and drew himself from the hole.
“Jim!” The new-comer recognized him. “What’s the matter?”
“Wot’s the matter? Oh, nothink at all. It jest ‘appens as I do
little things like this for my ‘ealth. Wot’s the matter, you
bloomin’ idjit? Wot’s the matter, eh? Cast me loose or I’ll show
you wot! ‘Urry up, or I’ll ‘olystone the decks with you!”
“Huh!” he added, as the other went to work with his sheath-knife.
“Wot’s the matter? I want to know. Jes’ tell me that, will you,
wot’s the matter? Hey?”
Kent was quite dead when they rolled him over. The gun, an old-
fashioned, heavy-weighted muzzle-loader, lay near him. Steel and
wood had parted company. Near the butt of the right-hand barrel,
with lips pressed outward, gaped a fissure several inches in
length. The sailor picked it up, curiously. A glittering stream
of yellow dust ran out through the crack. The facts of the case
dawned upon Jim Cardegee.
“Strike me standin’!” he roared; “‘ere’s a go! ‘Ere’s ‘is
bloomin’ dust! Gawd blime me, an’ you, too, Charley, if you don’t
run an’ get the dish-pan!”
JAN, THE UNREPENTANT
“For there’s never a law of God or man
Runs north of Fifty-three.”
Jan rolled over, clawing and kicking. He was fighting hand and
foot now, and he fought grimly, silently. Two of the three men
who hung upon him, shouted directions to each other, and strove to
curb the short, hairy devil who would not curb. The third man
howled. His finger was between Jan’s teeth.
“Quit yer tantrums, Jan, an’ ease up!” panted Red Bill, getting a
strangle-hold on Jan’s neck. “Why on earth can’t yeh hang decent
and peaceable?”
But Jan kept his grip on the third man’s finger, and squirmed over
the floor of the tent, into the pots and pans.
“Youah no gentleman, suh,” reproved Mr. Taylor, his body following
his finger, and endeavoring to accommodate itself to every jerk of
Tales of the Klondyke
55
Jan’s head. “You hev killed Mistah Gordon, as brave and honorable
a gentleman as ever hit the trail aftah the dogs. Youah a
murderah, suh, and without honah.”
“An’ yer no comrade,” broke in Red Bill. “If you was, you’d hang
‘thout rampin’ around an’ roarin’. Come on, Jan, there’s a good
fellow. Don’t give us no more trouble. Jes’ quit, an’ we’ll hang
yeh neat and handy, an’ be done with it.”
“Steady, all!” Lawson, the sailorman, bawled. “Jam his head into
the bean pot and batten down.”
“But my fingah, suh,” Mr. Taylor protested.
“Leggo with y’r finger, then! Always in the way!”
“But I can’t, Mistah Lawson. It’s in the critter’s gullet, and
nigh chewed off as ‘t is.”
“Stand by for stays!” As Lawson gave the warning, Jan half lifted
himself, and the struggling quartet floundered across the tent
into a muddle of furs and blankets. In its passage it cleared the
body of a man, who lay motionless, bleeding from a bullet-wound in
the neck.
All this was because of the madness which had come upon Jan–the
madness which comes upon a man who has stripped off the raw skin
of earth and grovelled long in primal nakedness, and before whose
eyes rises the fat vales of the homeland, and into whose nostrils
steals the whiff of bay, and grass, and flower, and new-turned
soil. Through five frigid years Jan had sown the seed. Stuart
River, Forty Mile, Circle City, Koyokuk, Kotzebue, had marked his
bleak and strenuous agriculture, and now it was Nome that bore the
harvest,–not the Nome of golden beaches and ruby sands, but the
Nome of ’97, before Anvil City was located, or Eldorado District
organized. John Gordon was a Yankee, and should have known
better. But he passed the sharp word at a time when Jan’s blood-
shot eyes blazed and his teeth gritted in torment. And because of
this, there was a smell of saltpetre in the tent, and one lay
quietly, while the other fought like a cornered rat, and refused
to hang in the decent and peacable manner suggested by his
comrades.
“If you will allow me, Mistah Lawson, befoah we go further in this
rumpus, I would say it wah a good idea to pry this hyer varmint’s
teeth apart. Neither will he bite off, nor will he let go. He
has the wisdom of the sarpint, suh, the wisdom of the sarpint.”
“Lemme get the hatchet to him!” vociferated the sailor. “Lemme
get the hatchet!” He shoved the steel edge close to Mr. Taylor’s
finger and used the man’s teeth as a fulcrum. Jan held on and
breathed through his nose, snorting like a grampus. “Steady, all!
Now she takes it!”
Tales of the Klondyke
56
“Thank you, suh; it is a powerful relief.” And Mr. Taylor
proceeded to gather into his arms the victim’s wildly waving legs.
But Jan upreared in his Berserker rage; bleeding, frothing,
cursing; five frozen years thawing into sudden hell. They swayed
backward and forward, panted, sweated, like some cyclopean, many-
legged monster rising from the lower deeps. The slush-lamp went
over, drowned in its own fat, while the midday twilight scarce
percolated through the dirty canvas of the tent.
“For the love of Gawd, Jan, get yer senses back!” pleaded Red
Bill. “We ain’t goin’ to hurt yeh, ‘r kill yeh, ‘r anythin’ of
that sort. Jes’ want to hang yeh, that’s all, an’ you a-messin’
round an’ rampagin’ somethin’ terrible. To think of travellin’
trail together an’ then bein’ treated this-a way. Wouldn’t
‘bleeved it of yeh, Jan!”
“He’s got too much steerage-way. Grab holt his legs, Taylor, and
heave’m over!”
“Yes, suh, Mistah Lawson. Do you press youah weight above, after
I give the word.” The Kentuckian groped about him in the murky
darkness. “Now, suh, now is the accepted time!”
There was a great surge, and a quarter of a ton of human flesh
tottered and crashed to its fall against the side-wall. Pegs drew
and guy-ropes parted, and the tent, collapsing, wrapped the battle
in its greasy folds.
“Yer only makin’ it harder fer yerself,” Red Bill continued, at
the same time driving both his thumbs into a hairy throat, the
possessor of which he had pinned down. “You’ve made nuisance
enough a’ ready, an’ it’ll take half the day to get things
straightened when we’ve strung yeh up.”
“I’ll thank you to leave go, suh,” spluttered Mr. Taylor.
Red Bill grunted and loosed his grip, and the twain crawled out
into the open. At the same instant Jan kicked clear of the
sailor, and took to his heels across the snow.
“Hi! you lazy devils! Buck! Bright! Sic’m! Pull ‘m down!” sang
out Lawson, lunging through the snow after the fleeing man. Buck
and Bright, followed by the rest of the dogs, outstripped him and
rapidly overhauled the murderer.
There was no reason that these men should do this; no reason for
Jan to run away; no reason for them to attempt to prevent him. On
the one hand stretched the barren snow-land; on the other, the
frozen sea. With neither food nor shelter, he could not run far.
All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent,
as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him.
Tales of the Klondyke
57
But these men did not stop to think. There was a certain taint of
madness running in the veins of all of them. Besides, blood had
been spilled, and upon them was the blood-lust, thick and hot.
“Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord, and He saith it in temperate
climes where the warm sun steals away the energies of men. But in
the Northland they have discovered that prayer is only efficacious
when backed by muscle, and they are accustomed to doing things for
themselves. God is everywhere, they have heard, but he flings a
shadow over the land for half the year that they may not find him;
so they grope in darkness, and it is not to be wondered that they
often doubt, and deem the Decalogue out of gear.
Jan ran blindly, reckoning not of the way of his feet, for he was
mastered by the verb “to live.” To live! To exist! Buck flashed
gray through the air, but missed. The man struck madly at him,
and stumbled. Then the white teeth of Bright closed on his
mackinaw jacket, and he pitched into the snow. TO LIVE! TO
EXIST! He fought wildly as ever, the centre of a tossing heap of
men and dogs. His left hand gripped a wolf-dog by the scruff of
the back, while the arm was passed around the neck of Lawson.
Every struggle of the dog helped to throttle the hapless sailor.
Jan’s right hand was buried deep in the curling tendrils of Red
Bill’s shaggy head, and beneath all, Mr. Taylor lay pinned and
helpless. It was a deadlock, for the strength of his madness was