The Crimson Gardenia and Other Tales of Adventure
"Would you mind walking with me up to my cabin?" Ollie asked.
"Of course not," I said, and we went down the long street, past the
theater, the trading-post, and the saloons, till we came to the hill
where her little nest was perched. Every one spoke and smiled to her and
she answered in the same way, though I knew she was on parade and
holding herself with firm hands. As we came near to the end and her pace
quickened, however, and I guessed the panic that was on her to be alone
where she could drop her mask and become a woman--a poor, weak,
grief-stricken woman. But when we were inside at last her manner
astounded me. She didn't throw herself on her couch nor go to pieces, as
I had dreaded, but turned on me with burning eyes and her hands tight
clenched, while her voice was throaty and hoarse. The words came
tumbling out in confusion.
"I've let him go," she said. "Yes, and you helped me. Only for you I'd
have broken down; but I want you to know I've done one good thing at
last in my miserable life. I've held in. He never knew--he never knew. O
God! what fools men are!"
"Yes," I said, "you did mighty well. He's a sensitive chap, and if you'd
broken down he'd have felt awful bad."
"What!"
She grasped me by the coat lapels and shook me. Yes! That weak little
woman shook me, while her face went perfectly livid.
"'He'd have felt badly,' eh? Man! Man! Didn't you _see_! Are you blind?
Why, he asked me to go with him. He asked me to marry him. Think of
it--that great, wonderful man asked me to be his wife--me--Olive
Marceau, the dancer! Oh, oh! Isn't it funny? Why don't you laugh?"
I didn't laugh. I stood there, picking pieces of fur out of my cap and
wondering if ever I should see another woman like this one. She paced
about over the skin rugs, tearing at the throat of her dress as if it
choked her. There were no tears in her eyes, but her whole frame shook
and shuddered as if from great cold, deep set in her bones.
"Why didn't you go?" I asked, stupidly. "You love him, don't you?"
"You know why I didn't go," she cried, fiercely. "I couldn't. How could
I go back and meet his mother? Some day she'd find me out and it would
spoil his life. No, no! If only she hadn't recovered--No, I don't mean
that, either. I'm not his kind, that's all. Ah, God! I let him go--I let
him go, and he never knew!"
She was writhing now on her bed in a perfect frenzy, calling to him
brokenly, stretching out her arms while great, dry, coughing sobs
wrenched her.
"Little one," I said, unsteadily, and my throat ached so that I couldn't
trust myself, "you're a brave--girl, and you're his kind or anybody's
kind."
With that the rain came, and so I left her alone with her comforting
misery. When I told Kink he sputtered like a pinwheel, and every evening
thereafter we two went up to her house and sat with her. We could do
this because she'd quit the theater the day the boat took Prosser away,
and she wouldn't heed Eckert's offers to go back.
"I'm through with it for good," she told us, "though I don't know what
else I'm good for. You see, I don't know anything useful, but I suppose
I can learn."
"Now, if I wasn't married already--" I said.
"Humph!" snorted Kink. "I ain't so young as neither one of my pardners,
miss, but I'm possessed of rare intellectual treasures."
She laughed at both of us.
When a week had passed after the first boat went down with Prosser, we
began to look daily for the first up-river steamer, bringing word direct
from the outside world. It came one midnight, and as we were getting
dressed to go to the landing our tent was torn open and Montague tumbled
in upon us.
"What brought you back?" we questioned when we'd finished mauling him.
It was June, and the nights were as light as day in this latitude, so we
could see his face plainly.
"Why--er--" He hesitated for an instant, then threw back his head,
squared his great young shoulders, and looked us in the eyes, while all
his embarrassment fled. "I came back to marry Olive Marceau," said he.
"I came to take her back home to the little mother."
He stared out wistfully at the distant southern mountains, effulgent and
glorified by the midnight sun which lay so close behind their crests,
and I winked at Martin.
"She's left--"
"What!" He whirled quickly.
"--the theater, and I don't suppose you can see her until to-morrow."
Disappointment darkened his face.
"Besides," Kink added, gloomily, "when you quit her like a dog I slicked
myself up some, and I ain't anyways sure she'll care to see you
now--only jest as a friend of mine. Notice I've cut my whiskers, don't
you?"
We made Monty pay for that instant's hesitation, the last he ever had,
and then I said:
"You walk up the river trail for a quarter of a mile and wait. If I can
persuade her to come out at this hour I'll send her to you. No, you
couldn't find her. She's moved since you left."
"I wouldn't gamble none on her meetin' you," Martin said,
discouragingly, and combed out his new-mown beard with ostentation.
She was up the moment I knocked, and when I said that a man needed help
I heard her murmur sympathetically as she dressed. When we came to our
tent I stopped her.
"He's up yonder a piece," said I. "You run along while I fetch Kink and
the medicine-kit. We'll overtake you."
"Is it anything serious?"
"Yes, it's apt to be unless you hurry. He seems to think he needs you
pretty badly."
And so she went up the river trail to where he was waiting, her way
golden with the beams of the sun whose rim peeped at her over the
far-off hills. And there, in the free, still air, among the virgin
spruce, with the clean, sweet moss beneath their feet, they met. The
good sun smiled broadly at them now, and the grim Yukon hurried past,
chuckling under its banks and swiggering among the roots, while the song
it sang was of spring and of long, bright days that had no night.
McGILL
The ice was running when McGill arrived. Had he been two hours later he
might have fared badly, for the ramparts above Ophir choke the river
down into a narrow chute through which it hurries, snarling, and the
shore ice was widening at the rate of a foot an hour. Early in the day
the recorder from Alder Creek had tried to come ashore, but had broken
through, losing his skiff and saving his life by the sheer good luck
that favors fools and drunken men. It was October; the last mail had
gone out a fortnight previous; the wiseacres were laying odds that the
river would be closed in three days, so it was close running that McGill
made--six hundred miles in an open whip-sawed dory.
They heard him calling, once he saw the lights, and, getting down to the
water-level, they could make out his boat crunching along through the
thin ice at the outer edge. He was trying to force his way inward to a
point where the current would not move him, but the Yukon spun him like
a top, and it looked as if he would go past. Fortunately, however, there
happened to be a man in the crowd who had learned tricks with a lariat
back in Oklahoma; a line was put out, and McGill came ashore with his
bedding under one arm and a sheet-iron stove under the other. Stoves
were scarce that winter, and McGill was no tenderfoot.
They obtained their first good look at him when he lined up with the
crowd at Hopper's bar, ten minutes later, by which time it was known who
he was. He had a great big frame, with a great big face on top of it,
and, judging from his reputation, he had a great big heart to match them
both. Some of the late-comers recalled a tale of how he had lifted the
gunwales out of a poling-boat that was wedged in a timber-jam above
White Horse, and from the looks of his massive hands and shoulders the
tale seemed true. He was not handsome--few strong men are--but he had
level, blue eyes, rather small and deep set, and a jaw that made people
think twice before angering him, while his voice carried the rumbling
bass note one hears at the edge of a spring freshet when the boulders
are shifting.
"I missed the last boat from Circle," he explained, "so I took a chance
with the skiff."
"Looks like you'd be the last arrival before the trails open," offered
Hopper. "I don't guess there's nobody behind you?"
"I didn't pass anybody," said McGill, and it was plain from his smile
that he had made good time.
"Aim to winter here, Dan?"
"I do. Minook told me, four summers ago, that he'd found a prospect near
here, and I've always figgered on putting some holes down. But it looks
like I'm late."
"Oh, there's plenty of ground open. You've got as good a chance as the
balance of us."
"Any grub in camp?"
"Nope. Ophir was struck too late in the fall."
McGill laughed. "I didn't think there would be; but that's nothing new."
"Didn't you bring none?"
"Nary a pound. There's women and children at the Circle, and there
wasn't more than enough for them, so I pulled out."
"There's plenty below," Hopper assured him.
"How far?"
"We don't know yet. There's a boat-load of 'chekakos' bound for Dawson
somewhere between here and Cochrane's Landing. They'll be froze in now,
and tenderfeet always has grub. Soon's we get some more snow we'll do
some freightin'."
Before he retired that night McGill had bought a town lot, and a week
later there was a cabin on it, for he was a man who knew how to work.
Then, during the interval between the close of navigation and the
opening of winter travel he looked over the country and staked some
claims. He did not locate at random, but used a discrimination based
upon ten years' experience in the arctics, and when cold weather set in
he felt satisfied with his work. Men with half his holdings reckoned
their fortunes at extravagant figures; transfers of unproved properties
for handsome terms were common; millions were made daily, on paper.
Soon after the winter had settled, two strangers "mushed" in from
down-river. For ten days they had pulled their own sled through the
first dry, trackless snow of the season, and they were well spent, but
they brought news that the steamboat was in winter quarters a hundred
and fifty miles below. They assured McGill, moreover, that there was
plenty of food aboard, so, a day later, he set off on their back trail
with his dog-team. By now the melancholy autumn was gone, the air was
frozen clean of every taint, the frost made men's blood gallop through
their veins. It changed McGill into a boy again. His lungs ached from
the throbbing power within them, his loping stride was as smooth as that
of a timber-wolf, his loud, deep laughter caused the dogs to yelp in
answer.
When he finally burst out of the silence and into the midst of the
gold-seekers with tidings of the new camp only a hundred and fifty miles
away they shook off their lethargy and awoke to a great excitement. He
told all he honestly knew about Ophir, and with nimble fancies they
added two words of their own to every one of his. They stopped work upon
their winter quarters and made ready to push on afoot--on hands and
knees, if necessary. Here was a man who had made a fortune in one short
autumn, for with the customary ignorance of tenderfeet they perceived no
distinction between a mining claim and a mine. A gold-mine, they
reasoned, was worth anything one wished to imagine, from a hundred
thousand to a million; thirty gold-mines were worth thirty
millions--figure it out for yourself. The conservative ones cut the
result in half and were well satisfied with it. They were glad they had
come.
The steamboat captain offered McGill a bed in his own cabin, for the log
houses were not yet completed, and that night at supper the miner met
the rest of the big family. Among them was a girl. Once McGill had