The Magnetic North Part 99

"I don't imagine you'll be quite alone."

"No? Why, there's only between five and six hundred expectin' to board a boat that'll be crowded before she gets here."

"Does everybody want to go to Dawson?"

"Everybody except a few boomers who mean to stay long enough to play off their misery on someone else before they move on."

The Colonel looked a trifle anxious.

"I hadn't thought of that. I suppose there will be a race for the boat."

"There'll be a race all the way up the river for all the early boats.

Ain't half enough to carry the people. But you look to me like you'll stand as good a chance as most, and anyhow, you're the one man I know, I'll trust my dough to."

The Colonel stared.

"You see, I want to get some money to my kiddie, an' besides, I got m'self kind o' scared about keepin' dust in my cabin. I want it in a bank, so's if I should kick the bucket (there'll be some pretty high rollin' here when there's been a few boats in, and my life's no better than any other feller's), I'd feel a lot easier if I knew the kiddie'd have six thousand clear, even if I did turn up my toes. See?"

"A--yes--I see. But----"

The door of the cabin next the saloon opened suddenly. A graybeard with a young face came out rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He stared interrogatively at the river, and then to the world in general:

"What time is it?"

"Half-past four."

"Mornin' or evenin'?" and no one thought the question strange.

Maudie lowered her voice.

"No need to mention it to pardners and people. You don't want every feller to know you're goin' about loaded; but will you take my dust up to Dawson and get it sent to 'Frisco on the first boat?"

"The ice! the ice! It's moving!"

"The ice is going out!"

"Look! the ice!"

From end to end of the settlement the cry was taken up. People darted out of cabins like beavers out of their burrows. Three little half-breed Indian boys, yelling with excitement, tore past the Gold Nugget, crying now in their mother's Minook, now in their father's English, "The ice is going out!" From the depths of the store-box whereon his master had sat, Nig darted, howling excitedly and waving a muddy tail like a draggled banner, saying in Mahlemeut: "The ice is going out! The fish are coming in." All the other dogs waked and gave tongue, running in and out among the huddled rows of people gathered on the Ramparts.

Every ear full of the rubbing, grinding noise that came up out of the Yukon--noise not loud, but deep--an undercurrent of heavy sound. As they stood there, wide-eyed, gaping, their solid winter world began to move. A compact ma.s.s of ice, three-quarters of a mile wide and four miles long, with a great grinding and crushing went down the valley.

Some distance below the town it jammed, building with incredible quickness a barrier twenty feet high.

The people waited breathless. Again the ice-ma.s.s trembled. But the watchers lifted their eyes to the heights above. Was that thunder in the hills? No, the ice again; again crushing, grinding, to the low accompaniment of thunder that seemed to come from far away.

Sections a mile long and half a mile wide were forced up, carried over the first ice-pack, and summarily stopped below the barrier. Huge pieces, broken off from the sides, came crunching their way angrily up the bank, as if acting on some independent impulse. There they sat, great fragments, glistening in the sunlight, as big as cabins. It was something to see them come walking up the shelving bank! The cheechalkos who laughed before are contented now with running, leaving their goods behind. Sour-dough Saunders himself never dreamed the ice would push its way so far.

In mid-channel a still unbroken sheet is bent yet more in the centre.

Every now and then a wide crack opens near the margin, and the water rushes out with a roar. Once more the ma.s.s is nearly still, and now all's silent. Not till the water, dammed and thrown back by the ice, not until it rises many feet and comes down with a volume and momentum irresistible, will the final conflict come.

Hour after hour the people stand there on the bank, waiting to see the barrier go down. Unwillingly, as the time goes on, this one, that one, hurries away for a few minutes to prepare and devour a meal, back again, breathless, upon rumour of that preparatory trembling, that strange thrilling of the ice. The grinding and the crushing had begun again.

The long tension, the mysterious sounds, the sense of some great unbridled power at work, wrought on the steadiest nerves. People did the oddest things. Down at the lower end of the town a couple of miners, sick of the scurvy, had painfully clambered on their roof--whether to see the sights or be out of harm's way, no one knew.

The stingiest man in Minook, who had refused to help them in their cabin, carried them food on the roof. A woman made and took them the Yukon remedy for their disease. They sat in state in sight of all men, and drank spruce tea.

By one o'clock in the afternoon the river had risen eight feet, but the ice barrier still held. The people, worn out, went away to sleep. All that night the barrier held, though more ice came down and still the water rose. Twelve feet now. The ranks of shattered ice along the sh.o.r.e are claimed again as the flood widens and licks them in. The cheechalkos' cabins are flooded to the caves. Stout fellows in hip-boots take a boat and rescue the scurvy-stricken from the roof. And still the barrier held.

People began to go about their usual avocations. The empty Gold Nugget filled again. Men sat, as they had done all the winter, drinking, and reading the news of eight months before, out of soiled and tattered papers.

Late the following day everyone started up at a new sound. Again miners, Indians, and dogs lined the bank, saw the piled ice ma.s.ses tremble, heard a crashing and grinding as of mountains of gla.s.s hurled together, saw the barrier give way, and the frozen wastes move down on the bosom of the flood. Higher yet the water rose--the current ran eight miles an hour. And now the ice ma.s.ses were less enormous, more broken. Somewhere far below another jam. Another long bout of waiting.

Birds are singing everywhere. Between the white snowdrifts the Arctic moss shows green and yellow, white flowers star the hills.

Half the town is packed, ready to catch the boat at five minutes'

notice. With door barred and red curtain down, Maudie is doing up her gold-dust for the Colonel to take to Dawson. The man who had washed it out of a Birch Creek placer, and "blowed it in fur the girl"--up on the hillside he sleeps sound.

The two who had broken the record for winter travel on the Yukon, side by side in the sunshine, on a plank laid across two mackerel firkins, sit and watch the br.i.m.m.i.n.g flood. They speak of the Big Chimney men, picture them, packed and waiting for the Oklahoma, wonder what they have done with Kaviak, and what the three months have brought them.

"When we started out that day from the Big Chimney, we thought we'd be made if only we managed to reach Minook."

"Well, we've got what we came for--each got a claim."

"Oh, yes."

"A good claim, too."

"Guess so."

"Don't you know the gold's there?"

"Yes; but where are the miners? You and I don't propose to spend the next ten years in gettin' that gold out."

"No; but there are plenty who would if we gave 'em the chance. All we have to do is to give the right ones the chance."

The Colonel wore an air of reflection.

"The district will be opened up," the Boy went on cheerfully, "and we'll have people beggin' us to let 'em get out our gold, and givin' us the lion's share for the privilege."

"Do you altogether like the sound o' that?"

"I expect, like other people, I'll like the result."

"We ought to see some things clearer than other people. We had our lesson on the trail," said the Colonel quietly. "n.o.body ought ever to be able to fool us about the power and the value of the individual apart from society. Seems as if a.s.sociation did make value. In the absence of men and markets a pit full of gold is worth no more than a pit full of clay."

"Oh, yes; I admit, till the boats come in, we're poor men."

"n.o.body will stop here this summer--they'll all be racing on to Dawson."

"Dawson's 'It,' beyond a doubt."