Part 5 (1/2)
”'Are they goin' to hang ye in six months?' you asks, 'Have ye got yer sentence?'
”'I've got my sentence,' I says, 'But it ain't hangin'. The doctors sentenced me. It's the con.'
”'To h.e.l.l with the doctors,' you says, 'They don't know it all. We'll fool 'em. All you need is to git out in the mountains--an' lay off the hooch.'
”I laughed at you. 'Me go to the mountains!' I says, 'Why man I ain't hardly got strength to get to my room an' back to the job again--an'
couldn't even make that if it wasn't for the hooch.'
”'That's right,' you says, 'From the job to the room, an' the room to the job, ye'll last maybe six months--but I'm doubtin' it. But the mountains is different.' An' then you goes on an talks mountains an'
gold till you got me interested, an' you offers to grub-stake me for a trip into the Kootenay country. You claimed it was a straight business proposition--fifty-fifty if I made a strike, an' you put up the money against my time.” The stranger paused and smiled as a subdued ripple of whisperings went from man to man as he mentioned the Kootenay. Then he looked Kelliher squarely in the face: ”There wasn't no gold in the Kootenay,” he said simply, ”Or leastwise I couldn't find none. I figured someone had be'n stringin' you.”
Patsy Kelliher s.h.i.+fted the hat to the back of his head and laughed out loud as his little eyes twinkled with merriment. ”I git ye now, son,” he said, ”I moind the white face av ye, an' the chist bowed in like the bottom av a wash bowl, an' yer shoulders stuck out befront ye loike the horns av a cow.” He paused as his eyes ran the lines of sinewy leanness and came to rest upon the sun bronzed face: ”So ye made a failure av the trip, eh? A plumb clane failure--an' Oi'm out the couple av hundred it cost me fer the grub stake----”
”It cost you more than five hundred,” interrupted the other. ”I was in bad shape and there was things I needed that other men wouldn't of--that I don't need--now.”
”Well--foive hundred, thin. An' how long has ut be'n ago?”
”Nine years.”
Kelliher laughed: ”Who was roight--me or the d.a.m.n doctors? Ye've lived eighteen toimes as long as they was going to let ye live a'ready--an' av me eyes deceive me roight, ye ain't ordered no coffin yet.”
”No--I ain't ordered no coffin. I come here to hunt you up an' pay you back.”
Kelliher laughed: ”There ain't nothin' to pay son. You don't owe me a cent. A grub-stake's a grub-stake, an' no one iver yit said Patsy Kelliher welched on a bargain. Besoides, Oi guess ye got all Oi sint ye afther. I know'd d.a.m.n well they wasn't no gold in the Kootenay--none that a tenderfoot lunger cud foind.”
McBride laughed: ”Sure--I knew after I'd been there six months what you done it for. I doped it all out. But, as you say, a grub-stake's a grub-stake, an' no time limit on it, an' no one ever said Jim McBride ever welched on a bargain, neither. I ain't never be'n just ready to come back an' settle with you, till now. I drifted north, and farther north, till I wound up in the Yukon country. I prospected around there an' had pretty good luck. I'd got back my strength an' my health till right now there ain't but d.a.m.n few men in the big country that can hit the trail with Jim McBride. But I wasn't never satisfied with what I was takin' out. I know'd there was somethin' big somewheres up there. I could _feel_ it, an' I played for the big stake. Others stuck by stuff that was pannin' 'em out wages. I didn't. They called me a fool--an' I let 'em. I struck up river at last an' they laughed--but they ain't laughin' now. Me an' a squaw-man named Carmack hunted moose together over on Bonanza. One day Carmack was scratchin' around the roots of a big birch tree an' just fer fun he gets to monkeyin' with my pan.” The man paused and Brent could hear the suppressed breathing of the miners who had crowded close. His eyes swept their faces and he saw that every eye in the house was staring into the face of McBride as they hung upon his every word. He realized suddenly that he himself was waiting in a fever of impatience for the man to go on. ”Then I come into camp, an' we both fooled with the pan--but we didn't fool long. G.o.d, man! We was shakin' it out of the gra.s.s roots! _Coa.r.s.e gold!_ I stayed at it a month--an' I've filed on every creek within ten miles of that lone birch tree. Then I come outside to find you an' settle.” He paused and his eyes swept the room: ”These men friends of yourn?” he asked. Kelliher nodded. ”Well then I'm lettin' 'em in. Right here starts the biggest stampede the world ever seen. Some of the old timers that was already up there are into the stuff now--but in the spring the whole world will be gettin' in on it!”
Kelliher was the only self-possessed man in the room: ”What'll she run to the pan?” he asked.
”_Run to the pan!_ G.o.d knows! We thought she was _big_ when she hit an ounce----”
”_An ounce to the pan!_” cried Kelliher, ”Man ye're crazy!”
The other continued: ”An' we thought she was _little_ when she run a hundred dollars--two hundred! I've washed out six-hundred dollars to the pan! An' I ain't to bed rock!”
And then he began to empty his pockets. One after another the little buckskin sacks thudded upon the bar--ten--fifteen--twenty of them.
McBride spoke to Kelliher, who stared with incredulous, bulging eyes: ”That's your share of what I've took out. You're filed along with me as full pardner in all the claims I've got. They's millions in them claims--an' more millions fer the men that gets there first.” He paused and turned to the men of the crowd who stood silent, with tense white faces, and staring eyes glued on the pile of buckskin sacks: ”Beat it, you gravel hogs!” he cried, ”It's the biggest strike that ever was! Hit fer Seattle, go by Dyea Beach an' over the Chilkoot, an' take a thousand pounds of outfit--or you'll die. A h.e.l.l of a lot of you'll die anyhow--but some of you will win--an' win big. Over the Chilkoot, down through the lakes, an' down the Yukon to Dawson--” A high pitched, unnatural yell, animal-like in its nervous excitement broke from a throat in the crowd, and the next instant pandemonium broke loose in Kelliher's, and Carter Brent fought his way to the door through a howling ma.s.s of mad men, and struck out for his boarding house at a run.
CHAPTER II
ON DYEA BEACH
In a drizzle of cold rain forty men stood on Dyea beach and viewed with disfavor the forty thousand pounds of sodden, mud-smeared outfit that had been hurriedly landed from the little steamer that was already plowing her way southward. Of the sixty-odd men who, two weeks before had stood in Patsy Kelliher's ”Ore Dump Saloon” and had seen Jim McBride toss one after another upon the bar twenty buckskin pouches filled to bursting with coa.r.s.e gold in his reckoning with Kelliher, these forty had accomplished the first leg of the long North trail. The next year and the next, thousands, and tens of thousands of men would follow in their footsteps, for these forty were the forerunners of the great stampede from the ”outside”--a stampede that exacted merciless toll in the lives of fools and weaklings, even as it heaped riches with lavish prodigality into the laps of the strong.
Jim McBride had said that each man must carry in a thousand pounds of outfit. Well and good, they had complied. Each had purchased his thousand pounds, had it delivered on board the steamer, and in due course, had watched it dumped upon the beach from the small boats.
Despite the cold drizzle, throughout the unloading the forty had laughed and joked each other and had liberally tendered flasks. But now, with the steamer a vanis.h.i.+ng speck in the distance and the rock-studded Dyea Flats stretching away toward the mountains, the laughter and joking ceased. Men eyed the trail, moved aimlessly about, and returned to their luggage. The thousand pound outfits had suddenly a.s.sumed proportions.
Every ounce of it must be man-handled across a twenty-eight mile portage and over the Chilkoot Pa.s.s. Now and then a man bent down and gave a tentative lift at a bale or a sack. Muttered curses had taken the place of laughter, and if a man drew a flask from his pocket, he drank, and returned it to his pocket without tendering it to his neighbor.
When Carter Brent had reached the seclusion of his room after leaving Kelliher's saloon, he slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrawing his roll of bills, counted them. He found exactly three hundred and seventy-eight dollars which he rightly decided was not enough to finance an expedition to the gold country. He must get more--and get it quickly.