The Crimson Gardenia and Other Tales of Adventure
the solitudes. Here in the presence of the Mail they laid aside their
cloaks of carelessness and saw one another bared to the quick, timid
with hunger for the wives and little ones behind.
There were a few like Prosser, in whom there was still the glamour of
the Northland and the mystery of the unknown, but they were scattered,
and in their eyes the anxious light was growing also.
Five months is a wearying time, and silent suspense will sap the
courage. If only one could banish worry; but the long, unbearable nights
when the mind leaps and scurries out into the voids of conjecture like
sparks from a chimney--well, it's then you roll in your bunk and your
sigh ain't from the snow-shoe pain.
A half-frozen man in an ice-clogged dory had brought us our last news,
one October day, just before the river stopped, and now, after five
months, the curtain parted again.
I saw McGill, the lawyer, in the line ahead of me and noted the grayness
of his cheeks, the nervous way his lips worked, and the futile,
wandering, uselessness of his hands. Then I remembered. When his letter
came the fall before it said the wife was very low, that the crisis was
near, and that they would write again in a few days. He had lived this
endless time with Fear stalking at his shoulder. He had lain down with
it nightly and risen with it grinning at him in the slow, cold dawn. The
boys had told me how well he fought it back week after week, but now,
edging inch by inch toward the door behind which lay his message, it got
the best of him.
I wrung his hand and tried to say something.
"I want to run away," he quavered. "But I'm afraid to."
When we got in at last we met men coming out, and in some faces we saw
the marks of tragedy. Others smiled, and these put heart into us.
Old man Tomlinson had four little girls back in Idaho. He got two
letters. One was a six-months-old tax-receipt, the other a laundry bill.
That meant three months more of silence.
When my turn came and I saw the writing of the little woman something
gripped me by the throat, while I saw my hands shake as if they belonged
to somebody else. My news was good, though, and I read it slowly--some
parts twice--then at last when I looked up I found McGill near me.
Unconsciously we had both sought a quiet corner, but he had sunk on to a
box. Now, as I glanced at him I saw what made me shiver. The Fear was
there again--naked and ugly--for he held one lonesome letter, and its
inscription was in no woman's hand. He had crouched there by my side all
this time, staring, staring, staring at it, afraid to read--afraid to
open it. Some men smile in their agony, shifting their pitiful masks to
the last, others curse, and no two will take their blows alike.
McGill was plucking feebly at the end of his envelope, tearing off tiny
bits, dropping the fragments at his feet. Now and then he stopped, and
when he did he shuddered.
"Buck up, old pal," I said.
Then, recognizing me, he thrust the missive into my hand.
"Tell me--for God's sake--tell me quick. I can't--No, no--wait! Not yet.
Don't tell me. I'll know from your face. They said she couldn't live--"
But she had, and he watched me so fiercely that when the light came into
my face he snatched the letter from me like a madman.
"Ah-h! Give it to me! Give it to me! I _knew_ it! I told you they
couldn't fool me. No, sir. I felt all the time she'd make it. Why, I
knew it in my marrow!"
"What's the date?" I inquired.
"September thirtieth," he said. Then, as he realized how old it was, he
began to worry again.
"Why didn't they write later? They must know I'll eat my heart out.
Suppose she's had a relapse. That's it. They wrote too soon, and now
they don't dare tell me. She--got worse--died--months ago, and they're
afraid to let me know."
"Stop it," I said, and reasoned sanity back into him.
Monty had taken his mail and run off like a puppy to feast in quiet, so
I went over to Eckert's and had a drink.
Sam winked at me as I came in. A man was reading from a letter.
"Go on. I'm interested," said the proprietor.
The fellow was getting full pretty fast and was down to the garrulous
stage, but he began again:
"DEAR HUSBAND,--I am sorry to hear that you have been so
unfortunate, but don't get discouraged. I know you will make a good
miner if you stick to it long enough. Don't worry about me. I have
rented the front room to a very nice man for fifteen dollars a
week. The papers here are full of a gold strike in Siberia, just
across Bering Sea from where you are. If you don't find something
during the next two years, why not try it over there for a couple?"
"That's what I call a persevering woman," said Eckert, solemnly.
"She's a business woman, too," said the husband. "All I ever got for
that room was seven-fifty a week."
It seems I'd missed Montague at the store, but when the crowd came out
Ollie Marceau found him away in at the back, having gone there to be
alone with his letters. She saw the utter abandon and grief in his pose,
and the tears came to her eyes. Impulsively she went up and laid her
hand on his bowed head. She had followed the frontier enough to know the
signs.
"Oh, Mr. Prosser," she said, "I'm so sorry! Is it the little mother?"
"Yes," he answered, without moving.
"Not--not--" she hesitated.
"I don't know. The letters are up to the middle of December, and she was
very sick."
Then, with the quick sentiment of her kind, the girl spoke to him,
forgetting herself, her life, his prejudice, everything except the
lonely little gray woman off there who had waited and longed just as
such another had waited and longed for her, and, inasmuch as Ollie had
suffered before as this boy suffered now, in her words there was a sweet
sympathy and a perfect understanding.
It was very fine, I think, coming so from her, and when the first shock
had passed over he felt that here, among all these rugged men, there was
no one to give him the comfort he craved except this child of the
dance-halls. Compassion and sympathy he could get from any of us, but he
was a boy and this was his first grief, so he yearned for something
more, something subtler, perhaps the delicate comprehension of a woman.
At any rate, he wouldn't let her leave him, and the tender-hearted lass
poured out all the best her warm nature afforded.
In a few days he braced up, however, and stood his sorrow like the rest
of us. It made him more of a man in many ways. For one thing, he never
scoffed now at any of the nine women, which, taken as an indication, was
good. In fact, I saw him several times with the Marceau girl, for he
found her always ready and responsive, and came to confide in her rather
than in Martin or me, which was quite natural. Martin spoke about it
first.
"I hate to see 'em together so much," said he. "One of 'em is going to
fall in love, sure, and it won't be reciprocated none. It would serve
him right to get it hard, but if _she's_ hit--it'll be too dam' pitiful.
You an' I will have to combine forces and beat him up, I reckon."
The days were growing long and warm, the hills were coming bare on the
heights, while the snow packed wet at midday when we went into town to
sled out grub for the clean-up. We found everybody else there for the
same purpose, so the sap began to run through the camp. We were loading
at the trading-post the next day when I heard the name of Ollie Marceau.
It was a big-limbed fellow from Alder Creek talking, and, as he showed
no liquor in his face, what he said sounded all the worse. I have heard
as bad many a time without offense, for there is no code of loyalty
concerning these girls, but Ollie had got my sympathy, somehow, and I
resented the remarks, particularly the laughter. So did Prosser, the
Puritan. He looked up from his work, white and dangerous.
"Don't talk that way about a girl," said he to the stranger, and it made
a sensation among the crowd.
I never knew a man before with courage enough to kick in public on such
subjects. As it was, the man said something so much worse that right
there the front busted out of the tiger-cage and for a few brief moments
we were given over to chaos.
I had seen Whitewater walloped and I knew how full of parlor tricks the
kid was, but this time he went insane. He knocked that man off the
counter at the first pass and climbed him with his hobnails as he lay on
the floor. A fight is a fight, and a good thing for spectators and
participants, for it does more to keep down scurvy than anything I know
of, but the thud of those heavy boots into that helpless flesh sickened
me, and we rushed Prosser out of there while he struggled like a maniac.
I never saw such a complete reversal of form. Somewhere, away back
yonder, that boy's forefathers were pirates or cannibals or butchers.
When the fog had cleared out of his brain the reaction was just as
powerful. I took him out alone while the others worked over the Alder
Creek party, and all at once my man fell apart like wet sawdust.
"What made me do it--what made me do it?" he cried. "I'm crazy. Why, I
tried to kill him! And yet what he said is true--that's the worst of
it--it's true. Think of it, and I fought for her. What am I coming to?"
After the clean-up we came to camp, waiting for the river to break and
the first boat to follow. It was then that the suspense began to tell on
our partner. He read and reread his letters, but there was little hope
in them, and now, with no work to do, he grew nervous. Added to
everything else, our food ran short, and we lived on scraps of whatever
was left over from our winter grub-stake. Just out of cussedness the
break-up was ten days late, the ten longest days I ever put in, but
eventually it came, and a week later also came the mail. We needed food
and clothes, we needed whisky, we needed news of the great, distant
world--but all we thought of was our mail.
The boy had decided to go home. We were sorry to see him leave, too, for
he had the makings of a real man in him even if he shaved three times a
week, but no sooner was the steamer tied than he came plunging into my
tent like a moose, laughing and dancing in his first gladness. The
mother was well again.
Later I went aboard to give him the last lonesome good wishes of the
fellow who stays behind and fights along for another year. The big
freighter, with her neat staterooms and long, glass-burdened tables,
awoke a perfect panic in me to be going with him, to shake this cruel
country and drift back to the home and the wife and the pies like mother
made.
I found him on the top deck with the Marceau girl, who was saying
good-by to him. There was a look about her I had never seen before, and
all at once the understanding and the bitter irony of it struck me. This
poor waif hadn't had enough to stand, so Love had come to her, just as
Kink had predicted--a hopeless love which she would have to fight the
way she fought the whole world. It made me bitter and cynical, but I
admired her nerve--she was dressed for the sacrifice, trim and
well-curried as a thousand-dollar pony. Back of her smile, though, I saw
the waiting tears, and my heart bled. Spring is a fierce time for
romance, anyhow.
There wasn't time to say much, so I squeezed Monty's hand like a
cider-press.
"God bless you, lad! You must come back to us," I said, but he shook his
head, and I heard the girl's breath catch. I continued, "Come on, Ollie;
I'll help you ashore."
We stood on the bank there together and watched the last of him, tall
and clear-cut against the white of the wheel-house, and it seemed to me
when he had gone that something bright and vital and young had passed
out of me, leaving in its stead discouragement and darkness and age.