A thousand deaths by Jack London

blankets, estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below.

The cold snap had broken. On top their blankets lay six inches of

frost crystals.

“Good morning! how’s your feet?” was Smoke’s greeting across the

ashes of the fire to where Joy Gastell, carefully shaking aside the

snow, was sitting up in her sleeping furs.

Shorty built the fire and quarried ice from the creek, while Smoke

cooked breakfast. Daylight came on as they finished the meal.

“You go an’ fix them corner-stakes, Smoke,” Shorty said. “There’s a

gravel under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an’ I’m goin’ to

melt water and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck.”

Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes. Starting from the

down-stream centre-stake of ‘twenty-seven,’ he headed at right

angles across the narrow valley towards its rim. He proceeded

methodically, almost automatically, for his mind was alive with

recollections of the night before. He felt, somehow, that he had

won to empery over the delicate lines and firm muscles of those feet

and ankles he had rubbed with snow, and this empery seemed to extend

to all women. In dim and fiery ways a feeling of possession

mastered him. It seemed that all that was necessary was for him to

walk up to this Joy Gastell, take her hand in his, and say “Come.”

SMOKE BELLEW

55

It was in this mood that he discovered something that made him

forget empery over the white feet of woman. At the valley rim he

blazed no corner-stake. He did not reach the valley rim, but,

instead, he found himself confronted by another stream. He lined up

with his eye a blasted willow tree and a big and recognizable

spruce. He returned to the stream where were the centre stakes. He

followed the bed of the creek around a wide horseshoe bend through

the flat, and found that the two creeks were the same creek. Next,

he floundered twice through the snow from valley rim to valley rim,

running the first line from the lower stake of ‘twenty-seven,’ the

second from the upper stake of ‘twenty-eight,’ and he found that THE

UPPER STAKE OF THE LATTER WAS LOWER THAN THE LOWER STAKE OF THE

FORMER. In the gray twilight and half-darkness Shorty had located

their two claims on the horseshoe.

Smoke plodded back to the little camp. Shorty, at the end of

washing a pan of gravel, exploded at sight of him.

“We got it!” Shorty cried, holding out the pan. “Look at it! A

nasty mess of gold. Two hundred right there if it’s a cent. She

runs rich from the top of the wash-gravel. I’ve churned around

placers some, but I never got butter like what’s in this pan.”

Smoke cast an incurious glance at the coarse gold, poured himself a

cup of coffee at the fire, and sat down. Joy sensed something wrong

and looked at him with eagerly solicitous eyes. Shorty, however,

was disgruntled by his partner’s lack of delight in the discovery.

“Why don’t you kick in an’ get excited?” he demanded. “We got our

pile right here, unless you’re stickin’ up your nose at two-hundred-

dollar pans.”

Smoke took a swallow of coffee before replying.

“Shorty, why are our two claims here like the Panama Canal?”

“What’s the answer?”

“Well, the eastern entrance of the Panama Canal is west of the

western entrance, that’s all.”

“Go on,” Shorty said. “I ain’t seen the joke yet.”

“In short, Shorty, you staked our two claims on a big horseshoe

bend.”

Shorty set the gold pan down in the snow and stood up.

“Go on,” he repeated.

“The upper stake of twenty-eight is ten feet below the lower stake

of twenty-seven.”

“You mean we ain’t got nothin’, Smoke?”

“Worse than that; we’ve got ten feet less than nothing.”

SMOKE BELLEW

56

Shorty departed down the bank on the run. Five minutes later he

returned. In response to Joy’s look, he nodded. Without speech, he

went over to a log and sat down to gaze steadily at the snow in

front of his moccasins.

“We might as well break camp and start back for Dawson,” Smoke said,

beginning to fold the blankets.

“I am sorry, Smoke,” Joy said. “It’s all my fault.”

“It’s all right,” he answered. “All in the day’s work, you know.”

“But it’s my fault, wholly mine,” she persisted. “Dad’s staked for

me down near Discovery, I know. I’ll give you my claim.”

He shook his head.

“Shorty,” she pleaded.

Shorty shook his head and began to laugh. It was a colossal laugh.

Chuckles and muffled explosions yielded to hearty roars.

“It ain’t hysterics,” he explained, “I sure get powerful amused at

times, an’ this is one of them.”

His gaze chanced to fall on the gold pan. He walked over and

gravely kicked it, scattering the gold over the landscape.

“It ain’t ourn,” he said. “It belongs to the geezer I backed up

five hundred feet last night. An’ what gets me is four hundred an’

ninety of them feet was to the good . . . his good. Come on, Smoke.

Let’s start the hike to Dawson. Though if you’re hankerin’ to kill

me I won’t lift a finger to prevent.”

SHORTY DREAMS.

I.

“Funny you don’t gamble none,” Shorty said to Smoke one night in the

Elkhorn. “Ain’t it in your blood?”

“It is,” Smoke answered. “But the statistics are in my head. I

like an even break for my money.”

All about them, in the huge bar-room, arose the click and rattle and

rumble of a dozen games, at which fur-clad, moccasined men tried

their luck. Smoke waved his hand to include them all.

“Look at them,” he said. “It’s cold mathematics that they will lose

more than they win to-night, that the big proportion is losing right

SMOKE BELLEW

57

now.”

“You’re sure strong on figgers,” Shorty murmured admiringly. “An’

in the main you’re right. But they’s such a thing as facts. An’

one fact is streaks of luck. They’s times when every geezer playin’

wins, as I know, for I’ve sat in in such games an’ saw more’n one

bank busted. The only way to win at gamblin’ is wait for a hunch

that you’ve got a lucky streak comin’ and then to play it to the

roof.”

“It sounds simple,” Smoke criticized. “So simple I can’t see how

men can lose.”

“The trouble is,” Shorty admitted, “that most men gets fooled on

their hunches. On occasion I sure get fooled on mine. The thing is

to try, an’ find out.”

Smoke shook his head.

“That’s a statistic, too, Shorty. Most men prove wrong on their

hunches.”

“But don’t you ever get one of them streaky feelin’s that all you

got to do is put your money down an’ pick a winner?”

Smoke laughed.

“I’m too scared of the percentage against me. But I’ll tell you

what, Shorty. I’ll throw a dollar on the ‘high card’ right now and

see if it will buy us a drink.”

Smoke was edging his way in to the faro table, when Shorty caught

his arm.

“Hold on. I’m gettin’ one of them hunches now. You put that dollar

on roulette.”

They went over to a roulette table near the bar.

“Wait till I give the word,” Shorty counselled.

“What number?” Smoke asked.

“Pick it yourself. But wait till I say let her go.”

“You don’t mean to say I’ve got an even chance on that table?” Smoke

argued.

“As good as the next geezers.”

“But not as good as the bank’s.”

“Wait and see,” Shorty urged. “Now! Let her go!”

The game-keeper had just sent the little ivory ball whirling around

the smooth rim above the revolving, many-slotted wheel. Smoke, at

the lower end of the table, reached over a player, and blindly

SMOKE BELLEW

58

tossed the dollar. It slid along the smooth, green cloth and

stopped fairly in the centre of ’34.’

The ball came to rest, and the game-keeper announced, “Thirty-four

wins!” He swept the table, and alongside of Smoke’s dollar, stacked

thirty-five dollars. Smoke drew the money in, and Shorty slapped

him on the shoulder.

“Now, that was the real goods of a hunch, Smoke! How’d I know it?

There’s no tellin’. I just knew you’d win. Why, if that dollar of

yourn’d fell on any other number it’d won just the same. When the

hunch is right, you just can’t help winnin’.”

“Suppose it had come ‘double nought’?” Smoke queried, as they made

their way to the bar.

”

Then your dollar’d ben on ‘double nought,'” was Shorty’s answer.

“They’s no gettin’ away from it. A hunch is a hunch. Here’s how.

Come on back to the table. I got a hunch, after pickin’ you for a

winner, that I can pick some few numbers myself.”

“Are you playing a system?” Smoke asked, at the end of ten minutes,

when his partner had dropped a hundred dollars.