Snowdrift Part 29

"But, how about the dust?" asked the Captain, "If they don't come, we've got to find the camp."

Claw laughed: "You'll have a h.e.l.l of a time doin' it! With the snow piled twenty foot deep along them ledges. If they don't show up, we'll shove on to the Injuns. It's clost to a hundred an' fifty mile to the camp, accordin' to the Dog Rib, an' it'll take us anyways a week to make it, with the goin' as bad as it is."

"An' if we hang around here fer a couple o' days, that'll make nine days, with a week's grub. What ye goin' to do 'bout that? I told ye we'd ort to take more."

"Yer head don't hurt you none--the way you work it, does it?" sneered Claw, "I s'pose we couldn't send the Dog Rib back fer some more grub while we was awaitin'? An' while he's gone you kin git a belly full of rootin' up the snow to find the camp."

For two days Claw laid in the tent and laughed at the Captain's sporadic efforts to uncover Brent's camp. "If you'd help, 'stead of layin' around laughin', we might find it!" flared the Captain.

"I don't want to find it," jeered Claw, "I'm usin' my head--me. The main reason I come here was to kill Ace-In-The-Hole, so he couldn't b.u.t.t in on the other business. If the storm saved me the trouble, all right."

"But, the dust!"

"Sure--the dust," mocked Claw. "If we find the camp, an' locate the dust, I divide it up with you. If we don't--I slip up here in the spring, when you're chasin' whales, an' with the snow melted off all I got to do is reach down an' pick it up--an' they won't be no dividin', neither."

"What's to hinder me from slippin' in here long about that time? Two kin play that game."

"Help yerself," grinned Claw, "Only, the Mounted patrol will be along in the spring, an' they'll give you a chanct to explain about winterin'

them klooches on the _Belva Lou_. You've forgot, mebbe, that such customs is frowned on."

"Ye d.a.m.n double dealin' houn'!" cried the Captain, angrily.

"Double dealin', eh? I s'pose I'd ort to be out there breakin' my back diggin' in the snow, so I could divvy up with you dust that I could have all to myself, by takin' it easy. I offered to share the dust with you, cause I figgered I needed yer help in b.u.mpin' off them two. If you don't help, you don't git paid, an' that's all there is to it."

The Indian returned with the provisions, and in the morning of the third day they struck out up the Coppermine, with the Indian breaking trail ahead of the dogs.

"I didn't expect 'em to show up," grinned Claw, as he trudged along behind the Captain. "I figgered if they didn't make camp that first stretch, they never would make it. Full of hooch, a man ain't fit to hit the trail even in good weather. He thinks he kin stand anything--an' he can't stand nothin'. The cold gits him. Here's what happened. The storm gits thick, an' they git off the course. The Siwash is lost an' he tries to wake up Ace-In-The-Hole. He finds the bottle of hooch--and that's the end of the Siwash. Somewheres out on the sea-ice, or in under the snow on the flats they's two frozen corpses--an' d.a.m.n good reddence, I says."

Shortly after noon of the sixth day on the trail, the Dog Rib halted abruptly and stood staring in bewilderment at a little log cabin, half buried in the snow, that showed between the spruce trunks upon the right bank of the stream. Claw hastened forward, and spoke to him in jargon.

The Indian shook his head, and by means of signs and bits of jargon, conveyed the information that the cabin did not belong to the Indian camp, and that it had not been there at the time he fled from the camp.

He further elucidated that the camp was several miles along.

"Must be some of 'em got sore at the rest, an' moved up here an' built the shack," opined Claw, "Anyways, we got to find out--but we better be heeled when we do it." He looked to his revolver, and stooping, picked up a rifle from the sled. The Captain followed his example, and Claw ordered the Indian to proceed. No one had appeared, and at the foot of the ascent to the cabin, Claw paused to examine a snow-covered mound.

The Captain was about to join him when, with a loud yell of terror, he suddenly disappeared from sight, and the next moment the welkin rang with his curses, while Claw laughing immoderately at the mishap, stood peering into Brent's brush-covered shaft. It was but the work of a few moments to haul the discomfited Captain from the hole. "Shaft, an' an ore dump," explained Claw. "This here's a white man's layout, an' he's up to date, too. They ain't be'n burnin' in, even on the Yukon, only a year or so. Wonder who he is?"

The two followed the Indian who had halted before the cabin, and stood looking down at the snowshoe trail that led from the door.

"Off huntin', I guess. Er over to the Injun camp. Looks like them tracks was made yesterday. He ain't done no work in the shaft though sence the storm. We'll go in an' make ourself to home till he gits back, anyhow. I don't like the idee of no white man in here. 'Cordin' to who it is--but----"

"Mebbe it ain't a white man," ventured the Captain.

"Sure it's a white man. Didn't I jest tell you that burnin' in ain't no Injun trick?"

"Dog Rib snowshoes," suggested the Indian in jargon, pointing to the tracks.

"That don't prove nothin'," retorted Claw, "He could of got 'em from the Injuns, couldn't he? They's two of 'em lives here," he added, from the interior. "Unharness the dogs, while I build up a fire."

From the moment of Brent's departure, Snowdrift bent all her energies persuading the Indians to burn into the gravel for gold. At first her efforts were unavailing. Even Wananebish refused to take any interest in the proceeding, so the girl was forced to cut her own wood, tend her own fire, and throw out her own gravel. When, however, at the end of a week she panned out some yellow gold in the little cabin, as she had seen Brent do, the old squaw was won completely over, and thereafter the two women worked side by side, with the result that upon the test panning, Snowdrift computed that they, too, were taking out almost an ounce a day apiece. When the other Indians saw the gold they also began to sc.r.a.pe away the snow, and to cut wood and to build their fires on the gravel.

Men and women, and even the children worked all day and took turns tending the fire at night. Trapping and hunting were forgotten in the new found craze for gold, and it became necessary for Snowdrift to tole off hunters for the day, as the supply of meat shrank to an alarming minimum.

By the end of another week interest began to flag. The particles of gold collected in the test pannings were small in size, and few in number, the work was hard and distasteful, and it became more and more difficult for the girl to explain to them that these grains were not the ultimate reward for the work, that they were only tests, and that the real reward would not be visible until spring when they would clean up the gravel dumps that were mounding up beside the shafts. The Indians wanted to know how this was to be accomplished, and Snowdrift suddenly realized that she did not know. She tried to remember what Brent had told her of the sluicing out process, and realized that he had told very little. Both had been content to let the details go until such time as the sluicing should begin. Vaguely, she told the Indians of sluice boxes and riffles, but they were quick to see that she knew not whereof she spoke. In vain, she told them that Brent would explain it all when he returned, but they had little use for this white man who had no hooch to trade. At last, in desperation, she hit upon the expedient of showing the Indians more gold. From Brent's sack she extracted quant.i.ties of dust which she displayed with pride. The plan worked at first, but soon, the Indians became dissatisfied with their own showing, and either knocked off altogether, or ceased work on the shafts and began to laboriously pan out their dumps, melting the ice for water, and carrying the gravel, a pan at a time, to their cabins.

This too, was abandoned after a few days, and the Indians returned to their traps, and to the snaring of rabbits. Only Snowdrift and old Wananebish kept up to the work of cutting and hauling the wood, tending the fires, and throwing out the gravel. Despite the grueling toil, Snowdrift found time nearly every day to slip up and visit Brent's cabin. Sometimes she would go only to the bend of the river and gaze at it from a distance. Again she would enter and sit in his chair, or moving softly about the room, handle almost reverently the things that were his, wiping them carefully and returning them to their place. She purloined a s.h.i.+rt from a nail above his bunk, and carrying it home used it as a pattern for a wonderfully wrought s.h.i.+rt of buckskin and beads.

Each evening, she worked on the s.h.i.+rt, while Wananebish sat stolidly by, and each night as she knelt beside her bunk she murmured a prayer for the well-being of the big strong man who was hers.

But whether it was at the shaft, at her needle, at her devotions, or upon her frequent trips to his cabin, her thoughts were always of Brent, and her love for him grew with the pa.s.sing of the days until her longing for his presence amounted, at times, almost to a physical pain. One by one, she counted the days of his absence, and mentally speculated upon his return. After the second week had pa.s.sed she never missed a day in visiting his cabin. Always at the last bend of the river, she quickened her steps, and always she paused, breathless, for some sign of his return.

"Surely, he will come soon," she would mutter, when the inspection showed only the lifeless cabin, or, "He will come tomorrow." When the seventeenth and the eighteenth days had pa.s.sed, with no sign of him, the girl, woman like, began to conjure up all sort and manner of dire accident that could have befallen him. He might have been drowned upon a thinly crusted rapid. He might have become lost. Or frozen. Or, ventured upon a snow cornice and been dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.

Every violent death known to the North she pictured for him, and as each picture formed in her brain, she dismissed it, laughed at her fears, and immediately pictured another.

On the nineteenth day she chopped wood until the early darkness drove her from her tasks, then she returned to the cabin and, fastening on her snowshoes, struck off down the river. "Surely, he will be here today,"

she murmured, "If he is not here today I will know something has happened, and tomorrow I shall start out to find him. But, no--I am foolis.h.!.+ Did he not say it would be two weeks--a month--maybe longer--those were his very words. And it is only nineteen days, and that is not a month. But, he will come sooner!" She flushed deeply, "He will come to _me_--for he does love me, even as I love him. In his eyes I have seen it--and in his voice--and in the touch of his hand."

The last bend was almost in sight and she quickened her pace. She knew to an inch, the exact spot from which the first glimpse of the cabin was to be had. She reached the spot and stared eagerly toward the spruce thicket. The next instant a glad cry rang out upon the still Arctic air.

"Oh, he has come! He has come! The light is in his window! Oh, my darling! My own, own man!"

Half laughing, half sobbing, she ran forward, urging her tired muscles to their utmost, stumbling, recovering, hurrying on. Only a minute more now! Up the bank from the river! And, not even pausing to remove her snowshoes, she burst into the room with Brent's name upon her lips.

The next instant the blood rushed from her face leaving it deathly white. She drew herself swiftly erect, and with a wild cry of terror turned to fly from the room. But her snowshoes fouled, and she fell heavily to the floor, just as Johnnie Claw, with a triumphant leer upon his bearded face leaped to the door, banged it shut, and stood with his back against it, leering and smirking down at her, while the Captain of the _Belva Lou_ knelt over her and stared into her eyes with burning, b.e.s.t.i.a.l gaze.

CHAPTER XX

"YOU ARE WHITE!"

"So! my beauty!" grinned the Captain, "Fer once in his life Claw didn't lie. An' ye didn't wait fer us to go an' git ye--jest come right to us nice as ye please--an' saved me a keg o' rum." He rose with an evil leer. "An' now git up an' make yerself to home--an' long as ye do as I say, an' don't git yer back up, you an' me'll git along fine."

Frantic with terror the girl essayed to rise, but her snowshoes impeded her movements, so with trembling fingers she loosened the thongs and, leaping to her feet, backed into a corner, and stared in wide-eyed horror first at the Captain, then at Claw, the sight of whom caused her to shrink still further against the wall.

The man sneered: "Know me, eh? Rec'lect the time, over to the mission I tried to persuade you to make the trip to Dawson with me do you? Well, I made up my mind I'd git you. Tried to buy you offen the squaw an' she like to tore me to pieces. I'd of kidnapped you then, if it hadn't be'n fer the Mounted. But I've got you now--got you an' sold you to him," he grinned, pointing to the Captain. "An' yer lucky, at that. Let me make you acquainted with Cap Jinkins. 'Tain't every breed girl gits to be mistress of a s.h.i.+p like the _Belva Lou_."

Her eyes blazing with anger, she pointed a trembling finger at Claw: "Stand away from that door! Let me go!"

"Oh, jest like that!" mocked the man. "If he says let you go, it's all right with me, pervided he comes acrost with the balance of the dust."

The Captain laughed, and turning to the Dog Rib, he ordered: "Slip out to the sled an' git a bottle o' rum, an' we'll all have a little drink."

For the first time Snowdrift noticed the presence of the Indian.

"Yondo!" she screamed, "This is your work! You devil!" and beside herself with rage and terror, she s.n.a.t.c.hed a knife from the table and leaped upon him like a panther.

"Git back there!" cried Claw, leveling his revolver.

Quick as a flash, the Captain knocked up the gun, pinioned the girl's arms from behind, and stood glaring over her shoulder at Claw: "Put up that gun, d.a.m.n ye! An' look out who yer pullin' it on!"