CHAPTER IX.
We hurried back across the river, and stopped in the Honolulu to get warm. Cavanaugh was there with Doctor Sidebotham, and looked at me wonderingly as we came in.
“The moccasins are back,” I said to him, and he looked up at me with expressionless eyes.
“Where did you see them?”
“Over at Singer's dance. An up-river squaw had them on. They call her the Big Chicken.”
“That so? By the way, you're in late to-night, aren't you?”
I explained to him that I had planned to roll blankets on the floor of Windy Jim's cabin.
“Oh, I can beat that,” he objected. “Jim's got two good bunks. Kentuck can go with him, and you come over to my cabin. I've two good bunks, and it's cozy. I want to have a talk with you.”
My companions agreed, and we bade the others good night, and hurried across the crackling snow to the cabin at the rear of the trading post, which I had never entered. Cavanaugh went in ahead of me, and struck a light. It was from a heavy library lamp, that seemed incongruous so far from the outer world and its concomitants.
I looked around. One side of the room was literally filled with books, the only open space being a square in the center, where a double window was let in. Everything about the room bespoke the artist. It was divided by a portière made of shotgun wheels and cartridge shells, with pebbles of country rock clutched in with buckskin thongs. A couch was covered with a polar-bear skin; and another skin of the same kind, the most magnificent I have ever seen, formed the rug, which was laid down over curiously woven native matting, stained into patterns. The rafters above were stained to dark brown, and were carved with totem signs.
Beyond the hangings a dresser, evidently from the outside, was littered with rare old silver toilet articles, and I saw at the first glance that they bore an Irish crest in raised gold. In one corner was a baby organ, and I wondered how he had succeeded in importing it all this distance. It was littered with music, and opened on it was a book of exercises, which he saw me staring at.
“Bess,” he said. “I used to play a little, and so I give her lessons as best I can. She is very musical. She is about the only person, besides the doctor, that I ever invite here into my privacy, so you see you are honored. I had the bunk built in and fitted so that when Father Barnum comes through he can make this his home. He makes it up this way about once a year.”
As he talked in these disjointed sentences, he removed his mackinaw coat and moccasins, and pulled on a pair of worn slippers, and then took my hat and parka, and set a box of cigars on a taboret made from caribou horns.
“You are comfortable,” I said, glancing around his quarters.
“Yes, I am by nature a sybarite. Wait. I've a new pair of slippers at your disposal. All fixed, are you? Here, let me give you this other chair. It's a favorite of mine. Gives you that rested feeling.”
He lighted a cigar, and suddenly looked straight at me, and said: “I knew the moccasins of gold had been brought back. I know how she came to have them. And I know all of the end. It's not pleasant. You may laugh at me, but I believe the curse still holds good.”
He settled himself back farther into his chair, and the light of the lamp behind shadowed his face, but enlivened the silver of his hair. As he talked, he took the cigar from his mouth, and gesticulated with it, watching, sometimes, its little spirals of pale-blue smoke.
“Both Marie Barstow—she that was the foolish little Marie Devinne—and Spider Riggs, whose real name was something else, are dead. They paid the penalty, and Barstow executed them as cruelly as ever any man could conceive. He must have been as mad as any of those who ever went after the red gold. The squaw you saw wearing them was given the name of Mary down at the mission. I've known her and her brother, Constantine, for years. He worked for me two seasons. He doesn't lie. He is more than intelligent. Mary came honestly by the moccasins. He told me so. He told me the story, and I asked him to say nothing more about it, because the less said about the cursed gold the better. I've seen men die like flies in the fall by the side of the trails for less. And there was but little more attention paid to them than as if they were dead flies. There is nothing so heartless as a stampede. So Constantine will never talk.”
He got up, and brought out a decanter of brandy, and poured moderate drinks, then settled himself, and resumed:
“Constantine and Mary were coming down from Forty Mile. Marook told him last fall that if he came back here he would give him a lay on that Hunter Creek claim of his, and Constantine came down to work it. His sister's brighter than any squaw I ever met, but she's—well, she's too civilized. It spoils them. They get to know too much. They want too much. Constantine has hard work to control her. Up this side of the flats they heard a shot, and they naturally went to see what it was. It was off on the bank. It was what was left of Spider Riggs. His feet were frozen, and he had not waited to go to sleep in the snow. And I've no prayer for his soul, because he was bad, clean through. Constantine lashed him up in a tree, where the wolves couldn't get at him, and left him there.
“The trail was hard going, and the day was bad. The wind had come up along the river, and you know what that means. About ten miles farther on they were just in time to see something wavering and staggering along the edge of it, and it fell before they got to it. It was Marie. She was wandering in her mind, as her poor feet had wandered through life, so they put up their tent in a clump of trees on the bank, and made camp. They did all they could for her before the end, but she couldn't survive. The cold and the exhaustion had got in their work, and for twelve hours she babbled along about what had taken place, disjointedly, and never had sanity until within the hour she died.
“Partly from what she said then, and from what they gathered from her delirium, they know what happened. And Constantine came here, troubled, to tell it all to me, when he found out that Sam Barstow was dead, and that he couldn't deliver Marie's last message, which didn't amount to much, being merely: 'Please find Sam, and tell him that Marie, his little Marie, is sorry, so sorry, and tired, so tired, and that she hopes he will forget, and will never again go after the red gold.' That was all. I fancy I can see her as she said it, gasping out her life there in a tent on the Yukon, with the wind howling through the trees and around outside. She paid the price!
“Marie Devinne never loved Sam Barstow. She was fascinated by that Spider Riggs. She had promised to marry him long before Sam went away on that trip to the north with Pitkok, who betrayed the secrets o£ the old men of his tribe, and led a white man to the place where the gold is red. She was no better nor no worse than any other dance-hall girl in any other camp. She was not nearly so immoral as unmoral, and was what life and men had made her. She was a combination of what was left of the tenderness and sympathy of a woman's nature, and the mercenary woman of the camps, seeking nothing so much as a home stake, and the gold to buy baubles, and silks, and gayety, and entertainment.
“The remnant of good left in her was nearly wiped away under the tutelage of that blackguard Riggs, after she came to this camp and was fascinated by his outward varnish of gentility. He undermined all the good in Marie Devinne as surely as the devil undermines any of us, if he gets us in the right condition. He made her think that all they needed to be married and to go outside and live that other life, was money in plenty, and he made her believe that life was a joke, and that so long as one had money enough, everything went easily.
“Sam Barstow was soured by ill luck! He had starved, and worked, and trailed in this country, frozen, and slaved, and hoped, until everything hardened within him except that one dream, the possession of Marie Devinne. About the last straw with him was when his partner up on Birch Creek carried away all their stake from clean-up and sale that had been cached in the trader's safe, and went out on a steamer, leaving Sam waiting for him on the creek. The man wasn't quite right from that time on, as far as his love of humanity went; for he distrusted nearly every one, save the dance-hall girl.
“He made love to her in his way, and I hoped that he would marry her, and keep on trying, because there was a whole lot of good in Sam Barstow, as I knew him a few years ago—the old Sam. He was much of a man; but he had fallen in love with a heartless little fool, who couldn't understand him any more than a fox could understand a lion. He asked her to marry him, and she twiddled her fingers under his nose and told him she would when he had money enough to take her outside, and let her live like a real lady—whatever that meant in her estimation. She couldn't appreciate the honest love of an honest man, and a clean name, and a forgotten and forgiven past. All that, the cleanliness and decency of life, meant nothing to her. She was playing with him, because she wanted to be the wife of Spider Riggs, ex-race-track tout and tinhorn gambler!
“So Sam Barstow was tempted by Pitkok, who had been tempted by the legend of red gold, and couldn't go after it alone because he couldn't get credit from anybody on earth for an outfit, and wouldn't take the time and trouble to work for it. Pitkok told him about it, and the range of mountains where it was said to be, away up there on the far edge of the tundra, between the strange landmarks, a peak thin as a needle, and by it, on one side, one which looks like a devil's face, and on the other a third that resembles an eagle squatted with his head between his shoulders.
“The sagas know, and have known, for hundreds of years, perhaps, where they were—this spot that is accursed by God and eschewed by them, Not many of them, it is true, but one of them who did know had told Pitkok, and Pitkok, wanderer, came to regard gold, any man's gold, as the ultimate glory of life, for he had seen how white men struggled, and scraped, and worked, or murdered, for it.
“Barstow and Pitkok met at an unfortunate time, it seems, when the native was ready to sell his secret for an outfit and a half interest in what they might, get, and Sam was willing to sell anything, his soul possibly, for Marie Devinne, the little girl of the Horn Spoon hall. So they went away together, and Pitkok didn't come back. He had gone on his last wandering trip, and he, too, had paid the price.
“Barstow returned, and no one knew that he had found it, not even I, with whom he had banked his money before he left—amounting to an even eight thousand dollars in dust at seventeen fifty an ounce, which is what the company allows for up-river gold. But he told Marie, and exaggerated the amount he had brought back. She thought he had a fortune, not appreciating the fact that when a man walks away with about twenty thousand dollars' worth of low-grade gold on his back, he has a mule's load if he wants to travel very many miles. She was one of those who didn't know that it takes a freight car to carry a fortune in that metal, and that the man who says he would be contented with all the gold he could carry doesn't want much!
“It was Riggs' chance. People didn't know it, but he practically owned that table and its bank roll. He leased the privilege. Anything that came across that table was his. He saw that this was his chance to win Sam Barstow's discovery and his savings. He corrupted Marie's last remnant of honesty and self-respect, as men have, from time immemorial, corrupted women—through love. She loved him! She would do anything for him. He made black look white, only they must win, and probably he told her it didn't matter, because Sam could get more gold, and would not miss what they took away from him. So she joined forces with him, and ran to the limit because she loved him, and wanted him, and wanted to get away from it all, and didn't love Sam.
“That night, when Sam played in the Horn Spoon and she kept the cases, he was 'rooked.' Spider Riggs had taught her how, and practiced the signals with her so that the cases wouldn't tabulate the crookedness; but Sam fooled them. He thought the deal was fair, because Marie kept the cases, Instead of playing the fortune they supposed he possessed, he only played, and lost the money he had in my safe. Then his luck turned, devil's luck, as it proved—the luck of the red gold—and he broke Abramsky, who was honest as the day.
“Then he went back to Spider Riggs' table, and Marie was not at the cases, and Spider couldn't work a crooked deal, and the devil's luck held, for he broke Spider Riggs, and went away that night worth about eighteen thousand dollars in money, and when the men who owned the Horn Spoon backed Spider out of sympathy, and because they had a percentage in the game, he broke them, too, and owned that estimable place of gayety—that sodden place of misfortune!
“But Riggs was well named. He was a spider, and with webs broken, he calmly spun new and slimy coils. He talked Marie into marrying Sam, explaining to her that divorces were easily obtained and alimony abundant, and she fell again. She was ready to sacrifice the last thing she had to give for the love of Spider Riggs.
“And Sam, poor fool, blundered on, unseeing, undiscerning, and undismayed. He was happy in that last lap of his course. That girl was an angel to him. No matter what she was to any one else, to him she was the woman of dreams, audacious, impertinent, fascinating wife and companion. Life had not dealt softly with him, and it was a long cry from mud-floored cabins and trying trails and short rations to a home which he regarded as the ultimate splendor of luxury, a wife who was better than any that had ever lived, and the proprietorship of two great things—the Horn Spoon and the secret of the red gold.
“His fool's paradise was short-lived. He, too, must pay the price! He wanted more luxury, as you know, and went down to Taninaw to buy foolish furnishings and china plates, and carpets, and table luxuries, from the steamboat Healy laid up there for the winter. He had money, and wanted to spend it for the foolish Marie.”
He paused for a moment, and rested with the tips of his fingers touching before him as he lounged in his chair, and I saw that his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
“Now I don't know all that took place, of course,” he said slowly, “but I fancy I can conjecture it all, and fill in the blanks, from what she told Constantine, and what he heard of her raving. But it seems to me that she began to admire this rough, crude man, who believed in her, and had clean ideas, and would have died for her; but she had not the strength of character to resist the Spider, who was patiently waiting, true to the name, in his outer den. He had not lost touch with her, and his ambitions were unchanged.
“Sam, still blundering and believing, had laid his whole life bare to her without reservation. One can readily understand how she asked him curious questions, for she must have had curiosity. And his mental processes were simple and direct, and she was entitled to as much or more confidence than a partner, for she was his partner for life.
“And so she told Spider Riggs that she knew where the peculiar gold came from, and perhaps gloated over her knowledge, and Spider Riggs saw another lever to lift his aims. Could he but induce the girl who was faltering in her allegiance to him to betray her husband, he could get that secret, so he redoubled his efforts, and added to his intentions, and became more smooth, insinuating, and slimy than ever.
“On that night when Sam Barstow came home, vastly unexpected, and found Spider Riggs there with his wife, the black truth stared him in the face. If ever a man went mad in a minute, it was he. Nothing could palliate the shock.
“Madness lent him endurance. Tired as he was, he drove them out on the trail—the cold, night trail—unceasingly, tied together with a rope, and carrying the red-gold moccasins as their only fortune, for a full twenty-four hours. He gave them neither tent for shelter, nor food! He knew that he was driving them to their death as certainly as he knew that his life was a wreck.
“Riggs was a craven in the last moments after that discovery. He dropped to his knees and cried, as babies cry, and lied, as liars lie, laying the blame for it all on Marie. Poor girl! My sympathies are all with her as she saw that unmitigated poltroon prove his worthlessness, there on his knees, half-clad, begging for his life at her expense, while over them stood a madman, with an unwavering gun in his hand, sternly condemning them to a torturous death. And from what I gather, even as this house of cards proved itself, her pride rallied, and she made no appeal.
“Think of it! For almost twenty-four hours they walked, this desolate trio, until in the end she had fallen so often that Barstow thought it was the end, and left them. Spider Riggs, the delicate, must have had more iron in his blood than she, for he was still on his feet. Once he had been off them, and that was when, after sobbing uselessly, and murmuring appeals to the implacable Sam, he had faced about, and begged to be shot. The madman behind had calmly knocked him down, and said that he wanted to hear no more, or he would cut out his tongue.
“The only mercy he showed him was when he left, and gave Spider Riggs an empty gun, and his insane cunning was displayed by the fact that after he walked a hundred yards down the trail he threw back one cartridge. Just one, mind you, not two, which would have spelled an end to both their miseries. He wanted them to think of that one cartridge, as they staggered ahead, waiting for hard and painful death. He wanted to prove to her, in the last offering, that the man whom she had loved would be poltroon enough to use it on himself rather than speed her to a merciful and sudden end.
“They unlashed themselves when Sam turned back and began that dreary progress, hating each other; but the final contempt must have crept into her mind when Spider Riggs seized a remnant of food they had secreted, and went away with the pistol. She fell on the trail repeatedly, but that strange after-facility and toughness of feminine endurance asserted itself, as time after time she made a fresh attempt. She clung to life more fervently than she had ever clung to anything else, and was big enough, in the end, to send back a brave message to dead ears! It was her only appeal.
“The foolish Marie was a woman at last, too late, and to me there is a splendor in that end—that uprising, new-born nobility which would not descend to speeding back a curse to the man who had driven her, unforgiving of frailties, to that lonely passage from life on a mat of fir boughs in a wind-swept tent. Of the three she was the most noble, and met her end without whimpering in the consciousness that she had earned it.
“She had but one thing to give her would-be rescuers—the secret of the red gold, and the moccasins made of that gold that had been her temptation downward. And I doubt if that well-meant gift does not prove a mistaken kindness. I wonder!”
He suddenly stood on his feet, smothered the end of his cigar butt in a homemade ash tray, and pointed toward the bed I was to occupy.
“That's yours,” he said. “I'm going to turn in. Good night!”