“The labor of months! The labor of months, and the passage home!”
Davy wailed, while Montana Kid and the policeman dragged him
backward from the woodpiles.
“You’ll ‘ave plenty o’ hoppertunity all in good time for yer
passage ‘ome,” the policeman growled, clouting him alongside the
head and sending him flying into safety.
Donald, from the top of the pine, saw the devastating berg sweep
away the cordwood and disappear down-stream. As though satisfied
with this damage, the ice-flood quickly dropped to its old level
and began to slacken its pace. The noise likewise eased down, and
the others could hear Donald shouting from his eyrie to look down-
stream. As forecast, the jam had come among the islands in the
bend, and the ice was piling up in a great barrier which stretched
from shore to shore. The river came to a standstill, and the
water finding no outlet began to rise. It rushed up till the
island was awash, the men splashing around up to their knees, and
the dogs swimming to the ruins of the cabin. At this stage it
abruptly became stationary, with no perceptible rise or fall.
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Montana Kid shook his head. “It’s jammed above, and no more’s
coming down.”
“And the gamble is, which jam will break first,” Sutherland added.
“Exactly,” the Kid affirmed. “If the upper jam breaks first, we
haven’t a chance. Nothing will stand before it.”
The Minook men turned away in silence, but soon “Rumsky Ho”
floated upon the quiet air, followed by “The Orange and the
Black.” Room was made in the circle for Montana Kid and the
policeman, and they quickly caught the ringing rhythm of the
choruses as they drifted on from song to song.
“Oh, Donald, will ye no lend a hand?” Davy sobbed at the foot of
the tree into which his comrade had climbed. “Oh, Donald, man,
will ye no lend a hand?” he sobbed again, his hands bleeding from
vain attempts to scale the slippery trunk.
But Donald had fixed his gaze up river, and now his voice rang
out, vibrant with fear: –
“God Almichty, here she comes!”
Standing knee-deep in the icy water, the Minook men, with Montana
Kid and the policeman, gripped hands and raised their voices in
the terrible, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” But the words were
drowned in the advancing roar.
And to Donald was vouchsafed a sight such as no man may see and
live. A great wall of white flung itself upon the island. Trees,
dogs, men, were blotted out, as though the hand of God had wiped
the face of nature clean. This much he saw, then swayed an
instant longer in his lofty perch and hurtled far out into the
frozen hell.
THE SCORN OF WOMEN
Once Freda and Mrs. Eppingwell clashed.
Now Freda was a Greek girl and a dancer. At least she purported
to be Greek; but this was doubted by many, for her classic face
had over-much strength in it, and the tides of hell which rose in
her eyes made at rare moments her ethnology the more dubious. To
a few–men–this sight had been vouchsafed, and though long years
may have passed, they have not forgotten, nor will they ever
forget. She never talked of herself, so that it were well to let
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it go down that when in repose, expurgated, Greek she certainly
was. Her furs were the most magnificent in all the country from
Chilcoot to St. Michael’s, and her name was common on the lips of
men. But Mrs. Eppingwell was the wife of a captain; also a social
constellation of the first magnitude, the path of her orbit
marking the most select coterie in Dawson,–a coterie captioned by
the profane as the “official clique.” Sitka Charley had travelled
trail with her once, when famine drew tight and a man’s life was
less than a cup of flour, and his judgment placed her above all
women. Sitka Charley was an Indian; his criteria were primitive;
but his word was flat, and his verdict a hall-mark in every camp
under the circle.
These two women were man-conquering, man-subduing machines, each
in her own way, and their ways were different. Mrs. Eppingwell
ruled in her own house, and at the Barracks, where were younger
sons galore, to say nothing of the chiefs of the police, the
executive, and the judiciary. Freda ruled down in the town; but
the men she ruled were the same who functioned socially at the
Barracks or were fed tea and canned preserves at the hand of Mrs.
Eppingwell in her hillside cabin of rough-hewn logs. Each knew
the other existed; but their lives were apart as the Poles, and
while they must have heard stray bits of news and were curious,
they were never known to ask a question. And there would have
been no trouble had not a free lance in the shape of the model-
woman come into the land on the first ice, with a spanking dog-
team and a cosmopolitan reputation. Loraine Lisznayi–
alliterative, dramatic, and Hungarian–precipitated the strife,
and because of her Mrs. Eppingwell left her hillside and invaded
Freda’s domain, and Freda likewise went up from the town to spread
confusion and embarrassment at the Governor’s ball.
All of which may be ancient history so far as the Klondike is
concerned, but very few, even in Dawson, know the inner truth of
the matter; nor beyond those few are there any fit to measure the
wife of the captain or the Greek dancer. And that all are now
permitted to understand, let honor be accorded Sitka Charley.
From his lips fell the main facts in the screed herewith
presented. It ill befits that Freda herself should have waxed
confidential to a mere scribbler of words, or that Mrs. Eppingwell
made mention of the things which happened. They may have spoken,
but it is unlikely.
II
Floyd Vanderlip was a strong man, apparently. Hard work and hard
grub had no terrors for him, as his early history in the country
attested. In danger he was a lion, and when he held in check half
a thousand starving men, as he once did, it was remarked that no
cooler eye ever took the glint of sunshine on a rifle-sight. He
had but one weakness, and even that, rising from out his strength,
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was of a negative sort. His parts were strong, but they lacked
co-ordination. Now it happened that while his centre of
amativeness was pronounced, it had lain mute and passive during
the years he lived on moose and salmon and chased glowing
Eldorados over chill divides. But when he finally blazed the
corner-post and centre-stakes on one of the richest Klondike
claims, it began to quicken; and when he took his place in
society, a full-fledged Bonanza King, it awoke and took charge of
him. He suddenly recollected a girl in the States, and it came to
him quite forcibly, not only that she might be waiting for him,
but that a wife was a very pleasant acquisition for a man who
lived some several degrees north of 53. So he wrote an
appropriate note, enclosed a letter of credit generous enough to
cover all expenses, including trousseau and chaperon, and
addressed it to one Flossie. Flossie? One could imagine the
rest. However, after that he built a comfortable cabin on his
claim, bought another in Dawson, and broke the news to his
friends.
And just here is where the lack of co-ordination came into play.
The waiting was tedious, and having been long denied, the amative
element could not brook further delay. Flossie was coming; but
Loraine Lisznayi was here. And not only was Loraine Lisznayi
here, but her cosmopolitan reputation was somewhat the worse for
wear, and she was not exactly so young as when she posed in the
studios of artist queens and received at her door the cards of
cardinals and princes. Also, her finances were unhealthy. Having
run the gamut in her time, she was now not averse to trying
conclusions with a Bonanza King whose wealth was such that he
could not guess it within six figures. Like a wise soldier
casting about after years of service for a comfortable billet, she
had come into the Northland to be married. So, one day, her eyes
flashed up into Floyd Vanderlip’s as he was buying table linen for
Flossie in the P. C. Company’s store, and the thing was settled
out of hand.
When a man is free much may go unquestioned, which, should he be
rash enough to cumber himself with domestic ties, society will
instantly challenge. Thus it was with Floyd Vanderlip. Flossie
was coming, and a low buzz went up when Loraine Lisznayi rode down
the main street behind his wolf-dogs. She accompanied the lady
reporter of the “Kansas City Star” when photographs were taken of