crawling on hand and knee, the wind thrust back in her throat by
the wind, she was heading for the tent. On her shoulders a bulky
pack caught the full fury of the storm. She plucked feebly at the
knotted flaps, but it was Tommy and Dick who cast them loose.
Then she set her soul for the last effort, staggered in, and fell
exhausted on the floor.
Tommy unbuckled the straps and took the pack from her. As he
lifted it there was a clanging of pots and pans. Dick, pouring
out a mug of whiskey, paused long enough to pass the wink across
her body. Tommy winked back. His lips pursed the monosyllable,
“clothes,” but Dick shook his head reprovingly. “Here, little
woman,” he said, after she had drunk the whiskey and straightened
up a bit.
“Here’s some dry togs. Climb into them. We’re going out to
extra-peg the tent. After that, give us the call, and we’ll come
in and have dinner. Sing out when you’re ready.”
“So help me, Dick, that’s knocked the edge off her for the rest of
this trip,” Tommy spluttered as they crouched to the lee of the
tent.
“But it’s the edge is her saving grace.” Dick replied, ducking his
head to a volley of sleet that drove around a corner of the
canvas. “The edge that you and I’ve got, Tommy, and the edge of
our mothers before us.”
THE MAN WITH THE GASH
Jacob Kent had suffered from cupidity all the days of his life.
This, in turn, had engendered a chronic distrustfulness, and his
mind and character had become so warped that he was a very
disagreeable man to deal with. He was also a victim to
somnambulic propensities, and very set in his ideas. He had been
a weaver of cloth from the cradle, until the fever of Klondike had
entered his blood and torn him away from his loom. His cabin
stood midway between Sixty Mile Post and the Stuart River; and men
who made it a custom to travel the trail to Dawson, likened him to
a robber baron, perched in his fortress and exacting toll from the
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45
caravans that used his ill-kept roads. Since a certain amount of
history was required in the construction of this figure, the less
cultured wayfarers from Stuart River were prone to describe him
after a still more primordial fashion, in which a command of
strong adjectives was to be chiefly noted.
This cabin was not his, by the way, having been built several
years previously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of
logs at that point for a grub-stake. They had been most
hospitable lads, and, after they abandoned it, travelers who knew
the route made it an object to arrive there at nightfall. It was
very handy, saving them all the time and toil of pitching camp;
and it was an unwritten rule that the last man left a neat pile of
firewood for the next comer. Rarely a night passed but from half
a dozen to a score of men crowded into its shelter. Jacob Kent
noted these things, exercised squatter sovereignty, and moved in.
Thenceforth, the weary travelers were mulcted a dollar per head
for the privilege of sleeping on the floor, Jacob Kent weighing
the dust and never failing to steal the down-weight. Besides, he
so contrived that his transient guests chopped his wood for him
and carried his water. This was rank piracy, but his victims were
an easy-going breed, and while they detested him, they yet
permitted him to flourish in his sins.
One afternoon in April he sat by his door,–for all the world like
a predatory spider,–marvelling at the heat of the returning sun,
and keeping an eye on the trail for prospective flies. The Yukon
lay at his feet, a sea of ice, disappearing around two great bends
to the north and south, and stretching an honest two miles from
bank to bank. Over its rough breast ran the sled-trail, a slender
sunken line, eighteen inches wide and two thousand miles in
length, with more curses distributed to the linear foot than any
other road in or out of all Christendom.
Jacob Kent was feeling particularly good that afternoon. The
record had been broken the previous night, and he had sold his
hospitality to no less than twenty-eight visitors. True, it had
been quite uncomfortable, and four had snored beneath his bunk all
night; but then it had added appreciable weight to the sack in
which he kept his gold dust. That sack, with its glittering
yellow treasure, was at once the chief delight and the chief bane
of his existence. Heaven and hell lay within its slender mouth.
In the nature of things, there being no privacy to his one-roomed
dwelling, he was tortured by a constant fear of theft. It would
be very easy for these bearded, desperate-looking strangers to
make away with it. Often he dreamed that such was the case, and
awoke in the grip of nightmare. A select number of these robbers
haunted him through his dreams, and he came to know them quite
well, especially the bronzed leader with the gash on his right
cheek. This fellow was the most persistent of the lot, and,
because of him, he had, in his waking moments, constructed several
score of hiding-places in and about the cabin. After a
concealment he would breathe freely again, perhaps for several
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46
nights, only to collar the Man with the Gash in the very act of
unearthing the sack. Then, on awakening in the midst of the usual
struggle, he would at once get up and transfer the bag to a new
and more ingenious crypt. It was not that he was the direct
victim of these phantasms; but he believed in omens and thought-
transference, and he deemed these dream-robbers to be the astral
projection of real personages who happened at those particular
moments, no matter where they were in the flesh, to be harboring
designs, in the spirit, upon his wealth. So he continued to bleed
the unfortunates who crossed his threshold, and at the same time
to add to his trouble with every ounce that went into the sack.
As he sat sunning himself, a thought came to Jacob Kent that
brought him to his feet with a jerk. The pleasures of life had
culminated in the continual weighing and reweighing of his dust;
but a shadow had been thrown upon this pleasant avocation, which
he had hitherto failed to brush aside. His gold-scales were quite
small; in fact, their maximum was a pound and a half,–eighteen
ounces,–while his hoard mounted up to something like three and a
third times that. He had never been able to weigh it all at one
operation, and hence considered himself to have been shut out from
a new and most edifying coign of contemplation. Being denied
this, half the pleasure of possession had been lost; nay, he felt
that this miserable obstacle actually minimized the fact, as it
did the strength, of possession. It was the solution of this
problem flashing across his mind that had just brought him to his
feet. He searched the trail carefully in either direction. There
was nothing in sight, so he went inside.
In a few seconds he had the table cleared away and the scales set
up. On one side he placed the stamped disks to the equivalent of
fifteen ounces, and balanced it with dust on the other. Replacing
the weights with dust, he then had thirty ounces precisely
balanced. These, in turn, he placed together on one side and
again balanced with more dust. By this time the gold was
exhausted, and he was sweating liberally. He trembled with
ecstasy, ravished beyond measure. Nevertheless he dusted the sack
thoroughly, to the last least grain, till the balance was overcome
and one side of the scales sank to the table. Equilibrium,
however, was restored by the addition of a pennyweight and five
grains to the opposite side. He stood, head thrown back,
transfixed. The sack was empty, but the potentiality of the
scales had become immeasurable. Upon them he could weigh any
amount, from the tiniest grain to pounds upon pounds. Mammon laid
hot fingers on his heart. The sun swung on its westering way till
it flashed through the open doorway, full upon the yellow-burdened
scales. The precious heaps, like the golden breasts of a bronze
Cleopatra, flung back the light in a mellow glow. Time and space
were not.
“Gawd blime me! but you ‘aye the makin’ of several quid there,
‘aven’t you?”
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47
Jacob Kent wheeled about, at the same time reaching for his
double-barrelled shot-gun, which stood handy. But when his eyes
lit on the intruder’s face, he staggered back dizzily. IT WAS THE
FACE OF THE MAN WITH THE GASH!