Part 106 (1/2)

”I can use one more man on the night s.h.i.+ft, a dollar and a half an hour.”

”All right,” said the Boy.

The Colonel looked at him. ”Is this job yours or mine?”

The Superintendent had gone up towards the dam.

”Whichever you say.”

The Boy did not like to suggest that the Colonel seemed little fit for this kind of exercise. They had been in the Klond.y.k.e long enough to know that to be in work was to be in luck.

”I'll tell you,” the younger man said quickly, answering something unspoken, but plain in the Colonel's face; ”I'll go up the gulch and see what else there is.”

It crossed his mind that there might be something less arduous than this shovelling in the wet thaw or picking at frozen gravel in the hot sun. If so, the Colonel might be induced to exchange. It was obvious that, like so many Southerners, he stood the sun very ill. While they were agreeing upon a rendezvous the Superintendent came back.

”Our bunk-house is yonder,” he said, pointing. A kind of sickness came over the Kentuckian as he recalled the place. He turned to his pardner.

”Wish we'd got a pack-mule and brought our tent out from Dawson.” Then, apologetically, to the Superintendent: ”You see, sah, there are men who take to bunk-houses just as there are women who want to live in hotels; and there are others who want a place to call home, even if it's a tent.”

The Superintendent smiled. ”That's the way we feel about it in Alabama.” He reflected an instant. ”There's that big new tent up there on the hill, next to the Buckeyes' cabin. Good tent; belongs to a couple o' rich Englishmen, third owners in No. 0. Gone to Atlin. Told me to do what I liked with that tent. You might bunk there while they're away.”

”Now, that's mighty good of you, sah. Next whose cabin did you say?”

”Oh, I don't know their names. They have a lay on seventeen. Ohio men.

They're called Buck One and Buck Two. Anybody'll show you to the Buckeyes';” and he turned away to shout ”Gate!” for the head of water was too strong, and he strode off towards the lock.

As the Boy tramped about looking for work he met a great many on the same quest. It seemed as if the Colonel had secured the sole job on the creek. Still, vacancies might occur any hour.

In the big new tent the Colonel lay asleep on a little camp-bed, (mercifully left there by the rich Englishmen), ”gettin' ready for the night-s.h.i.+ft.” As he stood looking down upon him, a sudden wave of pity came over the Boy. He knew the Colonel didn't ”really and truly have to do this kind of thing; he just didn't like givin' in.” But behind all that there was a sense in the younger mind that here was a life unlike his own, which dimly he foresaw was to find its legitimate expression in battle and in striving. Here, in the person of the Colonel, no soldier fore-ordained, but a serene and equable soul wrenched out of its proper sphere by a chance hurt to a woman, forsooth! an imagination so stirred that, if it slept at all, it dreamed and moaned in its sleep, as now; a conscience wounded and refusing to heal. Had he not said himself that he had come up here to forget? It was best to let him have the job that was too heavy for him--yes, it was best, after all.

And so they lived for a few days, the Boy chafing and wanting to move on, the Colonel very earnest to have him stay.

”Something sure to turn up, and, anyhow, letters--my instruction----”

And he encouraged the acquaintance the Boy had struck up with the Buckeyes, hoping against hope that to go over and smoke a pipe, and exchange experiences with such mighty good fellows would lighten the tedium of the long day spent looking for a job.

”I call it a very pleasant cabin,” the Colonel would say as he lit up and looked about. Anything dismaller it would be hard to find. Not clean and s.h.i.+pshape as the Boy kept the tent. But with double army blankets nailed over the single window it was blessedly dark, if stuffy, and in crying need of cleaning. Still, they were mighty good fellows, and they had a right to be cheerful. Up there, on the rude shelf above the stove, was a row of old tomato-cans brimful of Bonanza gold. There they stood, not even covered. Dim as the light was, you could see the little top nuggets peering out at you over the ragged tin-rims, in a never locked shanty, never molested, never bothered about. Nearly every cabin on the creek had similar chimney ornaments, but not everyone boasted an old coat, kept under the bunk, full of the bigger sort of nuggets.

The Colonel was always ready with pretended admiration of such bric-a-brac, but the truth was he cared very little about this gold he had come so far to find. His own wages, paid in dust, were kept in a jam-pot the Boy had found ”lyin' round.”

The growing store shone cheerfully through the gla.s.s, but its value in the Colonel's eyes seemed to be simply as an argument to prove that they had enough, and ”needn't worry.” When the Boy said there was no doubt this was the district in all the world the most overdone, the Colonel looked at him with sun-tired, reproachful eyes.

”You want to dissolve the pardners.h.i.+p--I see.”

”I don't.”

But the Colonel, after any such interchange, would go off and smoke by himself, not even caring for Buckeyes'. The work was plainly overtaxing him. He slept badly, was growing moody and quick to take offence. One day when he had been distinctly uncivil he apologized for himself by saying that, standing with feet always in the wet, head always in the scorching sun, he had taken a h.e.l.l of a cold. Certain it was that, without sullenness, he would give in to long fits of silence; and his wide, honest eyes were heavy again, as if the snow-blindness of the winter had its a.n.a.logue in a summer torment from the sun. And his sometimes unusual gentleness to his companion was sharply alternated with unusual choler, excited by a mere nothing. Enough if the Boy were not in the tent when the Colonel came and went. Of course, the Boy did the cooking. The Colonel ate almost nothing, but he made a great point of his pardner's service in doing the cooking. He would starve, he said, if he had to cook for himself as well as swing a shovel; and the Boy, acting on pure instinct, pretended that he believed this was so.

Then came the evening when the Boy was so late the Colonel got his own breakfast; and when the recreant did get home, it was to announce that a man over at the Buckeyes' had just offered him a job out on Indian River. The Colonel set down his tea-cup and stared. His face took on an odd, rigid look. But almost indifferently he said:

”So you're goin'?”