The Magnetic North Part 106

"I can use one more man on the night shift, a dollar and a half an hour."

"All right," said the Boy.

The Colonel looked at him. "Is this job yours or mine?"

The Superintendent had gone up towards the dam.

"Whichever you say."

The Boy did not like to suggest that the Colonel seemed little fit for this kind of exercise. They had been in the Klond.y.k.e long enough to know that to be in work was to be in luck.

"I'll tell you," the younger man said quickly, answering something unspoken, but plain in the Colonel's face; "I'll go up the gulch and see what else there is."

It crossed his mind that there might be something less arduous than this shovelling in the wet thaw or picking at frozen gravel in the hot sun. If so, the Colonel might be induced to exchange. It was obvious that, like so many Southerners, he stood the sun very ill. While they were agreeing upon a rendezvous the Superintendent came back.

"Our bunk-house is yonder," he said, pointing. A kind of sickness came over the Kentuckian as he recalled the place. He turned to his pardner.

"Wish we'd got a pack-mule and brought our tent out from Dawson." Then, apologetically, to the Superintendent: "You see, sah, there are men who take to bunk-houses just as there are women who want to live in hotels; and there are others who want a place to call home, even if it's a tent."

The Superintendent smiled. "That's the way we feel about it in Alabama." He reflected an instant. "There's that big new tent up there on the hill, next to the Buckeyes' cabin. Good tent; belongs to a couple o' rich Englishmen, third owners in No. 0. Gone to Atlin. Told me to do what I liked with that tent. You might bunk there while they're away."

"Now, that's mighty good of you, sah. Next whose cabin did you say?"

"Oh, I don't know their names. They have a lay on seventeen. Ohio men.

They're called Buck One and Buck Two. Anybody'll show you to the Buckeyes';" and he turned away to shout "Gate!" for the head of water was too strong, and he strode off towards the lock.

As the Boy tramped about looking for work he met a great many on the same quest. It seemed as if the Colonel had secured the sole job on the creek. Still, vacancies might occur any hour.

In the big new tent the Colonel lay asleep on a little camp-bed, (mercifully left there by the rich Englishmen), "gettin' ready for the night-shift." As he stood looking down upon him, a sudden wave of pity came over the Boy. He knew the Colonel didn't "really and truly have to do this kind of thing; he just didn't like givin' in." But behind all that there was a sense in the younger mind that here was a life unlike his own, which dimly he foresaw was to find its legitimate expression in battle and in striving. Here, in the person of the Colonel, no soldier fore-ordained, but a serene and equable soul wrenched out of its proper sphere by a chance hurt to a woman, forsooth! an imagination so stirred that, if it slept at all, it dreamed and moaned in its sleep, as now; a conscience wounded and refusing to heal. Had he not said himself that he had come up here to forget? It was best to let him have the job that was too heavy for him--yes, it was best, after all.

And so they lived for a few days, the Boy chafing and wanting to move on, the Colonel very earnest to have him stay.

"Something sure to turn up, and, anyhow, letters--my instruction----"

And he encouraged the acquaintance the Boy had struck up with the Buckeyes, hoping against hope that to go over and smoke a pipe, and exchange experiences with such mighty good fellows would lighten the tedium of the long day spent looking for a job.

"I call it a very pleasant cabin," the Colonel would say as he lit up and looked about. Anything dismaller it would be hard to find. Not clean and shipshape as the Boy kept the tent. But with double army blankets nailed over the single window it was blessedly dark, if stuffy, and in crying need of cleaning. Still, they were mighty good fellows, and they had a right to be cheerful. Up there, on the rude shelf above the stove, was a row of old tomato-cans brimful of Bonanza gold. There they stood, not even covered. Dim as the light was, you could see the little top nuggets peering out at you over the ragged tin-rims, in a never locked shanty, never molested, never bothered about. Nearly every cabin on the creek had similar chimney ornaments, but not everyone boasted an old coat, kept under the bunk, full of the bigger sort of nuggets.

The Colonel was always ready with pretended admiration of such bric-a-brac, but the truth was he cared very little about this gold he had come so far to find. His own wages, paid in dust, were kept in a jam-pot the Boy had found "lyin' round."

The growing store shone cheerfully through the gla.s.s, but its value in the Colonel's eyes seemed to be simply as an argument to prove that they had enough, and "needn't worry." When the Boy said there was no doubt this was the district in all the world the most overdone, the Colonel looked at him with sun-tired, reproachful eyes.

"You want to dissolve the pardnership--I see."

"I don't."

But the Colonel, after any such interchange, would go off and smoke by himself, not even caring for Buckeyes'. The work was plainly overtaxing him. He slept badly, was growing moody and quick to take offence. One day when he had been distinctly uncivil he apologized for himself by saying that, standing with feet always in the wet, head always in the scorching sun, he had taken a h.e.l.l of a cold. Certain it was that, without sullenness, he would give in to long fits of silence; and his wide, honest eyes were heavy again, as if the snow-blindness of the winter had its a.n.a.logue in a summer torment from the sun. And his sometimes unusual gentleness to his companion was sharply alternated with unusual choler, excited by a mere nothing. Enough if the Boy were not in the tent when the Colonel came and went. Of course, the Boy did the cooking. The Colonel ate almost nothing, but he made a great point of his pardner's service in doing the cooking. He would starve, he said, if he had to cook for himself as well as swing a shovel; and the Boy, acting on pure instinct, pretended that he believed this was so.

Then came the evening when the Boy was so late the Colonel got his own breakfast; and when the recreant did get home, it was to announce that a man over at the Buckeyes' had just offered him a job out on Indian River. The Colonel set down his tea-cup and stared. His face took on an odd, rigid look. But almost indifferently he said:

"So you're goin'?"

"Of course, you know I must. I started with an outfit and fifteen hundred dollars, now I haven't a cent."

The Kentuckian raised his heavy eyes to the jam-jar. "Oh, help yourself."

The Boy laughed, and shook his head.

"I wish you wouldn't go," the other said very low.

"You see, I've got to. Why, Nig and I owe you for a week's grub already."

Then the Colonel stood up and swore--swore till he was scarlet and shaking with excitement.

"If the life up here has brought us to 'Scowl' Austin's point of view, we are poorly off." And he spoke of the way men lived in his part of Kentucky, where the old fashion of keeping open house survived. And didn't he know it was the same thing in Florida? "Wouldn't you do as much for me?"

"Yes, only I can't--and--I'm restless. The summer's half gone. Up here that means the whole year's half gone."

The Colonel had stumbled back into his seat, and now across the deal table he put out his hand.

"Don't go, Boy. I don't know how I'd get on without----" He stopped, and his big hand was raised as if to brush away some cloud between him and his pardner. "If you go, you won't come back."

"Oh, yes, I will. You'll see."

"I know the kind," the other went on, as if there had been no interruption. "They never come back. I don't know as I ever cared quite as much for my brother--little fella that died, you know." Then, seeing that his companion did not instantly iterate his determination to go, "That's right," he said, getting up suddenly, and leaving his breakfast barely touched. "We've been through such a lot together, let's see it out."

Without waiting for an answer, he went off to his favourite seat under the little birch-tree. But the incident had left him nervous. He would come up from his work almost on the run, and if he failed to find his pardner in the tent there was the devil to pay. The Boy would laugh to himself to think what a lot he seemed able to stand from the Colonel; and then he would grow grave, remembering what he had to make up for.

Still, his sense of obligation did not extend to giving up this splendid chance down on Indian River. On Wednesday, when the fellow over at the Buckeyes' was for going back, the Boy would go along.

On Sunday morning he ran a crooked, rusty nail into his foot. Clumsily extracted, it left an ugly wound. Walking became a torture, and the pain a banisher of sleep. It was during the next few days that he found out how much the Colonel lay awake. Who could sleep in this blazing sun? Black tents were not invented then, so they lay awake and talked of many things.

The man from Indian River went back alone. The Boy would limp after the Colonel down to the sluice, and sit on a dump heap with Nig. Few people not there strictly on business were tolerated on No. 0, but Nig and his master had been on good terms with Seymour from the first. Now they struck up acquaintance with several of the night-gang, especially with the men who worked on either side of the Colonel. An Irish gentleman, who did the shovelling just below, said he had graduated from Dublin University. He certainly had been educated somewhere, and if the discussion were theologic, would take out of his linen-coat pocket a little testament in the Vulgate to verify a bit of Gospel. He could even pelt the man next but one in his native tongue, calling the Silesian "Uebermensch." There existed some doubt whether this were the gentleman's real name, but none at all as to his talking philosophy with greater fervour than he bestowed on the puddling box.

The others were men more accustomed to work with their hands, but, in spite of the conscious superiority of your experienced miner, a very good feeling prevailed in the gang--a general friendliness that presently centred about the Colonel, for even in his present mood he was far from disagreeable, except now and then, to the man he cared the most for.

Seymour admitted that he had placed the Southerner where he thought he'd feel most at home. "Anyhow, the company is less mixed," he said, "than it was all winter up at twenty-three, where they had a Presbyterian missionary down the shaft, a Salvation Army captain turnin' the windla.s.s, a n.i.g.g.e.r thief dumpin' the becket, and a dignitary of the Church of England doin' the cookin', with the help of a Chinese ch.o.r.e-boy. They're all there now (except one) washin' out gold for the couple of San Francisco card-sharpers that own the claim."

"Vich von is gone?" asked the Silesian, who heard the end of the conversation.

"Oh, the Chinese ch.o.r.e-boy is the one who's bettered himself," said the Superintendent--"makin' more than all the others put together ever made in their lives; runnin' a laundry up at Dawson."

The Boy, since this trouble with his foot, had fallen into the way of turning night into day. The Colonel liked to have him down there at the sluice, and when he thought about it, the Boy marvelled at the hours he spent looking on while others worked.

At first he said he came down only to make Scowl Austin mad. And it did make him mad at first, but the odd thing was he got over it, and used to stop and say something now and then. This attention on the part of the owner was distinctly perilous to the Boy's good standing with the gang. Not because Austin was the owner; there was the millionaire Swede, Ole Olsen--any man might talk to him. He was on the square, treated his workmen mighty fair, and when the other owners tried to reduce wages, and did, Ole wouldn't join them--went right along paying the highest rate on the creek.

Various stories were afloat about Austin. Oh, yes, Scowl Austin was a hard man--the only owner on the creek who wouldn't even pay the little subscription every poor miner contributed to keep the Dawson Catholic Hospital going.

The women, too, had grievances against Austin, not only "the usual lot"

up at the Gold Belt, who sneered at his close fist, but some of the other sort--those few hard-working wives or "women on their own," or those who washed and cooked for this claim or that. They had stories about Austin that shed a lurid light. And so by degrees the gathered experience, good and ill, of "the greatest of all placer diggin's"