THE THAW AT SLISCO'S
The storm broke at Salmon Lake, and we ran for Slisco's road-house.It whipped out from the mountains, all tore into strips comingthrough the saw-teeth, lashing us off the glare ice and driving us upagainst the river banks among the willows. Cold? Well, some! Mybottle of painkiller froze slushy, like lemon punch.
There's nothing like a warm shack, with a cache full of grub, whenthe peaks smoke and the black snow-clouds roar down the gulch.
Other "mushers" were ahead of us at the road-house, freighters fromKougarok, an outfit from Teller going after booze, the mail-carrier,and, who do you reckon?--Annie Black. First time I had seen hersince she was run out of Dawson for claim jumping.
Her and me hadn't been essential to one another since I won that suitover a water right on Eldorado.
"Hello, Annie," says I, clawing the ice out of my whiskers; "findingplenty of claims down here to relocate?"
"Shut up, you perjured pup," says she, full of disappointingaffabilities; "I don't want any dealings with a lying, thievinghypocrite like you, Billy Joyce."
Annie lacks the sporting instinct; she ain't got the disposition forcup-racing. Never knew her to win a case, and yet she's theinstigatress of more emotional activities than all the marked cardsand home distilled liquor in Alaska.
"See here," says I, "a prairie dog and a rattler can hole uptogether, but humans has got to be congenial, so, seein' as we're allstuck to live in the same room till this blizzard blizzes out, let'sforget our troubles. I'm as game a Hibernian as the next, but Idon't hibernate till there's a blaze of mutual respect going."
"Blaze away," says she, "though I leave it to the crowd if you don'tlook and act like a liar and a grave robber." Her speech is surefull of artless hostilities.
Ain't ever seen her? Lord! I thought everybody knew Annie Black.She drifted into camp one day, tall, slab-sided, ornery to the view,and raising fifty or upwards; disposition uncertain as frozendynamite. Her ground plans and elevations looked like she was laidout for a man, but the specifications hadn't been follered. We ain'tconsumed by curiosity regarding the etymology of every stranger thatdrifts in, and as long as he totes his own pack, does hisassessments, and writes his location notices proper, it goes.Leastways, it went till she hit town. In a month she had thebrotherly love of that camp gritting its teeth and throwing backtwisters. 'Twas all legitimate, too, and there never was apennyweight of scandal connected with her name. No, sir! Far'sconduct goes, she's always been the shinin' female example of thiscountry; but them qualities let her out.
First move was to jump Bat Ruggles's town lot. He had four coursesof logs laid for a cabin when "Scotty" Bell came in from the hillswith $1800 in coarse gold that he'd rocked out of a prospect shaft onBat's Moose's Creek claim.
Naturally Bat made general proclamation of thirst, and our townkinder dozed violently into a joyful three days' reverie, duringwhich period of coma the recording time on Bat's lot ran out.
He returns from his "hootch-hunt" to complete the shack, and findsAnnie overseeing some "Siwashes" put a pole roof on it. Of course hepromotes a race-war immediate, playing the white "open" and the redto lose, so to speak, when she up an' spanks his face, addressingexpurgated, motherly cuss-words at him like he'd been a bad boy andswallered his spoon, or dug an eye out of the kitten. Bat realizeshe's against a strange system and draws out of the game.
A week later she jumps No. 3, Gold Bottom, because Donnelly stuck apick in his foot and couldn't stay to finish the assessment.
"I can't throw her off, or shoot her up," says he, "or even cuss ather like I want to, 'cause she's a lady." And it appeared likethat'd been her graft ever since--presumin' on her sex to makedisturbances. In six months we hated her like pizen.
There wasn't a stampede in a hundred miles where her bloomers wasn'tleading, for she had the endurance of a moose; and betweenexcitements she prospected for trouble in the manner of relocations.
I've heard of fellers speakin' disrespectful to her and thenwandering around dazed and loco after she'd got through painting wordpictures of 'em. It goes without saying she was generally popularand petted, and when the Commissioner invited her to duck out downthe river, the community sighed, turned over, and had a peacefulrest--first one since she'd come in.
I hadn't seen her from that time till I blowed into Slisco's on thebosom of this forty mile, forty below blizzard.
Setting around the fire that night I found that she'd just lostanother of her famous lawsuits--claimed she owned a fraction'longside of No. 20, Buster Creek, and that the Lund boys had changedtheir stakes so as to take in her ground. During the winter they'dopened up a hundred and fifty feet of awful rich pay right next toher line, and she'd raised the devil. Injunctions, hearings andappeals, and now she was coming back, swearing she'd been "jobbed,"the judge had been bought, and the jury corrupted.
"It's the richest strike in the district," says she. "They've rockedout $11,000 since snow flew, and there's 30,000 buckets of dirt onthe dump. They can bribe and bulldoze a decision through this court,but I'll have that fraction yet, the robbers."
"Robbers be cussed," speaks up the mail man. "You're the cause ofthe trouble yourself. If you don't get a square deal, it's your ownfault--always looking for technicalities in the mining laws. It'sbeen your game from the start to take advantage of your skirts, whatthere is of 'em, and jump, jump, jump. Nobody believes half you say.You're a natural disturber, and if you was a man you'd have been hunglong ago."
I've heard her oral formations, and I looked for his epidermis toshrivel when she got her replications focused. She just soared upand busted.
"Look out for the stick," thinks I.
"Woman, am I," she says, musical as a bum gramophone under the slowbell. "I take advantage of my skirts, do I? Who are you, you mangy'malamoot,' to criticise a lady? I'm more of a man than you, youtin-horn; I want no favours; I do a man's work; I live a man's life;I am a man, and I'm proud of it, but you--; Nome's full of your kind;you need a woman to support you; you're a protoplasm, a polyp. ThoseSwedes changed their stakes to cover my fraction. I know it, theyknow it, and if it wasn't Alaska, God would know it, but He won't bein again till spring, and then the season's only three months long.I've worked like a man, suffered like a man--"
"Why don't ye' lose like a man?" says he.
"I will, and I'll fight like one, too," says she, while her eyesburned like faggots. "They've torn away the reward of years of workand agony, and they forget I can hate like a man."
She was stretched up to high C, where her voice drowned the howl ofthe storm, and her seamed old face was a sight. I've seen mild,shrinky, mouse-shy women 'roused to hell's own fury, and I felt thatnight that here was a bad enemy for the Swedes of Buster Creek.
She stopped, listening.
"What's that? There's some one at the door."
"Nonsense," says one of the freighters. "You do so much knocking youcan hear the echo."
"There's some one at that door," says she.
"If there was, they'd come in," says Joe.
"Couldn't be, this late in this storm," I adds.
She came from behind the stove, and we let her go to the door alone.Nobody ever seemed to do any favours for Annie Black.
"She'll be seein' things next," says Joe, winking. "What'd I tellyou? For God's sake close it--you'll freeze us."
Annie opened the door, and was hid to the waist in a cloud of steamthat rolled in out of the blackness. She peered out for a minute,stooped, and tugged at something in the dark. I was at her side in ajump, and we dragged him in, snow-covered and senseless.
"Quick--brandy," says she, slashing at his stiff "mukluks." "Joe,bring in a tub of snow." Her voice was steel sharp.
"Well, I'm danged," says the mail man. "It's only an Injun. Youneedn't go crazy like he was a white."
"Oh, you _fool_" says Annie. "Can't you see? Esquimaux don't travelalone. There's white men behind, and God help them if we don't bri
nghim to."
She knew more about rescustications than us, and we did what shesaid, till at last he came out of it, groaning--just plumb wore outand numb.
"Talk to him, Joe; you savvy their noise," says I.
The poor devil showed his excitement, dead as he was.
"There's two men on the big 'Cut-off,'" Joe translates. "Lost on theportage. There was only one robe between 'em, so they rolled up init, and the boy came on in the dark. Says they can't last tillmorning."
"That lets them out," says the mail carrier. "Too bad we can't reachthem to-night."
"What!" snaps Annie. "Reach 'em? Huh! I said you were a jellyfish.Hurry up and get your things on, boys."
"Have a little sense," says Joe. "You surely ain't a darn fool. Outin this storm, dark as the inside of a cow; blowin' forty mile, andthe 'quick' froze. Can't be done. I wonder who they are?"
He "kowtowed" some more, and at the answer of the chattering savagewe looked at Annie.
"Him called Lund," shivered the Siwash.
I never see anybody harder hit than her. I love a scrap, but Ithinks "Billy, she's having a stiffer fight than you ever associatedwith."
Finally she says, kind of slow and quiet: "Who knows where the'Cut-off' starts?"
Nobody answers, and up speaks the U. S. man again.
"You've got your nerve, to ask a man out on such a night."
"If there was one here, I wouldn't have to ask him. There's peoplefreezing within five miles of here, and you hug the stove, saying:'It's stormy, and we'll get cold.' Of course it is. If it wasn'tstormy they'd be here too, and it's so cold, you'll probably freeze.What's that got to do with it? Ever have your mother talk to youabout duty? Thank Heaven I travelled that portage once, and I canfind it again if somebody will go with me."
'Twas a blush raising talk, but nobody upset any furniture gettingdressed.
She continues:
"So I'm the woman of this crowd and I hide behind my skirts. Mr.Mail Man, show what a glorious creature you are. Throw yourself--getup and stretch and roar. Oh, you barn-yard bantam! Has it had itspap to-night? I've a grand commercial enterprise; I'll take all ofyour bust measurements and send out to the States for a line ofcorsets. Ain't there half a man among you?"
She continued in this vein, pollutin' the air, and, having no meansof defence, we found ourselves follerin' her out into a yelling stormthat beat and roared over us like waves of flame.
Swede luck had guided their shaft onto the richest pay-streak inseven districts, and Swede luck now led us to the Lund boys, curledup in the drifted snow beside their dogs; but it was the level headand cool judgment of a woman that steered us home in the grey whirlof the dawn.
During the deathly weariness of that night I saw past the callousedhide of that woman and sighted the splendid courage cached awaybeneath her bitter oratory and hosstyle syllogisms. "There's a storythere," thinks I, "an' maybe a man moved in it--though I can'timagine her softened by much affection." It pleased some guy tostate that woman's the cause of all our troubles, but I figgerthey're like whisky--all good, though some a heap better'n others, ofcourse, and when a frail, little, ninety pound woman gets to buckingand acting bad, there's generally a two hundred pound man hid out inthe brush that put the burr under the saddle.
During the next three days she dressed the wounds of themScow-weegians and nursed them as tender as a mother.
The wind hadn't died away till along came the "Flying Dutchman" fromDugan's, twenty miles up, floatin' on the skirts of the blizzard.
"Hello, fellers. Howdy, Annie. What's the matter here?" says he."We had a woman at Dugan's too--purty as a picture; different fromthe Nome bunch--real sort of a lady."
"Who is she?" says I, "an' what's she doin' out here on the trail?"
"Dunno, but she's all right; come clean from Dawson with a dog team;says she's looking for her mother."
I heard a pan clatter on the floor where Annie was washing dishes,and her face went a sickly grey. She leaned across, gripping thetable and straining to ask something, but the words wouldn't come,while "Dutch" continues:
"Somethin' strange about it, I think. She says her ma's over in theGolden Gate district, workin' a rich mine. Of course we all laughedat her, and said there wasn't a woman in the whole layout, 'ceptin'_some_ folks might misconstrue Annie here into a kind of a female.She stuck to it though, much as to say we was liars. She's comin'on--what's the matter, Annie--you ain't sore at me effeminatin' youby the gentle name of female, are you?"
She had come to him, and gripped his shoulder, till her long, bonyfingers buried themselves in his mackinaw. Her mouth was twitching,and she hadn't got shed of that "first-aid-to-the-injured" look.
"What name? What name, Dutch? What name?" She shook him like a rat.
"Bradshaw--but you needn't run your nails through and clinch 'em.Ow! Le'go my white meat. You act like she was your long lost baby.What d'ye think of that idea, fellers? Ain't that a pleasin'conceit? Annie Black, and a baby. Ha! Ha! that's a hit. Annie anda daughter. A cow-thief and a calla-lily."
"Dutch," says I, "you ain't a-goin' to make it through to Lane'sLanding if you don't pull your freight," and I drags the darn foolout and starts him off.
When I came in she was huddled onto a goods box, shaking and sobbinglike any woman, while the boys sat around and champed their bits andstomped.
"Take me away, Billy," she says. "For God's sake take me away beforeshe sees me." She slid down to the floor and cried something awful.Gents, that was sure the real distress, nothing soft and sloppy, buthard, wrenchy, deep ones, like you hear at a melodrayma. 'Twas onlyback in '99 that I seen an awful crying match, though both of theladies had been drinking, so I felt like I was useder to emotion thanthe balance of the boys, and it was up to me to take a holt.
"Madam," says I, and somehow the word didn't seem out of place anymore--"Madam, why do you want to avoid this party?"
"Take me away," she says. "It's my daughter. She's going to find methis way, all rough and immodest and made fun of. But that's theworst you can say, isn't it? I'm a square woman--you know I am,don't you, boys?" and she looked at us fierce and pleadin'.
"Sure," says Joe. "We'll boost you with the girl all right."
"She thinks her father's dead, but he isn't--he ran away with a showwoman--a year after we were married. I never told her about it, andI've tried to make a little lady of her."
We found out afterwards that she had put the girl in aboarding-school, but couldn't seem to make enough for both of them,and when the Klondyke was struck thought she saw a chance. She camenorth, insulted by deck hands and laughed at by the officers. AtSkagway she nursed a man through typhoid, and when he could walk herobbed her. The mounted police took everything else she had andmocked at her. "Your kind always has money," they said.
That's how it had been everywhere, and that's why she was so hard andbitter. She'd worked and fought like a man, but she'd suffered likea woman.
"I've lied and starved and stolen for her," said Annie, "to make herthink I was doing well. She said she was coming in to me, but I knewwinter would catch her at Dawson, and I thought I could head her offby spring."
"Now, she's here; but, men, as your mothers loved you, save me frommy little girl."
She buried her face, and when I looked at the boys, tears stood inJoe Slisco's eyes and the others breathed hard. Ole Lund, him thatwas froze worst about the hands, spoke up:
"Someboady tak de corner dat blanket an' blow may nose."
Then we heard voices outside.
"Hello, in there."
Annie stood up, clutching at her throat, and stepped behind thecorner of the bunks as the door opened, framing the prettiest picturethis old range rider ever saw.
'Twas a girl, glowing pink and red where the cold had kissed hercheeks, with yellow curlicues of hair wandering out under her yarncap. Her little fox-trimmed parka quit at the knees, showing thedaintiest pair of--I can't say it. Anyhow, the
y wasn't, they justlooked like 'em, only nicer.
She stood blinking at us, coming from the bright light outside, ascute as a new faro box--then:
"Can you tell me where Mrs. Bradshaw lives? She's somewhere in thisdistrict. I'm her daughter--come all the way from the States to seeher."
When she smiled I could hear the heart-strings of those ragged,whiskered, frost-bit "mushers" bustin' like banjo strings.
"You know her, don't you?" she says, turning to me.
"Know her, Miss? Well, I should snort! There ain't a prospector onthe range that ain't proud and honoured to call her a friend.Leastways, if there is I'll bust his block," and I cast the bad eyeon the boys to wise 'em up.
"Ain't I right, Joe?"
"Betcher dam life," says Joe, sort of over-stepping the conventions.
"Then tell me where her claim is. It's quite rich, and you must knowit," says she, appealing to him.
Up against it? Say! I seen the whites of his eyes show like he wasdrownding, and he grinned joyful as a man kicked in the stummick.
"Er--er--I just bought in here, and ain't acquainted much," says he."Have a drink," and, in his confusions, he sets out the bottle ofalkalies that he dignifies by the alias of booze. Then he continueswith reg'lar human intelligence.
"Bill, here, he can tell you where the ground is," and the whelpindicates me.
Lord knows my finish, but for Ole Lund. He sits up in his bunk,swaddled in Annie Black's bandages, and through slits between hisfrost bites, he moults the follering rhetoric:
"Aye tole you vere de claim iss. She own de Nomber Twenty fractionon Buster Creek, 'longside may and may broder. She's dam goodfraction, too."
I consider that a blamed white stunt for Swedes; paying for theirlives with the mine they swindled her out of.
Anyhow, it knocked us galley-west.
I'd formulated a swell climax, involving the discovery of the mother,when the mail man spoke up, him that had been her particularabomination, a queer kind of a break in his voice:
"Come out of that."
Mrs. Bradshaw moved out into the light, and, if I'm any judge, thejoy that showed in her face rubbed away the bitterness of the pastyears. With an aching little cry the girl ran to her, and hid in herarms like a quail.
We men-folks got accumulated up into a dark corner where we shookhands and swore soft and insincere, and let our throats hurt, for allthe world like it was Christmas or we'd got mail from home.