Part 100 (1/2)
The Colonel laughed a little ruefully.
”We used to say Minook.”
”I said Minook, just to sound reasonable, but, of course, I meant Dawson.”
And they sat there thinking, watching the ice-blocks meet, crash, go down in foam, and come up again on the lower reaches, the Boy idly swinging the great Katharine's medal to and fro. In his buckskin pocket it has worn so bright it catches at the light like a coin fresh from the mint.
No doubt Muckluck is on the river-bank at Pymeut; the one-eyed Prince, the story-teller Yagorsha, even Ol' Chief--no one will be indoors to-day.
Sitting there together, they saw the last stand made by the ice, and shared that moment when the final barrier, somewhere far below, gave way with boom and thunder. The mighty flood ran free, tearing up trees by their roots as it ran, detaching ma.s.ses of rock, dissolving islands into swirling sand and drift, carving new channels, making and unmaking the land. The water began to fall. It had been a great time: it was ended.
”Pardner,” says the Colonel, ”we've seen the ice go out.”
”No fella can call you and me cheechalkos after to-day.”
”No, sah. We've travelled the Long Trail, we've seen the ice go out, and we're friends yet.”
The Kentuckian took his pardner's brown hand with a gentle solemnity, seemed about to say something, but stopped, and turned his bronzed face to the flood, carried back upon some sudden tide within himself to those black days on the trail, that he wanted most in the world to forget. But in his heart he knew that all dear things, all things kind and precious--his home, a woman's face--all, all would fade before he forgot those last days on the trail. The record of that journey was burnt into the brain of the men who had made it. On that stretch of the Long Trail the elder had grown old, and the younger had forever lost his youth. Not only had the roundness gone out of his face, not only was it scarred, but such lines were graven there as commonly takes the antique pencil half a score of years to trace.
”Something has happened,” the Colonel said quite low. ”We aren't the same men who left the Big Chimney.”
”Right!” said the Boy, with a laugh, unwilling as yet to accept his own personal revelation, preferring to put a superficial interpretation on his companion's words. He glanced at the Colonel, and his face changed a little. But still he would not understand. Looking down at the chaparejos that he had been so proud of, sadly abbreviated to make boots for Nig, jagged here and there, and with fringes now not all intentional, it suited him to pretend that the ”shaps” had suffered most.
”Yes, the ice takes the kinks out.”
”Whether the thing that's happened is good or evil, I don't pretend to say,” the other went on gravely, staring at the river. ”I only know something's happened. There were possibilities--in me, anyhow--that have been frozen to death. Yes, we're different.”
The Boy roused himself, but only to persist in his misinterpretation.
”You ain't different to hurt. If I started out again tomorrow----”
”The Lord forbid!”
”Amen. But if I had to, you're the only man in Alaska--in the world--I'd want for my pardner.”
”Boy----!” he wrestled with a slight bronchial huskiness, cleared his throat, tried again, and gave it up, contenting himself with, ”Beg your pardon for callin' you 'Boy.' You're a seasoned old-timer, sah.” And the Boy felt as if some Sovereign had dubbed him Knight.
In a day or two now, from north or south, the first boat must appear.
The willows were unfolding their silver leaves. The alder-buds were bursting; geese and teal and mallard swarmed about the river margin.
Especially where the equisetae showed the tips of their feathery green tails above the mud, ducks flocked and feasted. People were too excited, ”too busy,” they said, looking for the boats, to do much shooting. The shy birds waxed daring. Keith, standing by his shack, knocked over a mallard within forty paces of his door.
It was eight days after that first cry, ”The ice is going out!” four since the final jam gave way and let the floes run free, that at one o'clock in the afternoon the shout went up, ”A boat! a boat!”
Only a lumberman's bateau, but two men were poling her down the current with a skill that matched the speed. They swung her in. A dozen hands caught at the painter and made fast. A young man stepped ash.o.r.e and introduced himself as Van Alen, Benham's ”Upper River pardner, on the way to Anvik.”
His companion, Donovan, was from Circle City, and brought appalling news. The boats depended on for the early summer traffic, Bella, and three other N.A.T. and T. steamers, as well as the A.C.'s Victoria and the St. Michael, had been lifted up by the ice ”like so many feathers,”
forced clean out of the channel, and left high and dry on a sandy ridge, with an ice wall eighty feet wide and fifteen high between them and open water.
”All the crews hard at work with jackscrews,” said Donovan; ”and if they can get skids under, and a channel blasted through the ice, they may get the boats down here in fifteen or twenty days.”