Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London

know what I would do.” Thus reiterated Molly, she of the flashing

eyes, and therein spoke the cumulative grit of five American-born

generations.

In the succeeding silence, Tommy thrust a pan of biscuits into the

Yukon stove and piled on fresh fuel. A reddish flood pounded

along under his sun-tanned skin, and as he stooped, the skin of

his neck was scarlet. Dick palmed a three-cornered sail needle

through a set of broken pack straps, his good nature in nowise

disturbed by the feminine cataclysm which was threatening to burst

in the storm-beaten tent.

“And if you was a man?” he asked, his voice vibrant with kindness.

The three-cornered needle jammed in the damp leather, and he

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35

suspended work for the moment.

“I’d be a man. I’d put the straps on my back and light out. I

wouldn’t lay in camp here, with the Yukon like to freeze most any

day, and the goods not half over the portage. And you–you are

men, and you sit here, holding your hands, afraid of a little wind

and wet. I tell you straight, Yankee-men are made of different

stuff. They’d be hitting the trail for Dawson if they had to wade

through hell-fire. And you, you–I wish I was a man.”

“I’m very glad, my dear, that you’re not.” Dick Humphries threw

the bight of the sail twine over the point of the needle and drew

it clear with a couple of deft turns and a jerk.

A snort of the gale dealt the tent a broad-handed slap as it

hurtled past, and the sleet rat-tat-tatted with snappy spite

against the thin canvas. The smoke, smothered in its exit, drove

back through the fire-box door, carrying with it the pungent odor

of green spruce.

“Good Gawd! Why can’t a woman listen to reason?” Tommy lifted

his head from the denser depths and turned upon her a pair of

smoke-outraged eyes.

“And why can’t a man show his manhood?”

Tommy sprang to his feet with an oath which would have shocked a

woman of lesser heart, ripped loose the sturdy reef-knots and

flung back the flaps of the tent.

The trio peered out. It was not a heartening spectacle. A few

water-soaked tents formed the miserable foreground, from which the

streaming ground sloped to a foaming gorge. Down this ramped a

mountain torrent. Here and there, dwarf spruce, rooting and

grovelling in the shallow alluvium, marked the proximity of the

timber line. Beyond, on the opposing slope, the vague outlines of

a glacier loomed dead-white through the driving rain. Even as

they looked, its massive front crumbled into the valley, on the

breast of some subterranean vomit, and it lifted its hoarse

thunder above the screeching voice of the storm. Involuntarily,

Molly shrank back.

“Look, woman! Look with all your eyes! Three miles in the teeth

of the gale to Crater Lake, across two glaciers, along the

slippery rim-rock, knee-deep in a howling river! Look, I say, you

Yankee woman! Look! There’s your Yankee-men!” Tommy pointed a

passionate hand in the direction of the struggling tents.

“Yankees, the last mother’s son of them. Are they on trail? Is

there one of them with the straps to his back? And you would

teach us men our work? Look, I say!”

Another tremendous section of the glacier rumbled earthward. The

wind whipped in at the open doorway, bulging out the sides of the

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36

tent till it swayed like a huge bladder at its guy ropes. The

smoke swirled about them, and the sleet drove sharply into their

flesh. Tommy pulled the flaps together hastily, and returned to

his tearful task at the fire-box. Dick Humphries threw the mended

pack straps into a corner and lighted his pipe. Even Molly was

for the moment persuaded.

“There’s my clothes,” she half-whimpered, the feminine for the

moment prevailing. “They’re right at the top of the cache, and

they’ll be ruined! I tell you, ruined!”

“There, there,” Dick interposed, when the last quavering syllable

had wailed itself out. “Don’t let that worry you, little woman.

I’m old enough to be your father’s brother, and I’ve a daughter

older than you, and I’ll tog you out in fripperies when we get to

Dawson if it takes my last dollar.”

“When we get to Dawson!” The scorn had come back to her throat

with a sudden surge. “You’ll rot on the way, first. You’ll drown

in a mudhole. You–you–Britishers!”

The last word, explosive, intensive, had strained the limits of

her vituperation. If that would not stir these men, what could?

Tommy’s neck ran red again, but he kept his tongue between his

teeth. Dick’s eyes mellowed. He had the advantage over Tommy,

for he had once had a white woman for a wife.

The blood of five American-born generations is, under certain

circumstances, an uncomfortable heritage; and among these

circumstances might be enumerated that of being quartered with

next of kin. These men were Britons. On sea and land her

ancestry and the generations thereof had thrashed them and theirs.

On sea and land they would continue to do so. The traditions of

her race clamored for vindication. She was but a woman of the

present, but in her bubbled the whole mighty past. It was not

alone Molly Travis who pulled on gum boots, mackintosh, and

straps; for the phantom hands of ten thousand forbears drew tight

the buckles, just so as they squared her jaw and set her eyes with

determination. She, Molly Travis, intended to shame these

Britishers; they, the innumerable shades, were asserting the

dominance of the common race.

The men-folk did not interfere. Once Dick suggested that she take

his oilskins, as her mackintosh was worth no more than paper in

such a storm. But she sniffed her independence so sharply that he

communed with his pipe till she tied the flaps on the outside and

slushed away on the flooded trail.

“Think she’ll make it?” Dick’s face belied the indifference of

his voice.

“Make it? If she stands the pressure till she gets to the cache,

what of the cold and misery, she’ll be stark, raving mad. Stand

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37

it? She’ll be dumb-crazed. You know it yourself, Dick. You’ve

wind-jammed round the Horn. You know what it is to lay out on a

topsail yard in the thick of it, bucking sleet and snow and frozen

canvas till you’re ready to just let go and cry like a baby.

Clothes? She won’t be able to tell a bundle of skirts from a gold

pan or a tea-kettle.”

“Kind of think we were wrong in letting her go, then?”

“Not a bit of it. So help me, Dick, she’d ‘a’ made this tent a

hell for the rest of the trip if we hadn’t. Trouble with her

she’s got too much spirit. This’ll tone it down a bit.”

“Yes,” Dick admitted, “she’s too ambitious. But then Molly’s all

right. A cussed little fool to tackle a trip like this, but a

plucky sight better than those pick-me-up-and-carry-me kind of

women. She’s the stock that carried you and me, Tommy, and you’ve

got to make allowance for the spirit. Takes a woman to breed a

man. You can’t suck manhood from the dugs of a creature whose

only claim to womanhood is her petticoats. Takes a she-cat, not a

cow, to mother a tiger.”

“And when they’re unreasonable we’ve got to put up with it, eh?”

“The proposition. A sharp sheath-knife cuts deeper on a slip than

a dull one; but that’s no reason for to hack the edge off over a

capstan bar.”

“All right, if you say so, but when it comes to woman, I guess

I’ll take mine with a little less edge.”

“What do you know about it?” Dick demanded.

“Some.” Tommy reached over for a pair of Molly’s wet stockings

and stretched them across his knees to dry.

Dick, eying him querulously, went fishing in her hand satchel,

then hitched up to the front of the stove with divers articles of

damp clothing spread likewise to the heat.

“Thought you said you never were married?” he asked.

“Did I? No more was I–that is–yes, by Gawd! I was. And as good

a woman as ever cooked grub for a man.”

“Slipped her moorings?” Dick symbolized infinity with a wave of

his hand.

“Ay.”

“Childbirth,” he added, after a moment’s pause.

The beans bubbled rowdily on the front lid, and he pushed the pot

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38

back to a cooler surface. After that he investigated the

biscuits, tested them with a splinter of wood, and placed them

aside under cover of a damp cloth. Dick, after the manner of his

kind, stifled his interest and waited silently. “A different

woman to Molly. Siwash.”

Dick nodded his understanding.

“Not so proud and wilful, but stick by a fellow through thick and

thin. Sling a paddle with the next and starve as contentedly as

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