Snowdrift Part 5

"'Are they goin' to hang ye in six months?' you asks, 'Have ye got yer sentence?'

"'I've got my sentence,' I says, 'But it ain't hangin'. The doctors sentenced me. It's the con.'

"'To h.e.l.l with the doctors,' you says, 'They don't know it all. We'll fool 'em. All you need is to git out in the mountains--an' lay off the hooch.'

"I laughed at you. 'Me go to the mountains!' I says, 'Why man I ain't hardly got strength to get to my room an' back to the job again--an'

couldn't even make that if it wasn't for the hooch.'

"'That's right,' you says, 'From the job to the room, an' the room to the job, ye'll last maybe six months--but I'm doubtin' it. But the mountains is different.' An' then you goes on an talks mountains an'

gold till you got me interested, an' you offers to grub-stake me for a trip into the Kootenay country. You claimed it was a straight business proposition--fifty-fifty if I made a strike, an' you put up the money against my time." The stranger paused and smiled as a subdued ripple of whisperings went from man to man as he mentioned the Kootenay. Then he looked Kelliher squarely in the face: "There wasn't no gold in the Kootenay," he said simply, "Or leastwise I couldn't find none. I figured someone had be'n stringin' you."

Patsy Kelliher s.h.i.+fted the hat to the back of his head and laughed out loud as his little eyes twinkled with merriment. "I git ye now, son," he said, "I moind the white face av ye, an' the chist bowed in like the bottom av a wash bowl, an' yer shoulders stuck out befront ye loike the horns av a cow." He paused as his eyes ran the lines of sinewy leanness and came to rest upon the sun bronzed face: "So ye made a failure av the trip, eh? A plumb clane failure--an' Oi'm out the couple av hundred it cost me fer the grub stake----"

"It cost you more than five hundred," interrupted the other. "I was in bad shape and there was things I needed that other men wouldn't of--that I don't need--now."

"Well--foive hundred, thin. An' how long has ut be'n ago?"

"Nine years."

Kelliher laughed: "Who was roight--me or the d.a.m.n doctors? Ye've lived eighteen toimes as long as they was going to let ye live a'ready--an' av me eyes deceive me roight, ye ain't ordered no coffin yet."

"No--I ain't ordered no coffin. I come here to hunt you up an' pay you back."

Kelliher laughed: "There ain't nothin' to pay son. You don't owe me a cent. A grub-stake's a grub-stake, an' no one iver yit said Patsy Kelliher welched on a bargain. Besoides, Oi guess ye got all Oi sint ye afther. I know'd d.a.m.n well they wasn't no gold in the Kootenay--none that a tenderfoot lunger cud foind."

McBride laughed: "Sure--I knew after I'd been there six months what you done it for. I doped it all out. But, as you say, a grub-stake's a grub-stake, an' no time limit on it, an' no one ever said Jim McBride ever welched on a bargain, neither. I ain't never be'n just ready to come back an' settle with you, till now. I drifted north, and farther north, till I wound up in the Yukon country. I prospected around there an' had pretty good luck. I'd got back my strength an' my health till right now there ain't but d.a.m.n few men in the big country that can hit the trail with Jim McBride. But I wasn't never satisfied with what I was takin' out. I know'd there was somethin' big somewheres up there. I could _feel_ it, an' I played for the big stake. Others stuck by stuff that was pannin' 'em out wages. I didn't. They called me a fool--an' I let 'em. I struck up river at last an' they laughed--but they ain't laughin' now. Me an' a squaw-man named Carmack hunted moose together over on Bonanza. One day Carmack was scratchin' around the roots of a big birch tree an' just fer fun he gets to monkeyin' with my pan." The man paused and Brent could hear the suppressed breathing of the miners who had crowded close. His eyes swept their faces and he saw that every eye in the house was staring into the face of McBride as they hung upon his every word. He realized suddenly that he himself was waiting in a fever of impatience for the man to go on. "Then I come into camp, an' we both fooled with the pan--but we didn't fool long. G.o.d, man! We was shakin' it out of the gra.s.s roots! _Coa.r.s.e gold!_ I stayed at it a month--an' I've filed on every creek within ten miles of that lone birch tree. Then I come outside to find you an' settle." He paused and his eyes swept the room: "These men friends of yourn?" he asked. Kelliher nodded. "Well then I'm lettin' 'em in. Right here starts the biggest stampede the world ever seen. Some of the old timers that was already up there are into the stuff now--but in the spring the whole world will be gettin' in on it!"

Kelliher was the only self-possessed man in the room: "What'll she run to the pan?" he asked.

"_Run to the pan!_ G.o.d knows! We thought she was _big_ when she hit an ounce----"

"_An ounce to the pan!_" cried Kelliher, "Man ye're crazy!"

The other continued: "An' we thought she was _little_ when she run a hundred dollars--two hundred! I've washed out six-hundred dollars to the pan! An' I ain't to bed rock!"

And then he began to empty his pockets. One after another the little buckskin sacks thudded upon the bar--ten--fifteen--twenty of them.

McBride spoke to Kelliher, who stared with incredulous, bulging eyes: "That's your share of what I've took out. You're filed along with me as full pardner in all the claims I've got. They's millions in them claims--an' more millions fer the men that gets there first." He paused and turned to the men of the crowd who stood silent, with tense white faces, and staring eyes glued on the pile of buckskin sacks: "Beat it, you gravel hogs!" he cried, "It's the biggest strike that ever was! Hit fer Seattle, go by Dyea Beach an' over the Chilkoot, an' take a thousand pounds of outfit--or you'll die. A h.e.l.l of a lot of you'll die anyhow--but some of you will win--an' win big. Over the Chilkoot, down through the lakes, an' down the Yukon to Dawson--" A high pitched, unnatural yell, animal-like in its nervous excitement broke from a throat in the crowd, and the next instant pandemonium broke loose in Kelliher's, and Carter Brent fought his way to the door through a howling ma.s.s of mad men, and struck out for his boarding house at a run.

CHAPTER II

ON DYEA BEACH

In a drizzle of cold rain forty men stood on Dyea beach and viewed with disfavor the forty thousand pounds of sodden, mud-smeared outfit that had been hurriedly landed from the little steamer that was already plowing her way southward. Of the sixty-odd men who, two weeks before had stood in Patsy Kelliher's "Ore Dump Saloon" and had seen Jim McBride toss one after another upon the bar twenty buckskin pouches filled to bursting with coa.r.s.e gold in his reckoning with Kelliher, these forty had accomplished the first leg of the long North trail. The next year and the next, thousands, and tens of thousands of men would follow in their footsteps, for these forty were the forerunners of the great stampede from the "outside"--a stampede that exacted merciless toll in the lives of fools and weaklings, even as it heaped riches with lavish prodigality into the laps of the strong.

Jim McBride had said that each man must carry in a thousand pounds of outfit. Well and good, they had complied. Each had purchased his thousand pounds, had it delivered on board the steamer, and in due course, had watched it dumped upon the beach from the small boats.

Despite the cold drizzle, throughout the unloading the forty had laughed and joked each other and had liberally tendered flasks. But now, with the steamer a vanis.h.i.+ng speck in the distance and the rock-studded Dyea Flats stretching away toward the mountains, the laughter and joking ceased. Men eyed the trail, moved aimlessly about, and returned to their luggage. The thousand pound outfits had suddenly a.s.sumed proportions.

Every ounce of it must be man-handled across a twenty-eight mile portage and over the Chilkoot Pa.s.s. Now and then a man bent down and gave a tentative lift at a bale or a sack. Muttered curses had taken the place of laughter, and if a man drew a flask from his pocket, he drank, and returned it to his pocket without tendering it to his neighbor.

When Carter Brent had reached the seclusion of his room after leaving Kelliher's saloon, he slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrawing his roll of bills, counted them. He found exactly three hundred and seventy-eight dollars which he rightly decided was not enough to finance an expedition to the gold country. He must get more--and get it quickly.

Returning the bills in his pocket he packed his belongings, left the room, and a few minutes later was admitted upon signal to the gambling rooms of Nick the Greek where selecting a faro layout, he bought a stack of chips. At the end of a half-hour he bought another stack, and thereafter he began to win. When his innings totaled one thousand dollars he cashed in, and that evening at seven o'clock he stepped onto a train bound for Seattle. He was mildly surprised that none of the others from Kelliher's were in evidence. But when he arrived at his destination he grinned as he saw them swarming from the day coaches ahead.

And now on Dyea beach he stood and scowled as he watched the rain water collect in drops and roll down the sides of his packages.

"He said they was Injuns would pack this here junk," complained a man beside him, "Where'n h.e.l.l be they?"

"Search me," grinned Brent, "How much can you carry?"

"Don't know--not a h.e.l.l of a lot over them rocks--an' he said this here Chilkoot was so steep you had to climb it instead of walk."

"Suppose we make a try," suggested Brent. "A man ought to handle a hundred pounds----"

"_A hundred pounds!_ You're crazy as h.e.l.l! I ain't no d.a.m.n burro--me.

Not no hundred pounds no twenty-eight mile, an' part of it cat-climbin'.

'Bout twenty-five's more my size."

"You like to walk better than I do," shrugged Brent, "Have you stopped to figure that a twenty-five-pound pack means four trips to the hundred--forty trips for the thousand? And forty round trips of twenty-eight miles means something over twenty-two hundred miles of hiking."

"Gawd!" exclaimed the other, in dismay, "It must be h.e.l.l to be eggicated! If _I'd_ figgered that out, _I'd_ of stayed on the boat!

We're in a h.e.l.l of a fix now, an' no ways to git back. That grub'll all be et gittin' it over the pa.s.s, an' when we git there, we ain't nowheres--we got them lakes an' river to make after that. Looks like by the time we hit this here Bonanza place all the claims will be took up, or the gold'll be rotted with old age."

"You're sure a son of gloom," opined Brent as he stooped and affixed his straps to a hundred-pound sack of flour. "But I'm going to hit the trail. So long."

As Brent essayed to swing the pack to his shoulders he learned for the first time in his life that one hundred pounds is a matter not lightly to be juggled. The pack did not swing to his shoulders, and it was only after repeated efforts, and the use of other bales of luggage as a platform that he was at length able to stand erect under his burden. The other man had watched without offer of a.s.sistance, and Brent's wrath flared as he noted his grin. Without a word he struck across the rock-strewn flat.

"Hurry back," taunted the other, "You ort to make about four trips by supper time."

Before he had covered fifty yards Brent knew that he could never stand the strain of a hundred-pound pack. While not a large man, he was well built and rugged, but he had never before carried a pack, and every muscle of his body registered its aching protest at the unaccustomed strain. Time and again it seemed as though the next step must be his last, then a friendly rock would show up ahead and he would stagger forward and sink against its side allowing the rock to ease the weight from his shoulders. As the distance between resting places became shorter, the periods of rest lengthened, and during these periods, while he panted for breath and listened to the pounding of his heart's blood as it surged past his ear drums, his brain was very active. "McBride said a good packer could walk off with a hundred, or a hundred and fifty pounds, and he'd seen 'em pack two hundred," he muttered. "And I've been an hour moving one hundred pounds one mile! And I'm so near all in that I couldn't move it another mile in a week. I wonder where those Indian packers are that he said we could get?" His eyes travelled back across the flats, every inch of which had caused him bodily anguish, and came to rest upon the men who still moved aimlessly among the rain-sodden bales, or stood about in groups. "Anyway I'm the only one that has made a stab at it."

A sound behind him caused him to turn his head abruptly to see five Indians striding toward him along the rock-strewn trail. Brent wriggled painfully from his pack straps as the leader, a bigframed giant of a man, halted at his side and stared stolidly down at him. Brent gained his feet and thrust out his hand: "h.e.l.lo, there, old Nick o' Time! Want a job? I've got a thousand pounds of junk back there on the beach, counting this piece, and all you gentlemen have got to do is to flip it up onto your backs and skip over the Chilkoot with it--it's a snap, and I'll pay you good wages. Do you speak English?"

The big Indian nodded gravely, "Me spik Eengliss. Me no nem Nickytam.

Nem Kamish--W'ite man call Joe Pete."

Brent nodded: "All right, Joe Pete. Now how much are you and your gang going to charge me to pack this stuff up over the pa.s.s?"

The Indian regarded the sack of flour: "You _chechako_," he announced.

"Just as you say," grinned Brent, "I wouldn't take that from everybody, whatever it means, but if you'll get that stuff over the pa.s.s you can call me anything you want to."

"You Boston man."

"No--I'm from Tennessee. But we'll overlook even that. How much you pack it over the pa.s.s." Brent pointed to the flour and held up ten fingers.

The Indian turned to his followers and spoke to them in guttural jargon.

They nodded a.s.sent, and he turned to Brent: "Top Chilkoot fi' cent poun'--hondre poun', fi' dolla. Lak Lindermann, three cent poun'