Emerson's next words added to her alarm:

"We'll catch the mail-boat at Katmai."

"Katmai!" she broke in, sharply. "You said you were going by the Iliamna route."

"The other is shorter."

She turned on Balt, angrily. "You know better than to suggest such a thing."

"I didn't suggest it," said Balt. "It's Mr. Emerson's own idea; he insists."

"I'm for the long, safe proposition every time," Fraser announced, as if settling the matter definitely, languidly filling his pipe.

Boyd's voice broke in curtly upon his revery. "You're not going with us."

"The h.e.l.l I ain't!" exploded the other. "Why not?"

"There won't be room. You understand--it's hard travelling with three."

"Oh, see here, now, pal! You promised to take me to the States," the adventurer demurred. "You wouldn't slough me at this gravel-pit, after you _promised?"_ He was visibly alarmed.

"Very well," said Emerson, resignedly, "If you feel that way about it, come along; but I won't take you east of Seattle."

"Seattle ain't so bad," Fraser replied. "I guess I can pick up a pinch of change there, all right. But Kalvik--Wow!"

"Why do you have to go so soon?" Cherry asked Emerson, when the two others had left them.

"Because every day counts."

"But why the Katmai route? It's the stormy season, and you may have to wait two weeks for the mail-boat after you reach the coast."

"Yes; but, on the other hand, if we should miss it by one day, it would mean a month's delay. She ought to be due in about ten days, so we can't take any chances."

"I shall be dreadfully worried until I know you are safely over," said the girl, a new note of wistful tenderness in her voice.

"Nonsense! We've all taken bigger risks before."

"Do you know," she began, hesitatingly, "I've been thinking that perhaps you'd better not take up this enterprise, after all."

"Why not?" he asked, with an incredulous stare. "I thought you were enthusiastic on the subject."

"I am--I--believe in the proposition thoroughly," Cherry limped on, "but-- well, I was entirely selfish in getting you started, for it possibly means my own salvation, but--"

"It's my last chance also," Boyd broke in. "That's only another reason for you to continue, however. Why have you suddenly weakened?"

"Because I see you don't realize what you are going into," she said, desperately. "Because you don't appreciate the character of the men you will clash with. There is actual physical peril attached to this undertaking, and Marsh won't hesitate to--to do anything under the sun to balk you. It isn't worth while risking your life for a few dollars."

"Oh, isn't it!" Emerson laughed a trifle harshly. "My dear girl, you don't know what I am willing to risk for those 'few dollars'; you don't know what success means to me. Why, if I don't make this thing win, I'll be perfectly willing to let Marsh wreak his vengeance upon me--I might even help him."

"Oh no!"

"You may rest a.s.sured of one thing: if he is unscrupulous, so shall I be.

If he undertakes to check me, I'll--well, I'll fight fire with fire."

His face was not pleasant to look at now, and the girl felt an access of that vague alarm which had been troubling her of late. She saw again that old light of sullen desperation in the man's eye, and marked with it a new, dogged, dangerous gleam as of one possessed, which proclaimed his extreme necessity.

"But what has occurred to make you change your mind?" he asked, causing the faintest flush to rise in her cheeks.

"A few days ago you were a stranger, now you are a friend," she replied, steadily. "One's likes and dislikes grow rapidly when they are not choked by convention. I like you too well to see you do this. You are too good a man to become the prey of those people. Remember George Balt."

"Balt hasn't started yet. For the first time he is a real menace to Willis Marsh."

"Won't you take my advice and reconsider?" urged the girl.

"Listen!" said the young man. "I came to this country with a definite purpose in mind, and I had three years in which to work it out. I needed money--G.o.d, how I needed money! They may talk about the emptiness of riches, and tell you that men labor not for the 'kill' but for the pursuit, not for the score but for the contest. Maybe some of them do; but with me it was gold I needed, gold I had to have, and I didn't care much how I got it, so long as I got it honestly. I didn't crave the pleasure of earning it nor the thrill of finding it; I just wanted the thing itself, and came up here because I thought the opportunities were greater here than elsewhere. I'd have gone to the Sahara or into Thibet just as willingly. I left behind a good many things to which I had been raised, and forsook opportunities which to most fellows of my age would seem golden; but I did it eagerly, because I had only three years of grace and knew I must win in that time. Well, I went at it. No chance was too desperate, no peril was too great, no hards.h.i.+p too intense for me. I bent every effort to my task, until mind and body became sleepless, unresting implements for the working out of my purpose. I lost all sensibility to effort, to fatigue, to physical suffering; I forgot all things in the world except my one idea. I focussed every power upon my desire, but a curse was on me. A curse! Nothing less.

"At first I took misfortune philosophically; but when it came and slept with me, I began to rage at it. Month after month, year by year, it rose with me at dawn and lay down by me at night. Misfortune beleaguered me and dogged my heels, until it became a thing of amus.e.m.e.nt to every one except myself. To me it was terrifying, because my time was shortening, and the last day of grace was rus.h.i.+ng toward me.

"Just to show you what luck I played in:--at Dawson I found a prospect that would have made most men rich, and although such a thing had never happened in that particular locality before, it pinched out. I tried again and again and again, and finally found another mine, only to be robbed of it by the Canadian laws in such a manner that there wasn't the faintest hope of my recovering the property. Men told me about opportunities they couldn't avail themselves of, and, although I did what they themselves would have done, these chances proved to be ghastly jokes. I finally s.h.i.+fted from mining to other ventures, and the town burned. I awoke in a midnight blizzard to see my chance for a fortune licked up by flames, while the hiss of the water from the firemen's hose seemed directed at me and the voice of the crowd sounded like jeers.

"I was among the first at Nome and staked alongside the discoverers, who undertook to put me in right for once; but although the fellows around me made fortunes in a day, my ground was barren and my bed-rock swept clean by that unseen hand which I always felt but could never avoid. I leased proven properties, only to find that the pay ceased without reason. I did this so frequently that owners began to refuse me and came to consider me a thing of evil omen. Once a broken snow-shoe in a race to the recorder's office lost me a fortune; at another time a corrupt judge plunged me from certainty to despair, and all the while my time was growing shorter and I was growing poorer.

"Two hours after the Topkuk strike was made I drove past the shaft, but the one partner known to me had gone to the cabin to build a fire, and the other one lied to me, thinking I was a stranger. I heard afterward that just as I drove away my friend came to the door and called after me, but the day was bitter, and my ears were m.u.f.fled with fur, while the dry snow beneath the runners shrieked so that it drowned his cries. Me chased me for half a mile to make me rich, but the hand of fate lashed my dogs faster and faster, while that h.e.l.lish screeching outdinned his voice. Six hours later Topkuk was history. You've seen stampedes--you understand.

"My name became a by-word and caused people to laugh, though they shrank from me, for miners and sailors are equally superst.i.tious. No man ever had more opportunities than I, and no man was ever so miserably unfortunate in missing them. In time I became whipped, utterly without hope. Yet almost from habit I fought on and on, with my ears deaf to the voices that mocked me.

"Three years isn't very long as you measure time, but the death-watch drags, and the priest's prayers are an eternity when the hangman waits outside. But the time came and pa.s.sed at length, and I saw my beautiful breathing dream become a rotting corpse. Still, I struggled along, until one day something snapped and I gave up--for all time. I realized, as you said, that I was 'miscast,' that I had never been of this land, so I was headed for home. Home!" Emerson smiled bitterly. "The word doesn't mean anything to me now, but anyhow I was headed for G.o.d's country, an utter failure, in a worse plight than when I came here, when you put this last chance in front of me. It may be another _ignis fatuus_, such as the others I have pursued, for I have been chasing rainbows now for three years, and I suppose I shall go on chasing them; but as long as there is a chance left, I can't quit--I _can't_. And something tells me that I have left that ill-omened thing behind at last, and I am going to win!"

Cherry had listened eagerly to this bitter tirade, and was deeply touched by the pathos of the youth's sense of failure. His poignant pessimism, however, only seemed to throw into relief the stubborn fixedness of his dominant purpose. The moving cause of it all, whatever it was--and it could only be a woman--aroused a burning curiosity in her, and she said:

"But you're too late. You say your time was up some time ago."

"Perhaps," he returned, staring into the distances. "That's what I was going out to ascertain. I thought I might have a few days of grace allowed me." He turned his eyes directly upon her, and concluded, in a matter-of- fact tone: "That's why I can't quit, now that you've set me in motion again, now that you've given me another chance. That's why we leave to- morrow and go by way of the Katmai Pa.s.s."