Jack London 5 страница

bank to the steamer landing, where only water gurgled as the eddy

filled and emptied, and an occasional salmon leapt flashing into

the sun.

 

They sat down in the shade in front of the store and talked with

the consumptive storekeeper, whose liability to hemorrhage

accounted for his presence. Bill and Kink told him how they

intended loafing in their cabin and resting up after the hard

summer`s work. They told him, with a certain insistence, that was

half appeal for belief, half challenge for contradiction, how much

they were going to enjoy their idleness. But the storekeeper was

uninterested. He switched the conversation back to the strike on

Klondike, and they could not keep him away from it. He could think

of nothing else, talk of nothing else, till Hootchinoo Bill rose up

in anger and disgust.

 

"Gosh darn Dawson, say I!" he cried.

 

"Same here," said Kink Mitchell, with a brightening face. "One`d

think something was doin` up there, `stead of bein` a mere stampede

of greenhorns an` tinhorns."

 

But a boat came into view from downstream. It was long and slim.

It hugged the bank closely, and its three occupants, standing

upright, propelled it against the stiff current by means of long

poles.

 

"Circle City outfit," said the storekeeper. "I was lookin` for `em

along by afternoon. Forty Mile had the start of them by a hundred

and seventy miles. But gee! they ain`t losin` any time!"

 

`We`ll just sit here quiet-like and watch `em string by," Bill said

complacently.

 

As he spoke, another boat appeared in sight, followed after a brief

interval by two others. By this time the first boat was abreast of

the men on the bank. Its occupants did not cease poling while

greetings were exchanged, and, though its progress was slow, a

half-hour saw it out of sight up river.

 

Still they came from below, boat after boat, in endless procession.

The uneasiness of Bill and Kink increased. They stole speculative,

tentative glances at each other, and when their eyes met looked

away in embarrassment. Finally, however, their eyes met and

neither looked away.

 

Kink opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him and his mouth

remained open while he continued to gaze at his partner.

 

"Just what I was thinken`, Kink," said Bill.

 

They grinned sheepishly at each other, and by tacit consent started

to walk away. Their pace quickened, and by the time they arrived

at their cabin they were on the run.

 

"Can`t lose no time with all that multitude a-rushin` by," Kink

spluttered, as he jabbed the sour-dough can into the beanpot with

one hand and with the other gathered in the frying-pan and coffee-

pot.

 

"Should say not," gasped Bill, his head and shoulders buried in a

clothes-sack wherein were stored winter socks and underwear. "I

say, Kink, don`t forget the saleratus on the corner shelf back of

the stove."

 

Half-an-hour later they were launching the canoe and loading up,

while the storekeeper made jocular remarks about poor, weak mortals

and the contagiousness of "stampedin` fever." But when Bill and

Kink thrust their long poles to bottom and started the canoe

against the current, he called after them:-

 

"Well, so-long and good luck! And don`t forget to blaze a stake or

two for me!"

 

They nodded their heads vigorously and felt sorry for the poor

wretch who remained perforce behind.

 

* * * * *

 

Kink and Bill were sweating hard. According to the revised

Northland Scripture, the stampede is to the swift, the blazing of

stakes to the strong, and the Crown in royalties, gathers to itself

the fulness thereof. Kink and Bill were both swift and strong.

They took the soggy trail at a long, swinging gait that broke the

hearts of a couple of tender-feet who tried to keep up with them.

Behind, strung out between them and Dawson (where the boats were

discarded and land travel began), was the vanguard of the Circle

City outfit. In the race from Forty Mile the partners had passed

every boat, winning from the leading boat by a length in the Dawson

eddy, and leaving its occupants sadly behind the moment their feet

struck the trail.

 

"Huh! couldn`t see us for smoke," Hootchinoo Bill chuckled,

flirting the stinging sweat from his brow and glancing swiftly back

along the way they had come.

 

Three men emerged from where the trail broke through the trees.

Two followed close at their heels, and then a man and a woman shot

into view.

 

"Come on, you Kink! Hit her up! Hit her up!"

 

Bill quickened his pace. Mitchell glanced back in more leisurely

fashion.

 

"I declare if they ain`t lopin`!"

 

"And here`s one that`s loped himself out," said Bill, pointing to

the side of the trail.

 

A man was lying on his back panting in the culminating stages of

violent exhaustion. His face was ghastly, his eyes bloodshot and

glazed, for all the world like a dying man.

 

"CHECHAQUO!" Kink Mitchell grunted, and it was the grunt of the old

"sour dough" for the green-horn, for the man who outfitted with

"self-risin`" flour and used baking-powder in his biscuits.

 

The partners, true to the old-timer custom, had intended to stake

down-stream from the strike, but when they saw claim 81 BELOW

blazed on a tree,--which meant fully eight miles below Discovery,--

they changed their minds. The eight miles were covered in less

than two hours. It was a killing pace, over so rough trail, and

they passed scores of exhausted men that had fallen by the wayside.

 

At Discovery little was to be learned of the upper creek.

Cormack`s Indian brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, had a hazy notion

that the creek was staked as high as the 30`s; but when Kink and

Bill looked at the corner-stakes of 79 ABOVE, they threw their

stampeding packs off their backs and sat down to smoke. All their

efforts had been vain. Bonanza was staked from mouth to source,--

"out of sight and across the next divide." Bill complained that

night as they fried their bacon and boiled their coffee over

Cormack`s fire at Discovery.

 

"Try that pup," Carmack suggested next morning.

 

"That pup" was a broad creek that flowed into Bonanza at 7 ABOVE.

The partners received his advice with the magnificent contempt of

the sour dough for a squaw-man, and, instead, spent the day on

Adam`s Creek, another and more likely-looking tributary of Bonanza.

But it was the old story over again--staked to the sky-line.

 

For threes days Carmack repeated his advice, and for three days

they received it contemptuously. But on the fourth day, there

being nowhere else to go, they went up "that pup." They knew that

it was practically unstaked, but they had no intention of staking.

The trip was made more for the purpose of giving vent to their ill-

humour than for anything else. They had become quite cynical,

sceptical. They jeered and scoffed at everything, and insulted

every chechaquo they met along the way.

 

At No. 23 the stakes ceased. The remainder of the creek was open

for location.

 

"Moose pasture," sneered Kink Mitchell.

 

But Bill gravely paced off five hundred feet up the creek and

blazed the corner-stakes. He had picked up the bottom of a candle-

box, and on the smooth side he wrote the notice for his centre-

stake:-

 

 

THIS MOOSE PASTURE IS RESERVED FOR THE

SWEDES AND CHECHAQUOS.

- BILL RADER.

 

 

Kink read it over with approval, saying:-

 

"As them`s my sentiments, I reckon I might as well subscribe."

 

So the name of Charles Mitchell was added to the notice; and many

an old sour dough`s face relaxed that day at sight of the handiwork

of a kindred spirit.

 

"How`s the pup?" Carmack inquired when they strolled back into

camp.

 

"To hell with pups!" was Hootchinoo Bill`s reply. "Me and Kink`s

goin` a-lookin` for Too Much Gold when we get rested up."

 

Too Much Gold was the fabled creek of which all sour doughs

dreamed, whereof it was said the gold was so thick that, in order

to wash it, gravel must first be shovelled into the sluice-boxes.

But the several days` rest, preliminary to the quest for Too Much

Gold, brought a slight change in their plan, inasmuch as it brought

one Ans Handerson, a Swede.

 

Ans Handerson had been working for wages all summer at Miller Creek

over on the Sixty Mile, and, the summer done, had strayed up

Bonanza like many another waif helplessly adrift on the gold tides

that swept willy-nilly across the land. He was tall and lanky.

His arms were long, like prehistoric man`s, and his hands were like

soup-plates, twisted and gnarled, and big-knuckled from toil. He

was slow of utterance and movement, and his eyes, pale blue as his

hair was pale yellow, seemed filled with an immortal dreaming, the

stuff of which no man knew, and himself least of all. Perhaps this

appearance of immortal dreaming was due to a supreme and vacuous

innocence. At any rate, this was the valuation men of ordinary

clay put upon him, and there was nothing extraordinary about the

composition of Hootchinoo Bill and Kink Mitchell.

 

The partners had spent a day of visiting and gossip, and in the

evening met in the temporary quarters of the Monte Carlo--a large

tent were stampeders rested their weary bones and bad whisky sold

at a dollar a drink. Since the only money in circulation was dust,

and since the house took the "down-weight" on the scales, a drink

cost something more than a dollar. Bill and Kink were not

drinking, principally for the reason that their one and common sack

was not strong enough to stand many excursions to the scales.

 

"Say, Bill, I`ve got a chechaquo on the string for a sack of

flour," Mitchell announced jubilantly.

 

Bill looked interested and pleased. Grub as scarce, and they were

not over-plentifully supplied for the quest after Too Much Gold.

 

"Flour`s worth a dollar a pound," he answered. "How like do you

calculate to get your finger on it?"

 

"Trade `m a half-interest in that claim of ourn," Kink answered.

 

"What claim?" Bill was surprised. Then he remembered the

reservation he had staked off for the Swedes, and said, "Oh!"

 

"I wouldn`t be so clost about it, though," he added. "Give `m the

whole thing while you`re about it, in a right free-handed way."

 

Bill shook his head. "If I did, he`d get clean scairt and prance

off. I`m lettin` on as how the ground is believed to be valuable,

an` that we`re lettin` go half just because we`re monstrous short

on grub. After the dicker we can make him a present of the whole

shebang."

 

"If somebody ain`t disregarded our notice," Bill objected, though

he was plainly pleased at the prospect of exchanging the claim for

a sack of flour.

 

"She ain`t jumped," Kink assured him. "It`s No. 24, and it stands.

The chechaquos took it serious, and they begun stakin` where you

left off. Staked clean over the divide, too. I was gassin` with

one of them which has just got in with cramps in his legs."

 

It was then, and for the first time, that they heard the slow and

groping utterance of Ans Handerson.

 

"Ay like the looks," he was saying to the bar-keeper. "Ay tank Ay

gat a claim."

 

The partners winked at each other, and a few minutes later a

surprised and grateful Swede was drinking bad whisky with two hard-

hearted strangers. But he was as hard-headed as they were hard-

hearted. The sack made frequent journeys to the scales, followed

solicitously each time by Kink Mitchell`s eyes, and still Ans

Handerson did not loosen up. In his pale blue eyes, as in summer

seas, immortal dreams swam up and burned, but the swimming and the

burning were due to the tales of gold and prospect pans he heard,

rather than to the whisky he slid so easily down his throat.

 

The partners were in despair, though they appeared boisterous and

jovial of speech and action.

 

"Don`t mind me, my friend," Hootchinoo Bill hiccoughed, his hand

upon Ans Handerson`s shoulder. "Have another drink. We`re just

celebratin` Kink`s birthday here. This is my pardner, Kink, Kink

Mitchell. An` what might your name be?"

 

This learned, his hand descended resoundingly on Kink`s back, and

Kink simulated clumsy self-consciousness in that he was for the

time being the centre of the rejoicing, while Ans Handerson looked

pleased and asked them to have a drink with him. It was the first

and last time he treated, until the play changed and his canny soul

was roused to unwonted prodigality. But he paid for the liquor

from a fairly healthy-looking sack. "Not less `n eight hundred in

it," calculated the lynx-eyed Kink; and on the strength of it he

took the first opportunity of a privy conversation with Bidwell,

proprietor of the bad whisky and the tent.

 

"Here`s my sack, Bidwell," Kink said, with the intimacy and surety

of one old-timer to another. "Just weigh fifty dollars into it for

a day or so more or less, and we`ll be yours truly, Bill an` me."

 

Thereafter the journeys of the sack to the scales were more

frequent, and the celebration of Kink`s natal day waxed hilarious.

He even essayed to sing the old-timer`s classic, "The Juice of the

Forbidden Fruit," but broke down and drowned his embarrassment in

another round of drinks. Even Bidwell honoured him with a round or

two on the house; and he and Bill were decently drunk by the time

Ans Handerson`s eyelids began to droop and his tongue gave promise

of loosening.

 

Bill grew affectionate, then confidential. He told his troubles

and hard luck to the bar-keeper and the world in general, and to

Ans Handerson in particular. He required no histrionic powers to

act the part. The bad whisky attended to that. He worked himself

into a great sorrow for himself and Bill, and his tears were

sincere when he told how he and his partner were thinking of

selling a half-interest in good ground just because they were short

of grub. Even Kink listened and believed.

 

Ans Handerson`s eyes were shining unholily as he asked, "How much

you tank you take?"

 

Bill and Kink did not hear him, and he was compelled to repeat his

query. They appeared reluctant. He grew keener. And he swayed

back and forward, holding on to the bar and listened with all his

ears while they conferred together on one side, and wrangled as to

whether they should or not, and disagreed in stage whispers over

the price they should set.

 

"Two hundred and--hic!--fifty," Bill finally announced, "but we

reckon as we won`t sell."

 

"Which is monstrous wise if I might chip in my little say,"

seconded Bidwell.

 

"Yes, indeedy," added Kink. "We ain`t in no charity business a-

disgorgin` free an` generous to Swedes an` white men."

 

"Ay tank we haf another drink," hiccoughed Ans Handerson, craftily

changing the subject against a more propitious time.

 

And thereafter, to bring about that propitious time, his own sack

began to see-saw between his hip pocket and the scales. Bill and

Kink were coy, but they finally yielded to his blandishments.

Whereupon he grew shy and drew Bidwell to one side. He staggered

exceedingly, and held on to Bidwell for support as he asked -

 

"They ban all right, them men, you tank so?"

 

"Sure," Bidwell answered heartily. "Known `em for years. Old sour

doughs. When they sell a claim, they sell a claim. They ain`t no

air-dealers."

 

"Ay tank Ay buy," Ans Handerson announced, tottering back to the

two men.

 

But by now he was dreaming deeply, and he proclaimed he would have

the whole claim or nothing. This was the cause of great pain to

Hootchinoo Bill. He orated grandly against the "hawgishness" of

chechaquos and Swedes, albeit he dozed between periods, his voice

dying away to a gurgle, and his head sinking forward on his breast.

But whenever roused by a nudge from Kink or Bidwell, he never

failed to explode another volley of abuse and insult.

 

Ans Handerson was calm under it all. Each insult added to the

value of the claim. Such unamiable reluctance to sell advertised

but one thing to him, and he was aware of a great relief when

Hootchinoo Bill sank snoring to the floor, and he was free to turn

his attention to his less intractable partner.

 

Kink Mitchell was persuadable, though a poor mathematician. He

wept dolefully, but was willing to sell a half-interest for two

hundred and fifty dollars or the whole claim for seven hundred and

fifty. Ans Handerson and Bidwell laboured to clear away his

erroneous ideas concerning fractions, but their labour was vain.

He spilled tears and regrets all over the bar and on their

shoulders, which tears, however, did not wash away his opinion,

that if one half was worth two hundred and fifty, two halves were

worth three times as much.

 

In the end,--and even Bidwell retained no more than hazy

recollections of how the night terminated,--a bill of sale was

drawn up, wherein Bill Rader and Charles Mitchell yielded up all

right and title to the claim known as 24 ELDORADO, the same being

the name the creek had received from some optimistic chechaquo.

 

When Kink had signed, it took the united efforts of the three to

arouse Bill. Pen in hand, he swayed long over the document; and,

each time he rocked back and forth, in Ans Handerson`s eyes flashed

and faded a wondrous golden vision. When the precious signature

was at last appended and the dust paid over, he breathed a great

sigh, and sank to sleep under a table, where he dreamed immortally

until morning.

 

But the day was chill and grey. He felt bad. His first act,

unconscious and automatic, was to feel for his sack. Its lightness

startled him. Then, slowly, memories of the night thronged into

his brain. Rough voices disturbed him. He opened his eyes and

peered out from under the table. A couple of early risers, or,

rather, men who had been out on trail all night, were vociferating

their opinions concerning the utter and loathsome worthlessness of

Eldorado Creek. He grew frightened, felt in his pocket, and found

the deed to 24 ELDORADO.

 

Ten minutes later Hootchinoo Bill and Kink Mitchell were roused

from their blankets by a wild-eyed Swede that strove to force upon

them an ink-scrawled and very blotty piece of paper.

 

"Ay tank Ay take my money back," he gibbered. "Ay tank Ay take my

money back."

 

Tears were in his eyes and throat. They ran down his cheeks as he

knelt before them and pleaded and implored. But Bill and Kink did

not laugh. They might have been harder hearted.

 

"First time I ever hear a man squeal over a minin` deal," Bill

said. "An` I make free to say `tis too onusual for me to savvy."

 

"Same here," Kink Mitchell remarked. "Minin` deals is like horse-

tradin`."

 

They were honest in their wonderment. They could not conceive of

themselves raising a wail over a business transaction, so they

could not understand it in another man.

 

"The poor, ornery chechaquo," murmured Hootchinoo Bill, as they

watched the sorrowing Swede disappear up the trail.

 

"But this ain`t Too Much Gold," Kink Mitchell said cheerfully.

 

And ere the day was out they purchased flour and bacon at

exorbitant prices with Ans Handerson`s dust and crossed over the

divide in the direction of the creeks that lie between Klondike and

Indian River.

 

Three months later they came back over the divide in the midst of a

snow-storm and dropped down the trail to 24 ELDORADO. It merely

chanced that the trail led them that way. They were not looking

for the claim. Nor could they see much through the driving white

till they set foot upon the claim itself. And then the air

lightened, and they beheld a dump, capped by a windlass that a man

was turning. They saw him draw a bucket of gravel from the hole

and tilt it on the edge of the dump. Likewise they saw another,

man, strangely familiar, filling a pan with the fresh gravel. His

hands were large; his hair wets pale yellow. But before they

reached him, he turned with the pan and fled toward a cabin. He

wore no hat, and the snow falling down his neck accounted for his

haste. Bill and Kink ran after him, and came upon him in the

cabin, kneeling by the stove and washing the pan of gravel in a tub

of water.

 

He was too deeply engaged to notice more than that somebody had

entered the cabin. They stood at his shoulder and looked on. He

imparted to the pan a deft circular motion, pausing once or twice

to rake out the larger particles of gravel with his fingers. The

water was muddy, and, with the pan buried in it, they could see

nothing of its contents. Suddenly he lifted the pan clear and sent

the water out of it with a flirt. A mass of yellow, like butter in

a churn, showed across the bottom.

 

Hootchinoo Bill swallowed. Never in his life had he dreamed of so

rich a test-pan.

 

"Kind of thick, my friend," he said huskily. "How much might you

reckon that-all to be?"

 

Ans Handerson did not look up as he replied, "Ay tank fafty

ounces."

 

"You must be scrumptious rich, then, eh?"

 

Still Ans Handerson kept his head down, absorbed in putting in the

fine touches which wash out the last particles of dross, though he

answered, "Ay tank Ay ban wort` five hundred t`ousand dollar."

 

"Gosh!" said Hootchinoo Bill, and he said it reverently.

 

"Yes, Bill, gosh!" said Kink Mitchell; and they went out softly and

closed the door.

 

THE ONE THOUSAND DOZEN

 

David Rasmunsen was a hustler, and, like many a greater man, a man

of the one idea. Wherefore, when the clarion call of the North

rang on his ear, he conceived an adventure in eggs and bent all his

energy to its achievement. He figured briefly and to the point,

and the adventure became iridescent-hued, splendid. That eggs

would sell at Dawson for five dollars a dozen was a safe working

premise. Whence it was incontrovertible that one thousand dozen

would bring, in the Golden Metropolis, five thousand dollars.

 

On the other hand, expense was to be considered, and he considered

it well, for he was a careful man, keenly practical, with a hard

head and a heart that imagination never warmed. At fifteen cents a

dozen, the initial cost of his thousand dozen would be one hundred

and fifty dollars, a mere bagatelle in face of the enormous profit.

And suppose, just suppose, to be wildly extravagant for once, that

transportation for himself and eggs should run up eight hundred and

fifty more; he would still have four thousand clear cash and clean

when the last egg was disposed of and the last dust had rippled

into his sack

 

"You see, Alma,"--he figured it over with his wife, the cosy

dining-room submerged in a sea of maps, government surveys, guide-

books, and Alaskan itineraries,--"you see, expenses don`t really

begin till you make Dyea--fifty dollars`ll cover it with a first-

class passage thrown in. Now from Dyea to Lake Linderman, Indian

packers take your goods over for twelve cents a pound, twelve

dollars a hundred, or one hundred and twenty dollars a thousand.

Say I have fifteen hundred pounds, it`ll cost one hundred and

eighty dollars--call it two hundred and be safe. I am creditably

informed by a Klondiker just come out that I can buy a boat for

three hundred. But the same man says I`m sure to get a couple of

passengers for one hundred and fifty each, which will give me the

boat for nothing, and, further, they can help me manage it. And.

.. that`s all; I put my eggs ashore from the boat at Dawson. Now

let me see how much is that?"

 

"Fifty dollars from San Francisco to Dyea, two hundred from Dyea to

Linderman, passengers pay for the boat--two hundred and fifty all

told," she summed up swiftly.

 

"And a hundred for my clothes and personal outfit," he went on

happily; "that leaves a margin of five hundred for emergencies.

And what possible emergencies can arise?"

 

Alma shrugged her shoulders and elevated her brows. If that vast

Northland was capable of swallowing up a man and a thousand dozen

eggs, surely there was room and to spare for whatever else he might

happen to possess. So she thought, but she said nothing. She knew

David Rasmunsen too well to say anything.

 

"Doubling the time because of chance delays, I should make the trip

in two months. Think of it, Alma! Four thousand in two months!

Beats the paltry hundred a month I`m getting now. Why, we`ll build

further out where we`ll have more space, gas in every room, and a

view, and the rent of the cottage`ll pay taxes, insurance, and

water, and leave something over. And then there`s always the