Part 11 (1/2)
”I've gambled ever since I was a kid. I bet I could cross Death Valley and get out alive. That time I won. I bet it would rain once down in Arizona before my cattle died. I lost. Another time I took a contract to run a tunnel. In my bid I bet I wouldn't run into rock. My bank went broke that trip. When I joined the Klondike rush I was backing my luck to stand up. Same thing when I located the Kamatlah field. The coal might be a poor quality. Maybe I couldn't interest big capital in the proposition. Perhaps the Government would turn me down when I came to prove up. I was betting my last dollar against big odds. When I quit gambling it will be because I've quit living.”
”And I suppose I'm a gambler too?” Mrs. Mallory demanded with a little tilt of her handsome head.
He looked straight at her with the keen eyes that had bored through her from the first day they had met, the eyes that understood the manner of woman she was and liked her none the less.
”Of all the women I know you are the best gambler. It's born in you.”
”Why, Mr. Macdonald!” screamed Mrs. Selfridge in her high staccato. ”I don't think that's a compliment.”
Mrs. Mallory did not often indulge in the luxury of a blush, but she changed color now. This big, blunt man sometimes had an uncanny divination. Did he, she asked herself, know what stake she was gambling for at Kusiak?
”You are too wise,” she laughed with a touch of embarra.s.sment very becoming. ”But I suppose you are right. I like excitement.”
”We all do. The only man who doesn't gamble is the convict in stripes, and the only reason he doesn't is that his chips are all gone. It's true that men on the frontier play for bigger stakes. They back their bets with all they have got and put their lives on top for good measure. But kids in the cradle all over the United States are going to live easier because of the gamblers at the dropping-off places. That writer fellow hit the nail on the head about me. My whole life is a gamble.”
She moved with slow grace toward the door, then over her shoulder flashed a sudden invitation at him. ”Mrs. Selfridge and I are doing a little betting to-day, Big Chief Gambler. We're backing our luck that you two men will eat lunch with us at the Blue Bird Inn. Do we win?”
Macdonald reached for his hat promptly. ”You win.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE END OF THE Pa.s.sAGE
Wally Selfridge was a reliable business subordinate, even though he had slipped up in the matter of the appointment of Elliot. But when it came to facing the physical hards.h.i.+ps of the North he was a malingerer. The Kamatlah trip had to be taken because his chief had ordered it, but the little man s.h.i.+rked the journey in his heart just as he knew his soft muscles would shrink from the aches of the trail.
His idea of work was a set of tennis on the outdoor wooden court of the Kusiak clubhouse, and even there his game was not a hard, smas.h.i.+ng one, but an easy foursome with a girl for partner. He liked better to play bridge with attendants at hand to supply drinks and cigars. By nature he was a sybarite. The call of the frontier found no response in his sophisticated soul.
The part of the journey to be made by water was not so bad. Left to his own judgment, he would have gone to St. Michael's by boat and chartered a small steamer for the long trip along the coast through Bering Sea.
But this would take time, and Macdonald did not mean to let him waste a day. He was to leave the river boat at the big bend and pack across country to Kamatlah. It would be a rough, heavy trail. The mosquitoes would be a continual torment. The cooking would be poor. And at the end of the long trek there awaited him monotonous months in a wretched coal camp far from all the comforts of civilization. No wonder he grumbled.
But though he grumbled at home and at the club and on the street about his coming exile, Selfridge made no complaints to Macdonald. That man of steel had no sympathy with the yearnings for the fleshpots. He was used to driving himself through discomfort to his end, and he expected as much of his deputies. Wherefore Wally took the boat at the time scheduled and waved a dismal farewell to wife and friends a.s.sembled upon the wharf.
Elliot said good-bye to the Pagets and Miss O'Neill ten days later.
Diane was very frank with him.
”I hear you've been sleuthing around, Gordon, for facts about Colby Macdonald. I don't know what you have heard about him, but I hope you've got the sense to see how big a man he is and how much this country here owes him.”
Gordon nodded agreement. ”Yes, he's a big man.”
”And he's good,” added Sheba eagerly. ”He never talks of it, but one finds out splendid things he has done.”
The young man smiled, but not at all superciliously. He liked the stanch faith of the girl in her friend, even though his investigations had not led him to accept goodness as the outstanding quality of the Scotchman.
”I don't know what we would do without him,” Diane went on. ”Give him ten years and a free hand and Alaska will be fit for white people to live in. These attacks on him by newspapers and magazines are an outrage.”
”It's plain that you are a partisan,” charged Gordon gayly.
”I'm against locking up Alaska and throwing away the key, if that is what you mean by a partisan. We need this country opened up--the farms settled, the mines worked, the coal-fields developed, railroads built.
It is one great big opportunity, the country here, and the narrow little conservation cranks want to shut it up tight from the people who have energy and foresight enough to help do the building.”