The Man Who Found Gold

by James B. Hendryx

THE MAN WHO
FOUND GOLD

By JAMES B. HENDRYX

 

JOHN DENNIS stared gloomily at the blue print spread before him upon the flat-topped desk. Minutes passed as his gaze strayed through the open window and rested upon the little cluster of wooden buildings and the black ore dump that scarred the long sweep of green hillside.

"The Bramble Patch is beginning to make 'em sit up and take notice." The man spoke to himself aloud, as is the way of the men of the open. "It's the best proposition in the country—now. And I'm tired of it! It's always the way. As soon as the game is won, the excitement's gone, and——" He picked up a pencilled memorandum. "The Trust ain't overlooking any bets. They have allowed me a good margin of profit, and—— Well, I can go and hunt up another sick one and doctor it back to life, or I can tell 'em the Bramble Patch ain't for sale." The corners of the man's mouth twisted into a grim smile as his eyes once more rested upon the little group of wooden buildings. "I guess, as a sporting proposition," he muttered, "you ain't dead yet."

"Telegram!" The operator from the little station across the gulch laid a yellow envelope upon the table and shuffled from the room. Very deliberately Dennis slit the envelope and glanced at the brief message:

 

"Think I have located J. W. Will you prosecute?

(Signed) Downey. ⁠
Dawson, Y.T."

 

"Will I prosecute?" A short, hard laugh rasped from the man's throat, and for a long time he sat with his eyes fixed on the far hills. Then, opening a drawer in his desk, he took out some photographs, and as his glance passed from one to another—from dog trains labouring over the snow-trails, to squat log cabins and rude sluices, into which bearded men shovelled gravel, a great longing possessed him—an urge to travel once more the long trails and to eat his meat with tillicums.

A breath of soft spring air wafted through the open window and rustled the yellow paper upon his desk, and the man breathed deeply of its fragrance.

"Just getting ready for the clean-up up there. Heavens, how I used to hate it! How we all did! And how our backs and shoulders and fingers used to ache!" He glanced at a smooth palm that had once been a calloused one. "How we used to curse the country and ourselves, as we fought the gravel way up there on the edge of things! Copper's a banker's game. Gold's the real mining. I'd like to take a hunk of sourdough bread and mop up the grease from a half-dozen slices of limber-fried bacon right now. No one that hasn't gouged gravel knows how to eat! And, by Heavens, I'll do it!" He returned the photographs to the drawer and closed it with a bang. "I'll do it," he repeated. "It's a long way to Dawson, but I'd go half-way around the world to see Jess Ward get what's coming to him. I've waited a long time for this." He reached for the receiver of the private telephone connected with the mine. "Tell Mr. Goodwin I want him," he ordered.

"You've got to run this outfit till I get back," he explained, as the engineer stepped into the office. "Going North. Keep on with the construction work, and——"

"But——" objected the other.

"No 'buts' about it!" snapped Dennis, as he jammed on his hat and crushed the telegram into his pocket. At the doorway he turned. "By the way, when that man Ainslee, or whatever his name is, comes back for his answer, you tell him I say the Morman-Gugenspiel crowd can go to the devil! The Bramble Patch ain't for sale."

Two days later John Dennis stood upon the deck of the Dolphin and idly watched the passengers file up the gang-plank—the van of the flood of summer tourists that the exigencies of the Great War had turned from the beaten track.

"They'll get the surprise of their life when they find out they've been overlooking the one best bit in the way of scenery just because it's so close to home," he muttered to himself.

"What ju say?" asked a voice at his side. Ignoring the questioner, Dennis suddenly leaned far over the rail as his eyes followed a trim figure in a grey travelling suit, whose face had been momentarily raised to his.

"It looked like—her," he exclaimed, as the figure disappeared below deck. "But—pshaw!"

"How?"

Dennis favoured the chatty one with a level stare. "I said, some folks grow old minding their own business, and some don't," he growled, and, turning on his heel, hurried below. All that day and the next he scanned the faces of his fellow-passengers without so much as a fleeting glimpse of the face of the woman in grey.

On the evening of the second day out from Seattle, with Ketchikan, left astern, John Dennis leaned upon the rail and watched the mighty giants of the coastal range fade sombrely into the gloom. Unconsciously his thoughts followed the back-trail of the years. With vivid distinctness came the memory of that other trip into the North, when he had leaned upon the rail of another steamer and gazed in fascination upon those self-same mountains. He remembered even the feel of the throb of the engines, as the rickety little steamer ploughed northward, her deck piled high with packs and outfits of the stampeders—remembered the hotchpotch of humanity that rubbed elbows at the rotten rail. Citizens of the world, those—the foot-loose, the drifters, the good and the bad, the manicured and the horny-handed. And all—the age-grizzled, the youthful, the sober, and the drunken—answered the call of gold, and their eyes burned deep with the lure of it. As vividly as though it lay before him, he saw the freight-cluttered Dyea beach, with its rabble of howling, whimpering curs that later were to die like flies on the Chilkoot, or be knocked on the head or pitched into the icy black water of Linderman and Bennett and Labarge to lighten ice-logged boats.

It was at Dyea he had thrown in with Jess Ward. He remembered the hell of the storm-ridden Chilkoot Pass, with its long, thin line of pack-laden men. It was there he bit into the raw—learned the feel of pack-straps that cut to the bone, and the crushing, muscle-tearing weight of one hundred pounds sweated up the side of a mountain to a quarter of a mile above the timber line—learned to sleep wet in the snow, with the thermometer at zero, and to wolf down raw bacon. He remembered the Box Canyon, the wreck at White Horse Rapids, the fight with Skookum Johnson and his outlaw Swedes, the long stretch on the Yukon, the strike on Willow Creek, and, last of all, the treachery of Jess Ward, who had decamped with the dust when the claim petered out. The man's jaw clamped hard. The North had taught him to live and to hate. Then came Nome, his great strike on the third beach line, his fruitless search for Jess Ward, his return to the States, and the year of restless wandering before he purchased the Bramble Patch. The corners of his mouth twisted into a grim smile. He, John Dennis, had inscribed his name upon the foreshortened scroll of the lucky ones. He had found gold—had found, also, that there was no joy in the possession of gold. There was something he had missed. Other men were contented, and he had never known contentment.

"It's Jess Ward!" he gritted. "But I'll get him! It's knowing that a man lives who has double-crossed me and got away with it!" And then the figure of Jess Ward faded, as his mind drifted backward, far backward, before Dyea beach, when Alaska was only a name. He flung his half-smoked cigar viciously outboard, and turned impatiently from the rail—turned to meet squarely the eyes of the woman in grey. She was seated in a deck-chair a half-dozen paces from where he stood, and she was alone.

"So I was not mistaken," he said, after what seemed an interminable period of silence. "It—it's been a—a long time, Laura!"

"Yes," answered the woman, in a low voice that the man thought trembled ever so lightly. "Yes—John—a long, long time."

The man removed his hat awkwardly as he offered his hand, and at the clasp of the soft fingers the years rolled backward. In all the world there was no such thing as gold—only a country town in a far-distant Slate, broad maple-lined streets, trim wooden houses, and well-kept lawns that showed green and cool beyond their painted picket fences, a big red-brick schoolhouse, a prim little park beside a lake, and——"

"You have grown older, John, and, somehow, you have changed. I have been watching your profile as you stood there staring at the mountains. There's a kind of—what shall I say?—of hardness in the lines of your face that did not use to be there." Her eyes rested for a moment upon the uncovered head. "And, yes—there are grey hairs, too."

The man drew a chair to her side. "Yes, I suppose I've aged some—most folks do that ain't good and die young. And as for the lines and the grey hairs—I've lived hard. But you haven't changed much, Laura. A little stouter, maybe, and a little more serious. But you always did take things serious—folks and—and things." The woman remained silent, her eyes on the dimming skyline. "How's the old town?" he continued, with an obvious attempt at conversation. "Same old folks doing the same old things, I suppose. I've been meaning to go back ever since I struck it lucky; but—well, somehow I never could quite make up my mind to. You see, I never let on, but it hurt mighty bad when you—when we—busted up. And—well, if you'd married one of the other fellows, I didn't want to know it, that's all. They're good folks, back there. They miss a lot by spending their lives in the same little town; they never get rich—nor poor, neither—and they get to know each other so well that they can tell what their next-door neighbour is going to think about next week. But they're satisfied and they're happy, and that's what makes life worth living. You can't buy happiness. The man that's learnt to live and be happy on a hundred a month is a heap richer than the man that ain't learnt to on a hundred thousand. But tell me," he asked so suddenly that his voice sounded harsh, "you didn't marry one of 'em, did you?"

The woman's eyes turned slowly from the distant mountains. "No," she answered, "I didn't. We moved out to the coast the year after you went away." She noted the look of relief—of almost boyish eagerness—that greeted her words, and was about to continue, but he interrupted.

"And so we meet again!" he breathed. "Men have told me I was lucky, and I've sneered at 'em. But tell me, how's the old world used you? Somehow you don't look as if life had been one continual round of frivolity, as the saying is. Is there something you have missed?"

The woman turned her face seaward. "Yes," she answered, "I guess there is a whole lot I've missed. There's a whole lot anybody misses who teaches school for—— How many years is it? No, don't let's count them—just years and years. I didn't know what it was until——"

"Until you decided to throw over your job and travel!" Darkness had followed the twilight, and the man failed to notice the puzzled expression that greeted his interruption, nor did he notice that the woman's lips smiled.

"Yes," she answered, "until I decided to travel."

Dennis shook his head. "It's no go, Laura," he said, after a moment of silence. "It won't work. You'll take your trip and enjoy it, but when you get back you'll find yourself right where you started. I've travelled. I've knocked around Alaska and gouged for gold—found it, too—lots of it. Then I travelled all over the country for a year, but——"

"You, too, have missed something?" she asked.

"Yes," answered the man gravely, "I have missed something. And, like you, I didn't know what it was. For years the only times I've been satisfied was when I've been fighting against odds to keep what I've got, and get more. But as soon as I get it, it's no good. I've told myself all along that I'd be satisfied if only I could take out my revenge on Jess Ward. But it ain't that. I knew the answer the minute I caught sight of you, back there in Seattle."

The woman rose abruptly, "It's getting cold, John," she said, "and the sea-breeze makes me sleepy. Good night."

The man escorted her to the head of the stairway. "Good night," he said softly, and walked forward, to stand for a long time leaning upon the rail and watching the white water curl back from the bow.

During the remainder of the voyage to Skagway the two spent many hours together, and always the woman managed to turn adroitly the conversation into impersonal channels. It was the same on the train to White Horse and the Yukon River steamboat, and not until the last evening of the journey did the man succeed in speaking of the thing that was uppermost in his mind.

"Look here, Laura," he began bluntly, as they found themselves in a secluded corner of the deck, "we've wasted the best part of a week talking war, and votes for women, and the fate of the Chinese Republic, and we haven't neither one spoke a word of what we're thinking about. To-morrow this boat ties up at Dawson. It's the end of the trail. To-night we're going to do some back trailing—me and you. We're going to talk about ourselves."

The wind blew chill, and he drew the chairs into the shelter of the cabin. "It's a queer world, isn't it, John?" said the woman, after a long silence, during which daylight slowly faded. "You have been successful. You say you are rich, and yet your gold has not brought you happiness."

"No," answered the man. "Gold don't bring happiness. I ain't been successful. And I'll never be happy till I've got you." In the deepening twilight he failed to notice that the woman shrank from him at the words, but continued, speaking rapidly, with his eyes on the skyline of the far hills. "It's this way, Laura. Ever since we—busted up I have been restless. I told myself I didn't care, and there were times I believed it. I set about deliberately not to care. I told myself that love was rot, and I started hunting for something that would take its place—that would fill my life and drive the thought of you from my mind. I tried the booze game, but it didn't work, and I quit just short of the jimjams. Then I drifted to the gold diggings. As long as I had a fight on, I was all right. Me and Jess Ward hammered our way into this country over a trail that got good men, and lots of 'em. We beat the trail and staked a claim on Willow Creek. We was hogs for work, and was doing fairly well, when the claim petered out, and Jess Ward double-crossed me. I couldn't follow him then, because I was broke. And that year Alaska was the worst land in the world to be broke in. There were hundreds of others in the same fix, and some of 'em didn't winter through. I did. And after that came Nome. I located on Anvil Creek, and when my claim developed into a sure thing for about ten thousand a year, I lost interest in it. I got restless—wanted something bigger. Then someone discovered the Ruby Beach sand, and men went crazy. I jammed in my stakes on the third beach line, and started shovelling out more gold in a day than I had in a month on Anvil. I guess I was nearer happy then than I've ever been—since way back yonder. But it didn't last. The game's the same, no matter what the chips are worth. I rolled up half a million and quit. I thought I was satisfied, and went back to the States. I got the travelling bug then, same as you have now. That's why I told you it wouldn't work.

"I had to be doing something, so I hit for the West, and began nosing around for a mine. There were lots of good mines I could have bought, but I turned 'em down. You see, I'd kind of got acquainted with myself. There is no fight to a good mine—one that couldn't help but roll up profits—so I began hunting for a rotten one. Found lots of 'em, but they didn't suit me. Either they never ought to have been dug, or they was worked out. At last I heard of the Bramble Patch. The ore was there all right, but the men that owned her had got cold feet. They couldn't keep her pumped out, and a half-dozen other little things ailed her—things that make yellow men quit. I bought the outfit, hired the best engineer that was loose, and went at her.

"She's dry now," he continued, after a pause, "but we had to drive a four-foot tunnel through a rock mountain to drain her. All her other little ails are cured, too, and her dump looks like a million dollar certified check. Just about the time I began to lose interest, up pops an agent of the Trust with a proposition to sell out. I came pretty near doing it, till I happened to think that, if I sold out, I'd just have to hunt around for another mine to whip into shape—I'd have to go and hunt for trouble, whereas, if I didn't sell, I'd have a scrap on my hands without moving out of my chair. Then came the telegram from Downey that he'd located Jess Ward. I've always swore to get him, if he's still alive. So I told Goodwin to tell the Morman-Gugenspiel crowd to go to the devil. You see, they have been in the habit of reaching out and grabbing everything that looks good to 'em, and bucking 'em will get under their hide. They may get the Bramble Patch at that, but, if they do, they'll earn it." Dennis held a match to his dead cigar, and the strong, hard lines of his face stood out with startling distinctness in the flare of the tiny flame.

"You see how it is with me," he resumed. "I never get anywheres. I take hold of a proposition, and work and plot and fight twenty hours out of twenty-four to put it through, and when the game is won—when any other man would sit back and look with pride on the work of his head and hands, and enjoy its benefits—right then I lose interest in it. I've worked all my life for something I've never got—for something I know I will never get—by work. There's only one measure of work—money. I use to think it was money I wanted. I got it, and found there was no satisfaction in the possession of it. I turned for satisfaction to winning out where other men failed. The satisfaction ain't there. I've beat men at their own game, and I've piled up more money than I can ever spend, and I'm right where I started."

For the first time the man withdrew his gaze from the hills. He leaned close to the woman, and his eyes sought hers in the darkness. "But no, I ain't where I started, because I've found by accident what the years haven't taught me, I've found what I've wanted all along. I ain't going to make you any pretty speech. I'd be a fool to try. The gold country roughens a man. It's what the writers would call the irony of Fate, I guess—this finding out by accident that the thing I've wanted and worked for through all the years was the thing I once had and never appreciated, because I took it as a matter of course. I mean love—your love. For we were happy back there. Do you remember? I do. I haven't thought of it for years, because I haven't let myself think. But now it seems like it was only a little while ago—a week, maybe, or a year. You remember that night in the little park on the shore of the lake, with the lights twinkling on the opposite bank, and the moon-path stretching away like a trail of gold across the black water, and over the marsh at the mouth of the creek a million fireflies flashing, and the bellow of the frogs in the sedges, and the soft slap of the waves when the night wind rippled the water? In May it was, or June."

"It was the third of June." The woman's voice was very low.

"You remember?"

"Yes, I remember. The night was cool, and you took off your coat and threw it over my shoulders."

The man nodded. "We were happy that summer we were engaged," he said gruffly.

"We missed our chance for happiness—together." There was a note of finality in the voice that struck a chill to the man's heart.

He interrupted her almost fiercely. "Yes I was a fool, and all that. I know I was wild, but maybe you took it too serious. When I found it was getting me, I quit. But it ain't too late yet. Our best years are ahead of us. We'll start in where we left off. Or, better yet, we'll begin where we began that night there by the shore of the lake. See, the night wind is cool. I'll take off my coat and——"

The woman laid a detaining hand upon his arm. "No, John, not that. Don't you know that, even if we wanted to, we couldn't drop out the years, nor live years over again? Lives are not like that. They go on and on, and the years change them."

"You mean that you don't want to—that there's someone else you love?"

"Yes," answered the woman, as she drew the glove from her hand and exposed the plain gold ring that encircled the finger, "my husband."

For a long time John Dennis stared at the dull yellow band that encircled the white finger. Neither spoke. At length the man rose slowly to his feet. "I guess you're right," he said in a dull voice, as he extended his hand, "about lives moving on—that way."

The woman took the hand. "I am to join my husband in Dawson. I should like you to meet him."

"No," answered the man curtly. "I wish you luck. And—I won't be seeing you again. Good-bye! "

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

"Well, you sure come a-runnin'," grinned Corporal Downey, as he greeted Dennis at the headquarters of the Mounted.

"Yes, and I'd have come twice as far to square my account with Jess Ward. And, besides, I wanted to see the cold side of sixty again. I'm an office miner now, you know." He shrugged expressively. "But you bet a man never forgets the big country, and when I got your wire, it didn't take me long to make up my mind to come."

Downey nodded. "It gets into your blood—the North. I never know'd a tillicum yet which, if he left the country, he didn't come mushin' back on some pretex' or another—if it wasn't only just long enough to cock his lip over a big hunk of sourdough bread, an' cuss the snow or the gravel—or the mosquitoes, if he come in summer. An', now you're here, you're goin' to have to do some little trailin', John. Our man's up on Many Lodge Creek. It's a feeder for the Upper Chandindu. Started an independent tradin' post in a new camp."

"How do you know he's Jess Ward?" asked Dennis. "If I remember right, you didn't get transferred to Dawson till after he'd beat it."

"No, I never seen him," answered the officer, "but I run on to a fellow prospectin' that's been in the country for years, an' he happened to mention that this fellow—Harkness he calls himself now—looked uncommon like Jess Ward. Said he know'd you and him both over on Willow Creek, so, when I got back here, I wired you. I s'pose you'll know him if you see him?"

Dennis nodded. "You bet I'll know him!" he ground between clenched teeth. "The coyote! He's the only living man that ever put anything over on me and got away with it. When can we start for Many Lodge?"

"That depends," answered the officer. "I've got to hike up the Klondike and straighten out a little matter. You can wait here till I get back, or you can come on along, an' we'll cross somewhere about the head of North Fork, an' slip over on to the Chandindu from there."

"Suit me to a T. When do we start?"

"First thing in the mornin'. You don't need to bother about any outfit—I've got all we need."

During the days of the trail Corporal Downey wondered much at his companion's taciturnity. They had become great friends, these two, in the lean year that followed the disappearance of Jess Ward. The officer fell to studying the man whose silence at times amounted almost to moroseness.

"They say you struck it big over to Nome," said Downey one evening, as they ate their supper beside a little fire.

Dennis nodded. "Yes, I took out a lot of gold."

"You sure are lucky, John. Not that you didn't earn it—I don't mean that," the officer hastened to add, as he noticed the other's lip curl into a peculiar smile. "Because you always was a hard worker, even workin' for wages. But hard work won't get you nowheres unless you're lucky along with it. Take that winter around Dawson. Why, who'd ha' picked you, without no claim, an' workin' with your two hands for a bare livin', to be one of the lucky ones! There was other fellows workin' that winter—plenty of 'em—but they didn't none of 'em get rich. No, you're just naturally lucky, John." The other made no reply, but continued to stare moodily into the fire. "Why, the sourdoughs are tellin' round here yet how you barely wintered through, an' a few years later pulled out of Nome with half a million. That's what I call luck!"

Dennis's lips twisted into an ironical smile. "And when you do," he answered bitterly, "it shows that you don't know a thing about what luck means!"

With the passing of the days Dennis fell under the spell of the hills, and became more like his old self. His taciturnity left him, and the two sat late over their camp- fires. But whether the talk was of mines, or politics, or growing things, Downey perceived a deep-seated pessimism—an underlying bitterness—in his friend's viewpoint that invariably found outlet in the damning of Jess Ward. Revenge had become an obsession.

"You're a good hater, John," observed the officer, at the end of one of these jaundiced tirades. "But hate needs a balance. Too much of it makes a man lopsided, an' lopsided men ain't happy. Trouble is, you ain't never learned how to enjoy yourself. I've knowed lots of men in my time—rich ones and poor ones—poor ones that was happy, and rich ones that wasn't. You're one of them last. I've been studying over what you said the other evenin', about me not knowin' what I was talkin' about—about luck, you know. I guess you're right about that. 'Tain't how much a man gets that makes him lucky—it's knowin' how to enjoy what he has got. You're restless, John. What you need is a wife." Dennis's only answer was an inarticulate growl, nor did he speak again that evening.

"Thought I'd prod round till I found the sore spot," mused Downey to himself, as lie drew the blankets over his head. "I've been wonderin' what put the acid in his heart. It's a woman—an' that settles it. Trouble with men is, they get it into their head there ain't but one partic'lar woman that's fit for 'em to marry. Which it ain't reasonable, an' it ain't accordin' to facts. Then, if somethin' turns up so's he can't get her, he goes mopin' round like a dog that's lost his last flea. An' there you are! "

The police business that took them up the Klondike required more time than Downey had anticipated, and it was three weeks from the time they left Dawson that the two paused before a log trading post near the headwaters of Many Lodge Creek.

Stepping in front of the officer, Dennis threw open the door and entered. A man was arranging a pile of blankets upon the end of the rude counter. He looked up as the other advanced into the room. Corporal Downey leaned lightly against the jamb of the door and surveyed the scene with interest. The keen eyes, trained to detail, noted his friend's clenched fists, and the thickening cords of his neck, and the lips pressed to a thin, cold line of cruelty; noted also the swift look of terror that flashed from the eyes of the trader, the chalk-white face and the fingers that groped nervously at the counter's edge, as the man's mouth sagged slowly open. No word was spoken, and Downey could distinctly hear their breathing, as the fear-widened eyes of the man at the counter stared into the narrowed eyes of the other. After what seemed an interminable silence, the sagging jaw moved, and the man moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. He was about to speak, when a door at the rear of the store opened, and a woman stepped into the room. She paused uncertainly, as her glance swept the faces of its three occupants. Dennis's narrowed eyes flashed her a swift glance, and the next instant he stepped backward.

"You here!" he rasped harshly.

"Why, yes, John," she answered, in surprise; "this is my home."

The man beside the counter stared uncomprehendingly from one to the other, as the woman continued: "It's rough and all that, but we are happy here, and already I am learning to love it. This is George Harkness, my husband." She advanced to the side of the trader. "I met him six months ago in San Francisco, when he came down to buy his stock, and we were married."

From his position in the doorway Downey watched Dennis's eyes travel slowly from the face of the woman to the face of the man at her side. He saw Dennis's shoulders suddenly stiffen as he faced the woman. "I'll be going now," he said, in a low, hard voice. "I told you on the boat I didn't want to meet your husband, and I meant it." Abruptly he turned on his heel.

Outside the door Downey hailed him. "Hold on, John," he said; "this is police business. What you going to do about him?"

"About whom?" asked Dennis, in the same hard tone.

"Why, the man, Jess Ward, of course?"

John Dennis raised his eyes to the officer's face and fixed him with a level stare. "We're wrong, Downey," he said simply; "that man ain't Jess Ward!"