milkman. Steve went north to Seattle, I learned, that very morning. I didn’t
put on any more weight. My wife made me buy him a collar and tag, and
within an hour he showed his gratitude by killing her pet Persian cat.
There is no getting rid of that Spot. He will be with me until I die, for he’ll
never die. My appetite is not so good since he arrived, and my wife says I
am looking peaked. Last night that Spot got into Mr. Harvey’s hen-house
(Harvey is my next door neighbor) and killed nineteen of his fancy-bred
chickens. I shall have to pay for them. My neighbors on the other side
quarrelled with my wife and then moved out. Spot was the cause of it. And
that is why I am disappointed in Stephen Mackaye. I had no idea he was
so mean a man.
FLUSH OF GOLD
LON McFANE was a bit grumpy, what of losing his tobacco pouch, or
else he might have told me, before we got to it, something about the cabin
at Surprise Lake. All day, turn and turn about, we had spelled each other at
going to the fore and breaking trail for the dogs. It was heavy snow-shoe
work, and did not tend to make a man voluble, yet Lon McFane might
LOST FACE
45
have found breath enough at noon, when we stopped to boil coffee, with
which to tell me. But he didn’t. Surprise Lake?–it was Surprise Cabin to
me. I had never heard of it before. I confess I was a bit tired. I had been
looking for Lon to stop and make camp any time for an hour; but I had too
much pride to suggest making camp or to ask him his intentions; and yet
he was my man, hired at a handsome wage to mush my dogs for me and to
obey my commands. I guess I was a bit grumpy myself. He said nothing,
and I was resolved to ask nothing, even if we tramped on all night.
We came upon the cabin abruptly. For a week of trail we had met no one,
and, in my mind, there had been little likelihood of meeting any one for a
week to come. And yet there it was, right before my eyes, a cabin, with a
dim light in the window and smoke curling up from the chimney.
“Why didn’t you tell me–” I began, but was interrupted by Lon, who
muttered:–
“Surprise Lake–it lies up a small feeder half a mile on. It’s only a pond.”
“Yes, but the cabin–who lives in it?”
“A woman,” was the answer, and the next moment Lon had rapped on the
door, and a woman’s voice bade him enter.
“Have you seen Dave recently?” she asked.
“Nope,” Lon answered carelessly. “I’ve been in the other direction, down
Circle City way. Dave’s up Dawson way, ain’t he?”
The woman nodded, and Lon fell to unharnessing the dogs, while I
unlashed the sled and carried the camp outfit into the cabin. The cabin was
a large, one-room affair, and the woman was evidently alone in it. She
pointed to the stove, where water was already boiling, and Lon set about
the preparation of supper, while I opened the fish-bag and fed the dogs. I
looked for Lon to introduce us, and was vexed that he did not, for they
were evidently old friends.
“You are Lon McFane, aren’t you?” I heard her ask him. “Why, I
remember you now. The last time I saw you it was on a steamboat, wasn’t
it? I remember . . .”
Her speech seemed suddenly to be frozen by the spectacle of dread which,
I knew, from the terror I saw mounting in her eyes, must be on her inner
vision. To my astonishment, Lon was affected by her words and manner.
His face showed desperate, for all his voice sounded hearty and genial, as
he said:–
LOST FACE
46
“The last time we met was at Dawson, Queen’s Jubilee, or Birthday, or
something–don’t you remember?–the canoe races in the river, and the
obstacle races down the main street?”
The terror faded out of her eyes and her whole body relaxed. “Oh, yes, I
do remember,” she said. “And you won one of the canoe races.” “How’s
Dave been makin’ it lately? Strikin’ it as rich as ever, I suppose?” Lon
asked, with apparent irrelevance.
She smiled and nodded, and then, noticing that I had unlashed the bed roll,
she indicated the end of the cabin where I might spread it. Her own bunk, I
noticed, was made up at the opposite end.
“I thought it was Dave coming when I heard your dogs,” she said.
After that she said nothing, contenting herself with watching Lon’s
cooking operations, and listening the while as for the sound of dogs along
the trail. I lay back on the blankets and smoked and watched. Here was
mystery; I could make that much out, but no more could I make out. Why
in the deuce hadn’t Lon given me the tip before we arrived? I looked at her
face, unnoticed by her, and the longer I looked the harder it was to take
my eyes away. It was a wonderfully beautiful face, un- earthly, I may say,
with a light in it or an expression or something that was never on land or
sea. Fear and terror had completely vanished, and it was a placidly
beautiful face–if by “placid” one can characterize that intangible and
occult something that I cannot say was a radiance or a light any more than
I can say it was an expression.
Abruptly, as if for the first time, she became aware of my presence.
“Have you seen Dave recently?” she asked me. It was on the tip of my
tongue to say “Dave who?” when Lon coughed in the smoke that arose
from the sizzling bacon. The bacon might have caused that cough, but I
took it as a hint and left my question unasked. “No, I haven’t,” I answered.
“I’m new in this part of the country–”
“But you don’t mean to say,” she interrupted, “that you’ve never heard of
Dave–of Big Dave Walsh?”
“You see,” I apologized, “I’m new in the country. I’ve put in most of| my
time in the Lower Country, down Nome way.”
“Tell him about Dave,” she said to Lon.
Lon seemed put out, but he began in that hearty, genial manner that I had
noticed before. It seemed a shade too hearty and genial, and it irritated me.
LOST FACE
47
“Oh, Dave is a fine man,” he said. “He’s a man, every inch of him, and he
stands six feet four in his socks. His word is as good as his bond. The man
lies who ever says Dave told a lie, and that man will have to. fight with
me, too, as well–if there’s anything left of him when Dave gets done with
him. For Dave is a fighter. Oh, yes, he’s a scrapper from way back. He got
a grizzly with a ’38 popgun. He got clawed some, but he knew what he
was coin’. He went into the cave on purpose to get that grizzly. ‘Fraid of
nothing. Free an’ easy with his money, or his last shirt an’ match when out
of money. Why, he drained Surprise Lake here in three weeks an’ took out
ninety thousand, didn’t he?” She flushed and nodded her head proudly.
Through his recital she had followed every word with keenest interest.
“An’ I must say,” Lon went on, “that I was disappointed sore on not
meeting Dave here to-night.”
Lon served supper at one end of the table of whip-sawed spruce, and we
fell to eating. A howling of the dogs took the woman to the door. She
opened it an inch and listened.
“Where is Dave Walsh?” I asked, in an undertone. “Dead,” Lon answered.
“In hell, maybe. I don’t know. Shut up.”
“But you just said that you expected to meet him here to-night,” I
challenged.
“Oh, shut up’ can’t you,” was Lon’s reply, in the same cautious undertone.
The woman had closed the door and was returning, and I sat and meditated
upon the fact that this man who told me to shut up received from me a
salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month and his board.
Lon washed the dishes, while I smoked and watched the woman. She
seemed more beautiful than ever–strangely and weirdly beautiful, it is
true. After looking at her steadfastly for five minutes, I was compelled to
come back to the real world and to glance at Lon McFane. This enabled
me to know, without discussion, that the woman, too, was real. At first I
had taken her for the wife of Dave Walsh; but if Dave Walsh were dead,
as Lon had said, then she could be only his widow.
It was early to bed, for we faced a long day on the morrow; and as Lon