Part 5 (1/2)
”Them's the kind that does freeze their lungs,” he lamented. ”If Daylight pulls out before this snap breaks, he'll never get through--an' him travelin' without tent or fly.”
”It's a thousand miles to Dyea,” Bettles announced, climbing on the chair and supporting his swaying body by an arm pa.s.sed around Daylight's neck. ”It's a thousand miles, I'm sayin' an' most of the trail unbroke, but I bet any chechaquo--anything he wants--that Daylight makes Dyea in thirty days.”
”That's an average of over thirty-three miles a day,” Doc Watson warned, ”and I've travelled some myself. A blizzard on Chilcoot would tie him up for a week.”
”Yep,” Bettles retorted, ”an' Daylight'll do the second thousand back again on end in thirty days more, and I got five hundred dollars that says so, and d.a.m.n the blizzards.”
To emphasize his remarks, he pulled out a gold-sack the size of a bologna sausage and thumped it down on the bar. Doc Watson thumped his own sack alongside.
”Hold on!” Daylight cried. ”Bettles's right, and I want in on this. I bet five hundred that sixty days from now I pull up at the Tivoli door with the Dyea mail.”
A sceptical roar went up, and a dozen men pulled out their sacks.
Jack Kearns crowded in close and caught Daylight's attention.
”I take you, Daylight,” he cried. ”Two to one you don't--not in seventy-five days.”
”No charity, Jack,” was the reply. ”The bettin's even, and the time is sixty days.”
”Seventy-five days, and two to one you don't,” Kearns insisted. ”Fifty Mile'll be wide open and the rim-ice rotten.”
”What you win from me is yours,” Daylight went on. ”And, by thunder, Jack, you can't give it back that way. I won't bet with you. You're trying to give me money. But I tell you-all one thing, Jack, I got another hunch. I'm goin' to win it back some one of these days.
You-all just wait till the big strike up river. Then you and me'll take the roof off and sit in a game that'll be full man's size. Is it a go?”
They shook hands.
”Of course he'll make it,” Kearns whispered in Bettles' ear. ”And there's five hundred Daylight's back in sixty days,” he added aloud.
Billy Rawlins closed with the wager, and Bettles hugged Kearns ecstatically.
”By Yupiter, I ban take that bet,” Olaf Henderson said, dragging Daylight away from Bettles and Kearns.
”Winner pays!” Daylight shouted, closing the wager.
”And I'm sure going to win, and sixty days is a long time between drinks, so I pay now. Name your brand, you hoochinoos! Name your brand!”
Bettles, a gla.s.s of whiskey in hand, climbed back on his chair, and swaying back and forth, sang the one song he knew:--
”O, it's Henry Ward Beecher And Sunday-school teachers All sing of the sa.s.safras-root; But you bet all the same, If it had its right name It's the juice of the forbidden fruit.”
The crowd roared out the chorus:--
”But you bet all the same If it had its right name It's the juice of the forbidden fruit.”
Somebody opened the outer door. A vague gray light filtered in.
”Burning daylight, burning daylight,” some one called warningly.
Daylight paused for nothing, heading for the door and pulling down his ear-flaps. Kama stood outside by the sled, a long, narrow affair, sixteen inches wide and seven and a half feet in length, its slatted bottom raised six inches above the steel-shod runners. On it, lashed with thongs of moose-hide, were the light canvas bags that contained the mail, and the food and gear for dogs and men. In front of it, in a single line, lay curled five frost-rimed dogs. They were huskies, matched in size and color, all unusually large and all gray. From their cruel jaws to their bushy tails they were as like as peas in their likeness to timber-wolves. Wolves they were, domesticated, it was true, but wolves in appearance and in all their characteristics.