The Magnetic North Part 53

It is part of the sorcery of such days that men's thoughts, like birds', turn to other places, impatient of the haven that gave them shelter in rough weather overpast. The Big Chimney men leaned on their axes and looked north, south, east, west.

Then the Colonel would give a little start, turn about, lift his double-bitter, and swing it frontier fas.h.i.+on, first over one shoulder, then over the other, striking cleanly home each time, working with a kind of splendid rhythm more harmonious, more beautiful to look at, than most of the works of men. This was, perhaps, the view of his comrades, for they did a good deal of looking at the Colonel. He said he was a modest man and didn't like it, and Mac, turning a little rusty under the gibe, answered:

"Haven't you got the sense to see we've cut all the good timber just round here?" and again he turned his eyes to the horizon line.

"Mac's right," said the Boy; and even the Colonel stood still a moment, and they all looked away to that land at the end of the world where the best materials are for the building of castles--it's the same country so plainly pointed out by the Rainbow's End, and never so much as in the springtime does it lure men with its ancient promise.

"Come along, Colonel; let's go and look for real timber--"

"And let's find it nearer water-level--where the steamers can see it right away."

"What about the kid?"

"Me come," said Kaviak, with a highly obliging air.

"No; you stay at home."

"No; go too."

"Go too, thou babbler! Kaviak's a better trail man than some I could mention."

"We'll have to carry him home," objected Potts.

"Now don't tell us you'll do any of the carryin', or we'll lose confidence in you, Potts."

The trail was something awful, but on their Canadian snowshoes they got as far as an island, six miles off. One end of it was better wooded than any easily accessible place they had seen.

"Why, this is quite like real spruce," said the Boy, and O'Flynn admitted that even in California "these here would be called 'trees'

wid no intintion o' bein' sarcaustic."

So they cut holes in the ice, and sounded for the channel.

"Yes, sir, the steamers can make a landin' here, and here's where we'll have our wood-rack."

They went home in better spirits than they had been in since that welter of gold had lain on the Big Cabin table.

But a few days sufficed to wear the novelty off the new wood camp for most of the party. Potts and O'Flynn set out in the opposite direction one morning with a hand-sled, and provisions to last several days. They were sick of bacon and beans, and were "goin' huntin'." No one could deny that a moose or even a grouse--anything in the shape of fresh meat--was sufficiently needed. But Potts and O'Flynn were really sick and sore from their recent slight attack of wood-felling. They were after bigger game, too, as well as grouse, and a few days "off." It had turned just enough colder to glaze the trail and put it in fine condition. They went down the river to the _Oklahoma,_ were generously entertained by Captain Rainey, and learned that, with earlier contracts on his hands, he did not want more wood from them than they had already corded. They returned to the camp without game, but with plenty of whisky, and information that freed them from the yoke of labour, and from the lash of ironic comment. In vain the Colonel urged that the _Oklahoma_ was not the only steamer plying the Yukon, that with the big rush of the coming season the traffic would be enormous, and a wood-pile as good as a gold mine. The cause was lost.

"You won't get us to make galley-slaves of ourselves on the off-chance of selling. Rainey says that wood camps have sprung up like mushrooms all along the river. The price of wood will go down to--"

"All along the river! There isn't one between us and Andreievsky, nor between here and Holy Cross."

But it was no use. The travellers pledged each other in _Oklahoma_ whisky, and making a common cause once more, the original Trio put in a night of it. The Boy and the Colonel turned into their bunks at eleven o'clock. They were roused in the small hours, by Kaviak's frightened crying, and the noise of angry voices.

"You let the kid alone."

"Well, it's mesilf that'll take the liberty o' mintionin' that I ain't goin' to stand furr another minyit an Esquimer's cuttin' down _my_ rations. Sure it's a fool I've been!"

"You can't help that," Mac chopped out.

"Say Mac," said Potts in a drunken voice, "I'm talkin' to you like a friend. You want to get a move on that kid."

"Kaviak's goin' won't make any more difference than a fly's."

The other two grumbled incoherently.

"But I tell you what _would_ make a difference: if you two would quit eatin' on the sly--out o' meal-times."

"Be the Siven!"

"You lie!" A movement, a stool overturned, and the two men in the bunks were struck broad awake by the smart concussion of a gun-shot. n.o.body was hurt, and between them they disarmed Potts, and turned the Irishman out to cool off in his own cabin. It was all over in a minute. Kaviak, rea.s.sured, curled down to sleep again. Mac and Potts stretched themselves on the buffalo-robe half under the table, and speedily fell to snoring. The Boy put on some logs. He and the Colonel sat and watched the sparks.

"It's a bad business."

"It can't go on," says the Colonel; "but Mac's right: Kaviak's being here isn't to blame. They--we, too--are like a lot of powder-cans."

The Boy nodded. "Any day a spark, and _biff!_ some of us are in a blaze, and wh-tt! bang! and some of us are in Kingdom Come."

"I begin to be afraid to open my lips," said the Colonel. "We all are; don't you notice?"

"Yes. I wonder why we came."

"_You_ had no excuse," said the elder man almost angrily.

"Same excuse as you."

The Colonel shook his head.

"Exactly," maintained the Boy. "Tired of towns and desk-work, and--and--" The Boy s.h.i.+fted about on his wooden stool, and held up his hands to the reviving blaze. "Life owes us steady fellows one year of freedom, anyhow--one year to make ducks and drakes of. Besides, we've all come to make our fortunes. Doesn't every mother's son of us mean to find a gold-mine in the spring when we get to the Klond.y.k.e--eh?" And he laughed again, and presently he yawned, and tumbled back into his bunk.

But he put his head out in a moment. "Aren't you going to bed?"

"Yes." The Colonel stood up.

"Did you know Father Wills went by, last night, when those fellows began to row about getting out the whisky?"

"No."

"He says there's another stampede on."

"Where to?"

"Koyukuk this time."

"Why didn't he come in?"

"Awful hurry to get to somebody that sent for him. Funny fellas these Jesuits. They _believe_ all those odd things they teach."