CHAPTER XVII.
His cheery “Hello!” was the most welcome sound I had heard in weeks. I hurried into the tent where he was lying, and he put a hand up to me. The tent was warm; but I had arrived none too soon.
“I got it!” I exclaimed, but he only smiled at me, with a pathetic, tired face. “It was; there, all right, more than I can tell you of until I can eat. I'm in!”
“Poor old chap,” he said softly. “You look as if about one more day of the trail would have finished you, and then—then—what would have become of me!”
The half sob in the voice told me what he had feared, what he had suffered, and I turned my back to him, and tried to speak cheerfully, but scarcely recognized the thin, croaking voice as my own.
“The last of the beans are over there in the kettle,” he said, and I seized them like a famished animal, checking myself only from the danger of overeating by a remnant of will power. And in the night I arose and ate again, because the overworked body cried aloud for food, even in sleep.
I learned much of that terrible lapse which he had endured, helpless and alone. The other dog was dead. Once he had heard wolves, but they had been distant, and his fears had come to naught. His leg was doing as well as could be expected, and he had succeeded in removing the bandages the day before, and putting the crude splints closer. But it was a long time before we spoke of one element, and that was the supply of food. When we did it was with averted eyes, for each knew that there was scarcely any left.
“We'll talk about that in the morning,” I said, as, half ill, I crawled into my blankets. And by the morning, so resilient is life, so tenacious, so self-repairing, that some of my courage had returned, and the world was more normal.
Kentuck must have been awake a long time, and careful not to disturb me, for he had started the fire from where he lay, and the smell of smoke awoke me. I was about to speak, but checked myself, and rested, with eyes closed, trying to reason out our best course. It came to me, as a certainty, that our slim hope of life lay in pressing back to the place where the triple tragedy had been consummated, for there, at least, was a little food. Slowly I thought over the quantity I had left with Kentuck when I started on alone, and came to the conclusion that there could be scarcely any left. My resolve was taken.
I yawned and sat up, as if just-aroused, and he looked at me with the look of a child staring at its guardian. In the daylight I saw how seriously his misfortune had told on him, and my heart sank a little, as I saw that his face was so much thinner, his hands so much more nervous, and his whole body so much wasted.
“Sleep well? You have been at it fourteen hours,” he said. “But I was afraid you didn't, because you moaned, and swore, and shrieked, in the night, sometimes.”
“I feel fine,” I asserted. “I did dream some; but that doesn't count.”
I pretended to be thoughtful.
“I think I told you, last night, all about the place where the gold is, and that I found Pitkok's body as well as the Hatchet's, and that I brought away a little of the gold, all I could bring, on account of the weight?”
“Yes,” he said; “you told me that much, and said the gold was in the sled, I'd like to see it.”
“But I didn't tell you that I got quite a little food left by the Sioux.”
“No!” he said incredulously. “Well, that's the best news of all.”
He thought for a moment, and then his face twitched with the weakness of the man who has suffered illness, and he said; “Old man, I thought when you came in last night that you had been starving to death. I couldn't talk. This lump in my throat! That's why the gold you brought back didn't seem so good. It hurt mighty bad to look at you when you came in. I had to keep right quiet to—well, to keep from blubberin' like a baby!”
He had brightened as he talked, as if his mind were relieved, but I dared not meet his eyes lest he read that lie. I assumed a gayety I did not feel, and brought him the red gold, through which he ran his fingers, picking up a nugget now and then to inspect it, and studying that curious red while I prepared the breakfast. It was liberal. I resolved to have all I wanted once more before I died, no matter what the cost. After that I must—I can scarcely write now of how my resolution wavered, of how cowardly I was, and of how I shrank from what must come.
“But we must go on—to-day!” I asserted. “We must get back to that other camp, or we will starve, lost certainly.”
“Then we must leave this behind,” he asserted, sighing as he dropped the nuggets he had been holding into the black pot at his side.
“Yes,” I assented. But it was another lie, for I had become so filled with hatred for that gold, and what it had cost, that I had resolved that I would return with it or die. “I'll cache it somewhere, so that we can get it if ever we come back.”
“If we come back? If we come back!”
His voice had the helpless tones of a man whose spirit has been broken by all that he has endured, and I knew, then, that Kentucky Smith had lived through centuries in that time when I was absent, as surely as had I, struggling always.
We broke camp at noon. I know it was noon when I lifted him to the sled, and prepared to say good-by to the scene of misfortune, for I looked at my watch and wondered how far we could travel, Malicula, Barsick, and I, before the last light waned. Every hour must be made to count. Every mile traveled meant that much more of a chance to live. And God knows I was tired when we started, and that had not Kentucky Smith, broken, ill, and helpless, been there behind me, I would rather have taken my pistol and put a more merciful end to the faithful dogs and myself, than have attempted it.
It was that same interminable struggle, that same interminable suffering, that I had, endured from the time I turned my back on the three peaks, now so far behind. The frozen meat of a dog, a stringy skeleton, meat for the team, half rations for a man helpless and requiring nourishment, and quarter rations for myself, were supplies with which I faced that journey, which had taken us three days to make when we assisted each other.
How I lied on that trip! How the cunning of a madness that had become constant made me dissemble about my share of the food! How many mornings I arose quietly, and stealthily, and weakly, and assured him that I had breakfasted, when my famished eyes followed every mouthful as he conveyed it to his lips! How I nibbled at the moldy dog fish, which I had reserved for myself, stealing rather from those poor brutes tottering alongside me in the trail than from Kentucky Smith.
He told me, long after, that there were times when he was afraid of me, as I reeled along the trail, singing in a cracked voice as I tried to make him feel that I was happy and confident. He told me long afterward that it took us six days to get back to the place where we had cached the food left by Sparhawk and Royce, and that at the last I heard sounds which were not audible, and threatened to kill him when he tried surreptitiously to lighten the load of the red gold. But to me much of it is a blank, and instead of six days we trailed through eternity, with that profanation of French, “Mush! Mush on!” always my sole thought.
I do remember this, that for a long time we traveled through silence, and that I was deathly ill, and that the snow was coated with red, which I thought was a coating of red gold, and that I cursed it, and that at last we saw something ahead that I vaguely remembered having seen before, as I gave a final stagger, threw the rope from my shoulder, and pitched headlong into the soft snow beside our trail.
The first thing of which I have a clear recollection is Constantine's face bending over me, and the hot, wonderful draft of meat broth poured down my throat. Of how my clawlike fingers seized the edge of the tin kettle, and of how I cried like a child, and tried to fight for its retention, as he pulled it away from me.
We were in that ill-fated camp, and the days had passed. Constantine had at last got word that his sister had started away Northward with the Sioux, and, as it came to him from Taninaw, he surmised where they were going. He, too, had heard where it lay, and had gone to find her. I doubt not that in his heart was some other hope, that primitive, savage desire that never quite leaves the primitive man—the thirst for vengeance.
Patiently he had trailed them to this camp, to his sorrow. And there he had found her body, and knew that his quest for her at least was at an end, and, with native reasoning, when he saw the cache of food, had concluded that sooner or later his enemy, the Hatchet, would return. Caribou had crossed his trail, and he had an abundance of food, and I doubt not would have remained there, waiting, and waiting, for months, had we not come to tell him that the Hatchet was beyond his earthly reach. Like ours, his quest was at its end.
And so, in time, before the snows were gone, we turned again toward the South. But now it was not so hard, for he had many dogs and we had much food, and the cold was not so drear, and Kentucky was recovering.
It was in the afternoon and the days were already unduly warm, when we trailed through the soft snow around the bend, and caught our view of Neucloviat. The snow had been so soft that it had clogged and delayed us, and the daylight was long, for the sun had returned to the North to bring the melting of the blanket, the breaking of the ice, the songs of the birds and wild fowl flying to their breeding grounds, and the brilliancy of spring. For hours we had skirted the edges of the river, fearing at any time to see dark cracks outlined on its surface. Water was gurgling here and there from the entering streams, and so it was with great relief that we saw the camp.
A group of men stood in front of the trading post, whose door was open, and called to others in surprise at finding any one still traveling. They ran down the bank as we approached, and first of all I heard Dan's voice bellowing a welcome, mixed with scathing accusations of desertion to conceal his happiness. Kentucky hobbled off the sled with his crutch, and Cavanaugh took hold of my arm.
“You've been there?” he questioned, and there was not quite an interrogation in his voice.
“Yes,” I said, and I could not repress a shudder.
“Tell me about it to-night,” he said, putting a finger to his lips, and I understood and acquiesced.
We talked at random with those around, and Dan and I at last got into the corner of the post alone.
“Tom,” he said, “what made you do it? Are you daffy?.”
“Dan,” I said, “I found it. It's there, lots of it, the red gold.”
For a full minute he looked at me, and then reached up and ran his fingers along the edges of my hair.
“And it ran threads of white through there, didn't it, old pardner! And it stole twenty years from the sluice boxes of your life! And so, for me, it can stay there. We have gold, honest gold, bright and yellow, in our own ground. More than you and I'll ever want. I struck it four days after you left, and for weeks there hasn't been a day when there were less than twenty or thirty men workin' on the claim.”
“But, Dan,” I said, “I don't think I ought to be in on that. I went away. I didn't help. It ought to be all yours. I've got some of the red gold—maybe ten thousand dollars' worth.”
“I'll have none of it!” he roared. “I'm afraid of it. It ain't no good! It's under a curse, as sure as there's a God! Give it to Kentuck, Tom, and be my pardner. I've always figured you as in half, just the same, and just as you figured me in for half of what you'd find away off up there.”
He suddenly caught me by both arms, and looked down into my eyes. His voice lowered, and was tender as a woman's:
“I know one reason why you went, Tom. You wouldn't have done it, I have a notion, if it hadn't been that you thought about me and what I told you. Ain't that so?”
I held my tongue. He knew. He gave me a slap on the back that almost toppled me over.
“That's settled!” he declared. “There'll be no more talk about that part of it. You're to give what you brought back to Kentuck. If it makes you feel any better, we'll dope it out that we three own the red-gold claim together, and will go for it if it ever strikes us that we need it. But now you're my same old pardner, and there's gold enough cached in that safe in the corner over there, so I ain't thinkin' you'll try again for the other.”
Outside, Constantine was throwing off Kentuck's and my things. The idlers had turned their attention to an excited argument farther up the street, in front of the Horn Spoon, which now seemed to me like a scene from a past life. I carried in the heavy burden of red that I had clung to through all those desperate leagues, and asked Cavanaugh to put it in his safe. He did so with a wry face, as if hating its sight. I was to see it but once more.
“There's Kentuck, askin' Windy Jim if he can use his cabin till he gets some other place to bunk,” Dan's voice growled behind me. “Go tell him. now. He must feel bad at havin' nothin', poor cuss!”
I went up and waited until Jim had assured him that he was welcome, and then hastened to join the crowd farther up that turgid line of cabins forming the water front.
“Kentuck,” I said, when we were alone, “I always told you that half of whatever I got belonged to Dan; so Dan and you and I are still pardners in that claim back off in the North.”
“Me? Not me!” he asserted. “You found it. It's yours.”
I did not heed him.
“Dan has struck it while I was gone. I don't need any of the red gold. So I'm going to make you take what we brought out. There must be about ten thousand dollars' worth. It will be enough for you to—well, to carry out what you want to do.”
He looked at me in a puzzled way, leaning on his crutch.
“What I want to do? I don't quite get you. What do you mean?”
“To marry Bessie.” The words came with difficulty, and slow.
He leaned back and laughed, while I stood, open-mouthed.
“Marry Bessie! Never thought of such a thing! Besides, I'm engaged to a girl down in Kentucky, and she knows it! She's a bully little pal. She's the only real sister I ever had, is Bessie!”
I rubbed my hands over my eyes, and for an instant believed that the madness of that far North still befogged me. I stammered when I spoke, and the words were jumbled.
“But I saw her kiss you—and you held her in your arms—and you kissed her—that day when the mail came in—and you had a letter in your hand—then!”
Again he laughed, and then sobered to a rare gravity.
“What a fool I am, never to have quite understood, and I wondered a heap about it, too, when there was nothin' else to do. That letter was from my brother. He's a big insane specialist out in the States, and he was answerin' a letter of mine that I never told her about, in which I put old Bill's case up to him. Never did so much writin' about how a man acted in my life! And he wrote back that there was still a chance for Bill, and that, if he could have him brought out, he might pull him around and straighten him out. And when I read the letter to Bessie, she just naturally flung her arms around me, and said: 'You dear thing! If I wasn't in love with Tom, I'd marry you!'”
I could not answer. I was too hurried. I was too far away! I was running up the hill to the cabin of hope, and—well, I was not at Cavanaugh's to tell him the story until quite late!
They are scattered now, after all these years. Cavanaugh is gone on that last, long trail, and may Heaven rest him! Faithful in life to the daughter of the woman he loved, he was faithful in death, and she inherited all that he had to give, even to the last red nuggets from his safe, and perhaps, although he left a modest fortune, they were the most prized, for in them was our story. Kentuck comes to see us once in a while, with his brother, to whom, even when dying, Bill Wilton was grateful for his last years of life, the life that held so much that was a blank.
Dan and I pass slow and soft lives up here in the Sierras, and each year the mine pays us well, and we are not eager for more. Particularly is this so with me, when Bessie tells me that she is content, and I am reminded of the long, bitter trail by Malicula and Barsick, sleeping the sleep of the aged on our porch.
It is still there, somewhere off up in that far North, a reef of gold, red gold, gold the color of blood, as if the blood of all those who sought it had stained it deep down into the frozen soil, and had warmed to perpetual warmth the waters that flow across it from the spring at the foot of the three peaks. But from it I claim nothing, not even a hope, a desire, or a curiosity. Cursed or not, it holds no thrall on me, and I want none of it. Is there anything in the superstition surrounding it, as it lies there, red and gleaming? That, too, I do not know. But of its story and what it cost those who knew of it, I have told.