Colorado Jim Part 22

They nodded and began to pole down the creek and out into the river. Jim sat down on a pile of muck and mopped his brow. The tent was approachable from the river on the other side of the bluff. The spruce-trees that surrounded it hid it from the view of one working by the creek, though any occupant would have the advantage of seeing without being seen. He remembered reaching the tent a few days before, to find Angela singularly embarra.s.sed. Was that the day on which the stranger had called? Despite his heartache he could think no wrong of her. She was lonely, pining for the life she had left. Between him and her loomed an apparently unbridgeable gulf. If she had found a friend in that mixed crowd back in Dawson, hadn't she a right to see him and speak with him? His heart answered in the affirmative, but it hurt just the same.

He said nothing to Angela on the subject, but carried on with his thankless task, with a strange mixture of pride and jealousy eating into his heart. When more wood was needed he innocently(?) hewed down two spruce-trees in close proximity to the tent, whose removal afforded him a view of the tent entrance from the scene of his daily "grind."

For a whole week he kept his eyes intermittently on the brown bell-tent, but the stranger came not. He wondered if Angela had become aware of the increased vision afforded him by the felled trees, and was careful to keep her strange friend away. He noticed some slight change in her disposition--a queer light in her eye and a mocking ring in the monosyllabic replies which she gave to any questions he found it necessary to put to her.

Their conversation had not improved with time. If he addressed her at all it was with reference to the domestic arrangements. She, on her part, never interrogated him on any subject. Every movement of her lips, and of her body, made it clear that she regarded him as a complete stranger under whose jailership certain circ.u.mstances had placed her. Her determination was scarcely less than his own. She meant to break his stubborn spirit--to arouse in him, if possible, a violent aversion to her presence. Already the summer was vanishing. The few birds--swallows, swifts, and yellow warblers--that had immigrated at the coming of spring were preparing for a long journey South. Cold winds were turning the leaves brown, and the whole landscape deepened into autumn glory. Angela noted the change with an impatience that was evident to any observer.

Jim, testing the last few yards of claim, pondered over the problem of her change of front. She even sang at times, in a way that only succeeded in deepening his suspicions. Was she singing on account of some happiness newly found?--some interest in life which lay beyond himself and the immediate surroundings?

It seemed to be the case, and the consciousness of this disturbing truth caused him acute mental agony. Some other man could bring her happiness.

Some other man had succeeded in breaking into that icy reserve against which all attempts on his part had been vain. Was it worth while continuing the drama? If he let her escape, forgetfulness might come. Time had its reward no less than its revenges. Why suffer, as he was suffering, all the agonies of burning, unrequited love. At nights, with that hateful curtain between them, he had writhed in anguish to hear the soft breathing within a foot or so of his head. More than once a mad desire to rise up and claim her as mate came to him, only to be cast aside as the better part of him prevailed over these primal instincts.

"She's mine," he argued, "mine by purchase, an' if I was anything of a man I'd go and take her now."

But just because he was a man he didn't. She owed her sanct.i.ty to the fact that this rough son of Nature loved her with a love that seemed to rend his heart in twain. The thin canvas between them was as safe a part.i.tion as walls of granite. She might have found time to admire the quality of his love, considering the circ.u.mstances prevailing, but her pride left scant room for any sentiment of that sort. She merely took these things for granted.

Jim, with the last hole bored in the iron earth, and the precious glint of gold still as absent as ever, gazed back at the tent with knitted brows.

Red Ruin was a failure, as he had long known it to be. The future loomed dark and uncertain. There were no more creeks near Dawson worth the staking, but gold lay farther afield--over the vast repelling mountains.

It would mean suffering, misery, for her. A winter in the Great Alone, hara.s.sed by blizzards, bitten by the intense cold, tracked by wolves and all the ferocious starved things of the foodless wilderness, was all he had to offer--that, and a burning love of which she seemed totally unconscious, or coldly indifferent. Why not let her go now? To see her suffer were but to multiply his own suffering a thousandfold, and yet she was his in the sight of G.o.d! He emitted a hard, guttural laugh as the mockery of the phrase was made clear to him.

He collected the gear and, slinging it across his shoulders, mounted the hill. Overhead a long stream of birds was beating toward the South. He bade them a mute farewell, knowing that he would miss their silvern voices, and their morning wrangling among the spruce and hemlocks.

"I guess life might be beautiful enough," he ruminated, "if one only had the things one wants, but the gittin' of 'em is sure h.e.l.l!"

He flung the pick and ax and washing-pan to the ground, and looked inside the tent. It was empty, and the cooking utensils were lying about as they were left at breakfast-time. Then he noticed that some of Angela's clothes were missing. The latter fact removed any lingering doubts from his mind.

If any further evidence were required, it existed in the shape of a pile of cigar ash on the duckboarding.

"So!" he muttered.

He walked outside and stood gazing over the autumn-tinted country. A stray bird twitted among the trees, but the great silence was settling down every hour as the feathered immigrants mounted from copse and dell into the blue vault of heaven.

"So!" he repeated, as though he were powerless to find any fuller expression of his emotions. He went back into the tent and slipped a revolver into his holster, then with huge strides went over the hill towards Dawson.

He covered the five miles in less than fifty minutes, and entered the congested main street. The saloons were busy as usual, and there seemed to be more people than ever. A trading store was selling mackinaws, parkhas, and snow-shoes, as fast as they could be handled. "Old-timers" lounged in the doorway and grinned at the huge prices paid for these winter necessaries. Jim evaded the throng and made for the river bank. He guessed that Angela and her "friend" would not risk staying long in Dawson, and had doubtless timed their escape to catch the last boat down-river.

At that moment the _Silas P. Young_ gave announcement of its departure by two long blasts from its steam-whistle. Jim came out on the river bank and saw the boat well out in the stream, its paddle churning up the muddy water. Near him was an old man waving a red handkerchief. He recognized Jim and stopped his signaling.

"So you've sent her home, pard? Wal, it's a darn good----"

"What's that?"

"Yore wife. I sent mine too. It's going to be merry h.e.l.l in this yere town afore the summer comes round----"

Jim stood petrified. He had half expected this, but now that he was face to face with it the blow came harder than he expected it to be. She was going--going out of his life for ever.... Perhaps it was as well that way.

He turned to Hanky, the old man.

"Did you see her go?"

"Yep. I saw her go aboard."

"Was--was there any other guy with her?"

"No--leastways, that fellow D'Arcy saw her off. Friend of yours, I take it?"

Jim nodded, scarcely trusting himself to speak. The name was unknown to him, but he remembered the man in the canoe who had spoken to Angela a few months before. It must be the same man--the man who had visited her at the camp, and who had dropped the cigar ash on the floor that morning. D'Arcy had triumphed, then! He concluded that the latter must be aboard, though Hanky had not seen him go on the boat. He thought of Lord Featherstone and all those fine relations and friends of Angela's. How they would chuckle when they heard that she had escaped from her "impossible husband"! His gorge rose as he visualized the scene. They had sold him something only to get it back again for nothing. It wasn't straight dealing--it wasn't on the level. They had bargained on this eventuality when they made the deal.

They concluded it would be easy to hoodwink a "cowpuncher."

"No, by G.o.d!" he muttered. "I ain't lettin' go."

He turned to Hanky.

"You gotta hoss, Hank?"

"Sure!"

"Will you loan him to me for an hour or two? I'll take care of him. I'm strong on hosses."

"She's yourn," replied Hanky. "Come right along and I'll fix you up. She's stabled at Dan's place."

Ten minutes later Jim was mounted on the big black mare. He waved his hand to Hanky and went up the street like a streak of lightning.

CHAPTER XII

INTO THE WILDERNESS

Hanky's mare, after being cooped up in a stable for a week without exercise, stretched its neck to the fresh air, and under the urging heels of Jim killed s.p.a.ce at a remarkable rate. Mounting an almost perpendicular hill, Jim saw the _Silas P. Young_ beating down-stream, a mile or two ahead, at a steady ten knots.

He made queer noises with his lips and his mount responded instantly, leaping with distended nostrils over stone and hummocks, like a piece of live steel. To be on a horse again was glorious. Instantly his form had merged with the animal's--they moved as one creature, raising dust and moss as they thundered down the river.

The boat turned a corner and was lost to view for a few minutes, but a mile lower down he saw it again, with a creamy wake streaming behind it.

He was nearer now and going strong. He pressed his hand over the glossy neck of the horse and crooned to it.

"Gee, yore some hoss--you beaut! The man that lays whip on your flanks oughter be shot. We're gaining, honey. Another league and we'll be putting it over that 'honking' bunch of machinery. Stead-dee!"

The thundering pace was maintained. Uphill, downhill, on the flat, it was all the same. Heels were no longer necessary. The horse understood that the big "horse-man" wanted to get somewhere in quick time, and meant to see him through.

Twenty minutes later they were abreast of the _Silas P. Young_. Then they shot into a deep gully and were lost among a thick forest of spruce-trees.

For two miles horse and man evaded low-hanging branches and treacherous footfalls, until the timber thinned and the straggling Yukon came again to view. Away up-stream was the steamboat, crawling down by the near bank.

There was no time to be lost if Angela's escape was to be frustrated. He tethered his foam-flecked mount to a tree and crept down the steep bank.

The muddied water swirled along at a ramping five knots--a vile-looking cocoa-colored ma.s.s that was scarcely inviting to any swimmer. He raised his hands and dived down.

With a powerful over-arm stroke he made for the line which the steamboat was following. In that wide welter of water the bobbing head would in all probability be lost to view, or any kind of shout would be drowned by the clanking noise of the paddle-wheels. The extreme danger of the exploit was not lost upon him, but the resolve, once rooted, stuck fast.

He looked up and saw the _Silas P. Young_ bearing down on him, her squat nose setting her course in dead line with his eyes. Treading water, he waited for the psychological moment. The chief danger lay in the vicinity of the paddle-wheel. To be caught up in that meant certain death. He resolved to fetch the boat as near the bows as possible and on the port side.