Connie Morgan in Alaska Part 5

After supper they harnessed the dogs and the boy turned to bid his friend good-bye. The man extended a buckskin pouch.

"Here's a poke with a couple hundred in it. Take it along. Ye mightn't need it, an' then agin ye might, an' if ye do need it, ye'll need it bad." The boy made a motion of protest.

"G'wan, it's yourn. I got it all chalked up agin ye, an' I'd have to change the figgers, an' if they's anything on earth I hate, it's to bookkeep. So long! When ye see Waseche Bill, tell him Black Jack Demaree says ye can't never tell by the size of a frog how fer he c'n jump."

CHAPTER VI

THE MEN OF EAGLE

Waseche Bill jogged along the main street of Eagle, past log cabins, board shacks, and the deceiving two-story fronts of one-story stores.

Now and then an acquaintance hailed him from the wooden sidewalk, and he recognized others he knew, among the small knots of men who stood about idly discussing the meagre news of the camp. At the Royal Palm Hotel, a long, low, log building with a false front of boards, he swung in and, pa.s.sing around to the rear, turned his dogs into the stockade.

In the office, seated about the stove, were a dozen or more men, most of whom Waseche knew. They greeted him loudly as he entered, and plied him with a volley of questions.

"Where ye headed?"

"Thought ye'd struck it rich on Ten Bow?"

"D'ye hear about Camaron Creek?"

The newcomer removed his heavy _parka_ and joined the group, answering a question here, and asking one there.

"How's Sam Morgan's boy comin' on? We heard how you an' him was pardners an' had a big thing over on Ten Bow," inquired a tall man whose doleful length of sallow countenance had earned him the nickname of Fiddle Face.

As he talked, this man gnawed the end of his prodigiously long mustache.

Waseche's eyes lighted at the mention of the boy.

"He's the finest kid eveh was, I reckon. Sma't as a steel trap, an' they ain't nawthin' he won't tackle. C'n cook a meal o' vittles that'd make yo' mouth wateh, an' jest nach'lly handles dogs like an ol' _tillic.u.m_."

"How come ye ain't workin' yer claim?" asked someone.

"It's this-a-way," answered Waseche, addressing the group. "Mine's Discovery, an' his'n's One Below, an' we th'ow'd in togetheh. 'Bout ten foot down, mine sloped off into his'n--run plumb out. An' I come away so's the kid'll have the claim cleah." A silence followed Waseche's simple statement--a silence punctuated by nods of approval and low-voiced mutterings of "Hard luck," and "Too bad." Fiddle Face was first to speak.

"That's what I call a _man_!" he exclaimed, bringing his hand down on Waseche's shoulder with a resounding whack.

"Won't ye step acrost to Hank's place an' have a drink?" invited a large man, removing his feet from the fender of the big stove, and settling the fur cap more firmly upon his head.

"No thanks, Joe. Fact is, I ain't took a drink fo' quite a spell. Kind o' got out o' the notion, somehow."

"Well, sure seems funny to hear you refusin' a drink! Remember Iditarod?" The man smiled.

"Oh, sure, I recollect. An' I recollect that it ain't neveh got me nawthin' but misery an' an empty poke. But, it ain't so much that.

It's--well, it's like this: Sam Mo'gan, he ain't heah no mo' to look afteh the kid, an'--yo' see, the li'l scamp, he's kind o' got it in his head that they ain't no one jest like me--kind o' thinks I really 'mount to somethin', an' what I say an' do is 'bout right. It don't stand to reason I c'n make him b'lieve 'taint no good to drink licker, an' then go ahead an' drink it myself--does it, now?"

"Sure don't!" agreed the other heartily. "An' that's what _I_ call a man!" And the whack that descended upon Waseche's shoulder out-sounded by half the whack of Fiddle Face.

After supper the men drifted out by twos and threes for their nightly rounds of the camp's tawdry places of amus.e.m.e.nt. Waseche Bill, declining their invitations, sat alone by the stove, thinking. The man was lonely.

Until this night he had had no time to realize how much he missed his little partner, and his thoughts lingered over the long evenings when they talked together in the cabin, and the boy would read aloud from the ill.u.s.trated magazines.

A chair was drawn up beside his, and the man called Joe laid a large hand upon his knee.

"This here Sam Morgan's boy--does he favour Sam?" he asked.

"Like as two bullets--barrin' size," replied Waseche, without raising his eyes.

"I s'pose you talked it over with the kid 'fore you come away?" Waseche looked up.

"Why, no! I done left a lettah, an' come away while he was sleepin'."

"D'ye think he'll stand fer that?"

"I reckon he's got to. Course, it'll be kind o' hard on him, fust off, me'be. Same as me. But it's bettah fo' him in the end. Why, his claim's good fo' a million! An' the boys up to Ten Bow, they'll see him through--McDougall, an' Dutch Henry, an' the rest. They-all think as much of the boy as what I do." The big man at Waseche's side shook his head doubtfully.

"I know'd Sam Morgan well," he said, fixing the other with his eyes. "He done me a good turn onct an' he never asked no odds off'en no one. Now, if the kid's jes' like him--s'pose he follers ye?"

"Cain't. He ain't got the dogs to."

The other smiled and dropped the subject.

"Where ye headin' fer, Waseche?" he asked, after a few moments of silence.

"I aim to make a try fo' the Lillimuit."

"The Lillimuit!" exclaimed Joe. "Man, be ye crazy?"

"No. They's gold theh. I seen the nuggets Sven Carlson fetched back two ye'rs ago."

"Yes! An' where's Sven Carlson now?"

"I don'no."

"An' no one else don't know, neither. He's dead--that's where he is!

Leastwise, he ain't never be'n heerd from after he started back fer the Lillimuit."

"Want to go 'long?" asked Waseche, ignoring the other's statement.

"Who? Me! Not on yer life I don't--not to the Lillimuit! Not fer all the gold in the world."

"Oh, I reckon 'tain't so bad as folks claim."

"Claim! Folks ain't in no shape to claim! They ain't no one ever come back, 'cept Carlson--an' he was loco, an' went in agin--an' that's the last of Carlson."

"What ails the country?" asked Waseche.

"They's talk of white Injuns, an' creeks that don't freeze, an'--well, they don't no one really know, but Carlson." The man shrugged and glanced over his shoulder. "If I was you, I'd hit the back trail. They's a plenty fer two in the Ten Bow claim an' pardners is pardners."