he discovered a rapid current flooding on top. Below, the river
twisted sharply to the west, and in this turn its breast was
studded by a maze of tiny islands.
“That’s where she’ll jam,” he remarked to himself.
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91
Half a dozen sleds, evidently bound up-stream to Dawson, were
splashing through the chill water to the tail of the island.
Travel on the river was passing from the precarious to the
impossible, and it was nip and tuck with them till they gained the
island and came up the path of the wood-choppers toward the cabin.
One of them, snow-blind, towed helplessly at the rear of a sled.
Husky young fellows they were, rough-garmented and trail-worn, yet
Montana Kid had met the breed before and knew at once that it was
not his kind.
“Hello! How’s things up Dawson-way?” queried the foremost,
passing his eye over Donald and Davy and settling it upon the Kid.
A first meeting in the wilderness is not characterized by
formality. The talk quickly became general, and the news of the
Upper and Lower Countries was swapped equitably back and forth.
But the little the newcomers had was soon over with, for they had
wintered at Minook, a thousand miles below, where nothing was
doing. Montana Kid, however, was fresh from Salt Water, and they
annexed him while they pitched camp, swamping him with questions
concerning the outside, from which they had been cut off for a
twelvemonth.
A shrieking split, suddenly lifting itself above the general
uproar on the river, drew everybody to the bank. The surface
water had increased in depth, and the ice, assailed from above and
below, was struggling to tear itself from the grip of the shores.
Fissures reverberated into life before their eyes, and the air was
filled with multitudinous crackling, crisp and sharp, like the
sound that goes up on a clear day from the firing line.
From up the river two men were racing a dog team toward them on an
uncovered stretch of ice. But even as they looked, the pair
struck the water and began to flounder through. Behind, where
their feet had sped the moment before, the ice broke up and turned
turtle. Through this opening the river rushed out upon them to
their waists, burying the sled and swinging the dogs off at right
angles in a drowning tangle. But the men stopped their flight to
give the animals a fighting chance, and they groped hurriedly in
the cold confusion, slashing at the detaining traces with their
sheath-knives. Then they fought their way to the bank through
swirling water and grinding ice, where, foremost in leaping to the
rescue among the jarring fragments, was the Kid.
“Why, blime me, if it ain’t Montana Kid!” exclaimed one of the men
whom the Kid was just placing upon his feet at the top of the
bank. He wore the scarlet tunic of the Mounted Police and
jocularly raised his right hand in salute.
“Got a warrant for you, Kid,” he continued, drawing a bedraggled
paper from his breast pocket, “an’ I ‘ope as you’ll come along
peaceable.”
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92
Montana Kid looked at the chaotic river and shrugged his
shoulders, and the policeman, following his glance, smiled.
“Where are the dogs?” his companion asked.
“Gentlemen,” interrupted the policeman, “this ‘ere mate o’ mine is
Jack Sutherland, owner of Twenty-Two Eldorado–”
“Not Sutherland of ’92?” broke in the snow-blinded Minook man,
groping feebly toward him.
“The same.” Sutherland gripped his hand.
“And you?”
“Oh, I’m after your time, but I remember you in my freshman year,-
-you were doing P. G. work then. Boys,” he called, turning half
about, “this is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland, erstwhile full-back
on the ‘Varsity. Come up, you gold-chasers, and fall upon him!
Sutherland, this is Greenwich,–played quarter two seasons back.”
“Yes, I read of the game,” Sutherland said, shaking hands. “And I
remember that big run of yours for the first touchdown.”
Greenwich flushed darkly under his tanned skin and awkwardly made
room for another.
“And here’s Matthews,–Berkeley man. And we’ve got some Eastern
cracks knocking about, too. Come up, you Princeton men! Come up!
This is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland!”
Then they fell upon him heavily, carried him into camp, and
supplied him with dry clothes and numerous mugs of black tea.
Donald and Davy, overlooked, had retired to their nightly game of
crib. Montana Kid followed them with the policeman.
“Here, get into some dry togs,” he said, pulling them from out his
scanty kit. “Guess you’ll have to bunk with me, too.”
“Well, I say, you’re a good ‘un,” the policeman remarked as he
pulled on the other man’s socks. “Sorry I’ve got to take you back
to Dawson, but I only ‘ope they won’t be ‘ard on you.”
“Not so fast.” The Kid smiled curiously. “We ain’t under way
yet. When I go I’m going down river, and I guess the chances are
you’ll go along.”
“Not if I know myself–”
“Come on outside, and I’ll show you, then. These damn fools,”
thrusting a thumb over his shoulder at the two Scots, “played
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93
smash when they located here. Fill your pipe, first–this is
pretty good plug–and enjoy yourself while you can. You haven’t
many smokes before you.”
The policeman went with him wonderingly, while Donald and Davy
dropped their cards and followed. The Minook men noticed Montana
Kid pointing now up the river, now down, and came over.
“What’s up?” Sutherland demanded.
“Nothing much.” Nonchalance sat well upon the Kid. “Just a case
of raising hell and putting a chunk under. See that bend down
there? That’s where she’ll jam millions of tons of ice. Then
she’ll jam in the bends up above, millions of tons. Upper jam
breaks first, lower jam holds, pouf!” He dramatically swept the
island with his hand. “Millions of tons,” he added reflectively.
“And what of the woodpiles?” Davy questioned.
The Kid repeated his sweeping gestures and Davy wailed, “The labor
of months! It canna be! Na, na, lad, it canna be. I doot not
it’s a jowk. Ay, say that it is,” he appealed.
But when the Kid laughed harshly and turned on his heel, Davy
flung himself upon the piles and began frantically to toss the
cordwood back from the bank.
“Lend a hand, Donald!” he cried. “Can ye no lend a hand? ‘T is
the labor of months and the passage home!”
Donald caught him by the arm and shook him, but he tore free.
“Did ye no hear, man? Millions of tons, and the island shall be
sweepit clean.”
“Straighten yersel’ up, man,” said Donald. “It’s a bit fashed ye
are.”
But Davy fell upon the cordwood. Donald stalked back to the
cabin, buckled on his money belt and Davy’s, and went out to the
point of the island where the ground was highest and where a huge
pine towered above its fellows.
The men before the cabin heard the ringing of his axe and smiled.
Greenwich returned from across the island with the word that they
were penned in. It was impossible to cross the back-channel. The
blind Minook man began to sing, and the rest joined in with –
“Wonder if it’s true?
Does it seem so to you?
Seems to me he’s lying –
Oh, I wonder if it’s true?”
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94
“It’s ay sinfu’,” Davy moaned, lifting his head and watching them
dance in the slanting rays of the sun. “And my guid wood a’ going
to waste.”
“Oh, I wonder if it’s true,”
was flaunted back.
The noise of the river ceased suddenly. A strange calm wrapped
about them. The ice had ripped from the shores and was floating
higher on the surface of the river, which was rising. Up it came,
swift and silent, for twenty feet, till the huge cakes rubbed
softly against the crest of the bank. The tail of the island,
being lower, was overrun. Then, without effort, the white flood
started down-stream. But the sound increased with the momentum,
and soon the whole island was shaking and quivering with the shock
of the grinding bergs. Under pressure, the mighty cakes, weighing
hundreds of tons, were shot into the air like peas. The frigid
anarchy increased its riot, and the men had to shout into one
another’s ears to be heard. Occasionally the racket from the back
channel could be heard above the tumult. The island shuddered
with the impact of an enormous cake which drove in squarely upon
its point. It ripped a score of pines out by the roots, then
swinging around and over, lifted its muddy base from the bottom of
the river and bore down upon the cabin, slicing the bank and trees
away like a gigantic knife. It seemed barely to graze the corner
of the cabin, but the cribbed logs tilted up like matches, and the
structure, like a toy house, fell backward in ruin.