suddenness. Heshook himself together, and realized that for long, how long he did notknow, he had bedded in the arms of Death. He spat, with definiteintention, heard the spittle crackle in the frost, and judged it must bebelow and far below sixty below. In truth, that day at Fort Yukon, thespirit thermometer registered seventy-five degrees below zero, which,since freezing-point is thirty-two above, was equivalent to one hundredand seven degrees of frost.
Slowly Tarwater’s brain reasoned to action. Here, in the vast alone,dwelt Death. Here had come two wounded moose. With the clearing of thesky after the great cold came on, he had located his bearings, and heknew that both wounded moose had trailed to him from the east.Therefore, in the east, were men—whites or Indians he could not tell, butat any rate men who might stand by him in his need and help moor him toreality above the sea of dark.
He moved slowly, but he moved in reality, girding himself with rifle,ammunition, matches, and a pack of twenty pounds of moose-meat. Then, anArgus rejuvenated, albeit lame of both legs and tottery, he turned hisback on the perilous west and limped into the sun-arising, re-birthingeast. . . .
Days later—how many days later he was never to know—dreaming dreams andseeing visions, cackling his old gold-chant of Forty-Nine, like onedrowning and swimming feebly to keep his consciousness above theengulfing dark, he came out upon the snow-slope to a canyon and saw belowsmoke rising and men who ceased from work to gaze at him. He tottereddown the hill to them, still singing; and when he ceased from lack ofbreath they called him variously: Santa Claus, Old Christmas, Whiskers,the Last of the Mohicans, and Father Christmas. And when he stood amongthem he stood very still, without speech, while great tears welled out ofhis eyes. He cried silently, a long time, till, as if suddenlybethinking himself, he sat down in the snow with much creaking andcrackling of his joints, and from this low vantage point toppled sidewiseand fainted calmly and easily away.
In less than a week Old Tarwater was up and limping about the houseworkof the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men of the creek.Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, tough and hard-bitten, who hadbeen buried so deeply inside the Circle that they did not know there wasa Klondike Strike. The news he brought them was their first word of it.They lived on an almost straight-meat diet of moose, caribou, and smokedsalmon, eked out with wild berries and somewhat succulent wild roots theyhad stocked up with in the summer. They had forgotten the taste ofcoffee, made fire with a burning glass, carried live fire-sticks withthem wherever they travelled, and in their pipes smoked dry leaves thatbit the tongue and were pungent to the nostrils.
Three years before, they had prospected from the head-reaches of theKoyokuk northward and clear across to the mouth of the Mackenzie on theArctic Ocean. Here, on the whaleships, they had beheld their last whitemen and equipped themselves with the last white man’s grub, consistingprincipally of salt and smoking tobacco. Striking south and west on thelong traverse to the junction of the Yukon and Porcupine at Fort Yukon,they had found gold on this creek and remained over to work the ground.
They hailed the advent of Tarwater with joy, never tired of listening tohis tales of Forty-Nine, and rechristened him Old Hero. Also, with teamade from spruce needles, with concoctions brewed from the inner willowbark, and with sour and bitter roots and bulbs from the ground, theydosed his scurvy out of him, so that he ceased limping and began to layon flesh over his bony framework. Further, they saw no reason at all whyhe should not gather a rich treasure of gold from the ground.
“Don’t know about all of three hundred thousand,” they told him onemorning, at breakfast, ere they departed to their work, “but how’d ahundred thousand do, Old Hero? That’s what we figure a claim is worth,the ground being badly spotted, and we’ve already staked your locationnotices.”
“Well, boys,” Old Tarwater answered, “and thanking you kindly, all I cansay is that a hundred thousand will do nicely, and very nicely, for astarter. Of course, I ain’t goin’ to stop till I get the full threehundred thousand. That’s what I come into the country for.”
They laughed and applauded his ambition and reckoned they’d have to hunta richer creek for him. And Old Hero reckoned that as the spring came onand he grew spryer, he’d have to get out and do a little snooping aroundhimself.
“For all anybody knows,” he said, pointing to a hillside across the creekbottom, “the moss under the snow there may be plumb rooted in nuggetgold.”
He said no more, but as the sun rose higher and the days grew longer andwarmer, he gazed often across the creek at the definite bench-formationhalf way up the hill. And, one day, when the thaw was in full swing, hecrossed the stream and climbed to the bench. Exposed patches of groundhad already thawed an inch deep. On one such patch he stopped, gathereda bunch of moss in his big gnarled hands, and ripped it out by the roots.The sun smouldered on dully glistening yellow. He shook the handful ofmoss, and coarse nuggets, like gravel, fell to the ground. It was theGolden Fleece ready for the shearing.
Not entirely unremembered in Alaskan annals is the summer stampede of1898 from Fort Yukon to the bench diggings of Tarwater Hill. And whenTarwater sold his holdings to the Bowdie interests for a sheerhalf-million and faced for California, he rode a mule over a new-cuttrail, with convenient road houses along the way, clear to the steamboatlanding at Fort Yukon.
At the first meal on the ocean-going steamship out of St. Michaels, awaiter, greyish-haired, pain-ravaged of face, scurvy-twisted of body,served him. Old Tarwater was compelled to look him over twice in orderto make certain he was Charles Crayton.
“Got it bad, eh, son?” Tarwater queried.
“Just my luck,” the other complained, after recognition and greeting.“Only one of the party that the scurvy attacked. I’ve been through hell.The other three are all at work and healthy, getting grub-stake toprospect up White River this winter. Anson’s earning twenty-five a dayat carpentering, Liverpool getting twenty logging for the saw-mill, andBig Bill’s getting forty a day as chief sawyer. I tried my best, and ifit hadn’t been for scurvy . . .”
“Sure, son, you done your best, which ain’t much, you being naturallyirritable and hard from too much business. Now I’ll tell you what. Youain’t fit to work crippled up this way. I’ll pay your passage with thecaptain in kind remembrance of the voyage you gave me, and you can lay upand take it easy the rest of the trip. And what are your circumstanceswhen you land at San Francisco?”
Charles Crayton shrugged his shoulders.
“Tell you what,” Tarwater continued. “There’s work on the ranch for youtill you can start business again.”
“I could manage your business for you—” Charles began eagerly.
“No, siree,” Tarwater declared emphatically. “But there’s alwayspost-holes to dig, and cordwood to chop, and the climate’s fine . . . ”
Tarwater arrived home a true prodigal grandfather for whom the fattedcalf was killed and ready. But first, ere he sat down at table, he muststroll out and around. And sons and daughters of his flesh and of thelaw needs must go with him fulsomely eating out of the gnarled old handthat had half a million to disburse. He led the way, and no opinion heslyly uttered was preposterous or impossible enough to draw dissent fromhis following. Pausing by the ruined water wheel which he had built fromthe standing timber, his face beamed as he gazed across the stretches ofTarwater Valley, and on and up the far heights to the summit of TarwaterMountain—now all his again.
A thought came to him that made him avert his face and blow his nose inorder to hide the twinkle in his eyes. Still attended by the entirefamily, he strolled on to the dilapidated barn. He picked up anage-weathered single-tree from the ground.
“William,” he said. “Remember that little conversation we had justbefore I started to Klondike? Sure, William, you remember. You told meI was crazy. And I said my father’d have walloped the tar out of me witha single-tree if I’d spoke to him that way.”
“Aw, but that was only foolin’,” William t
emporized.
William was a grizzled man of forty-five, and his wife and grown sonsstood in the group, curiously watching Grandfather Tarwater take off hiscoat and hand it to Mary to hold.
“William—come here,” he commanded imperatively.
No matter how reluctantly, William came.
“Just a taste, William, son, of what my father give me often enough,” OldTarwater crooned, as he laid on his son’s back and shoulders with thesingle-tree. “Observe, I ain’t hitting you on the head. My father had agosh-wollickin’ temper and never drew the line at heads when he wentafter tar.—Don’t jerk your elbows back that way! You’re likely to get acrack on one by accident. And just tell me one thing, William, son: isthere nary notion in your head that I’m crazy?”
“No!” William yelped out in pain, as he danced about. “You ain’t crazy,father of course you ain’t crazy!”
“You said it,” Old Tarwater remarked sententiously, tossing thesingle-tree aside and starting to struggle into his coat. “Now let’s allgo in and eat.”
THE END.
Glen Ellen, California, _September_ 14, 1916.
THE PRINCESS
A FIRE burned cheerfully in the jungle camp, and beside the fire lolled acheerful-seeming though horrible-appearing man. This was a hobo jungle,pitched in a thin strip of woods that lay between a railroad embankmentand the bank of a river. But no hobo was the man. So deep-sunk was hein the social abyss that a proper hobo would not sit by the same firewith him. A gay-cat, who is an ignorant new-comer on the “Road,” mightsit with such as he, but only long enough to learn better. Even low downbindle-stiffs and stew-bums, after a once-over, would have passed thisman by. A genuine hobo, a couple of punks, or a bunch of tender-yearedroad-kids might have gone through his rags for any stray pennies ornickels and kicked him out into the darkness. Even an alki-stiff wouldhave reckoned himself immeasurably superior.
For this man was that hybrid of tramp-land, an alki-stiff that hasdegenerated into a stew-bum, with so little self-respect that he willnever “boil-up,” and with so little pride that he will eat out of agarbage can. He was truly horrible-appearing. He might have been sixtyyears of age; he might have been ninety. His garments might have beendiscarded by a rag-picker. Beside him, an unrolled bundle showed itselfas consisting of a ragged overcoat and containing an empty andsmoke-blackened tomato can, an empty and battered condensed milk can,some dog-meat partly wrapped in brown paper and evidently begged fromsome butcher-shop, a carrot that had been run over in the street by awagon-wheel, three greenish-cankered and decayed potatoes, and asugar-bun with a mouthful bitten from it and rescued from the gutter, aswas made patent by the gutter-filth that still encrusted it.
A prodigious growth of whiskers, greyish-dirty and untrimmed for years,sprouted from his face. This hirsute growth should have been white, butthe season was summer and it had not been exposed to a rain-shower forsome time. What was visible of the face looked as if at some period ithad stopped a hand-grenade. The nose was so variously malformed in itshealed brokenness that there was no bridge, while one nostril, the sizeof a pea, opened downward, and the other, the size of a robin’s egg,tilted upward to the sky. One eye, of normal size, dim-brown and misty,bulged to the verge of popping out, and as if from senility weptcopiously and continuously. The other eye, scarcely larger than asquirrel’s and as uncannily bright, twisted up obliquely into the hairyscar of a bone-crushed eyebrow. And he had but one arm.
Yet was he cheerful. On his face, in mild degree, was depicted sensuouspleasure as he lethargically scratched his ribs with his one hand. Hepawed over his food-scraps, debated, then drew a twelve-ounce druggistbottle from his inside coat-pocket. The bottle was full of a colourlessliquid, the contemplation of which made his little eye burn brighter andquickened his movements. Picking up the tomato can, he arose, went downthe short path to the river, and returned with the can filled withnot-nice river water. In the condensed milk can he mixed one part ofwater with two parts of fluid from the bottle. This colourless fluid wasdruggist’s alcohol, and as such is known in tramp-land as “alki.”
Slow footsteps, coming down the side of the railroad embankment, alarmedhim ere he could drink. Placing the can carefully upon the groundbetween his legs, he covered it with his hat and waited anxiouslywhatever impended.
Out of the darkness emerged a man as filthy ragged as he. The new-comer,who might have been fifty, and might have been sixty, was grotesquelyfat. He bulged everywhere. He was composed of bulges. His bulbous nosewas the size and shape of a turnip. His eyelids bulged and his blue eyesbulged in competition with them. In many places the seams of hisgarments had parted across the bulges of body. His calves grew into hisfeet, for the broken elastic sides of his Congress gaiters were swelledfull with the fat of him. One arm only he sported, from the shoulder ofwhich was suspended a small and tattered bundle with the mud caked dry onthe outer covering from the last place he had pitched his doss. Headvanced with tentative caution, made sure of the harmlessness of the manbeside the fire, and joined him.
“Hello, grandpa,” the new-comer greeted, then paused to stare at theother’s flaring, sky-open nostril. “Say, Whiskers, how’d ye keep thenight dew out of that nose o’ yourn?”
Whiskers growled an incoherence deep in his throat and spat into the firein token that he was not pleased by the question.
“For the love of Mike,” the fat man chuckled, “if you got caught out in arainstorm without an umbrella you’d sure drown, wouldn’t you?”
“Can it, Fatty, can it,” Whiskers muttered wearily. “They ain’t nothin’new in that line of chatter. Even the bulls hand it out to me.”
“But you can still drink, I hope”; Fatty at the same time mollified andinvited, with his one hand deftly pulling the slip-knots that fastenedhis bundle.
From within the bundle he brought to light a twelve-ounce bottle of alki.Footsteps coming down the embankment alarmed him, and he hid the bottleunder his hat on the ground between his legs.
But the next comer proved to be not merely one of their own ilk, butlikewise to have only one arm. So forbidding of aspect was he thatgreetings consisted of no more than grunts. Huge-boned, tall, gaunt tocadaverousness, his face a dirty death’s head, he was as repellent anightmare of old age as ever Doré imagined. His toothless, thin-lippedmouth was a cruel and bitter slash under a great curved nose that almostmet the chin and that was like a buzzard’s beak. His one hand, lean andcrooked, was a talon. The beady grey eyes, unblinking and unwavering,were bitter as death, as bleak as absolute zero and as merciless. Hispresence was a chill, and Whiskers and Fatty instinctively drew togetherfor protection against the unguessed threat of him. Watching his chance,privily, Whiskers snuggled a chunk of rock several pounds in weigh closeto his hand if need for action should arise. Fatty duplicated theperformance.
Then both sat licking their lips, guiltily embarrassed, while theunblinking eyes of the terrible one bored into them, now into one, nowinto another, and then down at the rock-chunks of their preparedness.
“Huh!” sneered the terrible one, with such dreadfulness of menace as tocause Whiskers and Fatty involuntarily to close their hands down on theircave-man’s weapons.
“Huh!” the other repeated, reaching his one talon into his side coatpocket with swift definiteness. “A hell of a chance you two cheap bums’d have with me.”
The talon emerged, clutching ready for action a six-pound iron quoit.
“We ain’t lookin’ for trouble, Slim,” Fatty quavered.
“Who in hell are you to call me ‘Slim’?” came the snarling answer.
“Me? I’m just Fatty, an’ seein’ ’s I never seen you before—”
“An’ I suppose that’s Whiskers, there, with the gay an’ festive lamptan-going into his eyebrow an’ the God-forgive-us nose joy-riding allover his mug?”
“It’ll do, it’ll do,” Whiskers muttered uncomfortably. “One monica’s asgo
od as another, I find, at my time of life. And everybody hands it outto me anyway. And I need an umbrella when it rains to keep from gettingdrowned, an’ all the rest of it.”
“I ain’t used to company—don’t like it,” Slim growled. “So if you guyswant to stick around, mind your step, that’s all, mind your step.”
He fished from his pocket a cigar stump, self-evidently shot from thegutter, and prepared to put it in his mouth to chew. Then he changed hismind, glared at his companions savagely, and unrolled his bundle.Appeared in his hand a druggist’s bottle of alki.
“Well,” he snarled, “I suppose I gotta give you cheap skates a drink whenI ain’t got more’n enough for a good petrification for myself.”
Almost a softening flicker of light was imminent in his withered face ashe beheld the others proudly lift their hats and exhibit their ownsupplies.
“Here’s some water for the mixin’s,” Whiskers said, proffering histomato-can of river slush. “Stockyards just above,” he addedapologetically. “But they say—”
“Huh!” Slim snapped short, mixing the drink. “I’ve drunk worse’nstockyards in my time.”
Yet when all was ready, cans of alki in their solitary hands, the threethings that had once been men hesitated, as if of old habit, and nextbetrayed shame as if at self-exposure.
Whiskers was the first to brazen it.
“I’ve sat in at many a finer drinking,” he bragged.
“With the pewter,” Slim sneered.
“With the silver,” Whiskers corrected.
Slim turned a scorching eye-interrogation on Fatty.
Fatty nodded.
“Beneath the salt,” said Slim.
“Above it,” came Fatty’s correction. “I was born above it, and I’venever travelled second class. First or steerage, but no intermediate inmine.”
“Yourself?” Whiskers queried of Slim.
“In broken glass to the Queen, God bless her,” Slim answered, solemnly,without snarl or sneer.
“In the pantry?” Fatty insinuated.
Simultaneously Slim reached for his quoit, and Whiskers and Fatty fortheir rocks.
“Now