Part 12 (1/2)
Brent rose to his feet and held out his hand: ”Good bye, Kitty,” he said, gravely. ”I know what you've done for me--and I won't forget it.
You'll come to see me--sometimes?”
”No. I hate you! An' if you could see yourself the way I see you--knowing what you are, and what you ought to be--you'd hate yourself!”
Brent flushed under the sting of the words: ”I'm as good a man as I ever was,” he muttered, defiantly.
The girl sneered: ”You are--like h.e.l.l! Why, you ain't even got a job--now. You're a b.u.m! You hit the b.u.mp that I told you was at the end of your trail--now, where do you go from here?” And before Brent could reply she was gone.
”Where do I go from here?” he repeated slowly, as he sank into a chair beside his table, and swallowed a stiff drink of whiskey. And, ”Where do I go from here?” he babbled meaninglessly, three hours later when, very drunk, his head settled slowly forward upon his folded arms, and he slept.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PLOTTING OF CAMILLO BILL
With the rapidly lengthening days the sodden snow thawed and was carried away by the creeks which were running waist-deep on top of the ice. New snow fell, lay dazzling white for a day or two, and then under the ever increasing heat of the sun, it, too, turned sodden, and sullen, and grey, and added its water to the ever increasing torrent of the creeks.
Bare patches of ground showed upon south slopes. The ice in the creeks let go, and was borne down by the torrents in grinding, jamming floes.
Then, the big river broke up. Wild geese and ducks appeared heading northward. Wild flowers in a riot of blazing color followed up the mountain sides upon the heels of the retreating snow-banks. And with bewildering swiftness, the Yukon country leaped from winter into summer.
From his little cabin Carter Brent noted the kaleidoscopic change of seasons, and promised himself that as soon as the creeks receded into their normal beds he would hit the gold trail. He ate little, drank much, and spent most of his days in reading from some books left him by a wandering Englishman who had come in overland from the North-west territories, where for a year or more he had prowled aimlessly among the Hudson's Bay posts, and the outposts of the Mounted. The books were, for the most part, government reports, geological, and geodetical, upon the Canadian North.
”She said I am a b.u.m,” he muttered to himself one evening as he laid aside his book, and in the gathering darkness walked to the door and watched the last play of sunlight upon the distant glittering peaks.
”But, I'll show her--I'll show her where I'll go from here. I'm as good a man as I ever was.” This statement that he had at first made to others, he now found necessary to make to himself. A dozen times a day he would solemnly a.s.sure himself that he was as good a man as he ever was, and that when he got ready to hit the trail he would show them.
The sunlight faded from the peaks, and as he turned from the doorway, his eyes fell upon his pack straps that hung from their peg on the wall.
Reaching for his hat, he stepped to the door and peered out to make sure that no one was watching. Then he stooped and fixed his straps to a half-sack of flour which he judged would weigh about fifty pounds. After some difficulty he got the pack onto his back and started for the bank of the river, a quarter of a mile away. A hundred yards from the cabin he stopped for breath. His shoulders ached, and the muscles of his neck felt as though they were being torn from their moorings as he pushed his forehead against the tump-line. With the sweat starting from every pore he essayed a few more steps, stumbled, and in clumsily catching his balance, his hat fell off. As he stooped to recover it, the weight of the pack forced him down and down until he was flat on his belly with his face in the mud. For a long time he lay, panting, until the night-breeze chilled the sweat on his skin, and he s.h.i.+vered. Then he struggled to rise, gained his hands and knees and could get no farther.
Again and again he tried to rise to his feet, but the weight of the pack held him down. He remembered that between the Chilkoot and Lake Lindermann he had risen out of the mud with a hundred pounds on his shoulders, and thought nothing of it. He wriggled from the straps and carrying, and resting, staggered back to his cabin and sank into a chair. He took a big drink and felt better. ”It's the fever,” he a.s.sured himself, ”It left me weak. I'll be all right in a day or so. I'm as good a man as I ever was--only, a little out of practice.”
After that Brent stayed closer than ever to his cabin until the day came when there was not enough dust left in his little buckskin sack to pay for a quart of hooch. He bought a pint, and as he drank it in his cabin, decided he must go to work, until he got strong enough to hit the trail. Houses were going up everywhere, houses of boards that were taking the place of the tents and the cabins of the previous year. Work there was a plenty, and the laborers were few. _Chechakos_ were pouring in by the thousands and staking clear to the mountain tops. But, none of them would work. Crazed by the lure of gold they pitted the hillsides and valleys and mucked like gnomes in their wild scramble for riches.
Brent worked for a week in a sawmill, and then quit, bought some hooch and some necessary food, and retired to his cabin to reread his reports and laugh at the efforts of the hillside miners.
The old timers were scattered out in the hills, and the tin-horns and _chechakos_ who had wors.h.i.+ped at his shrine were dispersed, or had forgotten him. Life moved swiftly in the big camp. Yesterday's hero would be forgotten tomorrow. And the name of Ace-In-The-Hole meant nothing to the newcomers. Occasionally he met one of the old timers, who would buy him a drink, and hurry on about his business.
Spasmodically Brent worked at odd jobs. He fired a river steamboat on a round trip to Fort Gibbon. Always he promised himself pretty soon, now, he would be ready to hit the trail. Stampedes were of almost daily occurrence, but Brent was never in on them and so the summer wore on and still he had not hit the trail. ”I'll just wait now, for snow,” he decided late in August. ”Then I'll get a good dog team together, and make a real rush. There's no use hitting out with a poling boat, the creeks are all staked, and back-packing is too hard work for a white man. I'm as good a man as I ever was, and when the snow comes I'll show them.”
Brent's wardrobe was depleted until it consisted of a coa.r.s.e blue jumper and ragged overalls drawn over underclothing, laced and tied together in a dozen places. He had not shaved for a month.
Later in October Camillo Bill came to his cabin. He stood in the doorway and stared into the dirty interior where Brent, with the unwashed dishes of his last meal shoved back, sat reading.
”h.e.l.lo, Camillo,” greeted the owner of the cabin as he rose to his feet and extended his hand, ”Come in and sit down.”
Camillo Bill settled himself into a chair: ”Well I'll be d.a.m.ned!” he exclaimed under his breath.
Brent rinsed a couple of murky gla.s.ses in the water pail, and reached for a bottle that sat among the dirty dishes: ”Have a drink,” he invited, extending a gla.s.s to his visitor.
Camillo Bill poured a taste of liquor into the gla.s.s and watched Brent, with shaking hand, slop out a half a tumblerful, and drink it down as one would drink water. He swallowed the liquor and returned the gla.s.s to the table.
”Take some more,” urged Brent, ”I've got another quart under the bunk.”