CHAPTER V.
Winter seized us. My partner and I worked the claim we had bought on Little Marook, and yet, three times a week, I made the long trip to the camp; for the greatest ambition I had conceived, the greatest hope in life, lay in having Elizabeth Wilton tell me that she loved me. Thirty years of age, matured, unscarred, I had been drawn into the vortex of love, where everything but the ultimate is lost sight of, and paltry. Three times a week I made that long trip over the trail, that I might hear her voice, and watch the shadows in her hair, the light in her eyes, and the graceful mobility of her lips.
And many events had happened, trivial in themselves, but distinct and of note to one living in a camp so far removed from the outside world that letters came but once a year, and every thing was bounded by what could be seen on the horizon, and the day's work.
Early in the fall the constant companionship of Sam Barstow and Pitkok had been observed, and commented on. It was an unusual thing for a white man to take up with a native in those days.
“I tell you,” Dan was wont to assert, “there's somethin' back of it all that we ain't on to. That Pitkok's a devil! I know him. Sam was all right, as far as anybody knows, until he came down the river. He works, and he wants to get ahead. But what does he mix up with that big buck for? Why, the Koyukuks won't have nothin' to do with him, and when an Injun's own tribe throws him out, there's somethin' mighty bad about him. You just wait! You'll see!”
But the strange companionship had continued, and it had ended by their going away together one night, in which direction no one knew—not even the natives of the low-lying village across the river. That they went together I knew from something that Bessie told me on one of my visits.
“Sam Barstow has gone away with Pitkok,” she said, as if she, too, had noted the strange partnership. “You remember I told you, one time, oh, months ago, that he came into the post, and wanted credit for a big outfit? Well, it was right after that he and Sam Degan to be seen together. Now, it was Sam over in the Indian village, and again it was Pitkok living in Sam's cabin. Finally Sam came in and bought supplies, and Pitkok was with him, They stood there together, and discussed what they wanted, and it was light stuff, such as men would use on a long, hard trip. And they went away together, and—well, that's all there is to it. I wonder what that dance girl, Marie, thinks of it!”
She had ended her information in a feminine way, by a feminine speculation as to the member of her sex left behind.
In the usual meeting places, the trading posts, the saloons, and the dance halls, men had smiled,and ventured that Sam had gone away on a foolish prospecting trip, such as had been made by a half dozen men in search of “Too-much-gold Creek,” a mythical stream in the Mackenzie border told of by the natives, but never found.
Men worked more, gambled less, and played infrequently now that the busy season was on in force, and the fires from the pits shone dully on every gulch, every night. The ring of the ax, the creak of the windlass, and the clashing of overturned buckets, formed a threnody too irresistible to be displaced by idle wonder as to the goings and comings of one man. Life was palpitating, and wriggling, as if the loss of any camp character were unworthy of note. It followed its course.
Kentucky Smith, swinging down the trail and whistling, as he passed from his claim above ours, Bevins sauntering over to our cabin in the evenings to tell us that the pay on Number Twelve looked better, Sinclair stopping on his way up to give us camp news, were the only breaks in the steady grind of work, fed by hope.
And it was Sinclair who, on the way up, one night in early January, paused to tell us that Sam Barstow was back. That was all, he had returned.
“And Pitkok?” asked Dan, who stood on the edge of the dump, looking down to the blackened path leading past it, on which our fellow prospector had halted.
“Pitkok's dead!” was the reply.
We gave exclamations of surprise.
“Sam says he got scratched up by a bear as they were coming out,” Sinclair went on. “Sam got there too late. Pitkok cashed in his chips, in spite of all that Sam could do. And it's a small loss, according to my reckoning. That buck gave me the willies. He was too much of here, there, and everywhere, to suit my taste.”
He plodded off up the trail, and we laid our fires for the night, and I took my part with some haste. My partner noticed it, and growled as he stooped over and thrust short logs against the face of clay and gravel that was to be thawed out to expose its contents.
“I suppose,” he half groaned, in an amused voice, “that I've got to make the trip with you again to-night. Let me see. Yes, this is the regular night. It looks to me as if I stand to lose any way it's fixed up. If you get the girl, I lose a real partner. If you lose her, you'll be worse than a bear with a sore head, and I'm out. But I'll go with you, just the same.”
He grinned up at me, knowing that I was too embarrassed and annoyed to retort. But it was my night to visit the camp, and even his gibes could not deter me.
“I'm not even going up to say 'Howdy' his evening,” Dan said, parting from me at the beginning of the row. “It's a long, cold walk up there for a feller that ain't been sent for. Mercury's all frozen, everywhere. Davis Pain Killer bottle busted this afternoon, and I'm plum' anxious to dance some. I'll be here, somewhere. So long!”
He turned, and dodged into the Honolulu, from which issued hilarious sounds, and I hastened on up the trail. I was late, and Kentucky was already there, and this time he had brought a banjo with him, and was singing when I entered. He stopped long enough to grin a welcome, and then went on shouting a negro song in his inimitable drawling voice.
Bill Wilton appeared saner than I had seen him in some time, and was venting hoarse cackles of laughter. Now and then he would look bewildered, and appear intent on trying to remember something, perhaps some familiar strain that he had heard in the old past. Kentucky brought his hand across the strings with a heavy sweep, as he finished the doleful chant of “How the Possum Lost His Ta-a-ail,” and tossed the banjo over on top of the skin-covered couch.
“Beat you in to-night, Tom,” he grinned. “Had to come down to relieve my feelin's. I'm as happy as a coon, when he finds three dogs and a nigger under his home tree.”
I surmised that his words covered some other feeling than elation.
“What is the matter now?” I asked.
He looked grave for an instant, and then said: “Nothing, except that our claim's a dead one, and we've decided to abandon it, and look for a lay.”
I was genuinely sorry for Kentuck, because I liked him.
“Are you certain?” I asked.
“Yes. We've crosscut the gulch from rim to rim, and never had a pay pan. We've proved that we're too high for the feed of the pay streak, wherever it may be.”
He sat there and frowned for a moment, and I knew of what he was thinking—the best part of a season wasted; the long hours of hard work in the savage cold; the hopelessness of trying to get a lease at that time of the year on any ground that was worth while, and the futility of striking out on a prospecting trip. He glanced up, and read the sympathy in my eyes.
“Thanks,” he said soberly. “You're all right, Tom. Just keep me in mind, won't you? And if you hear of anything, let me know.”
Bessie was full of suggestions, but they were not altogether practical. The most promising venture was merely a little better than prospecting—the possibility of logging farther up the river, and running the timbers down to the camp when the spring floods were over to sell to arrivals. His ill fortune sobered our visit, and we started away earlier than usual, walking down the trail together, after bidding Bessie good-night.
“I've got to drop in along the line here to find Dan,” I said. “Suppose you come with me, and we'll see if he knows of anything. He usually has a card or two up his sleeve.”
We turned into the Honolulu, and found it strangely deserted.
“What's up?” Kentuck asked Hopkins, the proprietor, who was sitting gloomily by his stove.
“All right up to an hour ago,” he said, as if we had referred to his business alone, “and then somebody came in and said that Sam Barstow was up at the Horn Spoon trying to break the bank, and every one stampeded.”
“Then that's where we must go,” cheerfully responded Kentuck, leading the way toward the door.
We went into the Horn Spoon, and almost as we opened the storm door knew that something unusual was taking place. There was an air of suppressed excitement in its very atmosphere, an undercurrent of tensity. The wheel was not running as usual, and the back end of the room appeared deserted. Around the center table there was a crowd, the outer edges on tiptoe. There was scarcely a word being said, and the place was filled with that ominous silence which comes when big stakes are being played. Its very lamps, with their tin reflectors, seemed looking downward to one spot. We got to the edge of the crowd, and looked over others' shoulders.
At the table but one man was playing, and that was Sam Barstow, who sat with his hat down over his eyes. Marie Devinne was clicking the case buttons, and Spider Riggs, immaculate and immobile as usual, was dealing the cards, his long, slender fingers slipping back and forth as he drew them from the case, or reached over and raked in the chips. Evidently Barstow was playing recklessly, for his bets were large in blue chips, whose value I knew was five dollars each. He was shoving stacks of them over, and his customary coolness appeared to have deserted him, for at each successive loss he swore volubly. Dan was there, and our eyes met. He winked at me with gravity, and edged around to my side.
“That idiot is locoed,” he muttered. “He's lost at least seven or eight thousand dollars already, and is about to dip into his last thousand. Been playing on Cavanaugh's receipt for money in the A. C. safe. He acts half mad. Watch him.”
Barstow was playing a combination of cards, and Riggs was asking him if his bets were all down.
“Yes,” he said, “go ahead.”
Slowly the cards came out. It seemed as if every “coppered card” won, and every one without the little tablet lost. His luck was reversed. He sat motionless and gloomy, as pile after pile of his chips were drawn in and slipped back into the chip rack with the sharp, timed clicking, as the slender, manicured finger of Spider Riggs snipped them into place. For an instant he sat there and swore softly, and Riggs waited.
“Well,” he challenged, “got enough? Anybody else around here want to try his luck?”
He stared with insolent triumph at the faces girdling the table, and no one moved. Every one was watching Sam Barstow, whose drawn brows and set lips told of his rising anger.
He suddenly thrust all his remaining chips across on the table.
“I'll make a stab to call the turn,” he growled, and Riggs, after another deliberate pause, slipped the last cards from the box. He laughed a little as he raked in the chips, and Marie Devinne lifted the sides of the case rack, and let the buttons go slipping back.
Barstow gave a last oath, and. jumped to his feet so suddenly that his stool was overturned. He glared at Spider Riggs, as if undecided what to say, and then almost shouted; “You got me! If it hadn't been that Marie had the cases, I'd 'a' thought the game was crooked. I'm through with you. You're good and welcome. Let me out of this!”
He broke through the crowd, and elbowed his way toward the bar.
“How much of a stake have I got left?” he demanded, and the bartender, calmly looking up at him, called across the room to Spider Riggs: “What's the tally?”
“Seven thousand five hundred,” Riggs called back, with a certain note of gloating satisfaction in his voice.
“Five hundred left,” the bartender answered Barstow. “You don't seem to have much luck to-night. Have something?”
The miner stalked to the bar, and seized a bottle of hutchnu, the soul and body-destroying liquor of Alaska, filled a glass to the brim, and drained it at a gulp. He put the glass down again, and refilled it, and Kentucky Smith at my side nudged me, and whispered: “Travelin' a few, isn't he?”
The room was beginning to reek with sound again, and the wheel had started its rounds, while the man behind it shouted: “Try your luck here, gentlemen.”
The lure of the clicking bail appeared to attract Sam Barstow, and he banged his heavy fist down on the bar, and whirled around.
“I've got five hundred left,” he asserted belligerently, “and I'll take a chance on busting the wheel.”
He shoved men aside as he made his way over to it, and stood.
“What's the limit here?” he demanded.
“The bank roll,” was the calm response. “It's worth more than your five hundred.”
“Give me the chips,” Barstow growled, and did not trouble to seat himself, but stood erect at the end of the table.
Again the room was silenced, and men surged toward the gambler. Dan and I found ourselves jammed up against the side, where we could not for the moment extricate ourselves. Playing a hundred dollars at a wager, the angry victim of ill fortune threw his chips out, selecting the number fifteen as a favorite. It lost. Three times he tried it, and each time became angrier as it failed to appear. With a sudden gesture of defiance, he shoved all his remaining chips on the red. Marie Devinne had crowded through to his shoulder, and tried to get him to change his wager.
“Don't be a chump,” she insisted. “It's a fool's play.”
But he turned toward her, and frowned.
“You let me alone,” he said, and she shrugged her shoulders, and watched the ball start its course, as if fascinated.
There was a tense moment as it dropped downward from the rim, and began rattling and bouncing across the partitions. Slower and slower it ran, and then poised itself as the wheel slowed down, and appeared to be balanced. Barstow's fury was in suspense. He leaned forward on his knuckles at the end of the table, and fixed his staring, excited eyes on it, with a hard, glittering frown.
The ball wavered as the wheel went round, and then slowly, and as if maliciously, it fell from the partition with a soft click, and swam slowly around. The wheel man did not touch it, but stood with folded arms, appreciating the danger of appearing too eager to announce the result. It had fallen into the green of the “oo”, and the house had won.
It seemed to me, standing there by the side, and feeling a sort of sympathy for the fool, that every one in the place had held his breath up to that moment, and now gave a sigh. But the silence held as we waited to hear what Barstow would say.
I had a vague impression that the bartender had climbed to the top of his bar, and was looking down over the crowd; that Spider Riggs was standing on a chair behind, and that Big Jim was grinning over the shoulders of Kentucky Smith. I had witnessed other and heavier gambling than this, but none where there seemed to be so much concentrated fury in the loser. It was as if Barstow had been restraining himself all the evening, and now that his last savings had been swept away, broke loose.
He suddenly thrust his elbows backward, rudely making room for himself, and jerked the tails of his blue shirt loose from under his mackinaw. He tore at the belt around his waist, and fumbled beneath, then there was the sound of a harsh sweep and his oath, intermingled.
“Think you've got me, eh? Well, you ain't. Turn her for that, and may the curse of the devil take you if it doesn't win!”
He swung something high in the air, and brought it smashing down on the table, with a dull, heavy, crunching sound. It was a gold belt that he had carried over his hips, its pockets bulging with weight. The force of its heaviness and the blow broke it open, and I gave a gasp.
From its burst apertures rolled out, across the table, over the numbers of the cloth, and to the very floor itself, nuggets of gold. And they were red—glowing dully, red as the single nugget of ill omen I had seen in Cavanaugh's fingers, and held in my palm, unmistakably the red of the gold that had cost poor old Bill Wilton his reason, his happiness, and his wife.
There was a sharp gasp of indrawn breaths, as men, though unfamiliar with the legend, leaned forward and stared at that strange gold. They knew in a flash that Sam Barstow's mysterious trip had not been without results. I doubt if there were more than two men in the room, however, beside myself, who understood to the full what that red gold meant. It filled me with a strange horror, and, half faint and sick, I backed away from it, and crowded my way to the door, jerked it open, and stepped outside into the clean night air. One man followed on my heels, and I whirled to face him. It was Cavanaugh, and he met my eyes with a long, meaning stare.
“Pitkok!” he said hoarsely, in a strained voice. “Pitkok went with him, and showed the way. Pitkok, poor devil, learned the secret of it from some of the sagas of his tribe, and took that man to it. And I know how Pitkok died!”
I held myself rigid as I, too, surmised the tragedy, the murder, when the red lust had cankered the mind of Sam Barstow, honest up to that fateful hour.
Cavanaugh knew that I understood. He suddenly turned, and hurried away down the white trail, with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets, and his head bent low, as if grieving over this exposure of a fellow being's cruel cupidity, and I looked up at the door, which opened, to release my partner into the arms of the night.