Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London

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!

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