He waited for the next flame of the aurora, and by its light saw the
smallness of the moccasined feet. But he saw more–the walk; and
knew it for the unmistakable walk he had once resolved never to
forget.
“She’s a sure goer,” Shorty confided hoarsely. “I’ll bet it’s an
Indian.”
“How do you do, Miss Gastell,” Smoke addressed.
“How do you do,” she answered, with a turn of the head and a quick
glance. “It’s too dark to see. Who are you?”
SMOKE BELLEW
48
“Smoke,”
She laughed in the frost, and he was certain it was the prettiest
laughter he had ever heard.
“And have you married and raised all those children you were telling
me about?” Before he could retort, she went on. “How many
chechaquos are there behind?”
“Several thousand, I imagine. We passed over three hundred. And
they weren’t wasting any time.”
“It’s the old story,” she said bitterly. “The new-comers get in on
the rich creeks, and the old-timers who dared and suffered and made
this country, get nothing. Old-timers made this discovery on Squaw
Creek–how it leaked out is the mystery–and they sent word up to
all the old-timers on Sea Lion. But it’s ten miles farther than
Dawson, and when they arrive they’ll find the creek staked to the
skyline by the Dawson chechaquos. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair,
such perversity of luck.”
“It is too bad,” Smoke sympathized. “But I’m hanged if I know what
you’re going to do about it. First come, first served, you know.”
“I wish I could do something,” she flashed back at him. “I’d like
to see them all freeze on the trail, or have everything terrible
happen to them, so long as the Sea Lion stampede arrived first.”
“You’ve certainly got it in for us, hard,” he laughed.
“It isn’t that,” she said quickly. “Man by man, I know the crowd
from Sea Lion, and they are men. They starved in this country in
the old days, and they worked like giants to develop it. I went
through the hard times on the Koyokuk with them when I was a little
girl. And I was with them in the Birch Creek famine, and in the
Forty Mile famine. They are heroes, and they deserve some reward,
and yet here are thousands of green softlings who haven’t earned the
right to stake anything, miles and miles ahead of them. And now, if
you’ll forgive my tirade, I’ll save my breath, for I don’t know when
you and all the rest may try to pass dad and me.”
No further talk passed between Joy and Smoke for an hour or so,
though he noticed that for a time she and her father talked in low
tones.
“I know’m now,” Shorty told Smoke. “He’s old Louis Gastell, an’ the
real goods. That must be his kid. He come into this country so
long ago they ain’t nobody can recollect, an’ he brought the girl
with him, she only a baby. Him an’ Beetles was tradin’ partners an’
they ran the first dinkey little steamboat up the Koyokuk.”
“I don’t think we’ll try to pass them,” Smoke said. “We’re at the
head of the stampede, and there are only four of us.”
Shorty agreed, and another hour of silence followed, during which
they swung steadily along. At seven o’clock, the blackness was
SMOKE BELLEW
49
broken by a last display of the aurora borealis, which showed to the
west a broad opening between snow-clad mountains.
“Squaw Creek!” Joy exclaimed.
“Goin’ some,” Shorty exulted. “We oughtn’t to ben there for another
half hour to the least, accordin’ to my reckonin’. I must a’ ben
spreadin’ my legs.”
It was at this point that the Dyea trail, baffled by ice-jams,
swerved abruptly across the Yukon to the east bank. And here they
must leave the hard-packed, main-travelled trail, mount the jams,
and follow a dim trail, but slightly packed, that hovered the west
bank.
Louis Gastell, leading, slipped in the darkness on the rough ice,
and sat up, holding his ankle in both his hands. He struggled to
his feet and went on, but at a slower pace and with a perceptible
limp. After a few minutes he abruptly halted.
“It’s no use,” he said to his daughter. “I’ve sprained a tendon.
You go ahead and stake for me as well as yourself.”
“Can’t we do something?” Smoke asked.
Louis Gastell shook his head.
“She can stake two claims as well as one. I’ll crawl over to the
bank, start a fire, and bandage my ankle. I’ll be all right. Go
on, Joy. Stake ours above the Discovery claim; it’s richer higher
up.”
“Here’s some birch bark,” Smoke said, dividing his supply equally.
“We’ll take care of your daughter.”
Louis Gastell laughed harshly.
“Thank you just the same,” he said. “But she can take care of
herself. Follow her and watch her.”
“Do you mind if I lead?” she asked Smoke, as she headed on. “I know
this country better than you.”
“Lead on,” Smoke answered gallantly, “though I agree with you it’s a
darned shame all us chechaquos are going to beat that Sea Lion bunch
to it. Isn’t there some way to shake them?”
She shook her head.
“We can’t hide our trail, and they’ll follow it like sheep.”
After a quarter of a mile, she turned sharply to the west. Smoke
noticed that they were going through unpacked snow, but neither he
nor Shorty observed that the dim trail they had been on still led
south. Had they witnessed the subsequent procedure of Louis
Gastell, the history of the Klondike would have been written
differently; for they would have seen that old-timer, no longer
SMOKE BELLEW
50
limping, running with his nose to the trail like a hound, following
them. Also, they would have seen him trample and widen the turn
they had made to the west. And, finally, they would have seen him
keep on the old dim trail that still led south.
A trail did run up the creek, but so slight was it that they
continually lost it in the darkness. After a quarter of an hour,
Joy Gastell was willing to drop into the rear and let the two men
take turns in breaking a way through the snow. This slowness of the
leaders enabled the whole stampede to catch up, and when daylight
came, at nine o’clock, as far back as they could see was an unbroken
line of men. Joy’s dark eyes sparkled at the sight.
“How long since we started up the creek?” she asked.
“Fully two hours,” Smoke answered.
“And two hours back makes four,” she laughed. “The stampede from
Sea Lion is saved.”
A faint suspicion crossed Smoke’s mind, and he stopped and
confronted her.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“You don’t. Then I’ll tell you. This is Norway Creek. Squaw Creek
is the next to the south.”
Smoke was for the moment, speechless.
“You did it on purpose?” Shorty demanded.
“I did it to give the old-timers a chance.”
She laughed mockingly. The men grinned at each other and finally
joined her.
“I’d lay you across my knee an’ give you a wallopin’, if womenfolk
wasn’t so scarce in this country,” Shorty assured her.
“Your father didn’t sprain a tendon, but waited till we were out of
sight and then went on?” Smoke asked.
She nodded.
“And you were the decoy.”
Again she nodded, and this time Smoke’s laughter rang out clear and
true. It was the spontaneous laughter of a frankly beaten man.
“Why don’t you get angry with me?” she queried ruefully. “Or–or
wallop me?”
“Well, we might as well be starting back,” Shorty urged. “My feet’s
gettin’ cold standin’ here.”
Smoke shook his head.
SMOKE BELLEW
51
“That would mean four hours lost. We must be eight miles up this
Creek now, and from the look ahead Norway is making a long swing
south. We’ll follow it, then cross over the divide somehow, and tap
Squaw Creek somewhere above Discovery.” He looked at Joy. “Won’t
you come along with us? I told your father we’d look after you.”
“I–” She hesitated. “I think I shall, if you don’t mind.” She
was looking straight at him, and her face was no longer defiant and
mocking. “Really, Mr Smoke, you make me almost sorry for what I
have done. But somebody had to save the old-timers.”
“It strikes me that stampeding is at best a sporting proposition.”
“And it strikes me you two are very game about it,” she went on,
then added with the shadow of a sigh: “What a pity you are not old-
timers.”
For two hours more they kept to the frozen creek-bed of Norway, then
turned into a narrow and rugged tributary that flowed from the
south. At midday they began the ascent of the divide itself.
Behind them, looking down and back, they could see the long line of
stampeders breaking up. Here and there, in scores of places, thin