Colorado Jim Part 24

"I won't come--I won't!" she hissed.

But he had already reached the rail. Her heart seemed to freeze with horror as he lifted her on to the seat and clasped her firmly round the waist, imprisoning her arms so that resistance became impossible.

"Stop!" yelled the Captain. "You can't go that way----"

A gasp came from the crowd as they saw him take a deep breath and leap down with his burden. They disappeared beneath the filthy water, to come to the surface a few seconds later in exactly the same position as they had entered it--Angela with her arms held from behind, and the amazing husband swimming on his broad back, with head towards the nearest bank.

The current carried him down-stream, but his insh.o.r.e progress was swift and certain. A huge yell came from the admiring spectators as the _Silas P. Young_ pursued her course and rounded another bend.

Angela, stunned and terrified by this unexpected precipitation into ice-cold water, lay like a log with eyes closed. She lost all account of time in the mental paralysis that gripped her.... Only when they touched bottom and Jim commenced to carry her to the bank did her full sense come into operation. She stood in her sodden clothing, her pale, beautiful face quivering as she regarded this monster of a man.

"You brute! You heartless ruffian! Oh, if I could only make you feel what I think of you!"

"If I could only make you feel just what I think of you!" he said slowly.

"But we're both trying to do just what can't be done. Let's drop it and find the hoss. Better foller behind, and not try running away. Maybe you think it amuses me to yank you back like this every time--but it don't."

He began to tramp along a beaten path that wound up over the hill. Angela followed, with swift steps, for a cold wind blew down the valley and set her teeth chattering. Overhead thick gray clouds obliterated the sun. A mile farther on Jim stopped and, slipping off his coat, went to her.

"You're cold. Put it on."

"No--thanks."

"Put it on!"

"Why this sudden regard for my welfare?"

It was like a stab to him. She saw it and was pleased. But later on she was a little ashamed of that throb of transient joy. She would have liked to express her regrets, but her pride prevented such a descent.

They found the horse, pawing impatiently at the ground. He whinnied plaintively as he heard Jim's footfall and the call that the latter's lips gave utterance to. Without a word Jim lifted Angela into the saddle and mounted behind her. A "cluck" from his lips, and the mare went galloping across the uneven country towards Red Ruin. They arrived there just as the first flakes of snow began to fall.

For a whole week no single word pa.s.sed between them. The first snow had come, and every day found the thermometer registering a lower temperature.

In a week or two the whole land would be in the grip of the pitiless winter. What were Jim's intentions? She saw him pondering over a map and marking routes. After a trip into Dawson he came back with a team of dogs and a new sled, plus dog-feed, snow-shoes, and sundry other gear. One evening he broke the silence.

"Angela!"

She lifted her head from the book that she was reading.

"We're hitting the trail to-morrow."

"To where?"

"North--the Chandalar River district. There's nothing left worth staking down here. But there's gold up there, and we can't afford to waste time."

"Very well," she said icily, and turned to the book again.

He put his arm across and closed the book.

"Better git this thing clear."

"Isn't it clear?"

"Nope. Listen here--we got enough grub to carry us over the winter, that and no more. My last wad of dollars went to buy them dawgs. I guess you think I'm trash, and perhaps I am, but up here in the North men stick by their pardners till they strike gold or leave their bones on the trail.

You're my pard now--won't you act on that and make the best of it?"

Her eyes shone defiantly in the glare of the paraffin lamp. Appealing to her sense of justice was useless in the face of circ.u.mstances.

"You call it partners.h.i.+p when the one is forced against her will, and the other uses every kind of diabolical means to a.s.sist his mastery? I am coming with you because there is no way out of it. You understand.

Nothing but force can save me--I see that. Your code of life is based on brute strength devoid of any kind of moral sense."

His lips moved in a way that evidenced his resentment.

"What you call 'moral sense' is a pretty queer thing, I allow. It lets a man sell his daughter for hard cash, and it lets that daughter play with a man's feelings. If that's moral sense I ain't takin' none."

"Will you never forget that? Do you think I would have gone on with that had I believed you misinterpreted the whole thing?"

"Misinterpreted! Say, do your kisses allow of misinterpretation?"

She was amazed at this quick and telling thrust. She had yet much to learn about Colorado Jim. Education is a matter of mind, independent of environment. She made the mistake of believing it to be the special monopoly of high-schools and gentle breeding. She was unable to recognize the diamond in its crude unpolished state.

"When I kissed you, did you think that was a kind o' habit with me?" he queried.

She shrugged her shoulders, not wis.h.i.+ng to remember the incident.

"It was the first time anything like that had happened to me," he resumed, "and it was like touching heaven while it lasted. But I see now there was nothing in it--no more than kissing one of them saloon women---- Ugh!"

She felt like striking him, in her anger, at the insulting comparison, but she was not unconscious of the truth of it.... She opened the book again, and strove to forget his presence and the approaching horror of Arctic wanderings. She saw him pull the fur cap down over his ears, and disappear through the tent opening to feed the howling malemutes.

On the morrow they packed their tent, loaded the sled with everything they possessed, and set their head for the North. She sat on the sled, clad in thick mackinaw coat, fur cap, and mittens, whilst Jim stood behind with a twenty-foot whip clasped in his hand. The mixed team of twelve dogs snarled and snapped at each other as they waited for the word of command.

"Mush--you malemutes!" cried Jim.

The long curling whip came down with a whistling crack, and the team went trotting across the dazzling white plain.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TERROR OF THE NORTH

There is no stillness like the stillness of the Arctic. In the frozen wastes of the North the human voice is a blessed and desirable thing.

Imagine an ice-locked land, stretching on either hand for thousands of miles, with never a bird's song to break the silence, where nothing lives but a few starved wolves, and consumptive Indians existing for the most part in foetid igloos, venturing out but rarely in search of edible roots or an occasional indigenous animal. Ninety per cent. of the human life of Alaska was settled along the Yukon valley, in close proximity to the vast artery that connected with the outer world.

North of that the boundless wilderness stretches away over plain and mountain to the very pole. Traveling is slow and tortuous, for beaten trails are few, and the wanderer must "pack" his own trail where the snow is deep--walking in front of the sled and treading a negotiable sled-track by means of snow-shoes.

The body craves for warmth, and warmth can only be obtained by excessive consumption of food. The normal ration of a healthy being is trebled to counteract the enormous evaporation of bodily heat. Fat is the staff of life. The Esquimo, settled along the coast by the Bering Sea, takes his meal of ten pounds of blubber and feels a better man. By imitative methods the white man survives the awful cold and the pitiless conditions.

To Angela it seemed that every single discomfort to which human life was subject was epitomized in these appalling wastes. The ice was yet new and river trails were unsafe. Day after day they plowed through the deep snow, ever Northward, with the wind in their teeth, and the sun but a mere spectre mounting the horizon, with an effort, to sink again but a few hours later. The dogs frightened her. They were fierce, untamed brutes who snarled at each other and fought on occasion, until the stinging lash descended on their thick coats to remind them of the terrible master behind the sled. She came to see how necessary was the whip. They responded to that and that alone. Some of them were half wolf--creatures that were the result of inter-breeding on the part of Athabaskan Indians.

Like their wolf parent their energy was immense. They ate but twice daily--enormous meals of pulped fish and nondescript material which filled two of the sacks on the sled.