Seven Frozen Sailors Part 26

The Yankee turned his head slowly, spat a brown hailstone on to the ice, and then said--

"Whar did I get that thar piece o' wood, stranger? Wall, I reckon that's a bit o' Pole--North Pole--as I took off with these here hands with the carpenter's saw."

"I'll take a piece of it," said the doctor, and turning it over in his hands, "Ha, hum!" he muttered; "_Pinus silvestris_." Then aloud--"But how did you get up here, my friend?"

"Wall, I'll tell you," drawled the Yankee. "But I reckon thar's yards on it; and when I begin, I don't leave off till I've done, that I don't, you bet--not if you're friz. Won't it do that I'm here?"

"Well, no," said the doctor; "we should like to know how you got here."

"So," said the Yankee sailor, and, drawing his legs up under him, firing a couple of brown hailstones off right and left, and whittling away at so much of the North Pole as the doctor had left him, he thus began.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE YANKEE SAILOR'S YARN.

I warn't never meant for no sailor, I warn't; but I come of a great nation, and when a chap out our way says he'll du a thing, he does it.

I said I'd go to sea, and I went--and thar you are. I said I'd drop hunting, and take to mining, and thar I was; and that's how it come about.

You see, we was rather rough out our way, where Hez Lane and me went with our bit of tent and pickers, shooting-irons, and sech-like, meaning to make a pile of gold. We went to Washoe, and didn't get on; then we went to Saint Laramie, and didn't get on there. Last, we went right up into the mountains, picking our way among the stones, for Hez sez, "Look here, old hoss, let's get whar no one's been afore. If we get whar the boys are at work already, they've took the cream, and we gets the skim milk. Let's you and me get the cream, and let some o' the others take the skim milk."

"Good for you," I says; and we tramped on day after day, till we got right up in the heart o' the mountains, where no one hadn't been afore, and it was so still and quiet, as it made you quite deaf.

It was a strange, wild sort of place, like as if one o' them c.o.o.ns called giants had driven a wedge into a mountain, and split it, making a place for a bit of a stream to run at the bottom, and lay bare the cold we wanted to find.

"This'll do, Dab," says Hez, as we put up our bit of a tent on a pleasant green shelf in the steep valley place. "This'll do, Dab; thar's yaller gold spangling them sands, and running in veins through them rocks, and yaller gold in pockets of the rock."

"Then, let's call it Yaller Gulch," I says.

"Done, old hoss!" says Hez; and Yaller Gulch it is.

We set to work next day washing in the bit of a stream, and shook hands on our luck.

"This'll do," says Hez. "We shall make a pile here. No one won't dream of hunting this out."

"Say, stranger!" says a voice, as made us both jump. "Do it wash well?"

And if there warn't a long, lean, ugly, yaller-looking chap looking down at us, as he stood holding a mule by the bridle.

Why, afore a week was over, so far from us keeping it snug, I reckon there was fifty people in Yaller Gulch, washing away, and making their piles. Afore another week as over some one had set up a store, and next day there was a gambling saloon. Keep it to ourselves! Why, stranger, I reckon if there was a speck of gold anywheres within five hundred miles, our chaps'd sniff it out like vultures, and be down upon it.

It warn't no use to grumble, and we kept what we thought to ourselves, working away, and making our ounces the best way we could. One day I proposed we should go up higher in the mountains; but Hez said he'd be darned if he'd move; and next day, if he'd wanted me to go, I should have told him I'd be darned if I'd move; and all at once, from being red-hot chums, as would have done anything for one another, Hez and me got to be mortal enemies.

Now, look here, stranger. Did you ever keep chickens? P'r'aps not; but if you ever do, just you notice this. You've got, say, a dozen young c.o.c.ks pecking about, and as happy as can be--smart and lively, an'

innercent as chickens should be. Now, jist you go and drop a pretty young pullet in among 'em, and see if there won't be a row. Why, afore night there'll be combs bleeding, eyes knocked out, feathers torn and ragged--a reg'lar pepper-box and bowie set-to, and all acause of that little smooth, brown pullet, that looks on so quiet and gentle as if wondering who made the row.

Now, that's what was the matter with us; for who should come into the Gulch one day, but an old storekeeping sort of fellow, with as pretty a daughter as ever stepped, and from that moment it was all over between Hez and me.

He'd got a way with him, you see, as I hadn't; and they always made him welkim at that thar store, when it was only "How do you do?" and "Good-morning," to me. I don't know what love is, strangers; but if Jael Burn had told me to go and cut one of my hands off to please her, I'd ha' done it. I'd ha' gone through fire and water for her, G.o.d bless her! and if she'd tied one of her long, yaller hairs round my neck, she might have led me about like a bar, rough as I am.

But it wouldn't do. I soon see which way the wind blew. She was the only woman in camp, and could have the pick, and she picked Hez.

I was 'bout starin' mad first time I met them two together--she a hanging on his arm, and looking up in his face, worshipping him like some of them women can worship a great, big, strong lie; and as soon as they war got by I swore a big oath as Hez should never have her, and I plugged up my six-shooter, give my bowie a whetting, and lay wait for him coming back.

It was a nice time that, as I sot there, seeing in fancy him kissin' her sweet little face, and she hanging on him. If I was 'most mad afore, I was ten times worse now; and when I heer'd Hez comin', I stood thereon a shelf of rock, where the track came along, meaning to put half a dozen plugs in him, and then pitch him over into the Gulch. But I was that mad, that when he came up cheery and singing, I forgot all about my shooting-iron and bowie, and went at him like a bar, hugging and wrastling him, till we fell together close to the edge of the Gulch, and I had only to give him a shove, and down he' ha' gone kelch on the hard rocks ninety foot below.

"Now, Hez," I says; "how about your darling now? You'll cut in afore a better man again, will yer?"

"Yes, if I live!" he says, stout-like, so as I couldn't help liking the grit he showed. "That's right," he says; "pitch me over, and then go and tell little Jael what you've done. She'll be fine and proud of yer then, Abinadab Scales!"

He said that as I'd got him hanging over the rocks, and he looked me full in the face, full of grit, though he was helpless as a babby; but I didn't see his face then, for what I see was the face of Jael, wild and pa.s.sionate-like, asking me what I'd done with her love, and my heart swelled so that I gave a sob like a woman, as I swung Hez round into safety, and taking his place like, "Shove me over," I says, "and put me out of my misery."

Poor old Hez! I hated him like pyson; but he wasn't that sort. 'Stead of sending me over, now he had the chance, he claps his hand on my shoulder, and he says, says he, "Dab, old man," he says, "give it a name, and let's go and have a drink on this. We can't all find the big nuggets, old hoss; and if I'm in luck, don't be hard on yer mate."

Then he held out his fist, but I couldn't take it, but turning off, I ran hard down among the rocks till I dropped, bruised and bleeding, and didn't go back to my tent that night.

I got a bit wild arter that. Hez and Jael were spliced up, and I allus kep away. When I wanted an ounce or two of gold, I worked, and when I'd got it, I used to drink--drink, because I wanted to drown all recollection of the past.

Hez used to come to me, but I warned him off. Last time he come across me, and tried to make friends, "Hez," I says, "keep away--I'm desprit like--and I won't say I shan't plug yer!"

Then Jael came, and she began to talk to me about forgiving him; but it only made me more mad nor ever, and so I went and pitched at the lower end of the Gulch, and they lived at t'other.

Times and times I've felt as if I'd go and plug Hez on the quiet, but I never did, though I got to hate him more and more, and never half so much as I did nigh two years arter, when I came upon him one day sudden with his wife Jael, looking pootier than ever, with a little white-haired squealer on her arm. An' it ryled me above a bit, to see him so smiling and happy, and me turned into a bloodshot, drinking, raving savage, that half the Gulch was feared on, and t'other half daren't face.

I had been drinking hard--fiery Bourbon, you bet!--for about a week, when early one morning, as I lay in my ragged bit of a tent, I woke up, sudden-like, to a roarin' noise like thunder; and then there came a whirl and a rush, and I was swimmin' for life, half choked with the water that had carried me off. Now it was. .h.i.tting my head, playful like, agen the hardest corners of the rock it could find in the Gulch; then it was. .h.i.tting me in the back, or pounding me in the front with trunks of trees swept down from the mountains, for something had bust--a lake, or something high up--and in about a wink the hull settlement in Yaller Gulch was swep' away.

"Wall," I says, getting hold of a branch, and drawing myself out, "some on 'em wanted a good wash, and this 'll give it 'em;" for you see water had been skeerce lately, and what there was had all been used for cleaning the gold.

I sot on a bit o' rock, wringing that water out of my hair--leastwise, no: it was someone else like who sot there, chap's I knowed, you see; and there was the water rushing down thirty or forty foot deep, with everything swept before it--mules, and tents, and shanties, and stores, and dead bodies by the dozen.

"Unlucky for them," I says; and just then I hears a wild sorter shriek, and looking down, I see a chap half-swimming, half-swept along by the torrent, trying hard to get at a tree that stood t'other side.

"Why, it's you, is it, Hez?" I says to myself, as I looked at his wild eyes and strained face, on which the sun shone full. "You're a gone c.o.o.n, Hez, lad; so you may just as well fold yer arms, say amen, and go down like a man. How I could pot you now, lad, if I'd got a shooting-iron; put you out o' yer misery like. You'll drown, lad."

He made a dash, and tried for a branch hanging down, but missed it, and got swept against the rocks, where he shoved his arm between two big bits; but the water gave him a wrench, the bone went crack, and as I sat still there, I see him swept down lower and lower, till he clutched at a bush with his left hand, and hung on like grim death to a dead n.i.g.g.e.r.

"Sarve yer right," I says coolly. "Why shouldn't you die like the rest?

If I'd had any go in me I should have plugged yer long ago."

"Halloa!" I cried then, giving a start. "It ain't--'tis--tarnation! it can't be!"

But it was.

There on t'other side, not fifty yards lower down, on a bit of a shelf of earth, that kept crumbling away as the water washed it, was Jael, kneeling down with her young 'un; and, as I looked, something seemed to give my heart a jigg, just as if some c.o.o.n had pulled a string.

"Well, he's 'bout gone," I says; "and they can't hold out 'bout three minutes; then they'll all drown together, and she can take old Hez his last babby to miss--cuss 'em! I'm safe enough. What's it got to do with me? I shan't move."