The Winds of Chance Part 38

Now Rouletta had learned much about this big woodsman's peculiarities; among other things she had discovered that he took extravagant delight in his so-called "s'prises." They were many and varied, now a t.i.tbit to tempt her palate, or again a native doll which needed a complete outfit of moccasins, cap, and parka, and which he insisted he had met on the trail, very numb from the cold; again a pair of rabbit-fur sleeping-socks for herself. That crude dresser, which he had completed without her suspecting him, was another. Always he was making or doing something to amuse or to occupy her attention, and, although his gifts were poor, sometimes absurdly simple, he had, nevertheless, the power of investing them with importance. Being vitally interested in all things, big or little, he stimulated others to share in that interest. Life was an enjoyable game, inanimate objects talked to him, every enterprise was tinted imaginary colors, and he delighted in pretense--welcome traits to Rouletta, whose childhood had been starved.

"What is my new s'prise?" she queried. But, without answering, 'Poleon rose and left the tent; he was back a moment later with a bundle in his hands. This bundle he unrolled, displaying a fine fur parka, the hood of which was fringed with a deep fox-tail facing, the skirt and sleeves of an elaborate checker-board pattern of multicolored skins. Gay squirrel-tail streamers depended from its shoulders as further ornamentation. Altogether it was a splendid specimen of Indian needlework and Rouletta gasped with delight.

"How WONDERFUL!" she cried. "Is--it for me?" The pilot nodded.

"Sure t'ing. De purtiest one ever I see. But look!" He called her attention to a beaver cap, a pair of beaded moose-hide mittens, and a pair of small fur boots that went with the larger garments-- altogether a complete outfit for winter travel. "I buy him from dose hinjun hunter. Put him on, queeck."

Rouletta slipped into the parka; she donned cap and mittens; and 'Poleon was in raptures.

"By golly! Dat's beautiful!" he declared. "Now you' fix for sure.

No matter how col' she come, your li'l toes goin' be warm, you don' froze your nose--"

"You're good and true--and--" Rouletta faltered, then added, fervently, "I shall always thank G.o.d for knowing you."

Now above all things Doret dreaded his "sister's" serious moods or any expression of her grat.i.tude; he waved her words aside with an airy gesture and began in a hearty tone:

"We don't stop dis place no longer. To-morrow we start for Dyea.

Wat you t'ink of dat, eh? Pretty queeck you be home." When his hearer displayed no great animation at the prospect he exclaimed, in perplexity: "You fonny gal. Ain't you care?"

"I have no home," she gravely told him.

"But your people--dey goin' be glad for see you?"

"I have no people, either. You see, we lived a queer life, father and I. I was all he had, outside of poor Danny Royal, and he--was all I had. Home was where we happened to be. He sold everything to come North; he cut all ties and risked everything on a single throw. That was his way, our way--all or nothing. I've been thinking lately; I've asked myself what he would have wished me to do, and--I've made up my mind."

"So?" 'Poleon was puzzled.

"I'm not going 'outside.' I'm going to Dawson. 'Be a thoroughbred.

Don't weaken.' That's what he always said. Sam Kirby followed the frontier and he made his money there. Well, I'm his girl, his blood is in me. I'm going through."

'Poleon's brow was furrowed in deep thought; it cleared slowly.

"Dawson she's bad city, but you're brave li'l gal and--badness is here," he tapped his chest with a huge forefinger. "So long de heart she's pure, not'in' goin' touch you." He nodded in better agreement with Rouletta's decision. "Mebbe so you're right. For me, I'm glad, very glad, for I t'ink my bird is goin' spread her wing' an' fly away south lak all de res', but now--bien! I'm satisfy! We go to Dawson."

"Your work is here," the girl protested. "I can't take you away from it."

"Fonny t'ing 'bout work," 'Poleon said, with a grin. "Plenty tam I try to run away from him, but always he catch up wit' me."

"You're a poor man. I can't let you sacrifice too much."

"Poor?" The pilot opened his eyes in amazement. "Mon Dieu! I'm reech feller. Anybody is reech so long he's well an' happy. Mebbe I sell my claim."

"Your claim? Have you a claim? At Dawson?"

The man nodded indifferently. "I stake him las' winter. He's pretty claim to look at--plenty snow, nice tree for cabin, dry wood, everyt'ing but gold. Mebbe I sell him for beeg price."

"Why doesn't it have any gold?" Rouletta was genuinely curious.

"Why? Biccause I stake him," 'Poleon laughed heartily. "Dose claim I stake dey never has so much gold you can see wit' your eye. Not one, an' I stake t'ousan'. Me, I hear dose man talk 'bout million dollar; I'm drinkin' heavy so I t'ink I be millionaire, too. But bimeby I'm sober ag'in an' my money she's gone. I'm res'less feller; I don' stop long no place."

"What makes you think it's a poor claim?"

'Poleon shrugged. "All my claim is poor. Me, I'm onlucky. Mebbe so I don' care enough for bein' reech. W'at I'll do wit' pile of money, eh? Drink him up? Gamble? Dat's fun for while. Every spring I sell my fur an' have beeg tam; two weeks I'm drunk, but--dat's plenty. Any feller dat's drunk more 'n two weeks is b.u.m. No!" He shook his head and exposed his white teeth in a flashing smile.

"I'm cut off for poor man. I mak' beeg soccess of dat."

Rouletta studied the speaker silently for a moment. "I know." She nodded her complete understanding of his type. "Well, I'm not going to let you do that any more."

"I don' hurt n.o.body," he protested. "I sing plenty song an' fight li'l bit. A man mus' got some fun." "Won't you promise--for my sake?"

'Poleon gave in after some hesitation; reluctantly he agreed. "Eh bien! Mos' anyt'ing I promise for you, ma soeur. But--she's goin'

be mighty poor trip for me. S'pose mebbe I forget dose promise?"

"I sha'n't let you. I've seen too much drinking--gambling. I'll hold you to your pledge."

Again the man smiled; there was a light of warm affection in his eyes. "By Gar! It's nice t'ing to have sister w'at care for you.

When we goin' start for Dawson, eh?"

"To-morrow."

CHAPTER XIX

Every new and prosperous mining-camp has an Arabian Nights atmosphere, characteristic, peculiar, indescribable. Especially noticeable was this atmosphere in the early Arctic camps, made up as they were of men who knew little about mining, rather less about frontier ways, and next to nothing about the country in which they found themselves. These men had built fabulous hopes, they dwelt in illusion, they put faith in the thinnest of shadows.

Now the most practical miner is not a conservative person; he is erratic, credulous, and extravagant; reasonless optimism is at once his blessing and his curse. Nevertheless, the "old-timers" of the Yukon were moderate indeed as compared with the adventurous holiday-seekers who swarmed in upon their tracks. Being none too well balanced themselves, it was only natural that the exuberance of these new arrivals should prove infectious and that a sort of general auto-intoxication should result. That is precisely what happened at Dawson. Men lost all caution, all common sense; they lived in a land of rosy imaginings; hard-bought lessons of experience were forgotten; reality disappeared; fancy took wing and left fact behind; expectations were capitalized and no exaggeration was too wild to challenge acceptance. It became a City of Frenzy.

It was all very fine for an ardent youth like Pierce Phillips; it set him ablaze, stirring a fever in his blood. Having won thus far, he made the natural mistake of believing that the race was his; so he wasted little time in the town, but very soon took to the hills, there to make his fortune and be done with it.

Here came his awakening. Away from the delirium of the camp, in contact with cold reality, he began to learn something of the serious, practical business of gold-mining. Before he had been long on the creeks he found that it was no child's play to wrest treasure from the frozen bosom of a hostile wilderness, and that, no matter how rich or how plentiful the treasure, Mother Earth guarded her secrets jealously. He began to realize that the obstacles he had so blithely overcome in getting to the Klondike were as nothing to those in the way of his further success. Of a sudden his triumphal progress slowed down and he came to a pause; he began to mark time.

There was work in plenty to be had, but, like most of the new- comers, he was not satisfied to take fixed wages. They seemed paltry indeed compared with the drunken figures that were on every lip. In the presence of the uncertain he could not content himself with a sure thing. Nevertheless, he was soon forced to the necessity of resorting to it, for through the fog of his misapprehensions, beneath the obscurity of his ignorance, he began to discover the true outline of things and to understand that his ideas were impractical.

To begin with, every foot of ground in the proven districts was taken, and even when he pushed out far afield he found that the whole country was plastered with locations: rivers, creeks and tributaries, benches and hillsides, had been staked. For many miles in every direction blazed trees and pencil notices greeted him--he found them in places where it seemed no foot but his had ever trod. In Dawson the Gold Commissioner's office was besieged by daily crowds of claimants; it would have taken years of work on the part of a hundred thousand men to even prospect the ground already recorded on the books.

Back and forth Phillips came and went, he made trips with pack and hand-sled, he slept out in spruce forests, in prospectors' tents, in new cabins the sweaty green logs of which were still dripping, and when he had finished he was poorer by a good many dollars and richer only in the possession of a few recorder's receipts, the value of which he had already begun to doubt.

Disappointed he was, but not discouraged. It was all too new and exciting for that. Every visit to Bonanza or El Dorado inspired him. It would have inspired a wooden man. For miles those valleys were smoky from the sinking fires, and their clean white carpets were spotted with piles of raw red dirt. By day they echoed to blows of axes, the crash of falling trees, the plaint of windla.s.ses, the cries of freighters; by night they became vast caldrons filled with flickering fires; tremendous vats, the vapors from which were illuminated by hidden furnaces. One would have thought that here gold was being made, not sought--that this was a region of volcanic hot springs where every fissure and vent-hole spouted steam. It was a strange, a marvelous sight; it stirred the imagination to know that underfoot, locked in the flinty depths of the frozen gravel, was wealth unmeasured and unearned, rich h.o.a.rds of yellow gold that yesterday were ownerless.

A month of stampeding dulled the keen edge of Pierce's enthusiasm, so he took a breathing-spell in which to get his bearings.

The Yukon had closed and the human flotsam and jetsam it had borne thither was settling. Pierce could feel a metamorphic agency at work in the town; already new habits of life were crystallizing among its citizens; and beneath its whirlpool surface new forms were in the making. It alarmed him to realize that as yet his own affairs were in suspense, and he argued, with all the hot impatience of youth, that it was high time he came to rest.

Opportunities were on every side of him, but he knew not where or how to lay hold of them to his best advantage. More than ever he felt himself to be the toy of circ.u.mstance, more than ever he feared the fallibility of his judgment and the consequences of a mistake. He was in a mood both dissatisfied and irresolute when he encountered his two trail friends, Tom Linton and Jerry Quirk.

Pierce had seen them last at Linderman, engaged in prosecuting a stampeders' divorce; he was surprised to find them reunited.

"I never dreamed you'd get through," he told them, when greetings had pa.s.sed. "Did you come in one boat or in two?"

Jerry grinned. "We sawed up that outlaw four times. We'd have split her end to end finally, only we run out of pitch to cork her up."