CHAPTER XXII
Quite an exodus took place in Dawson in the spring. Men, because theyhad made stakes, and other men, because they had made none, bought upthe available dogs and rushed out for Dyea over the last ice.Incidentally, it was discovered that Dave Harney possessed most ofthese dogs.
"Going out?" Jacob Welse asked him on a day when the meridian sun forthe first time felt faintly warm to the naked skin.
"Well, I calkilate not. I'm clearin' three dollars a pair on themoccasins I cornered, to say nothing but saw wood on the boots. Say,Welse, not that my nose is out of joint, but you jest cinched meeverlastin' on sugar, didn't you?"
Jacob Welse smiled.
"And by the Jimcracky I'm squared! Got any rubber boots?"
"No; went out of stock early in the winter." Dave snickered slowly."And I'm the pertickler party that hocus-pocused 'em."
"Not you. I gave special orders to the clerks. They weren't sold inlots."
"No more they wa'n't. One man to the pair and one pair to the man, anda couple of hundred of them; but it was my dust they chucked into thescales an nobody else's. Drink? Don't mind. Easy! Put up your sack.Call it rebate, for I kin afford it. . . Goin' out? Not this year, Iguess. Wash-up's comin'."
A strike on Henderson the middle of April, which promised to besensational, drew St. Vincent to Stewart River. And a little later,Jacob Welse, interested on Gallagher Gulch and with an eye riveted onthe copper mines of White River, went up into the same district, andwith him went Frona, for it was more vacation than business. In themean time, Corliss and Bishop, who had been on trail for a month ormore running over the Mayo and McQuestion Country, rounded up on theleft fork of Henderson, where a block of claims waited to be surveyed.
But by May, spring was so far advanced that travel on the creeks becameperilous, and on the last of the thawing ice the miners travelled downto the bunch of islands below the mouth of the Stewart, where they wentinto temporary quarters or crowded the hospitality of those whopossessed cabins. Corliss and Bishop located on Split-up Island (socalled through the habit parties from the Outside had of dividing thereand going several ways), where Tommy McPherson was comfortablysituated. A couple of days later, Jacob Welse and Frona arrived from ahazardous trip out of White River, and pitched tent on the high groundat the upper end of Split-up. A few _chechaquos_, the first of thespring rush, strung in exhausted and went into camp against thebreaking of the river. Also, there were still men going out who,barred by the rotten ice, came ashore to build poling-boats and awaitthe break-up or to negotiate with the residents for canoes. Notablyamong these was the Baron Courbertin.
"Ah! Excruciating! Magnificent! Is it not?"
So Frona first ran across him on the following day. "What?" she asked,giving him her hand.
"You! You!" doffing his cap. "It is a delight!"
"I am sure--" she began.
"No! No!" He shook his curly mop warmly. "It is not you. See!" Heturned to a Peterborough, for which McPherson had just mulcted him ofthrice its value. "The canoe! Is it not--not--what you Yankeescall--a bute?"
"Oh, the canoe," she repeated, with a falling inflection of chagrin.
"No! No! Pardon!" He stamped angrily upon the ground. "It is notso. It is not you. It is not the canoe. It is--ah! I have it now!It is your promise. One day, do you not remember, at MadameSchoville's, we talked of the canoe, and of my ignorance, which wassad, and you promised, you said--"
"I would give you your first lesson?"
"And is it not delightful? Listen! Do you not hear? Therippling--ah! the rippling!--deep down at the heart of things! Soonwill the water run free. Here is the canoe! Here we meet! The firstlesson! Delightful! Delightful!"
The next island below Split-up was known as Roubeau's Island, and wasseparated from the former by a narrow back-channel. Here, when thebottom had about dropped out of the trail, and with the dogs swimmingas often as not, arrived St. Vincent--the last man to travel the wintertrail. He went into the cabin of John Borg, a taciturn, gloomyindividual, prone to segregate himself from his kind. It was themischance of St. Vincent's life that of all cabins he chose Borg's foran abiding-place against the break-up.
"All right," the man said, when questioned by him. "Throw yourblankets into the corner. Bella'll clear the litter out of the sparebunk."
Not till evening did he speak again, and then, "You're big enough to doyour own cooking. When the woman's done with the stove you can fireaway."
The woman, or Bella, was a comely Indian girl, young, and the prettiestSt. Vincent had run across. Instead of the customary greasedswarthiness of the race, her skin was clear and of a light-bronze tone,and her features less harsh, more felicitously curved, than thosecommon to the blood.
After supper, Borg, both elbows on table and huge misshapen handssupporting chin and jaws, sat puffing stinking Siwash tobacco andstaring straight before him. It would have seemed ruminative, thestare, had his eyes been softer or had he blinked; as it was, his facewas set and trance-like.
"Have you been in the country long?" St. Vincent asked, endeavoring tomake conversation.
Borg turned his sullen-black eyes upon him, and seemed to look into himand through him and beyond him, and, still regarding him, to haveforgotten all about him. It was as though he pondered some great andweighty matter--probably his sins, the correspondent mused nervously,rolling himself a cigarette. When the yellow cube had dissipateditself in curling fragrance, and he was deliberating about rolling asecond, Borg suddenly spoke.
"Fifteen years," he said, and returned to his tremendous cogitation.
Thereat, and for half an hour thereafter, St. Vincent, fascinated,studied his inscrutable countenance. To begin with, it was a massivehead, abnormal and top-heavy, and its only excuse for being was thehuge bull-throat which supported it. It had been cast in a mould ofelemental generousness, and everything about it partook of theasymmetrical crudeness of the elemental. The hair, rank of growth,thick and unkempt, matted itself here and there into curious splotchesof gray; and again, grinning at age, twisted itself into curling locksof lustreless black--locks of unusual thickness, like crooked fingers,heavy and solid. The shaggy whiskers, almost bare in places, and inothers massing into bunchgrass-like clumps, were plentifully splashedwith gray. They rioted monstrously over his face and fell raggedly tohis chest, but failed to hide the great hollowed cheeks or the twistedmouth. The latter was thin-lipped and cruel, but cruel only in apassionless sort of way. But the forehead was the anomaly,--theanomaly required to complete the irregularity of the face. For it wasa perfect forehead, full and broad, and rising superbly strong to itshigh dome. It was as the seat and bulwark of some vast intelligence;omniscience might have brooded there.
Bella, washing the dishes and placing them away on the shelf behindBorg's back, dropped a heavy tin cup. The cabin was very still, andthe sharp rattle came without warning. On the instant, with a bruteroar, the chair was overturned and Borg was on his feet, eyes blazingand face convulsed. Bella gave an inarticulate, animal-like cry offear and cowered at his feet. St. Vincent felt his hair bristling, andan uncanny chill, like a jet of cold air, played up and down his spine.Then Borg righted the chair and sank back into his old position, chinon hands and brooding ponderously. Not a word was spoken, and Bellawent on unconcernedly with the dishes, while St. Vincent rolled, ashaky cigarette and wondered if it had been a dream.
Jacob Welse laughed when the correspondent told him. "Just his way,"he said; "for his ways are like his looks,--unusual. He's anunsociable beast. Been in the country more years than he can numberacquaintances. Truth to say, I don't think he has a friend in allAlaska, not even among the Indians, and he's chummed thick with themoff and on. 'Johnny Sorehead,' they call him, but it might as well be'Johnny Break-um-head,' for he's got a quick temper and a rough hand.Temper! Some little misunderstanding popped up between him and theagent at Arctic City. He was in the right, too,--agent's mistake,--buthe
tabooed the Company on the spot and lived on straight meat for ayear. Then I happened to run across him at Tanana Station, and afterdue explanations he consented to buy from us again."
"Got the girl from up the head-waters of the White," Bill Brown toldSt. Vincent. "Welse thinks he's pioneering in that direction, but Borgcould give him cards and spades on it and then win out. He's been overthe ground years ago. Yes, strange sort of a chap. Wouldn't hanker tobe bunk-mates with him."
But St. Vincent did not mind the eccentricities of the man, for hespent most of his time on Split-up Island with Frona and the Baron.One day, however, and innocently, he ran foul of him. Two Swedes,hunting tree-squirrels from the other end of Roubeau Island, hadstopped to ask for matches and to yarn a while in the warm sunshine ofthe clearing. St. Vincent and Borg were accommodating them, the latterfor the most part in meditative monosyllables. Just to the rear, bythe cabin-door, Bella was washing clothes. The tub was a cumbersomehome-made affair, and half-full of water, was more than a fair matchfor an ordinary woman. The correspondent noticed her struggling withit, and stepped back quickly to her aid.
With the tub between them, they proceeded to carry it to one side inorder to dump it where the ground drained from the cabin. St. Vincentslipped in the thawing snow and the soapy water splashed up. ThenBella slipped, and then they both slipped. Bella giggled and laughed,and St. Vincent laughed back. The spring was in the air and in theirblood, and it was very good to be alive. Only a wintry heart coulddeny a smile on such a day. Bella slipped again, tried to recover,slipped with the other foot, and sat down abruptly. Laughinggleefully, both of them, the correspondent caught her hands to pull herto her feet. With a bound and a bellow, Borg was upon them. Theirhands were torn apart and St. Vincent thrust heavily backward. Hestaggered for a couple of yards and almost fell. Then the scene of thecabin was repeated. Bella cowered and grovelled in the muck, and herlord towered wrathfully over her.
"Look you," he said in stifled gutturals, turning to St. Vincent. "Yousleep in my cabin and you cook. That is enough. Let my woman alone."
Things went on after that as though nothing had happened; St. Vincentgave Bella a wide berth and seemed to have forgotten her existence.But the Swedes went back to their end of the island, laughing at thetrivial happening which was destined to be significant.