The Magnetic North Part 103

"You probably won't; people are too busy up here. If you do, I'm offerin' you a good many thousand dollars for the risk."

"G.o.d bless my soul! where'd I put you? There ain't a bunk."

"I've slept by the week on the ice."

"There ain't room to lie down."

"Then we'll stand up."

Lord, Lord! what could you do with such a man? Owner of Idaho Bar, too.

"Mechanics of erosion," "Concentrates," "a third interest"--it all rang in his head. "I've got nine fellers sleepin' in here," he said helplessly, "in my room."

"Can we come if we find our own place, and don't trouble you?"

"Well, I won't have any pardner--but perhaps you----"

"Oh, pardner's got to come too."

Whatever the Captain said the nerve-tearing shriek of the whistle drowned. It was promptly replied to by the most horrible howls.

"Reckon that's Nig! He's got to come too," said this dreadful ragged man.

"G.o.d bless me, this must be Minook!"

The hara.s.sed Captain hustled out.

"You must wait long enough here to get that deed drawn, Captain!"

called out the other, as he flew down the companionway.

Nearly six hundred people on the bank. Suddenly controlling his eagerness, the Boy contented himself with standing back and staring across strange shoulders at the place he knew so well. There was "the worst-lookin' shack in the town," that had been his home, the A. C.

store looming importantly, the Gold Nugget, and hardly a face to which he could not give a name and a history: Windy Jim and the crippled Swede; Bonsor, cheek by jowl with his enemy, McGinty; Judge Corey spitting straight and far; the gorgeous bartender, all checks and diamonds, in front of a pitiful group of the scurvy-stricken (thirty of them in the town waiting for rescue by the steamer); b.u.t.ts, quite bland, under the crooked cottonwood, with never a thought of how near he had come, on that very spot, to missing the first boat of the year, and all the boats of all the years to follow.

Maudie, Keith and the Colonel stood with the A. C. agent at the end of the baggage-bordered plank-walk that led to the landing. Behind them, at least four hundred people packed and waiting with their possessions at their feet, ready to be put aboard the instant the Oklahoma made fast. The Captain had called out "Howdy" to the A. C. Agent, and several greetings were shouted back and forth. Maudie mounted a huge pile of baggage and sat there as on a throne, the Colonel and Keith perching on a heap of gunny-sacks at her feet. That woman almost the only person in sight who did not expect, by means of the Oklahoma, to leave misery behind! The Boy stood thinking "How will they bear it when they know?"

The Oklahoma was late, but she was not only the first boat--she might conceivably be the last.

Potts and O'Flynn had spotted the man they were looking for, and called out "h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!" as the big fellow on the pile of gunnies got up and waved his hat.

Mac leaned over the rail, saying gruffly, "That you, Colonel?" trying, as the Boss of the Big Chimney saw--"tryin' his darndest not to look pleased," and all the while O'Flynn was waving his hat and howling with excitement:

"How's the gowld? How's yersilf?"

The gangway began its slow swing round preparatory to lowering into place. The mob on sh.o.r.e caught up boxes, bundles, bags, and pressed forward.

"No, no! Stand back!" ordered the Captain.

"Take your time!" said people trembling with excitement. "There's no rush."

"There's no room!" called out the purser to a friend.

"No room?" went from mouth to mouth, incredulous that the information could concern the speaker. He was only one. There was certainly room for him; and every man pushed the harder to be the sole exception to the dreadful verdict.

"Stand back there! Can't take even a pound of freight. Loaded to the guards!"

A whirlwind of protest and appeal died away in curses. Women wept, and sick men turned away their faces. The dogs still howled, for nothing is so lacerating to the feelings of your Siwash as a steam-whistle blast.

The memory of it troubles him long after the echo of it dies. Suddenly above the din Maudie's shrill voice:

"I thought that was Nig!"

Before the gangway had dropped with a bang her sharp eyes had picked out the Boy.

"Well I'll be----See who that is behind Nig? Trust him to get in on the ground-floor. He ain't worryin' for fear his pardner'll lose the boat,"

she called to the Colonel, who was pressing forward as Rainey came down the gangway.

"How do you do, Captain?"

The man addressed never turned his head. He was forcing his way through the jam up to the A. C. Store.

"You may recall me, sah; I am----"

"If you are a man wantin' to go to Dawson, it doesn't matter who you are. I can't take you."

"But, sah----" It was no use.

A dozen more were pus.h.i.+ng their claims, every one in vain. The Oklahoma pa.s.sengers, bent on having a look at Minook, crowded after the Captain.

Among those who first left the s.h.i.+p, the Boy, talking to the purser, hard upon Rainey's heels. The Colonel stood there as they pa.s.sed, the Captain turning back to say something to the Boy, and then they disappeared together through the door of the A. C.

Never a word for his pardner, not so much as a look. Bitterness fell upon the Colonel's heart. Maudie called to him, and he went back to his seat on the gunny-sacks.

"He's in with the Captain now," she said; "he's got no more use for us."

But there was less disgust than triumph in her face.

O'Flynn was walking over people in his frantic haste to reach the Colonel. Before he could accomplish his design he had three separate quarrels on his hands, and was threatening with fury to "settle the hash" of several of his dearest new friends.

Potts meanwhile was shaking the Big Chimney boss by the hand and saying, "Awfully sorry we can't take you on with us;" adding lower: "We had a mighty mean time after you lit out."

Then Mac thrust his hand in between the two, and gave the Colonel a monkey-wrench grip that made the Kentuckian's eyes water.

"Kaviak? Well, I'll tell you."

He shouldered Potts out of his way, and while the talk and movement went on all round Maudie's throne, Mac, ignoring her, set forth grimly how, after an awful row with Potts, he had adventured with Kaviak to Holy Cross. "An awful row, indeed," thought the Colonel, "to bring Mac to that;" but the circ.u.mstances had little interest for him, beside the fact that his pardner would be off to Dawson in a few minutes, leaving him behind and caring "not a sou markee."

Mac was still at Holy Cross. He had seen a woman there--"calls herself a nun--evidently swallows those priests whole. Kind of mad, believes it all. Except for that, good sort of girl. The kind to keep her word"--and she had promised to look after Kaviak, and never let him away from her till Mac came back to fetch him.

"Fetch him?"

"Fetch him!"