with me.”
Mrs. Sayther, whose flush had deepened and whose heart was urging
painfully, had been prepared for almost anything save this coolly
extended hand; but she tactfully curbed herself and grasped it
Tales of the Klondyke
19
heartily with her own.
“You know, Dave, I threatened often to come, and I would have,
too, only–only–”
“Only I didn’t give the word.” David Payne laughed and watched
the Indian girl disappearing into the cabin.
“Oh, I understand, Dave, and had I been in your place I’d most
probably have done the same. But I have come–now.”
“Then come a little bit farther, into the cabin and get something
to eat,” he said genially, ignoring or missing the feminine
suggestion of appeal in her voice. “And you must be tired too.
Which way are you travelling? Up? Then you wintered in Dawson,
or came in on the last ice. Your camp?” He glanced at the
voyageurs circled about the fire in the open, and held back the
door for her to enter.
“I came up on the ice from Circle City last winter,” he continued,
“and settled down here for a while. Am prospecting some on
Henderson Creek, and if that fails, have been thinking of trying
my hand this fall up the Stuart River.”
“You aren’t changed much, are you?” she asked irrelevantly,
striving to throw the conversation upon a more personal basis.
“A little less flesh, perhaps, and a little more muscle. How did
YOU mean?”
But she shrugged her shoulders and peered I through the dim light
at the Indian girl, who had lighted the fire and was frying great
chunks of moose meat, alternated with thin ribbons of bacon.
“Did you stop in Dawson long?” The man was whittling a stave of
birchwood into a rude axe-handle, and asked the question without
raising his head.
“Oh, a few days,” she answered, following the girl with her eyes,
and hardly hearing. “What were you saying? In Dawson? A month,
in fact, and glad to get away. The arctic male is elemental, you
know, and somewhat strenuous in his feelings.”
“Bound to be when he gets right down to the soil. He leaves
convention with the spring bed at borne. But you were wise in
your choice of time for leaving. You’ll be out of the country
before mosquito season, which is a blessing your lack of
experience will not permit you to appreciate.”
“I suppose not. But tell me about yourself, about your life.
What kind of neighbors have you? Or have you any?”
While she queried she watched the girl grinding coffee in the
Tales of the Klondyke
20
corner of a flower sack upon the hearthstone. With a steadiness
and skill which predicated nerves as primitive as the method, she
crushed the imprisoned berries with a heavy fragment of quartz.
David Payne noted his visitor’s gaze, and the shadow of a smile
drifted over his lips.
“I did have some,” he replied. “Missourian chaps, and a couple of
Cornishmen, but they went down to Eldorado to work at wages for a
grubstake.”
Mrs. Sayther cast a look of speculative regard upon the girl.
“But of course there are plenty of Indians about?”
“Every mother’s son of them down to Dawson long ago. Not a native
in the whole country, barring Winapie here, and she’s a Koyokuk
lass,–comes from a thousand miles or so down the river.”
Mrs. Sayther felt suddenly faint; and though the smile of interest
in no wise waned, the face of the man seemed to draw away to a
telescopic distance, and the tiered logs of the cabin to whirl
drunkenly about. But she was bidden draw up to the table, and
during the meal discovered time and space in which to find
herself. She talked little, and that principally about the land
and weather, while the man wandered off into a long description of
the difference between the shallow summer diggings of the Lower
Country and the deep winter diggings of the Upper Country.
“You do not ask why I came north?” she asked. “Surely you know.”
They had moved back from the table, and David Payne had returned
to his axe-handle. “Did you get my letter?”
“A last one? No, I don’t think so. Most probably it’s trailing
around the Birch Creek Country or lying in some trader’s shack on
the Lower River. The way they run the mails in here is shameful.
No order, no system, no–”
“Don’t be wooden, Dave! Help me!” She spoke sharply now, with an
assumption of authority which rested upon the past. “Why don’t
you ask me about myself? About those we knew in the old times?
Have you no longer any interest in the world? Do you know that my
husband is dead?”
“Indeed, I am sorry. How long–”
“David!” She was ready to cry with vexation, but the reproach she
threw into her voice eased her.
“Did you get any of my letters? You must have got some of them,
though you never answered.”
“Well, I didn’t get the last one, announcing, evidently, the death
of your husband, and most likely others went astray; but I did get
some. I–er–read them aloud to Winapie as a warning–that is,
Tales of the Klondyke
21
you know, to impress upon her the wickedness of her white sisters.
And I–er–think she profited by it. Don’t you?”
She disregarded the sting, and went on. “In the last letter,
which you did not receive, I told, as you have guessed, of Colonel
Sayther’s death. That was a year ago. I also said that if you
did not come out to me, I would go in to you. And as I had often
promised, I came.”
“I know of no promise.”
“In the earlier letters?”
“Yes, you promised, but as I neither asked nor answered, it was
unratified. So I do not know of any such promise. But I do know
of another, which you, too, may remember. It was very long ago.”
He dropped the axe-handle to the floor and raised his head. “It
was so very long ago, yet I remember it distinctly, the day, the
time, every detail. We were in a rose garden, you and I,–your
mother’s rose garden. All things were budding, blossoming, and
the sap of spring was in our blood. And I drew you over–it was
the first–and kissed you full on the lips. Don’t you remember?”
“Don’t go over it, Dave, don’t! I know every shameful line of it.
How often have I wept! If you only knew how I have suffered–”
“You promised me then–ay, and a thousand times in the sweet days
that followed. Each look of your eyes, each touch of your hand,
each syllable that fell from your lips, was a promise. And then–
how shall I say?–there came a man. He was old–old enough to
have begotten you–and not nice to look upon, but as the world
goes, clean. He had done no wrong, followed the letter of the
law, was respectable. Further, and to the point, he possessed
some several paltry mines,–a score; it does not matter: and he
owned a few miles of lands, and engineered deals, and clipped
coupons. He–”
“But there were other things,” she interrupted, “I told you.
Pressure–money matters–want–my people–trouble. You understood
the whole sordid situation. I could not help it. It was not my
will. I was sacrificed, or I sacrificed, have it as you wish.
But, my God! Dave, I gave you up! You never did ME justice.
Think what I have gone through!”
“It was not your will? Pressure? Under high heaven there was no
thing to will you to this man’s bed or that.”
“But I cared for you all the time,” she pleaded.
“I was unused to your way of measuring love. I am still unused.
I do not understand.”
“But now! now!”
Tales of the Klondyke
22
“We were speaking of this man you saw fit to marry. What manner
of man was he? Wherein did he charm your soul? What potent
virtues were his? True, he had a golden grip,–an almighty golden
grip. He knew the odds. He was versed in cent per cent. He had
a narrow wit and excellent judgment of the viler parts, whereby he
transferred this man’s money to his pockets, and that man’s money,
and the next man’s. And the law smiled. In that it did not
condemn, our Christian ethics approved. By social measure he was
not a bad man. But by your measure, Karen, by mine, by ours of
the rose garden, what was he?”
“Remember, he is dead.”
“The fact is not altered thereby. What was he? A great, gross,
material creature, deaf to song, blind to beauty, dead to the
spirit. He was fat with laziness, and flabby-cheeked, and the
round of his belly witnessed his gluttony–”
“But he is dead. It is we who are now–now! now! Don’t you hear?
As you say, I have been inconstant. I have sinned. Good. But