A Girl of the Klondike Part 15

"Why? how?" questioned Stephen, blankly.

"Oh, so quiet; no excitement."

"But women ought to like quiet, and excitement's sinful," returned Stephen hotly, becoming the Low Church missionary school-teacher at once.

Talbot merely laughed and shrugged his shoulders, but his laugh was not friendly, and there was an angry light in his eyes.

"What am I to do?" asked Stephen mechanically, still standing, the pallor and the horror of his face growing each minute.

"I've told you. Let her have the few days' enjoyment she asks for; then her heart will reproach her, and she will come back to you."

"But she might think me indifferent," murmured Stephen, his voice almost choked in his throat.

"I shouldn't leave her long. If she does not return the day after to-morrow, then you might go; but if you go now and attempt to force her back, you'll probably make a mess of it."

"But think--my wife--"

"That's all right," returned Talbot, looking at him and understanding what he was thinking of. "In one way, at least, you know she is a good girl. She will only gamble a little and drink and get very jolly, and she'll come back to you in a day or two with no harm done--what are you doing?" he broke off suddenly, as Stephen began to tear off his slippers and socks and get his thick wet boots on.

"I'm going after her," he said sullenly, in a thick voice, "to bring her back home here--alive or dead."

"It will be dead probably, and you'll be exceedingly sorry," returned Talbot in a cutting tone.

Stephen made no answer, but continued fastening his boots.

"You'd better have your supper before you go out again," remarked Talbot, sarcastically.

Stephen made no reply. When he had his boots on he put an extra comforter inside his fur collar, put his cap on, and walked over to the door. There he hesitated and looked back. Talbot sat unmoved by the fire, his profile to the door. Stephen stood for an instant, then came back to the hearth.

"Talbot!" he said, standing in front of him.

The other looked up. "Well?"

"Come with me. Help me to find her and bring her back."

Talbot compressed his lips.

"Aren't you capable of managing your own 'wife yourself?" he asked.

"You have so much influence with her," said Stephen, pleadingly.

"I suppose I only have that influence because I am not quite a fool,"

returned Talbot angrily, commencing to pull off his slippers.

He was angry with Stephen, and feeling excessively wearied and disinclined for further effort. He hated to turn out again, and his whole physical system was craving for food and rest. But he was not the man to resist an appeal in which he saw another's whole soul was thrown, and angry and annoyed as he was with Stephen, he still disliked the idea of letting his friend go out alone in the Arctic night on such an errand. It seemed to him supremely ridiculous for Stephen to have to call in another man's aid in these personal matters, but then he was more than twice Stephen's age, and had got into the habit of making excuses for him. So, tired and exhausted though he was, he dragged on his frozen boots again, and prepared to accompany Stephen.

"You'd better have some of this first," he said, pouring out a cup of the coffee he had made, which stood ready on the stove.

They each took a cup standing, and then turned out of the cabin, locking the door behind them. The atmosphere and aspect, the whole face of the night, had changed since the girl started. The fog had lifted itself and rolled away somewhere in the darkness. The air was now clear and keen as the edge of steel. The stars were of a piercing brilliance, and all along the black horizon flickered and leaped a faint rosy light. The two men, stiff, tired, and aching, took much longer to accomplish the distance than the girl had done with her light, eager feet, and when they got down to the town the night was well on its way. At the bottom of Good Luck Row, which is, as explained already, one of the first streets you come to, on the edge of the town, they halted and took counsel as to where they would be most likely to find the object of their search.

"Perhaps she's gone up to the 'Pistol Shot,'" suggested Stephen. "We'd better go up to old Poniatovsky."

"She hasn't come down to see her father, I should imagine," remarked Talbot, in his dryest tone.

But Stephen persisted she might be there, and so they tramped straight across towards the main street and turned into the "Pistol Shot." They pushed their way unheeded through the idle, lounging, gossiping crowd within, found their way behind the bar, and asked for Poniatovsky. The little Pole came out of his back parlour and met them in the pa.s.sage. He listened to their story, his long pipe in one hand, his mouth open, and his own vile whisky obscuring and clouding his brain.

"Wot! she haf run away?" he exclaimed, as Stephen paused; "and who is de cause? Is it this shentleman here?" and he stared up at Talbot's slight, tall figure, imposing in its furs, and at the finely-cut, determined features that presented such a contrast to Stephen's weak boyish face.

"No, no," said the latter angrily; "she hasn't run away at all. She has only come down here for an hour or so. I thought she might have come here to see you."

"No," replied the Pole deprecatingly, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands, "I haf not seen her. If she come here, I shut the door upon her. I say, 'I vil haf no runaway wives here.' My fren, before you vos marrit did not I say, a truant daughter make a truant wife. She haf left me first, now she haf left you."

He had taken Stephen by the front of his coat, and was pushing in his words by the aid of a dirty forefinger.

Talbot abandoned Stephen to argue the matter out with his drunken father-in-law, and strolled back through the pa.s.sage, through the bar-room, and then stood, with his gloved hands deep in his fur-lined pockets, at the saloon door, looking up and down the street. Presently one of the wrecks of the night came drifting by, a girl of nineteen or so, with her cheeks blue and pinched in the terrible cold under their coat of coa.r.s.e paint. He signalled to her, and she drifted across to him, and stood, with her hands thrust up her sleeves, in the light from the "Pistol Shot."

"I expect you've seen the inside of most of the drinking-houses to-night," he said, speaking in a kind voice, for the pitiful, cold face of the girl touched him; "have you seen anything of Katrine Poniatovsky, a girl who used to live here?"

"Wot's she like?" the girl asked sullenly. She was so hoa.r.s.e that she could hardly make the words audible.

"A tall girl, dark, and very handsome."

"Yes, I seed her, not more'n an hour ago, in the 'c.o.c.k-pit.' She's a-makin' more money in there than I can make if I walk all night. Curse her! She sits there, and the devil sits behind her, a-playing for her, I know; but she'd better look out--you don't play with that partner long."

"The 'c.o.c.k-pit.' That's on the other side, isn't it, away from the river?" Talbot's heart sank a little as he recognized the name of the worst den for gambling in the whole town.

"Go down here, and turn to your left. Any one will tell you where the 'c.o.c.k-pit' is," said the girl, with a hollow laugh.

Then she lingered in the light, and looked at Talbot wistfully. He put some money into her hand. "Go into the warmth," he said kindly, "and get yourself something."

Then he turned back into the saloon to find Stephen. He met him, having broken away at last from the fatherly advice of the Pole, and brushing the front of his coat down with his hand. He was very flushed and angry.

"You'd better waste no more time," remarked Talbot, calmly. "She is down at the 'c.o.c.k-pit,' playing."

Stephen gasped. "How did you find out that?" he asked.

"I've just been told by one of the habitues. Come along at once." Both the men went out, and Talbot, following the girl's directions, marched on decidedly, scarcely noticing Stephen's questions, which he could not answer.

"I don't know," he said, for the fiftieth time, to Stephen's last absurd query as to how long she had been there.

The houses became poorer and shabbier as they walked. Even in log-cabins there is a great difference marked between the respectable and the disreputable. And the figures that pa.s.sed them from time to time, though more rarely here in this quarter, looked of the toughest, most cut-throat cla.s.s.

"How can she like to come here alone?" exclaimed Stephen, with a shudder. "I wonder she is not afraid. I'm surprised she has not come to some harm long ago."

Talbot smiled to himself inside his fur collar and said nothing. The girl's absolute fearlessness was the point which he admired most in her character, and the immunity from danger seemed in her case, as in others, the natural accompaniment of it. Fortune is said to favour the brave. Misfortune certainly seems to spare them.

"I think this is the place," said Talbot at last, and they stopped before a large, but old and dirty-looking cabin. It was sunk beneath the usual level of the ground, and reached by some crooked, slippery steps.

At the foot of these steps was a sort of yard, which you had to cross before reaching the cabin door itself. What was in the yard, or what its condition was, it was too dark to see, but a sickening smell came from it as the men descended the steps, and the ground seemed slippery or miry in places above the frozen snow. The windows of the cabin in front gave out no light whatever, but that there was light inside, and very bright light, was evidenced by that which burst through the c.h.i.n.ks all over it.