this genius of the lamp, he had suffered exquisitely, for months on end. Now he must enjoy exquisitely. He looked again at the water front—he had known since he first gazed at the river steamer from the law office that he was going to gaze upon it again and again in the next hour.
He crossed the wide, dray-laden street and interviewed a man at the wharf where was tied the Moosomin. He knew the sign said October 10th—two days hence. But was that to really be two days, or three or four? The man said it would be “pretty clost,” meaning close to the advertised sailing. Lederer sauntered over to a clean packing case, sat upon it in the still-genial autumn sunlight and thought—fighting.
He could run up to the fraction—which would not be disturbed for several days, he knew, by the purchasers. He could fix things with Dick the peasant, the yoeman, the clod. And then he could catch the boat—easily! With seven thousand five hundred dollars in his pocket, less his fare to Seattle. Seven thousand five hundred dollars did not seem very much to him—now. His fluent mind ran on to cities of the world—expensive cities to men of refined expensive tastes. He spent money—in his mind—for this and that. How expensive the things he loved most were. Soon he would be driven to practice his profession again—as an obscure physician. A thing he hated. But fifteen thousand dollars? Ah, that was twice as much. He wet his lips and proceeded, afresh, to spend money more craftily, conservatively, with only little spurts of lavishness. It sounded better—this fifteen thousand dollars.
Dick! Dick and money. It was hard to think of them together—fittingly. Consider, if you please, the differing natures of men. Their widely differing needs. Dick was happy working—with his hands. He, Lederer, was unhappy when forced to work—actually work. The struggle thus ended.
He bought—two days later—several bottles of wine and some good cigars. This was his only concession to the gilded palaces of Dawson City. He had written a letter to Dick, telling him their affairs were delayed somewhat but promised success. He sent it by a special carrier—an acquaintance of the Hill. Still, he worried a little when the Moosomin did not get off one day after her schedule. Nor two. But the third, early, she cast off and steamed up the river, bucking a skim of ice in the Dawson eddy. She would undoubtedly get up and out. Lederer opened his first bottle of wine.
It was some hours after Dawson had disappeared around the first upriver bend that he became acquainted with a congenial soul, a gambler of distinction, known to him by reputation. Lederer was not of this class. But he unbent, needing mightily a some one to whom to subtly vaunt. The gambler—this one, at least—understood the true meaning of making a half-round-the-world journey for a purpose of high chance. He would equally understand that a chance won is not to be renounced, either in whole or in part. He told his friend—as they drank the wine—obscured, rather by symbol and parable, of Dick, the drudge, the drone—of the day after day of his arid, stupid, obvious comments upon things and people. The gambler—a brilliant fellow—could comprehend the hate, or something quite akin to it, that six months of constant propinquity had bred in Lederer's heart for the plain, flat partner of the yoeman breed.
At Indian River the Moosomin stopped to take on wood—it was so much cheaper than at Dawson—and tied up for the night, there being no moon and the ice a bit troublesome to the pilot in the dark.
Lederer, in his narrow stateroom, was treating the gambler—and his woman friend—to some canned delicacies. For he had vowed to eat the grub of the country no longer. There was also a second bottle before them, a high light on its slender median line from the small brass bracket lamp. There was no marring of their converse except the thump of cordwood on the deck below—when the door opened. Dick Kibble, muddy and a little white, peered in!
“Why, Dick!” said Lederer, smiling affably, though his heart rumbled. He could not imagine it! Here was some extraordinary coincidence. Could Dick have gone hunting? His swift mind, stimulated by wine to tremendous self-confidence, instantly created an alibi. “Excuse me, dear friends,” he said to his companions of the little supper. “Want to see me, Dick?” He went out upon the narrow deck.
“Thought you were in Dawson, doc?”
Lederer had the impression that Dick, the never lying, had lied. Still—why not have thought him in Dawson? Yet
“Well, well,” he said genially. “To think of your being over here on the river. No, I
