CHAPTER III.
Cavanaugh had arisen to his feet, and, after a broad gesture with his hands, held them extended, as if seeing there, before him, on the rough floor of that older trading post far away, globules of gold, accursed. In the gloom of the post his eyes blazed and stared, and the muscles of his neck seemed tensed and drawn. He appeared to recover himself, gave a foolish, mirthless little laugh, and began pacing up and down the room, with slow, aimless footsteps. I shuddered a little, for the spell of his story was still on me. and thought of the wreck of a good man, Bill Wilton, whose reason had been unbalanced by privation and a succession of blows, incomprehensible and deadly.
My memory appeared to find new details in his attitude as I saw him sitting on the bank, with the pebbles falling through his maimed fingers, the fingers that had cast away all that he had found. Vivid and clear, he stood before me there in the H. B. log post, stricken to the heart and perhaps remorsefully believing that had he not made the great quest, his wife might have survived.
“So, you see, it had a foundation in truth!”
Cavanaugh had halted in front of me, and was again undisturbed.
“He had found a deposit of red gold. He had lived to bring some of it back, as tangible evidence of its existence. He had traveled over hundreds of miles, buoyed up by hope and the belief that he was to throw in his wife's lap the magnum opus of man's striving, wealth—wealth to buy ease, comfort, and travel, time to gain knowledge, means to make a home somewhere in a less inhospitable clime. And she was not there to greet him, or to forgive him the feverishness of his rude, half-mad departure.
“I left him huddled there against the foot of the wall, still moaning, and ran across to bring MacCulloch, telling him in broken, breathless sentences that Bill Wilton's reason was ebbing, that it was at stake, and that something must be done for him. Mac snatched the baby .from its rough, homemade crib, and we ran back and into the post.
“Mac shouted to Wilton, who looked up, and slowly got to his feet, where he stood, wavering, and his fingers worked, shutting and unshutting, and his lips twitched, and his eyes were blank and filmed, as if Death were invading him. Mac held the baby, Bessie, toward him; and she, recovering from the shock of her awakening from sleep, suddenly held her hands out toward her father, and smiled and gurgled with her sweet little voice.
“For an instant we thought the man was affrighted. He cowered back still farther, and then, as if we were wolves, and he feared for our hold of the baby, he seized her feverishly in his arms, and walked up and down the post. We hoped to see him break—hoped that the tears would swim in those fierce, glittering, dry eyes; but none came.
“He began to quaver in a far-away voice, as if detached from him, and bearing no relation to the big bell booms of sound that used to bubble from him in the old days, an Indian song from the Southern coast. You know it, that coarse chant of
“Konwusky nouka.
Tinki omlatuch!
Tinki omlatuch.
Konwusky nouka!
“The song of money in plenty, ask where!”
I nodded my head, and Cavanaugh walked slowly down to the end of the room, around some of the piles of merchandise that were heaped, dim and misshapen, in the lower end, and back up behind the counter, where he leaned against a string of beads that clashed and rattled. The light above shone more fully on his face, and it seemed to me to have become more sad in its fines.
“That's about all there is to it,” he said, as if his tale were finished. “We never quite understood, for a long time, whether he realized that he was Bessie's father; but he used to growl like a beast if any one attempted to take her away from him, or to care for her. He used to sleep with her in his arms, and one night, when I had worked late on the monthly report and come into the big living cabin, and passed his door, it was open, and he was there beside her, resting on his elbows, and staring down into her face, as if trying to solve that puzzling problem of existence. In the summer he would carry her, for hours, in his arms. For two or three years he scarcely spoke to any of us, then he began to work a little, doing chores around the post.
“Only once a sign of the old feverishness came over him in full force. That was after I had left the post, and was working a patch of poor placer ground up above. But I happened to be there. He had been restless for days, and on this afternoon came out into the open, with a huge pack before him, which he laid down, as if thinking of something forgotten. I tried to find out where he thought he was going, and all he did was to mutter that incoherent gibberish about red gold—red as blood.
“I didn't want to hurt him, and I knew that an attempt to overpower a man of such prodigious strength as was his, and especially as it might prove when fanned by madness, meant that I might have to wound him. So I ran back up past the post, and called for Bessie. She came toddling toward me, and I picked her up in my arms, and ran almost blindly, in haste, back to where I had seen her father.
“'You must put your arms around his neck and say, “Stay with Bessie. Don't go!”' I kept telling her, and she learned her little lesson. It worked. Bill Wilton rubbed his hands across his eyes, bewildered, as if the words had recalled something of his past, some other day, when he had been asked to stay, and had refused. I don't think he could grasp that intangible memory; but he suddenly cried—and Heaven knows it is pitiful to hear a strong man cry—carried his pack back inside the cabin, and was docile again.”
I sat for a time thinking of the tragedy of the mind, and was prompted to ask of the trader, still leaning against the partitions, and staring off into space: “Did he have much of the gold—the red gold?”
“Yes, a fair sum—such as a man might escape with after such hardship. About three thousand dollar's worth, I suppose. I have an idea that he tried to carry away more, but dropped it, little by little, as his strength failed in his flight to save his life. MacCulloch and I swept up about a hundred and forty ounces of it, and sent it away. We took the money and brought the best alienist from out in the States that our money would command, that he might say what was best to be done with Bill.”
“And what did he say?” I asked, filled with pity.
“That it was no earthly use for us to send him to a sanitarium or asylum, and that none but God Himself could restore the mind of Bill Wilton. He thought it might come by accident, but even that hope has died as the years have advanced; for he is now about sixty years of age, and the brain cells at his time of life are almost indurated.”
Cavanaugh stopped speaking, shifted on his feet, and then walked around the counter again, and looked out into the long twilight of the night. Then, as if satisfied that we were still safe from intrusion, leaped over the rough pine boards, polished by contact only to a lumpy smoothness, and stooped over his safe.
“I'll show you something,” he said, standing erect. “But I don't want you to mention it to any one. Sleeping dogs must be left to sleep. Look at this.”
He fumbled through the contents of the drawer he had removed from the safe, and I saw a priceless gem tossed carelessly to one side, a bow of faded ribbon, a coin cut in half, a miniature in a yellow frame, and then, with an exclamation—“Here it is!”—he picked up a small wad of paper. He unrolled it carefully, and held something in the palm of his hand. It was a single nugget of gold, not heavily washed, for its edges were still sharp in places, and it glowed a dull and somber red.
“That's one of them,” he said sententiously. “I have never seen anything like it. Have you?”
I did not answer. I was interested in its curious color. It was if it had been permeated with blood. Iron oxydization, perhaps, for such deposits have been found, though rarely. I recalled that down in Eldorado County, California, there was one small place where miners of the olden days tossed nuggets out of the sluice boxes because they were coated with red, to afterward learn that they had thrown away gold impregnated with iron in oxydization. But I had never seen that gold.
Perhaps this might be the same. I was not certain. And for some reason, it seemed to me that the nugget was evil, and that it burned the palm of my hand, and fascinated me, and was sentient. I gave it back, and caught myself furtively wiping my hand on my trousers leg, as if it had been stained by contact with that symbol of tragedy. It was as if there were truth in the Indian legend that it was accursed, and that it brought grief to all who came in contact with it.
Quite as carefully as he had removed it, the trader replaced it. His voice came to me as he knelt down, and locked the inner compartment of the safe.
“MacCulloch handled some of it. It set him to brooding over the heavy blow dealt his family. He neglected his business, and left it to a young fellow sent out from the head offices. When that boy was shot by one of the Northwest Mounted Police, who found him in his own home with a wife betrayed, the boy's defalcations came to light. It cost old Mac every dollar he had saved, for the H. B. is unbending. His half-breed wife went out one night with heart disease, and Mac, poor old chap, was drowned trying to save a crippled dog.”
Cavanaugh suddenly stood up, and blew out the light above—his face appearing old and distressed as its rays shone on him, standing tiptoe, to extinguish its flame. I knew that he was dismissing me, and walked slowly outside, and stood by the door. His movements were subdued until he stood beside me, and turned and fumbled with the big iron key that locked his fortress. The camp was still, and the air was still, with the long, hazy, gentle stillness of a summer's night in the Northland.
For a time we stood there, and looked at the river winding below us toward the buttresses of the Ramparts, and it seemed to me that the water was smoothing itself for that swift rush through the rock-bordered channel. I was filled with a strange love of the country which could be so hospitable in its lazy summer mood, and such a fierce, rigid contestant in its winter solstice. The voice of old Cavanaugh aroused me:
“Pretty, isn't it? Does it hold you, entice you, enthral you, as it does me?”
I told him that it did, and for another minute he stood and looked around him, and drew deep inhalations, as if clearing his lungs of the mingled odors emanating from the storehouse where he passed his days. Evidently he was in no mood for further words, for he bade me a curt “Good night,” and turned away toward the cabin, which huddled in the rear of the big log structure over which he presided. He suddenly turned and called to me:
“Oh, Amann! Amann! Just a minute.”
I had started along the trail leading past the river-fronting row, but halted. He came toward me with his long, sturdy step, and laid a hand on my arm.
“Don't forget to say nothing about the nugget,” he cautioned. “Men believe it a mere childish legend, and that Bill Wilton never found anything to prove it otherwise. Don't be so reckless as to start a stampede to unknown places, even if there is nothing in—well—in the native superstition. It is best that men, especially these tenderfeet, continue to believe it a myth.”
I agreed with him, and gave my word, even as I gave my hand in good night. He turned and walked away, and I resumed my march to the cabin where my partner, honest and tired, doubtless slept the sleep of the hard-worked.
Here and there along the row the lights still flared. From the Honolulu came the steady click of the white bail chasing itself languidly across the brass partitions of the roulette wheel, and I heard the bang of a case as a faro deal was finished, and the casekeeper flipped his little buttons back for a fresh start. Farther down the line a woman's voice, drink-coarsened, attempted a song, and the remnant of her contralto broke dolefully when she came to the changes in her meager register. A door of a cabin on the hillside opened and shut, and a man with a pack on his back plunged out, and started into the trail leading off toward the diggings, which lay three miles back of the river camp, his frying pan and coffee pot clanking as he went.
I halted when I came to the front of our cabin. My four dogs barked me a greeting, and Malicula, my big gray leader, jumped up and put his paws on my shoulder for a caress. The cabin door was open, as if my partner scorned its frail barrier against any one who cared to invade it. I started to enter, and then had a sudden disinclination for sleep. The story of the red gold was still overpowering my fatigue, and I turned down and loitered along the river bank, passing slowly, farther and farther, until I was near the place where the Marook came brawling across its shallows to empty its limpid waters into the yellow current of the Yukon. The light was turning again from a heavy dusk, somnolent and soporific to the paler gold of an arctic dawn—and there is nothing in the world more beautiful.
From up the river I saw something shaping itself upon its breast. It forged ahead, and I saw that it was a boatman in a native canoe. The paddle rose and fell with steady, dignified deliberation. Evidently the man was in no haste, and was not familiar with his landing place. He was almost abreast of me, when he appeared to evince curiosity as to who I was. He swung his paddle vigorously on the far side, and the canoe's nose, supple, turned toward me, and halted almost when the pebbles of the beach threatened to rend its lower hull.
A native of splendid stature leaped out, his mukluks splashing the water, and with paddle retained in one hand, with the other he caught his craft by its upturned nose, and held it secure. His denim parka, of a common cut, whose resemblance to a short shirt I had long ceased to be interested in, was without trimming, and open at the throat, and hoodless. His pillarlike legs, standing firmly, were surrounded by the waters which rippled and fought against them in little swirls.
His face was turned toward me, and I saw that the nose was high and strong, that the eyes were sharp and inquiring in their somber depths, and that his cheek bones were rounded rather than abrupt. His hair had been shorn away until it fell in an even line at the base of his neck, and he was bareheaded, with a parting line distinctly outlined up to the crown of his head. There was something aggressive about him, some primitive dignity different from the ordinary pose of the arctic native.
“Neucloviat?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good!”
He stepped back into his canoe, and, with one heavy, deft stroke, sent it clear of the shore, and, without looking back at me, began paddling diagonally across the river. I knew that he was heading for the Indian village on the opposite bank, and smiled when I thought of his sparse conversation; but there was something about him that caused me to be more thoughtful, to treat our interview as of more importance. It was as if he were a force commanding something from me, and from that primitive country of which he was a part.
And as he disappeared I went back to our cabin, to drop to sleep, exhausted, in my bunk, and to dream of tragedies, nameless and overpowering, in all of which there gleamed the ruddy nuggets.