Jack London 7 страница

and was beyond endurance.

 

Here at Selkirk he met the forerunners of the hungry exodus of

Dawson, and from there on they crept over the trail, a dismal

throng. "No grub!" was the song they sang. "No grub, and had to

go." "Everybody holding candles for a rise in the spring." "Flour

dollar `n a half a pound, and no sellers."

 

"Eggs?" one of them answered. "Dollar apiece, but there ain`t

none."

 

Rasmunsen made a rapid calculation. "Twelve thousand dollars," he

said aloud.

 

"Hey?" the man asked.

 

"Nothing," he answered, and MUSHED the dogs along.

 

When he arrived at Stewart River, seventy from Dawson, five of his

dogs were gone, and the remainder were falling in the traces. He,

also, was in the traces, hauling with what little strength was left

in him. Even then he was barely crawling along ten miles a day.

His cheek-bones and nose, frost-bitten again and again, were turned

bloody-black and hideous. The thumb, which was separated from the

fingers by the gee-pole, had likewise been nipped and gave him

great pain. The monstrous moccasin still incased his foot, and

strange pains were beginning to rack the leg. At Sixty Mile, the

last beans, which he had been rationing for some time, were

finished; yet he steadfastly refused to touch the eggs. He could

not reconcile his mind to the legitimacy of it, and staggered and

fell along the way to Indian River. Here a fresh-killed moose and

an open-handed old-timer gave him and his dogs new strength, and at

Ainslie`s he felt repaid for it all when a stampede, ripe from

Dawson in five hours, was sure he could get a dollar and a quarter

for every egg he possessed.

 

He came up the steep bank by the Dawson barracks with fluttering

heart and shaking knees. The dogs were so weak that he was forced

to rest them, and, waiting, he leaned limply against the gee-pole.

A man, an eminently decorous-looking man, came sauntering by in a

great bearskin coat. He glanced at Rasmunsen curiously, then

stopped and ran a speculative eye over the dogs and the three

lashed sleds.

 

"What you got?" he asked.

 

"Eggs," Rasmunsen answered huskily, hardly able to pitch his voice

above a whisper.

 

"Eggs! Whoopee! Whoopee!" He sprang up into the air, gyrated

madly, and finished with half-a-dozen war steps. "You don`t say--

all of `em?"

 

"All of `em."

 

"Say, you must be the Egg Man." He walked around and viewed

Rasmunsen from the other side. "Come, now, ain`t you the Egg Man?"

 

Rasmunsen didn`t know, but supposed he was, and the man sobered

down a bit.

 

"What d`ye expect to get for `em?" he asked cautiously.

 

Rasmunsen became audacious. "Dollar `n a half," he said.

 

"Done!" the man came back promptly. "Gimme a dozen."

 

"I--I mean a dollar `n a half apiece," Rasmunsen hesitatingly

explained.

 

"Sure. I heard you. Make it two dozen. Here`s the dust."

 

The man pulled out a healthy gold sack the size of a small sausage

and knocked it negligently against the gee-pole. Rasmunsen felt a

strange trembling in the pit of his stomach, a tickling of the

nostrils, and an almost overwhelming desire to sit down and cry.

But a curious, wide-eyed crowd was beginning to collect, and man

after man was calling out for eggs. He was without scales, but the

man with the bearskin coat fetched a pair and obligingly weighed in

the dust while Rasmunsen passed out the goods. Soon there was a

pushing and shoving and shouldering, and a great clamour.

Everybody wanted to buy and to be served first. And as the

excitement grew, Rasmunsen cooled down. This would never do.

There must be something behind the fact of their buying so eagerly.

It would be wiser if he rested first and sized up the market.

Perhaps eggs were worth two dollars apiece. Anyway, whenever he

wished to sell, he was sure of a dollar and a half. "Stop!" he

cried, when a couple of hundred had been sold. "No more now. I`m

played out. I`ve got to get a cabin, and then you can come and see

me."

 

A groan went up at this, but the man with the bearskin coat

approved. Twenty-four of the frozen eggs went rattling in his

capacious pockets, and he didn`t care whether the rest of the town

ate or not. Besides, he could see Rasmunsen was on his last legs.

 

"There`s a cabin right around the second corner from the Monte

Carlo," he told him--"the one with the sody-bottle window. It

ain`t mine, but I`ve got charge of it. Rents for ten a day and

cheap for the money. You move right in, and I`ll see you later.

Don`t forget the sody-bottle window."

 

"Tra-la-loo!" he called back a moment later. "I`m goin` up the

hill to eat eggs and dream of home."

 

On his way to the cabin, Rasmunsen recollected he was hungry and

bought a small supply of provisions at the N. A. T. & T. store--

also a beefsteak at the butcher shop and dried salmon for the dogs.

He found the cabin without difficulty, and left the dogs in the

harness while he started the fire and got the coffee under way.

 

A dollar `n a half apiece--one thousand dozen--eighteen thousand

dollars!" he kept muttering it to himself, over and over, as he

went about his work.

 

As he flopped the steak into the frying-pan the door opened. He

turned. It was the man with the bearskin coat. He seemed to come

in with determination, as though bound on some explicit errand, but

as he looked at Rasmunsen an expression of perplexity came into his

face.

 

"I say--now I say--" he began, then halted.

 

Rasmunsen wondered if he wanted the rent.

 

"I say, damn it, you know, them eggs is bad."

 

Rasmunsen staggered. He felt as though some one had struck him an

astounding blow between the eyes. The walls of the cabin reeled

and tilted up. He put out his hand to steady himself and rested it

on the stove. The sharp pain and the smell of the burning flesh

brought him back to himself.

 

"I see," he said slowly, fumbling in his pocket for the sack. "You

want your money back."

 

"It ain`t the money," the man said, "but hain`t you got any eggs--

good?"

 

Rasmunsen shook his head. "You`d better take the money."

 

But the man refused and backed away. "I`ll come back," he said,

"when you`ve taken stock, and get what`s comin`."

 

Rasmunsen rolled the chopping-block into the cabin and carried in

the eggs. He went about it quite calmly. He took up the hand-axe,

and, one by one, chopped the eggs in half. These halves he

examined carefully and let fall to the floor. At first he sampled

from the different cases, then deliberately emptied one case at a

time. The heap on the floor grew larger. The coffee boiled over

and the smoke of the burning beefsteak filled the cabin. He

chopped steadfastly and monotonously till the last case was

finished.

 

Somebody knocked at the door, knocked again, and let himself in.

 

"What a mess!" he remarked, as he paused and surveyed the scene.

 

The severed eggs were beginning to thaw in the heat of the stove,

and a miserable odour was growing stronger.

 

"Must a-happened on the steamer," he suggested.

 

Rasmunsen looked at him long and blankly.

 

"I`m Murray, Big Jim Murray, everybody knows me," the man

volunteered. "I`m just hearin` your eggs is rotten, and I`m

offerin` you two hundred for the batch. They ain`t good as salmon,

but still they`re fair scoffin`s for dogs."

 

Rasmunsen seemed turned to stone. He did not move. "You go to

hell," he said passionlessly.

 

"Now just consider. I pride myself it`s a decent price for a mess

like that, and it`s better `n nothin`. Two hundred. What you

say?"

 

"You go to hell," Rasmunsen repeated softly, "and get out of here."

 

Murray gaped with a great awe, then went out carefully, backward,

with his eyes fixed an the other`s face.

 

Rasmunsen followed him out and turned the dogs loose. He threw

them all the salmon he had bought, and coiled a sled-lashing up in

his hand. Then he re-entered the cabin and drew the latch in after

him. The smoke from the cindered steak made his eyes smart. He

stood on the bunk, passed the lashing over the ridge-pole, and

measured the swing-off with his eye. It did not seem to satisfy,

for he put the stool on the bunk and climbed upon the stool. He

drove a noose in the end of the lashing and slipped his head

through. The other end he made fast. Then he kicked the stool out

from under.

 

THE MARRIAGE OF LIT-LIT

 

When John Fox came into a country where whisky freezes solid and

may be used as a paper-weight for a large part of the year, he came

without the ideals and illusions that usually hamper the progress

of more delicately nurtured adventurers. Born and reared on the

frontier fringe of the United States, he took with him into Canada

a primitive cast of mind, an elemental simplicity and grip on

things, as it were, that insured him immediate success in his new

career. From a mere servant of the Hudson Bay Company, driving a

paddle with the voyageurs and carrying goods on his back across the

portages, he swiftly rose to a Factorship and took charge of a

trading post at Fort Angelus.

 

Here, because of his elemental simplicity, he took to himself a

native wife, and, by reason of the connubial bliss that followed,

he escaped the unrest and vain longings that curse the days of more

fastidious men, spoil their work, and conquer them in the end. He

lived contentedly, was at single purposes with the business he was

set there to do, and achieved a brilliant record in the service of

the Company. About this time his wife died, was claimed by her

people, and buried with savage circumstance in a tin trunk in the

top of a tree.

 

Two sons she had borne him, and when the Company promoted him, he

journeyed with them still deeper into the vastness of the North-

West Territory to a place called Sin Rock, where he took charge of

a new post in a more important fur field. Here he spent several

lonely and depressing months, eminently disgusted with the

unprepossessing appearance of the Indian maidens, and greatly

worried by his growing sons who stood in need of a mother`s care.

Then his eyes chanced upon Lit-lit.

 

"Lit-lit--well, she is Lit-lit," was the fashion in which he

despairingly described her to his chief clerk, Alexander McLean.

 

McLean was too fresh from his Scottish upbringing--"not dry behind

the ears yet," John Fox put it--to take to the marriage customs of

the country. Nevertheless he was not averse to the Factor`s

imperilling his own immortal soul, and, especially, feeling an

ominous attraction himself for Lit-lit, he was sombrely content to

clinch his own soul`s safety by seeing her married to the Factor.

 

Nor is it to be wondered that McLean`s austere Scotch soul stood in

danger of being thawed in the sunshine of Lit-lit`s eyes. She was

pretty, and slender, and willowy; without the massive face and

temperamental stolidity of the average squaw. "Lit-lit," so called

from her fashion, even as a child, of being fluttery, of darting

about from place to place like a butterfly, of being inconsequent

and merry, and of laughing as lightly as she darted and danced

about.

 

Lit-lit was the daughter of Snettishane, a prominent chief in the

tribe, by a half-breed mother, and to him the Factor fared casually

one summer day to open negotiations of marriage. He sat with the

chief in the smoke of a mosquito smudge before his lodge, and

together they talked about everything under the sun, or, at least,

everything that in the Northland is under the sun, with the sole

exception of marriage. John Fox had come particularly to talk of

marriage; Snettishane knew it, and John Fox knew he knew it,

wherefore the subject was religiously avoided. This is alleged to

be Indian subtlety. In reality it is transparent simplicity.

 

The hours slipped by, and Fox and Snettishane smoked interminable

pipes, looking each other in the eyes with a guilelessness superbly

histrionic. In the mid-afternoon McLean and his brother clerk,

McTavish, strolled past, innocently uninterested, on their way to

the river. When they strolled back again an hour later, Fox and

Snettishane had attained to a ceremonious discussion of the

condition and quality of the gunpowder and bacon which the Company

was offering in trade. Meanwhile Lit-lit, divining the Factor`s

errand, had crept in under the rear wall of the lodge, and through

the front flap was peeping out at the two logomachists by the

mosquito smudge. She was flushed and happy-eyed, proud that no

less a man than the Factor (who stood next to God in the Northland

hierarchy) had singled her out, femininely curious to see at close

range what manner of man he was. Sunglare on the ice, camp smoke,

and weather beat had burned his face to a copper-brown, so that her

father was as fair as he, while she was fairer. She was remotely

glad of this, and more immediately glad that he was large and

strong, though his great black beard half frightened her, it was so

strange.

 

Being very young, she was unversed in the ways of men. Seventeen

times she had seen the sun travel south and lose itself beyond the

sky-line, and seventeen times she had seen it travel back again and

ride the sky day and night till there was no night at all. And

through these years she had been cherished jealously by

Snettishane, who stood between her and all suitors, listening

disdainfully to the young hunters as they bid for her hand, and

turning them away as though she were beyond price. Snettishane was

mercenary. Lit-lit was to him an investment. She represented so

much capital, from which he expected to receive, not a certain

definite interest, but an incalculable interest.

 

And having thus been reared in a manner as near to that of the

nunnery as tribal conditions would permit, it was with a great and

maidenly anxiety that she peeped out at the man who had surely come

for her, at the husband who was to teach her all that was yet

unlearned of life, at the masterful being whose word was to be her

law, and who was to mete and bound her actions and comportment for

the rest of her days.

 

But, peeping through the front flap of the lodge, flushed and

thrilling at the strange destiny reaching out for her, she grew

disappointed as the day wore along, and the Factor and her father

still talked pompously of matters concerning other things and not

pertaining to marriage things at all. As the sun sank lower and

lower toward the north and midnight approached, the Factor began

making unmistakable preparations for departure. As he turned to

stride away Lit-lit`s heart sank; but it rose again as he halted,

half turning on one heel.

 

"Oh, by the way, Snettishane," he said, "I want a squaw to wash for

me and mend my clothes."

 

Snettishane grunted and suggested Wanidani, who was an old woman

and toothless.

 

"No, no," interposed the Factor. "What I want is a wife. I`ve

been kind of thinking about it, and the thought just struck me that

you might know of some one that would suit."

 

Snettishane looked interested, whereupon the Factor retraced his

steps, casually and carelessly to linger and discuss this new and

incidental topic.

 

"Kattou?" suggested Snettishane.

 

"She has but one eye," objected the Factor.

 

"Laska?"

 

"Her knees be wide apart when she stands upright. Kips, your

biggest dog, can leap between her knees when she stands upright."

 

"Senatee?" went on the imperturbable Snettishane.

 

But John Fox feigned anger, crying: "What foolishness is this? Am

I old, that thou shouldst mate me with old women? Am I toothless?

lame of leg? blind of eye? Or am I poor that no bright-eyed maiden

may look with favour upon me? Behold! I am the Factor, both rich

and great, a power in the land, whose speech makes men tremble and

is obeyed!"

 

Snettishane was inwardly pleased, though his sphinx-like visage

never relaxed. He was drawing the Factor, and making him break

ground. Being a creature so elemental as to have room for but one

idea at a time, Snettishane could pursue that one idea a greater

distance than could John Fox. For John Fox, elemental as he was,

was still complex enough to entertain several glimmering ideas at a

time, which debarred him from pursuing the one as single-heartedly

or as far as did the chief.

 

Snettishane calmly continued calling the roster of eligible

maidens, which, name by name, as fast as uttered, were stamped

ineligible by John Fox, with specified objections appended. Again

he gave it up and started to return to the Fort. Snettishane

watched him go, making no effort to stop him, but seeing him, in

the end, stop himself.

 

"Come to think of it," the Factor remarked, "we both of us forgot

Lit-lit. Now I wonder if she`ll suit me?"

 

Snettishane met the suggestion with a mirthless face, behind the

mask of which his soul grinned wide. It was a distinct victory.

Had the Factor gone but one step farther, perforce Snettishane

would himself have mentioned the name of Lit-lit, but--the Factor

had not gone that one step farther.

 

The chief was non-committal concerning Lit-lit`s suitability, till

he drove the white man into taking the next step in order of

procedure.

 

"Well," the Factor meditated aloud, "the only way to find out is to

make a try of it." He raised his voice. "So I will give for Lit-

lit ten blankets and three pounds of tobacco which is good

tobacco."

 

Snettishane replied with a gesture which seemed to say that all the

blankets and tobacco in all the world could not compensate him for

the loss of Lit-lit and her manifold virtues. When pressed by the

Factor to set a price, he coolly placed it at five hundred

blankets, ten guns, fifty pounds of tobacco, twenty scarlet cloths,

ten bottles of rum, a music-box, and lastly the good-will and best

offices of the Factor, with a place by his fire.

 

The Factor apparently suffered a stroke of apoplexy, which stroke

was successful in reducing the blankets to two hundred and in

cutting out the place by the fire--an unheard-of condition in the

marriages of white men with the daughters of the soil. In the end,

after three hours more of chaffering, they came to an agreement.

For Lit-lit Snettishane was to receive one hundred blankets, five

pounds of tobacco, three guns, and a bottle of rum, goodwill and

best offices included, which according to John Fox, was ten

blankets and a gun more than she was worth. And as he went home

through the wee sma` hours, the three-o`clock sun blazing in the

due north-east, he was unpleasantly aware that Snettishane had

bested him over the bargain.

 

Snettishane, tired and victorious, sought his bed, and discovered

Lit-lit before she could escape from the lodge.

 

He grunted knowingly: "Thou hast seen. Thou has heard. Wherefore

it be plain to thee thy father`s very great wisdom and

understanding. I have made for thee a great match. Heed my words

and walk in the way of my words, go when I say go, come when I bid

thee come, and we shall grow fat with the wealth of this big white

man who is a fool according to his bigness."

 

The next day no trading was done at the store. The Factor opened

whisky before breakfast, to the delight of McLean and McTavish,

gave his dogs double rations, and wore his best moccasins. Outside

the Fort preparations were under way for a POTLATCH. Potlatch

means "a giving," and John Fox`s intention was to signalize his

marriage with Lit-lit by a potlatch as generous as she was good-

looking. In the afternoon the whole tribe gathered to the feast.

Men, women, children, and dogs gorged to repletion, nor was there

one person, even among the chance visitors and stray hunters from

other tribes, who failed to receive some token of the bridegroom`s

largess.

 

Lit-lit, tearfully shy and frightened, was bedecked by her bearded

husband with a new calico dress, splendidly beaded moccasins, a

gorgeous silk handkerchief over her raven hair, a purple scarf

about her throat, brass ear-rings and finger-rings, and a whole

pint of pinchbeck jewellery, including a Waterbury watch.

Snettishane could scarce contain himself at the spectacle, but

watching his chance drew her aside from the feast.

 

"Not this night, nor the next night," he began ponderously, "but in

the nights to come, when I shall call like a raven by the river

bank, it is for thee to rise up from thy big husband, who is a

fool, and come to me.

 

"Nay, nay," he went on hastily, at sight of the dismay in her face

at turning her back upon her wonderful new life. "For no sooner

shall this happen than thy big husband, who is a fool, will come

wailing to my lodge. Then it is for thee to wail likewise,

claiming that this thing is not well, and that the other thing thou

dost not like, and that to be the wife of the Factor is more than

thou didst bargain for, only wilt thou be content with more

blankets, and more tobacco, and more wealth of various sorts for

thy poor old father, Snettishane. Remember well, when I call in

the night, like a raven, from the river bank."

 

Lit-lit nodded; for to disobey her father was a peril she knew

well; and, furthermore, it was a little thing he asked, a short

separation from the Factor, who would know only greater gladness at

having her back. She returned to the feast, and, midnight being

well at hand, the Factor sought her out and led her away to the

Fort amid joking and outcry, in which the squaws were especially

conspicuous.

 

Lit-lit quickly found that married life with the head-man of a fort

was even better than she had dreamed. No longer did she have to

fetch wood and water and wait hand and foot upon cantankerous

menfolk. For the first time in her life she could lie abed till

breakfast was on the table. And what a bed!--clean and soft, and

comfortable as no bed she had ever known. And such food! Flour,

cooked into biscuits, hot-cakes and bread, three times a day and

every day, and all one wanted! Such prodigality was hardly

believable.

 

To add to her contentment, the Factor was cunningly kind. He had

buried one wife, and he knew how to drive with a slack rein that

went firm only on occasion, and then went very firm. "Lit-lit is

boss of this place," he announced significantly at the table the

morning after the wedding. "What she says goes. Understand?" And

McLean and McTavish understood. Also, they knew that the Factor

had a heavy hand.

 

But Lit-lit did not take advantage. Taking a leaf from the book of

her husband, she at once assumed charge of his own growing sons,

giving them added comforts and a measure of freedom like to that

which he gave her. The two sons were loud in the praise of their

new mother; McLean and McTavish lifted their voices; and the Factor

bragged of the joys of matrimony till the story of her good

behaviour and her husband`s satisfaction became the property of all

the dwellers in the Sin Rock district.

 

Whereupon Snettishane, with visions of his incalculable interest

keeping him awake of nights, thought it time to bestir himself. On

the tenth night of her wedded life Lit-lit was awakened by the

croaking of a raven, and she knew that Snettishane was waiting for

her by the river bank. In her great happiness she had forgotten

her pact, and now it came back to her with behind it all the

childish terror of her father. For a time she lay in fear and

trembling, loath to go, afraid to stay. But in the end the Factor

won the silent victory, and his kindness plus his great muscles and

square jaw, nerved her to disregard Snettishane`s call.

 

But in the morning she arose very much afraid, and went about her

duties in momentary fear of her father`s coming. As the day wore

along, however, she began to recover her spirits. John Fox,

soundly berating McLean and McTavish for some petty dereliction of

duty, helped her to pluck up courage. She tried not to let him go

out of her sight, and when she followed him into the huge cache and

saw him twirling and tossing great bales around as though they were

feather pillows, she felt strengthened in her disobedience to her

father. Also (it was her first visit to the warehouse, and Sin

Rock was the chief distributing point to several chains of lesser

posts), she was astounded at the endlessness of the wealth there

stored away.

 

This sight and the picture in her mind`s eye of the bare lodge of

Snettishane, put all doubts at rest. Yet she capped her conviction

by a brief word with one of her step-sons. "White daddy good?" was

what she asked, and the boy answered that his father was the best

man he had ever known. That night the raven croaked again. On the

night following the croaking was more persistent. It awoke the