I could see that he was interested, and I knew that as I spoke he had looked through the window and seen the man writing the letter.
“There is a picture you have painted that I understand,” he said. “It is a true picture. It has much meaning. It is in your cabin at Dawson. It is a faro table. There are men playing. It is a large game. The limit is off.”
“How do you know the limit is off?” I broke in excitedly, for here was where my work could be tried out on an unbiassed judge who knew life only, and not art, and who was a sheer master of reality. Also, I was very proud of that particular piece of work. I had named it “The Last Turn,” and I believed it to be one of the best things I had ever done.
“There are no chips on the table”, Sitka Charley explained. “The men are playing with markers. That means the roof is the limit. One man play yellow markers – maybe one yellow marker worth one thousand dollars, maybe two thousand dollars. One man play red markers. Maybe they are worth five hundred dollars, maybe one thousand dollars. It is a very big game. Everybody play very high, up to the roof. How do I know? You make the dealer with blood little bit warm in face.” (I was delighted.) “The lookout, you make him lean forward in his chair. Why he lean forward? Why his face very much quiet? Why his eyes very much bright? Why dealer warm with blood a little bit in the face? Why all men very quiet? – the man with yellow markers? the man with white markers? the man with red markers? Why nobody talk? Because very much money. Because last turn.”
“How do you know it is the last turn?” I asked.
“The king is coppered, the seven is played open,” he answered. “Nobody bet on other cards. Other cards all gone. Everybody one mind. Everybody play king to lose, seven to win. Maybe bank lose twenty thousand dollars, maybe bank win. Yes, that picture I understand.”
“Yet you do not know the end!” I cried triumphantly. “It is the last turn, but the cards are not yet turned. In the picture they will never be turned. Nobody will ever know who wins nor who loses.”
“And the men will sit there and never talk,” he said, wonder and awe growing in his face. “And the lookout will lean forward, and the blood will be warm in the face of the dealer. It is a strange thing. Always will they sit there, always; and the cards will never be turned.”
“It is a picture,” I said. “It is life. You have seen things like it yourself.”
He looked at me and pondered, then said, very slowly: “No, as you say, there is no end to it. Nobody will ever know the end. Yet is it a true thing. I have seen it. It is life.”
For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial wisdom of the white man and verifying it by the facts of life. He nodded his head several times, and grunted once or twice. Then he knocked the ashes from his pipe, carefully refilled it, and after a thoughtful pause, lighted it again.
“Then have I, too, seen many pictures of life,” he began; “pictures not painted, but seen with the eyes. I have looked at them like through the window at the man writing the letter. I have seen many pieces of life, without beginning, without end, without understanding.”
With a sudden change of position he turned his eyes full upon me and regarded me thoughtfully.
“Look you,” he said; “you are a painter-man. How would you paint this which I saw, a picture without beginning, the ending of which I do not understand, a piece of life with the northern lights for a candle and Alaska for a frame.”
“It is a large canvas,” I murmured.
But he ignored me, for the picture he had in mind was before his eyes and he was seeing it.
“There are many names for this picture,” he said. “But in the picture there are many sun-dogs, and it comes into my mind to call it ‘The Sun-Dog Trail.’ It was a long time ago, seven years ago, the fall of ‘97, when I saw the woman first time. At Lake Linderman I had one canoe, very good Peterborough canoe. I came over Chilcoot Pass with two thousand letters for Dawson. I was letter carrier. Everybody rush to Klondike at that time. Many people on trail. Many people chop down trees and make boats. Last water, snow in the air, snow on the ground, ice on the lake, on the river ice in the eddies. Every day more snow, more ice. Maybe one day, maybe three days, maybe six days, any day maybe freeze-up come, then no more water, all ice, everybody walk, Dawson six hundred miles, long time walk. Boat go very quick. Everybody want to go boat. Everybody say, ‘Charley, two hundred dollars you take me in canoe,’ ‘Charley, three hundred dollars,’ ‘Charley, four hundred dollars.’ I say no, all the time I say no. I am letter carrier.
“In morning I get to Lake Linderman. I walk all night and am much tired. I cook breakfast, I eat, then I sleep on the beach three hours. I wake up. It is ten o’clock. Snow is falling. There is wind, much wind that blows fair. Also, there is a woman who sits in the snow alongside. She is white woman, she is young, very pretty, maybe she is twenty years old, maybe twenty-five years old. She look at me. I look at her. She is very tired. She is no dance-woman. I see that right away. She is good woman, and she is very tired.
“‘You are Sitka Charley,’ she says. I get up quick and roll blankets so snow does not get inside. ‘I go to Dawson,’ she says. ‘I go in your canoe – how much?’
“I do not want anybody in my canoe. I do not like to say no. So I say, ‘One thousand dollars.’ Just for fun I say it, so woman cannot come with me, much better than say no. She look at me very hard, then she says, ‘When you start?’ I say right away. Then she says all right, she will give me one thousand dollars.
“What can I say? I do not want the woman, yet have I given my word that for one thousand dollars she can come. I am surprised. Maybe she make fun, too, so I say, ‘Let me see thousand dollars.’ And that woman, that young woman, all alone on the trail, there in the snow, she take out one thousand dollars, in greenbacks, and she put them in my hand. I look at money, I look at her. What can I say? I say, ‘No, my canoe very small. There is no room for outfit.’ She laugh. She says, ‘I am great traveller. This is my outfit.’ She kick one small pack in the snow. It is two fur robes, canvas outside, some woman’s clothes inside. I pick it up. Maybe thirty-five pounds. I am surprised. She take it away from me. She says, ‘Come, let us start.’ She carries pack into canoe. What can I say? I put my blankets into canoe. We start.
“And that is the way I saw the woman first time. The wind was fair. I put up small sail. The canoe went very fast, it flew like a bird over the high waves. The woman was much afraid. ‘What for you come Klondike much afraid?’ I ask. She laugh at me, a hard laugh, but she is still much afraid. Also is she very tired. I run canoe through rapids to Lake Bennett. Water very bad, and woman cry out because she is afraid. We go down Lake Bennett, snow, ice, wind like a gale, but woman is very tired and go to sleep.
“That night we make camp at Windy Arm. Woman sit by fire and eat supper. I look at her. She is pretty. She fix hair. There is much hair, and it is brown, also sometimes it is like gold in the firelight, when she turn her head, so, and flashes come from it like golden fire. The eyes are large and brown, sometimes warm like a candle behind a curtain, sometimes very hard and bright like broken ice when sun shines upon it. When she smile – how can I say? – when she smile I know white man like to kiss her, just like that, when she smile. She never do hard work. Her hands are soft, like baby’s hand. She is soft all over, like baby. She is not thin, but round like baby; her arm, her leg, her muscles, all soft and round like baby. Her waist is small, and when she stand up, when she walk, or move her head or arm, it is – I do not know the word – but it is nice to look at, like – maybe I say she is built on lines like the lines of a good canoe, just like that, and when she move she is like the movement of the good canoe sliding through still water or leaping through water when it is white and fast and angry. It is very good to see.