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
Tales of the Klondyke
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
Tales of the Klondyke
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
Tales of the Klondyke
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
Tales of the Klondyke
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