The Yukon Trail Part 4

"You might throw in several other little souvenirs to boot and not miss them," suggested Elliot with a smile.

Macdonald nodded indifferently. "I gave and I took, which was as it should be. But it's different with you, Mr. Elliot. This wasn't your row."

"I hadn't been in a good mix-up since I left college. It did me a lot of good."

"Much obliged, anyhow." He turned his attention to a lady entering the dining-room. "'Mornin', Mrs. Selfridge. How's Wally?"

She threw up her hands in despair. "He's on his second bottle of liniment already. I expect those ruffians have ruined his singing voice.

It's a mercy they didn't murder both him and you, Mr. Macdonald. When I think of how close you both came to death last night--"

"I don't know about Wally, but I had no notion of dying, Mrs. Selfridge.

They mussed us up a bit. That was all."

"But they _meant_ to kill you, the cowards. And they almost did it too.

Look at Wally--confined to his bed and speaking in a whisper. Look at you--a wreck, horribly beaten up, almost drowned. We must drive the villains out of the country or send them to prison."

Mrs. Selfridge always talked in superlatives. She had an enthusiasm for the dramatics of conversation. Her supple hands, her shrill, eager voice, the snapping black eyes, all had the effect of startling headlines to the story she might be telling.

"Am I a wreck?" the big Scotchman wanted to know. "I feel as husky as a well-fed malamute."

"Oh, you _talk_. But we all know you--how brave and strong you are.

That's why this outrage ought to be punished. What would Alaska do if anything happened to you?"

"I hadn't thought of that," admitted Macdonald. "The North would have to go out of business, I suppose. But you're right about one thing, Mrs.

Selfridge. I'm brave and strong enough at the breakfast table. Steward, will you bring me a double order of these s.h.i.+rred eggs--and a small steak?"

"Well, I'm glad you can still joke, Mr. Macdonald, after such a terrible experience. All I can say is that I hope Wally isn't permanently injured. He hasn't your fine const.i.tution, and one never can tell about internal injuries." Mrs. Selfridge sighed and pa.s.sed to her place.

The eyes of the big man twinkled. "Our little fracas has been a G.o.dsend to Mrs. Selfridge. Wally and I will both emerge as heroes of a desperate struggle. You won't even get a mention. But it's a pity about Wally's injuries--and his singing voice."

The younger man agreed with a gravity back of which his amus.e.m.e.nt was apparent. The share of Selfridge in the battle had been limited to leg work only, but this had not been good enough to keep him from being overhauled and having his throat squeezed.

Elliot finished breakfast first and left Macdonald looking over a long typewritten doc.u.ment. He had it propped against a water-bottle and was reading as he ate. The paper was a report Selfridge had brought in to him from a clerk in the General Land Office. The big Canadian and the men he represented were dealing directly with the heads of the Government departments, but they thought it the part of wisdom to keep in their employ subordinates in the capacity of secret service agents to spy upon the higher-ups.

CHAPTER IV

THE CREVa.s.sE

For an hour before the Hannah reached Katma Miss O'Neill was busy getting her little brood ready. In that last half-day she was a creature of moods to them. They, too, like Sheba herself, were adventuring into a new world. Somehow they represented to her the last tie that bound her to the life she was leaving. Her heart was tender as a Madonna to these lambs so ill-fitted to face a frigid waste. Their mother had been a good woman. She could tell that. But she had no way of knowing what kind of man their father might be.

Sheba gave Janet advice about where to keep her money and when to wear rubbers and what to do for Billie's cold. She put up a lunch for them to take on the stage. When they said their sniffling good-byes at Katma she was suspiciously bright and merry. Soon the children were laughing again with her.

One glance at their father, who introduced himself to Miss O'Neill as John Husted, relieved her mind greatly. His spontaneous delight at seeing them again and his choking grat.i.tude to her for having looked after them were evidence enough that this kind-eyed man meant to be both father and mother to his recovered little folks. His emotion was too poignant for him to talk about his wife, but Sheba understood and liked him better for it.

Her temporary family stood on the end of the wharf and called good-byes to the girl.

"Tum soon and see us, Aunt Sheba," Billie shouted from his seat on the shoulder of his father.

The children waved handkerchiefs as long as she could be distinguished by them. When they turned away she went directly to her room.

Elliot was pa.s.sing forward when Miss O'Neill opened her stateroom door to go in. The eyes of the young woman were blind with tears and she was biting her lip to keep back the emotion that welled up. He knew she was very fond of the motherless children, but he guessed at an additional reason for her sobs. She too was as untaught as a child in the life of this frontier land. Whatever she found here--how much of hards.h.i.+p or happiness, of grief or woe--she knew that she had left behind forever the safe harborage of quiet waters in which her life craft had always floated.

It came on to rain in the afternoon. Heavy clouds swept across from the mountains, and the sodden sky opened like a sluice-box. The Kusiak contingent, driven indoors, resorted to bridge. Miss O'Neill read.

Gordon Elliot wrote letters, dawdled over magazines, and lounged alternately in the ladies' parlor and the smoking-room, where Macdonald, Strong, a hardware merchant from Fairbanks, and a pair of sour-dough miners had settled themselves to a poker game that was to last all night and well into the next day.

Of the two bridge tables all the players were old-timers except Mrs.

Mallory. Most of them were young enough in years, but they had been of the North long enough to know the gossip of the country and its small politics intimately. They shared common hopes of the day when Alaska would be thrown open to industry and a large population.

But Mrs. Mallory had come in over the ice for the first time last winter. The other women felt that she was a bird of pa.s.sage, that the frozen Arctic could be no more than a whim to her. They deferred a little to her because she knew the great world--New York, Vienna, London, Paris. Great names fell from her lips casually and carelessly.

She referred familiarly to princes and famous statesmen, as if she had gossiped with them tete-a-tete over the teacups. She was full of spicy little anecdotes about German royalty and the British aristocracy. It was no wonder, Gordon Elliot thought, that she had rather stunned the little social set of Kusiak.

Through Northrup and Trelawney a new slant on Macdonald was given to Gordon. He had fallen into casual talk with them after dinner on the fore deck. It was still raining, but all three were equipped with slickers or mackintoshes. To his surprise the young man discovered that they bore him no grudge at all for his interference the night before.

"But we ain't through with Colby Macdonald yet," Trelawney explained.

"Mind, I don't say we're going to get him. Nothing like that. He knocked me cold with that loaded suitcase of his. By the looks of him I'm even for that. Good enough. But here's the point. We stand for Labor. He stands for Capital. See? Things ain't what they used to be in Alaska, and it's because of Colby Macdonald and his friends. They're grabbers--that's what they are. They want the whole works. A h.e.l.l of a roar goes up from them when the Government stops their combines, but all the time they're bearing down a little harder on us workingmen.

Understand? It's up to us to fight, ain't it?"

Later Elliot put this viewpoint before Strong.

"There's something in it," the miner agreed. "Wages have gone down, and it's partly because the big fellows are consolidating interests. Alaska ain't a poor man's country the way it was. But Mac ain't to blame for that. He has to play the game the way the cards are dealt out."

The sky was clear again when the Hannah drew in to the wharf at Moose Head to unload freight, but the mud in the unpaved street leading to the business section of the little frontier town was instep deep. Many of the pa.s.sengers hurried ash.o.r.e to make the most of the five-hour stop.

Macdonald, with Mrs. Mallory and their Kusiak friends, disappeared in a bus. Elliot put on a pair of heavy boots and started uptown.

At the end of the wharf he pa.s.sed Miss O'Neill. She wore no rubbers and she had come to a halt at the beginning of the mud. After a momentary indecision she returned slowly to the boat.

The young man walked up into the town, but ten minutes later he crossed the gangplank of the Hannah again with a package under his arm. Miss O'Neill was sitting on the forward deck making a pretense to herself of reading. This was where Elliot had expected to find her, but now that the moment of attack had come he had to take his fear by the throat.

When he had thought of it first there seemed nothing difficult about offering to do her a kindness, yet he found himself shrinking from the chance of a rebuff.

He moved over to where she sat and lifted his hat. "I hope you won't think it a liberty, Miss O'Neill, but I've brought you some rubbers from a store uptown. I noticed you couldn't get ash.o.r.e without them."

Gordon tore the paper wrapping from his package and disclosed half a dozen pairs of rubbers.

The girl was visibly embarra.s.sed. She was not at all certain of the right thing to do. Where she had been brought up young men did not offer courtesies of this sort so informally.

"I--I think I won't need them, thank you. I've decided not to leave the boat," she answered shyly.

Elliot had never been accused of being a quitter. Having begun this, he proposed to see it out. He caught sight of the purser superintending the discharge of cargo and called to him by name. The officer joined them, a pad of paper and a pencil in his hand.

"I'm trying to persuade Miss O'Neill that she ought to go ash.o.r.e while we're lying here. What was it you told me about the waterfall back of the town?"

"Finest thing of its kind in Alaska. They're so proud of it in this burg that they would like to make it against the law for any one to leave without seeing it. Every one takes it in. We won't get away till night.

You've plenty of time if you want to see it."