CHAPTER IV.
It comes back to me now, as if it all occurred in a flash, the happenings of Neucloviat; and yet summer waned, the brief fall came, and winter was on us before they were complete, and I felt myself an integral part of the new camp hanging there on the river's brim. I see the forgotten faces, I laugh over the humorous lights, I frown at the somber ones.
The taciturn Indian, Pitkok, seems always present in those months, as he stalked gigantic and sullen across the scene. Sam Barstow is there, taciturn also, unlucky, dangerous, and credited with being an honest wolf, if such an anomaly may be. I see the iron gray of his hair, the conquering nose, the sweeping mustache, the hard eyes, and the lithe, nervous swing of his shoulders. Spider Riggs, the gambler, suave, rapacious, crafty, and insolent, a camp Lothario who prided himself on escapades which add to a blackguard's reputation for conquest. Marie Devinne, of doubtful ancestry, vivacious, French Canadian, and silly, flitting as a cheerful butterfly across the days, dancing as a cheerful will-o'-the-wisp at nights, elusive, fickle, and tempestuous. And, most important, but not lost to life or association, the irrepressible Kentucky Smith, boyish, reckless, and handsome, with a laugh that won hearts, a smile that conquered, and a fearlessness that commanded respect.
“That's Pitkok,” Dan said to me on the day after I saw the arrival of the native voyageur, pointing a grimy finger at the Indian. “The devil's in that Siwash. They say he's a Koyukuk, and that he's got the trail fever. Looks like it to me. I saw him down at Juneau one fall, when I was on the Treadwell. Then he was at Cassiar before you came there. I reckon that was where he learned the two wickedest things in the world—what gold is worth, and how hutch makes you feel if you can get enough of it. He gambles with the other bucks, and a sealer told me he hunted with a schooner one year, and gambled away all his wages. Windy Jim says he met him one season down in the hop fields of Oregon, and Billy Blatchford says the Kings Islanders know and hate him. So he's sure traveled some!”
“But what brings him here?” I wondered, taking another look at the man I had seen land.
“Because he can't go back to his own tribe!” chuckled my partner. “He knows too much and—well—he's a bad egg. He's up to something, you can be sure.”
I forgot that conversation as the weeks passed, until the night when Bessie Wilton brought Pitkok back to my mind. I had got into the habit of visiting her cabin every night, and looking forward to the evening through every day's work. We had arrived at terms of warm friendship, at least, and so were sometimes confidential.
“That Pitkok was in at the post to-day,” she said, one evening, “and he was just as ugly as ever. He was right angry with me because I wouldn't trust him for an oufit, and was angrier still with Uncle Cav because he wouldn't let him have about a year's supplies. Uncle Cav almost put him out; but he is a dear, and scarcely ever loses his temper, so it all passed over, like a summer thunder shower.”
I don't know why it was that a piece of gossip so trivial impressed itself on me, but it did, and afterward I had better cause to remember it. I sat thinking of it when Bess rallied me on my silence, and demanded that I tell her what studies were pursued by young ladies who passed through Wellesley, or Bryn Mawr.
“Not that I've any idea of going, for a while,” she said, laughing. “It takes money, in the first place; and, in the second, I don't think father would like it.”
Her voice broke with a little, pathetic laugh, which hurt, and she looked out into the other room, where Bill Wilton was laboriously adding another patch to his summer parka.
“Yes,” she sighed, as if answering my curious question at his needlework, “that is one of his peculiarities. He will neither permit me to do his sewing, nor to buy new clothing for him. When he wants anything he appears down at the post, refuses to do business with me, and buys from Uncle Cav, assuring him that sooner or later he is going to pay his bill, as soon as he feels well enough to go prospecting again.”
I wanted to change the subject, for I knew that it was a constant wound to her, a constant sorrow.
“But about some college?” I said. “Is it so hopeless that you can never go to one? It doesn't require so much money, in these days.”
Her face brightened, and she laughed tolerantly.
“I don't know why I should give you any confidence,” she replied, “but, on the other hand, I don't know why I shouldn't. I don't even know how much money I have. And I can't find out. I asked Uncle Cav once, as he stands like a guardian—almost like a father—to me, and he said for me not to bother my head about it. He explains that there is just income enough so that all the bills are always being paid, and that I owe nothing, and once in a while he insists that if I need any more money than I am getting, he can arrange to get it from the estate, whatever it is.”
Her face took on that all-too-frequent reflection of sorrow as she paused for a moment, and said softly, as if fearing the sound might be audible to the ears of her father:
“You see, it can't amount to very much, for it is simply an investment of the gold father brought back on that last expedition, and he couldn't have carried much, from all that can be learned of that trip. I know from what he has said at times that he was starving when he was rescued, and that the triplet peaks, as he always calls them, lay far behind.”
I nodded my head, and fell to silence again, a mood which she seemed to share, for she, too, sat staring vacantly at her open books. I was filled with a sudden increase of admiration for Cavanaugh, the trader. I understood at once, from her words, that he had lied to her like a gentleman through all the years of her life, and kept from her the knowledge that both she and her father were absolutely dependent on him for every dollar they had ever had since that unfortunate end to the quest for gold. He had preserved for her, delicately, her independence, even while he educated her, and directed her mind, and, as a last thoughtfulness, had found work for her in his trading post, so that she might have no time to brood.
I comprehended more fully that the white-headed gentleman of the wilderness was no ordinary man and mentally I blessed him. I wondered then, and have often done so since, at the great love he must have sustained for the girl's mother; but that was, and is, a closed chapter; for Cavanaugh, faithful, never referred to it further than the suggestion conveyed when he told me that night in the post that he loved the daughter of old MacCulloch.
“There was an ole nigger an' his name was Uncle Ned,
An' he died long, long ago-o-o.”
A careless, singing voice, musical and happy, floated through the closed door, followed by the clumping of boots over the frozen hummocks of the trail, and Bessie lifted her head and smiled.
“There comes Kentucky,” she exclaimed, and rose to her feet, and hurried to open the door—too eagerly, I thought; for the irrepressible Kentucky Smith was too popular with her to suit my own ideas.
“Shrieking as usual!” she laughed.
And I heard his hearty: “Sure! Why not, honey? It makes folks know you're happy.”
“But the song is doleful,” she retorted. “For instance, the line about taking pills through his nose, and his inability to masticate hoe cake because he was sans teeth.”
He came stamping into the outer room of the cabin, gave the patient old Wilton a slap on the back and a kindly greeting, and then stood in the doorway looking at me.
“Hello, Tom!” he said heartily. “You here again. Say, man, I'm gettin' jealous of you-all. I sure am! If I don't look out this Miss Bessie will be falling head over”
She brushed past him, and put her hand on his lips, and he tore them away to vent his fine, free laugh, then came forward and put his hand out to me. There was a splendid exuberance about him, a splendid youth, that was compelling. He was lithe and well set, his movements were graceful, and his face was winning. He had fine brown eyes, and heavy brown hair that, when “mussed up,” as he called it, never appeared less becoming to the well-rounded forehead and good brow.
I had come to regard him with a certain jealousy, and yet I liked him. My own inability to hold light conversation, my own seriousness, I knew, made me anything but a pleasant chance companion, and the foolish little name bestowed upon me by Miss Wilton in the first weeks of our acquaintance, “Old Mister Sobersides,” I felt bitterly was well merited.
“Everything's goin' to the bad in this camp,” he said dolefully, as he dropped into one of the rough chairs, comfortably blanketed with a white bearskin. “Old Cavanaugh had to bust in at the Horn Spoon, and spoil what promised to be a lovely fight. Sam Barstow was about to lam some fellow from Dawson for dancin' too many times with Marie Devinne! Ha, ha, ha!”
He threw his head back, and laughed with loud enjoyment.
“That little Marie certainly leads Sam something of a hurdle race, all right. She knows that Sam's crazy about her, and I reckon she thinks a heap of him, right down in her silly little insides; so she leads Sam up to the fool trough every once in a while, and then laughs when he drinks.”
“Care for Sam? Her? Pshaw!” Bessie exclaimed. “What big fools men can be! That girl is the silliest, most heartless, frivolous girl in any dance hall in the North. Didn't she stick to Panamint Jones, up at Circle City, only as long as his money lasted? Didn't she promise that Norwegian to marry him after he came down from Stewart River, and every one thought he had made a strike, and then, when it proved worthless, drop him as if he were hot iron?”
Kentucky laughed tolerantly.
“But my-oh, how she can dance!” he exclaimed enthusiastically, as if to arouse Bessie to further argument. “Lordee! I certainly do love to waltz with that girl.”
“Humph!” was all the answer he got, and she turned to me, and began addressing all her conversation in my direction, as if purposely ignoring the enthusiasms of the Kentuckian, who winked at me gravely, and in pauses of the conversation continued to deliver a panegyric on the dance-hall girl.
She finally drove us away, with the assertion that she had to study the books given her by Cavanaugh, and at the door somewhat pointedly gave me a warm invitation to come up any evening when I chose, and again ignored Kentucky, who stood shaking with suppressed laughter by my side.
“You-all don't need to invite me,” he said. “I'll come anyhow, unless you lock your doors. I'm certainly too much in love with this family to”
The door banged shut, and he doubled over hilariously, and then said: “Wow! That ends my sweet discourse for this evenin', bretheren!” and led the way down the hillside. The lights were beginning to flame in the north, and the crisp air of the early fall season was around us as we walked down toward the squat cabins below us, resting like distorted shapes, asleep, under the stars.
“I like to get a rise out of her,” he said, after we had stumbled halfway down the hill. “But she's right. That Marie Devinne is a little devil. And she'll make Sam Barstow look like a sucker yet, before she's through with him. Poor cuss! That feller's got too many dark horses runnin' in his head, to stand for too much. He's a simple sort, but I've noticed that when his kind go, they go hard. Either mighty bad, or mighty good. I'm right shy of him, myself, and yet they say he's on the level.”
He had almost voiced my own thoughts, and I was still thinking of his careless summary, when we turned into the Horn Spoon, to see what it held of interest. It was smoke-filled, and man-filled. The bar in front was doing its full share of business, and the glasses, piled in front of-the American flag and the mirror, which had done more than its share of service on some cheap dresser top, were diminished in number.
The bartender, wearing a white hat and blue glasses to shade his eyes, was steadily twisting the hutch bottle backward and forward, and his arms were wet up to the point where his blue flannel shirt sleeves were rolled below his elbows. His long, black necktie had become untied, and was trailing forlorn ends downward until he could find time to adjust them.
Back on the left-hand side of the room two faro layouts and a wheel were also liberally patronized, and in front of one of the faro tables Marie Devinne, with her white hat, dented, and banded by a red ribbon, was keeping the cases. Big Jim, a familiar character, with a crude eyeshade pulled over his forehead to protect his eyes from the glare of the smoke-clouded oil lamps above, was dealing, and Frank Smith, calm and unmoved, sat in the “lookout” chair, smoking and watching the play to arbitrate errors.
Behind Marie, and leaning across her, to place his bets as his fancy dictated, towered Sam Barstow, black-faced, and evidently playing in poor luck. Apparently the unpleasantness of the evening had passed away.
At the other table sat Spider Riggs, chalk-faced, furtive, immaculate; and watching the game were camp friends of mine—Sturgis, and Coen, and Atkins, Hopkins, Beaton, and Buckingham, Welch, and Crowley, and McCabe. Where are you all now?
And back in the far corner, leaning against the logs, and with folded arms, as if watching the whole scene disdainfully, stood Pitkok, the Indian, with his bright eyes flashing here and there, a picture of devilment and jealousy. I was caught by his attitude and scowl. The man envied these white trespassers for their cloak of masterfulness, and yet hated them all.
A guitar, a mandolin, and a flute, took up a dismal attempt at the Zenda waltzes, the sound coming in a jumble from the other far corner of the room, and the four women in the place suddenly got to their feet, and accepted proffered partners, and went whirling around the room in the cleared space reserved for dancing.
The games went on monotonously, the click of the bail on the wheel rising to a sharp clatter, and then dying away to slow, diminishing, and individual thuds. The chips clicked as they changed hands, symbols of changing money, and the smoke continued to rise and cloud the lamps as it wreathed itself spirally upward through the chimney opening of the bright tin reflectors. The clink of glasses and bottles thrown deftly along the bar continued unceasingly, and the only punctuations were the muttered exclamations of the losers or winners, and the rising voices of some of those who had imbibed.
Familiar as it all was, I had a sudden premonition that underneath all its recklessness there was an undernote of tragedy—a tragedy of the Northland, that was to involve me in its diapason when it came.