"ALL
ready, Miss Welse, though
I'm sorry we can't spare one of the steamer's boats."
Frona Welse arose with alacrity and came to the first officer's
side.
"We're so busy," he explained, "and gold-rushers are such
perishable freight, at least-"
"I understand," she interrupted, "and I, too, am behaving as
though I were perishable. And I am sorry for the trouble I am
giving you, but-but-" She turned quickly and pointed to the shore.
"Do you see that big log-house? Between the clump of pines and the
river? I was born there."
"Guess I'd be in a hurry myself," he muttered, sympathetically,
as he piloted her along the crowded deck.
Everybody was in everybody else's way; nor was there one who
failed to proclaim it at the top of his lungs. A thousand
gold-seekers were clamoring for the immediate landing of their
outfits. Each hatchway gaped wide open, and from the lower depths
the shrieking donkey-engines were hurrying the misassorted outfits
skyward. On either side of the steamer, rows of scows received the
flying cargo, and on each of these scows a sweating mob of men
charged the descending slings and heaved bales and boxes about in
frantic search. Men waved shipping receipts and shouted over the
steamer-rails to them. Sometimes two and three identified the same
article, and war arose. The "two-circle" and the "circle-and-dot"
brands caused endless jangling, while every whipsaw discovered a
dozen claimants.
"The purser insists that he is going mad," the first officer
said, as he helped Frona Welse down the gangway to the landing
stage, "and the freight clerks have turned the cargo over to the
passengers and quit work. But we're not so unlucky as the
Star of Bethlehem," he reassured her, pointing to a
steamship at anchor a quarter of a mile away. "Half of her
passengers have pack-horses for Skaguay and White Pass, and the
other half are bound over the Chilcoot. So they've mutinied and
everything's at a standstill."
"Hey, you!" he cried, beckoning to a Whitehall which hovered
discreetly on the outer rim of the floating confusion.
A tiny launch, pulling heroically at a huge tow-barge, attempted
to pass between; but the boatman shot nervily across her bow, and
just as he was clear, unfortunately, caught a crab. This slewed the
boat around and brought it to a stop.
"Watch out!" the first officer shouted.
A pair of seventy-foot canoes, loaded with outfits,
gold-rushers, and Indians, and under full sail, drove down from the
counter direction. One of them veered sharply towards the landing
stage, but the other pinched the Whitehall against the barge. The
boatman had unshipped his oars in time, but his small craft groaned
under the pressure and threatened to collapse. Whereat he came to
his feet, and in short, nervous phrases consigned all canoe-men and
launch-captains to eternal perdition. A man on the barge leaned
over from above and baptized him with crisp and crackling oaths,
while the whites and Indians in the canoe laughed derisively.
"Aw, g'wan!" one of them shouted. "Why don't yeh learn to
row?"
The boatman's fist landed on the point of his critic's jaw and
dropped him stunned upon the heaped merchandise. Not content with
this summary act he proceeded to follow his fist into the other
craft. The miner nearest him tugged vigorously at a revolver which
had jammed in its shiny leather holster, while his brother
argonauts, laughing, waited the outcome. But the canoe was under
way again, and the Indian helmsman drove the point of his paddle
into the boatman's chest and hurled him backward into the bottom of
the Whitehall.
When the flood of oaths and blasphemy was at full tide, and
violent assault and quick death seemed most imminent, the first
officer had stolen a glance at the girl by his side. He had
expected to find a shocked and frightened maiden countenance, and
was not at all prepared for the flushed and deeply interested face
which met his eyes.
"I am sorry," he began.
But she broke in, as though annoyed by the interruption, "No,
no; not at all. I am enjoying it every bit. Though I am glad that
man's revolver stuck. If it had not-"
"We might have been delayed in getting ashore." The first
officer laughed, and therein displayed his tact.
"That man is a robber," he went on, indicating the boatman, who
had now shoved his oars into the water and was pulling alongside.
"He agreed to charge only twenty dollars for putting you ashore.
Said he'd have made it twenty-five had it been a man. He's a
pirate, mark me, and he will surely hang some day. Twenty dollars
for a half-hour's work! Think of it!"
"Easy, sport! Easy!" cautioned the fellow in question, at the
same time making an awkward landing and dropping one of his oars
over-side. "You've no call to be flingin' names about," he added,
defiantly, wringing out his shirt-sleeve, wet from rescue of the
oar.
"You've got good ears, my man," began the first officer.
"And a quick fist," the other snapped in.
"And a ready tongue."
"Need it in my business. No gettin' 'long without it among you
sea-sharks. Pirate, am I? And you with a thousand passengers packed
like sardines! Charge 'em double first-class passage, feed 'em
steerage grub, and bunk 'em worse 'n pigs! Pirate, eh! Me?"
A red-faced man thrust his head over the rail above and began to
bellow lustily.
"I want my stock landed! Come up here, Mr. Thurston! Now! Right
away! Fifty cayuses of mine eating their heads off in this dirty
kennel of yours, and it'll be a sick time you'll have if you don't
hustle them ashore as fast as God'll let you! I'm losing a thousand
dollars a day, and I won't stand it! Do you hear? I won't stand it!
You've robbed me right and left from the time you cleared dock in
Seattle, and by the hinges of hell I won't stand it any more! I'll
break this company as sure as my name's Thad Ferguson! D'ye hear my
spiel? I'm Thad Ferguson, and you can't come and see me any too
quick for your health! D'ye hear?"
"Pirate; eh?" the boatman soliloquized. "Who? Me?"
Mr. Thurston waved his hand appeasingly at the red-faced man,
and turned to the girl. "I'd like to go ashore with you, and as far
as the store, but you see how busy we are. Good-by, and a lucky
trip to you. I'll tell off a couple of men at once and break out
your baggage. Have it up at the store to-morrow morning,
sharp."
She took his hand lightly and stepped aboard. Her weight gave
the leaky boat a sudden lurch, and the water hurtled across the
bottom boards to her shoe-tops: but she took it coolly enough,
settling herself in the stern-sheets and tucking her feet under
her.
"Hold on!" the officer cried. "This will never do, Miss Welse.
Come on back, and I'll get one of our boats over as soon as I
can."
"I'll see you in-in heaven first," retorted the boatman, shoving
off. "Let go!" he threatened.
Mr. Thurston gripped tight hold of the gunwale, and as reward
for his chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade.
Then he forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and swore, and swore
fervently.
"I dare say our farewell might have been more dignified," she
called back to him, her laughter rippling across the water.
"Jove!" he muttered, doffing his cap gallantly. "There is a
woman!" And a sudden hunger seized him, and a yearning to
see himself mirrored always in the gray eyes of Frona Welse. He was
not analytical; he did not know why; but he knew that with her he
could travel to the end of the earth. He felt a distaste for his
profession, and a temptation to throw it all over and strike out
for the Klondike whither she was going; then he glanced up the
beetling side of the ship, saw the red face of Thad Ferguson, and
forgot the dream he had for an instant dreamed.
Splash! A handful of water from his strenuous oar struck her
full in the face. "Hope you don't mind it, miss," he apologized.
"I'm doin' the best I know how, which ain't much."
"So it seems," she answered, good-naturedly.
"Not that I love the sea," bitterly; "but I've got to turn a few
honest dollars somehow, and this seemed the likeliest way. I
oughter 'a ben in Klondike by now, if I'd had any luck at all. Tell
you how it was. I lost my outfit on Windy Arm, half-way in, after
packin' it clean across the Pass--"
Zip! Splash! She shook the water from her eyes, squirming the
while as some of it ran down her warm back.
"You'll do," he encouraged her. "You're the right stuff for this
country. Goin' all the way in?"
She nodded cheerfully.
"Then you'll do. But as I was sayin', after I lost my outfit I
hit back for the coast, bein' broke, to hustle up another one.
That's why I'm chargin' high-pressure rates. And I hope you don't
feel sore at what I made you pay. I'm no worse than the rest, miss,
sure. I had to dig up a hundred for this old tub, which ain't worth
ten down in the States. Same kind of prices everywhere. Over on the
Skaguay Trail horseshoe nails is just as good as a quarter any day.
A man goes up to the bar and calls for a whiskey. Whiskey's half a
dollar. Well, he drinks his whiskey, plunks down two horseshoe
nails, and it's O.K. No kick comin' on horseshoe nails. They use
'em to make change."
"You must be a brave man to venture into the country again after
such an experience. Won't you tell me your name? We may meet on the
Inside."
"Who? Me? Oh, I'm Del Bishop, pocket-miner; and if ever we run
across each other, remember I'd give you the last shirt-I mean,
remember my last bit of grub is yours."
"Thank you," she answered with a sweet smile; for she was a
woman who loved the things which rose straight from the heart.
He stopped rowing long enough to fish about in the water around
his feet for an old cornbeef can.
"You'd better do some bailin'," he ordered, tossing her the can.
"She's leakin' worse since that squeeze."
Frona smiled mentally, tucked up her skirts, and bent to the
work. At every dip, like great billows heaving along the sky-line,
the glacier-fretted mountains rose and fell. Sometimes she rested
her back and watched the teeming beach towards which they were
heading, and again, the land-locked arm of the sea in which a score
or so of great steamships lay at anchor. From each of these, to the
shore and back again, flowed a steady stream of scows, launches,
canoes, and all sorts of smaller craft. Man, the mighty toiler,
reacting upon a hostile environment, she thought, going back in
memory to the masters whose wisdom she had shared in lecture-room
and midnight study. She was a ripened child of the age, and fairly
understood the physical world and the workings thereof. And she had
a love for the world, and a deep respect.
For some time Del Bishop had only punctuated the silence with
splashes from his oars; but a thought struck him.
"You haven't told me your name," he suggested, with complacent
delicacy.
"My name is Welse," she answered. "Frona Welse."
A great awe manifested itself in his face, and grew to a greater
and greater awe. "You-are-Frona-Welse?" he enunciated slowly.
"Jacob Welse ain't your old man, is he?"
"Yes; I am Jacob Welse's daughter, at your service."
He puckered his lips in a long low whistle of understanding and
stopped rowing. "Just you climb back into the stern and take your
feet out of that water," he commanded. "And gimme holt that
can."
"Am I not bailing satisfactorily?" she demanded,
indignantly.
"Yep. You're doin' all right; but, but, you are-are--"
"Just what I was before you knew who I was. Now you go on
rowing,-that's your share of the work; and I'll take care of
mine."
"Oh, you'll do!" he murmured ecstatically, bending afresh to the
oars. "And Jacob Welse is your old man? I oughter 'a known it,
sure!"
When they reached the sand-spit, crowded with heterogeneous
piles of merchandise and buzzing with men, she stopped long enough
to shake hands with her ferryman. And though such a proceeding on
the part of his feminine patrons was certainly unusual, Del Bishop
squared it easily with the fact that she was Jacob Welse's
daughter.
"Remember, my last bit of grub is yours," he reassured her,
still holding her hand.
"And your last shirt, too; don't forget."
"Well, you're a-a-a crackerjack!" he exploded with a final
squeeze. "Sure!"
Her short skirt did not block the free movement of her limbs,
and she discovered with pleasurable surprise that the quick
tripping step of the city pavement had departed from her, and that
she was swinging off in the long easy stride which is born of the
trail and which comes only after much travail and endeavor. More
than one gold-rusher, shooting keen glances at her ankles and
gray-gaitered calves, affirmed Del Bishop's judgment. And more than
one glanced up at her face, and glanced again; for her gaze was
frank, with the frankness of comradeship; and in her eyes there was
always a smiling light, just trembling on the verge of dawn; and
did the onlooker smile, her eyes smiled also. And the smiling light
was protean-mooded,-merry, sympathetic, joyous, quizzical,-the
complement of whatsoever kindled it. And sometimes the light spread
over all her face, till the smile prefigured by it was realized.
But it was always in frank and open comradeship.
And there was much to cause her to smile as she hurried through
the crowd, across the sand-spit, and over the flat towards the
log-building she had pointed out to Mr. Thurston. Time had rolled
back, and locomotion and transportation were once again in the most
primitive stages. Men who had never carried more than parcels in
all their lives had now become bearers of burdens. They no longer
walked upright under the sun, but stooped the body forward and
bowed the head to the earth. Every back had become a pack-saddle,
and the strap-galls were beginning to form. They staggered beneath
the unwonted effort, and legs became drunken with weariness and
titubated in divers directions till the sunlight darkened and
bearer and burden fell by the way. Other men, exulting secretly,
piled their goods on two-wheeled go-carts and pulled out blithely
enough, only to stall at the first spot where the great round
boulders invaded the trail. Whereat they generalized anew upon the
principles of Alaskan travel, discarded the go-cart, or trundled it
back to the beach and sold it at fabulous price to the last man
landed. Tenderfeet, with ten pounds of Colt's revolvers,
cartridges, and hunting-knives belted about them, wandered
valiantly up the trail, and crept back softly, shedding revolvers,
cartridges, and knives in despairing showers. And so, in gasping
and bitter sweat, these sons of Adam suffered for Adam's sin.
Frona felt vaguely disturbed by this great throbbing rush of
gold-mad men, and the old scene with its clustering associations
seemed blotted out by these toiling aliens. Even the old landmarks
appeared strangely unfamiliar. It was the same, yet not the same.
Here, on the grassy flat, where she had played as a child and
shrunk back at the sound of her voice echoing from glacier to
glacier, ten thousand men tramped ceaselessly up and down, grinding
the tender herbage into the soil and mocking the stony silence. And
just up the trail were ten thousand men who had passed by, and over
the Chilcoot were ten thousand more. And behind, all down the
island-studded Alaskan coast, even to the Horn, were yet ten
thousand more, harnessers of wind and steam, hasteners from the
ends of the earth. The Dyea River as of old roared turbulently down
to the sea; but its ancient banks were gored by the feet of many
men, and these men labored in surging rows at the dripping
tow-lines, and the deep-laden boats followed them as they fought
their upward way. And the will of man strove with the will of the
water, and the men laughed at the old Dyea River and gored its
banks deeper for the men who were to follow.
The doorway of the store, through which she had once run out and
in, and where she had looked with awe at the unusual sight of a
stray trapper or fur-trader, was now packed with a clamorous throng
of men. Where of old one letter waiting a claimant was a thing of
wonder, she now saw, by peering through the window, the mail heaped
up from floor to ceiling. And it was for this mail the men were
clamoring so insistently. Before the store, by the scales, was
another crowd. An Indian threw his pack upon the scales, the white
owner jotted down the weight in a note-book, and another pack was
thrown on. Each pack was in the straps, ready for the packer's back
and the precarious journey over the Chilcoot. Frona edged in
closer. She was interested in freights. She remembered in her day
when the solitary prospector or trader had his outfit packed over
for six cents,-one hundred and twenty dollars a ton.
The tenderfoot who was weighing up consulted his guide-book.
"Eight cents," he said to the Indian. Whereupon the Indians laughed
scornfully and chorused, "Forty cents!" A pained expression came
into his face, and he looked about him anxiously. The sympathetic
light in Frona's eyes caught him, and he regarded her with intent
blankness. In reality he was busy reducing a three-ton outfit to
terms of cash at forty dollars per hundred-weight. "Twenty-four
hundred dollars for thirty miles!" he cried. "What can I do?"
Frona shrugged her shoulders. "You'd better pay them the forty
cents," she advised, "else they will take off their straps."
The man thanked her, but instead of taking heed went on with his
haggling. One of the Indians stepped up and proceeded to unfasten
his pack-straps. The tenderfoot wavered, but just as he was about
to give in, the packers jumped the price on him to forty-five
cents. He smiled after a sickly fashion, and nodded his head in
token of surrender. But another Indian joined the group and began
whispering excitedly. A cheer went up, and before the man could
realize it they had jerked off their straps and departed, spreading
the news as they went that freight to Lake Linderman was fifty
cents.
Of a sudden, the crowd before the store was perceptibly
agitated. Its members whispered excitedly one to another, and all
their eyes were focussed upon three men approaching from up the
trail. The trio were ordinary-looking creatures, ill-clad and even
ragged. In a more stable community their apprehension by the
village constable and arrest for vagrancy would have been
immediate. "French Louis," the tenderfeet whispered and passed the
word along. "Owns three Eldorado claims in a block," the man next
to Frona confided to her. "Worth ten millions at the very least."
French Louis, striding a little in advance of his companions, did
not look it. He had parted company with his hat somewhere along the
route, and a frayed silk kerchief was wrapped carelessly about his
head. And for all his ten millions, he carried his own travelling
pack on his broad shoulders. "And that one, the one with the beard,
that's Swiftwater Bill, another of the Eldorado kings."
"How do you know?" Frona asked, doubtingly.
"Know!" the man exclaimed. "Know! Why his picture has been in
all the papers for the last six weeks. See!" He unfolded a
newspaper. "And a pretty good likeness, too. I've looked at it so
much I'd know his mug among a thousand."
"Then who is the third one?" she queried, tacitly accepting him
as a fount of authority.
Her informant lifted himself on his toes to see better. "I don't
know," he confessed sorrowfully, then tapped the shoulder of the
man next to him. "Who is the lean, smooth-faced one? The one with
the blue shirt and the patch on his knee?"
Just then Frona uttered a glad little cry and darted forward.
"Matt!" she cried. "Matt McCarthy!"
The man with the patch shook her hand heartily, though he did
not know her and distrust was plain in his eyes.
"Oh, you don't remember me!" she chattered. "And don't you dare
say you do! If there weren't so many looking, I'd hug you, you old
bear!
"And so Big Bear went home to the Little Bears," she recited,
solemnly. "And the Little Bears were very hungry. And Big Bear
said, 'Guess what I have got, my children.' And one Little Bear
guessed berries, and one Little Bear guessed salmon, and t'other
Little Bear guessed porcupine. Then Big Bear laughed 'Whoof!
Whoof!' and said, '
A Nice Big Fat Man!'"
As he listened, recollection avowed itself in his face, and,
when she had finished, his eyes wrinkled up and he laughed a
peculiar, laughable silent laugh.
"Sure, an' it's well I know ye," he explained; "but for the life
iv me I can't put me finger on ye."
She pointed into the store and watched him anxiously.
"Now I have ye!" He drew back and looked her up and down, and
his expression changed to disappointment. "It cuddent be. I mistook
ye. Ye cud niver a-lived in that shanty," thrusting a thumb in the
direction of the store.
Frona nodded her head vigorously.
"Thin it's yer ownself afther all? The little motherless
darlin', with the goold hair I combed the knots out iv many's the
time? The little witch that run barefoot an' barelegged over all
the place?"
"Yes, yes," she corroborated, gleefully.
"The little divil that stole the dog-team an' wint over the Pass
in the dead o' winter for to see where the world come to an ind on
the ither side, just because old Matt McCarthy was afther tellin'
her fairy stories?"
"O Matt, dear old Matt! Remember the time I went swimming with
the Siwash girls from the Indian camp?"
"An' I dragged ye out by the hair o' yer head?"
"And lost one of your new rubber boots?"
"Ah, an' sure an' I do. And a most shockin' an' immodest affair
it was! An' the boots was worth tin dollars over yer father's
counter."
"And then you went away, over the Pass, to the Inside, and we
never heard a word of you. Everybody thought you dead."
"Well I recollect the day. An' ye cried in me arms an' wuddent
kiss yer old Matt good-by. But ye did in the ind," he exclaimed,
triumphantly, "whin ye saw I was goin' to lave ye for sure. What a
wee thing ye were!"
"I was only eight."
"An' 'tis twelve year agone. Twelve year I've spint on the
Inside, with niver a trip out. Ye must be twinty now?"
"And almost as big as you," Frona affirmed.
"A likely woman ye've grown into, tall, an' shapely, an' all
that." He looked her over critically. "But ye cud 'a' stood a bit
more flesh, I'm thinkin'."
"No, no," she denied. "Not at twenty, Matt, not at twenty. Feel
my arm, you'll see." She doubled that member till the biceps
knotted.
"'Tis muscle," he admitted, passing his hand admiringly over the
swelling bunch; "just as though ye'd been workin' hard for yer
livin'."
"Oh, I can swing clubs, and box, and fence," she cried,
successively striking the typical postures; "and swim, and make
high dives, chin a bar twenty times, and-and walk on my hands.
There!"
"Is that what ye've been doin'? I thought ye wint away for
book-larnin'," he commented, dryly.
"But they have new ways of teaching, now, Matt, and they don't
turn you out with your head crammed--"
"An' yer legs that spindly they can't carry it all! Well, an' I
forgive ye yer muscle."
"But how about yourself, Matt?" Frona asked. "How has the world
been to you these twelve years?"
"Behold!" He spread his legs apart, threw his head back, and his
chest out. "Ye now behold Mister Matthew McCarthy, a king iv the
noble Eldorado Dynasty by the strength iv his own right arm. Me
possessions is limitless. I have more dust in wan minute than iver
I saw in all me life before. Me intintion for makin' this trip to
the States is to look up me ancestors. I have a firm belafe that
they wance existed. Ye may find nuggets in the Klondike, but niver
good whiskey. 'Tis likewise me intintion to have wan drink iv the
rate stuff before I die. Afther that 'tis me sworn resolve to
return to the superveeshion iv me Klondike properties. Indade, and
I'm an Eldorado king; an' if ye'll be wantin' the lind iv a tidy
bit, it's meself that'll loan it ye."
"The same old, old Matt, who never grows old," Frona
laughed.
"An' it's yerself is the thrue Welse, for all yer
prize-fighter's muscles an' yer philosopher's brains. But let's
wander inside on the heels of Louis an' Swiftwater. Andy's still
tindin' store, I'm told, an' we'll see if I still linger in the
pages iv his mimory."
"And I, also." Frona seized him by the hand. It was a bad habit
she had of seizing the hands of those she loved. "It's ten years
since I went away."
The Irishman forged his way through the crowd like a
pile-driver, and Frona followed easily in the lee of his bulk. The
tenderfeet watched them reverently, for to them they were as
Northland divinities. The buzz of conversation rose again.
"Who's the girl?" somebody asked. And just as Frona passed
inside the door she caught the opening of the answer: "Jacob
Welse's daughter. Never heard of Jacob Welse? Where have you been
keeping yourself?"
