 | "At the Dropping-off Place" |  |
AT THE DROPPING-OFF PLACE
BY WILLIAM McLEOD RAINE
IN THE cabin situated on Lot 10, Block E, Water Street, Eagle City, Alaska, four men were striving to wear away the torment-laden, sleepless Yukon night. It was twelve o'clock by the Waterbury watch which hung on the wall, but save for a slight murkiness there was no sign of darkness. The mosquitoes hummed with a fiendish pertinacity that effectually precluded sleep. The thermometer registered one hundred degrees of torture. A thick smoke from four pipes and a smudge-fire hung cloudlike over the room, but entirely failed to disturb the countless pests.
The torture of the hour fell heavily on the four outcasts, and they writhed with silent curses and futile nausea of the soul. One of them lay on the floor, rolled in his blankets, damning the mosquitoes, the country, his luck,—anything that he could lay a name to. The poor living, the heat, lack of sleep, and the endless sunshine had worn his nerves to the danger-point. He was in that condition in which the merest word of his best friend would drive him into a rage. By birth he was an Englishman, though the uncivilized ends of the earth had long claimed him for their own. He had been a soldier of the Queen in India and a beachcomber in the South Sea islands. He had mined at Ballarat and at Cripple Creek. The music-halls of London and the Chinese Quarter in San Francisco were alike familiar to him. To-night the memories of the past were torturing him, and he felt impelled to cry out like a whipped boy.
Another man was sitting on his bunk patching his nether garments, whistling softly to himself the while. He wore a jumper made from a flour-sack with the lettering "EXCELSIOR XXX" stretched across his breast, like a baseball player. The rest of his costume was, for the present, meager; it consisted of a frown.
Just outside the hut, leaning over a camp-stove, was a third man, Grover by name. Between two frying-pans, thrust into the coals, he was cooking sour-dough bread.
The fourth man was writing to his wife back in the States.
Judged by ordinary standards, they were a disreputable lot—dirty, unshaven, unkempt. Among them was only one respectable article of wearing apparel—a mackinaw coat, owned by the man writing home, who in consequence had been dubbed by the Englishman, "the swagger swell." In point of fact the coat served as a dress-suit for any of the men in their occasional trips to Dawson. If the rest of their clothing was hopelessly nondescript and ragged, at least they had the consolation of knowing they were no worse than their neighbors. Yet one of them —the one patching his mackinaw trousers —was in all probability a millionaire. A year before he had been a railroad navvy. And the cook was a graduate of one of the greatest of American colleges. He was a clever cook, too, which was much more to the point. When one is reduced to bacon, beans, and flour, the cuisine possibilities are limited; but Grover was a man of imagination, and could produce a greater variety than any man in Eagle City. His cooking would have reduced a woman to despair.
The writer finished his letter and read it over. It was a bright, cheery letter, filled with love and hopes for better times after he should make his strike. He touched with characteristic American humor on the life he was leading, and described his companions with genuine dramatic ability. The letter gave no hint of soul-weariness.
"Finished your letter, Wood?"
"Yes. Been writing her we have a blamed good time. Been writing lies to keep her from worrying."
The man on the floor rolled over with a groan.
"What's the matter, Jones?"
"Matter?" he shouted. "Matter? What ain't the matter? I'm wondering why I was such a fool as to come to this God-forsaken country. If I stay here much longer I'll kill somebody,—myself or one of you!"
Grover, seating himself in the open doorway, took in the bloodshot, sleepless eyes and the haggard appearance of the man, and mentally agreed that he was traveling fast in that direction. There was a look in his eyes that might have been the beginning of madness.
"In another month we shall be past the worst of it. I don't believe the mosquitoes are as bad as they were last week," said Grover soothingly.
Jones felt that the other was treating him as he would a sick child, and resented it with unspoken rage and grinding teeth.
"When the first steamers break through the ice the mosquitoes—"
Jones sprang to his feet in a sullen fury, his eyes blazing. The longing for a fight was on him, but the pretext was lacking. Before he could speak, Wood interrupted. The sickness for home was eating his heart and had to break through, now that the floodgates of speech were opened.
"Jones is right," he said. "The Lord made the rest of the earth, and when he got through he had some rocks left and piled them here, hit or miss, because he thought folks had sense enough to stay away from here. It's no white man's country."
"It's a frozen fact that I haven't slept a wink for three nights," cried Jones. "Half the year it is the eternal cold, and the other half it is infernal heat and mosquitoes."
Grover shrugged his shoulders and began to hum "The Star-spangled Banner." His selection appeared to be unfortunate.
"Drop it!" cried Wood. "Do the people in hell sing about heaven?" Then he continued a little shamefacedly, "It is all very well for you Grover; but I've got a wife and two little kids down in God's country. If you've got to sing, sing something else. You make me homesick."
"Well, I'm a little that way myself," remarked the millionaire, holding his trousers out before him and viewing the artistic patch critically, his head slewed round a little to one side. "But I never knew you to kick before, and thought you didn't mind it, Wood."
"Did you?" cried the other bitterly. "Well, I do. A man may be sick without shouting about it all the time. And I'm sick—damn sick. I haven't sat down once in the last six weeks to these soggy beans and sour bread without thinking what a fool I was to come. Good Lord!" he groaned, "I might have been sleeping in a bed to-night—a bed with springs and a soft mattress; nothing to do but reach out my hand to touch my wife, and the kids in a crib not three feet away from me. I might have got up to-morrow morning and eaten eggs for breakfast and beefsteak that your teeth sink into. I might have had strawberries and cream from my own ranch. But the best wasn't good enough for me. O no! I wanted the earth, hooped round with a barb-wire fence or handed me on a silver platter. Think of it, men! Down in the States they are eating peas and beans-fresh beans, not this moldy mess—and cabbages and corn, and strawberries and watermelons—no, watermelons aren't ripe yet, but bottled beer is on tap all the year round."
"You two fellows had better run down to the States for the summer. The magnate and I will stay and look after things," said Grover gravely.
"That's right. I've been roughing it twenty years and don't mind it much," acquiesced the millionaire tailor.
"I'm no more a chechocho than you fellows," Jones responded. "I've worked as long hours and risked as much and lived as hard. I've worked all winter underground and asked no odds of anybody. You have never heard me squealing for the windlass end, I reckon. But I'm sick of it. By God! if it were not for my mother I'd —"
He set his teeth with a click and an expression on his face that was not good to see. It was as if the veil had been lifted and his soul stood naked for a moment.
"You're all right, Jones. But you two fellows have a touch of fever. There really isn't any reason why you shouldn't go home for the summer," continued Grover, noting the look which had swept over the face of the other man when he let the bars down. A man does not look like that unless he has thought of harikari.
"You make me weary," cried Wood. "I'm not going home till I make a strike, if I stay till I rot."
"I'll tell you where I wish I was," said the Englishman, harping on. "I wish I was in 'Frisco. I'd have a new rig-out, swell as they make 'em,—patent-leather shoes, ice-cream pants, gaudy necktie, and a billycock to top off with. My word! then I'd get a girl! You bet she would be a high-flyer, and we would go together to a feed-shop—best in town. It wouldn't be beans and bacon I'd order. I'd have oyster stew and hot tamales to start the show, then go down the line and finish off with champagne fizz—in buckets, mind you. Then we would go down to the Cliff House and listen to the bands play, and see the what-d'ye-call-'em-scopes that shows moving pictures. There'd likely be thousands of people moving about and electric lights galore. Gad! but we'd have a boat and sail out on the bloomin' Pacific while the band played 'Mandalay' and 'Tommy Atkins'!" and Jones broke into boisterous song:-
Bloomin' idol made o' mud-
What they called the Great Gawd Budd-
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I
Kissed her where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old flotilla lay,-
Then as if there were no break in the song:-But that's all shore be'ind me—long ago an'
fur away, An' there ain't no 'buses runnin' from the
Bank to Mandalay.
"I used to be a 'Tommy' myself, ye know. It would be a balmy, velvet time I'd have. I'd paint the town red P.D.Q. My word!" He ended with a long-drawn sigh and fell into ecstatic reverie, and Wood took up the burden of speech:-
"I believe you. Guess we'd all blow ourselves one way or another. I'd stop at Seattle and go round to some bank and cash up my chips. Then I'd clean out some toy-shop for the kids and get my wife the best dress I could find. After that I'd charter a special boat and go across the lake—Lake Washington, you know—to my ranch. I reckon they'd never quit hugging me, those blame little kids." And the man drew a deep breath that was more than half a sob. "Gee! but I'd like to see little old, hilly Seattle again, with its dirty water-front and its six-month rains! But what's the use of talking? D'ye s'pose Dives enjoyed seeing Lazarus in Abraham's bosom?" concluded Wood, lapsing into silence and holding himself in tightly.
All this proved too much for the millionaire, and he now took up the strain. "I'll take Denver in mine," said he, waving his nether garment excitedly. "I've railroaded and mined there twenty years, and it's the best State there is. You can't tell the truth about it without lying. There's a saloon on Arapahoe Street that used to be my headquarters. I know all the boys about town, and I guess I would be strictly in it. You can get more fun for your money in Denver than in any town I know. I'd go up to the First National Bank, just as I am in these duds —"
"Then you'd be arrested," broke in Grover; "for—"
"Shut up! You know what I mean. I'd wear this same old mackinaw suit. I'd tell the cashier I wanted to deposit some money, and he'd say 'How much?' Then I'd say, kinder casual like, 'Well, I haven't counted it—about a million, I guess—or maybe two. It's down at the express-office. You'll need several teams to get it up.' He'd size up my duds and think I was crazy, or maybe only drunk. About that time I'd hand out the express receipt, and if that didn't paralyze him it would be because he was lightning-proof. I think I see him wilt."
"What would you do, Grover?" asked Wood.
"Take a Turkish bath first thing; next have some clothes made by a decent tailor. Then I would run on to my class reunion at old Yale. After that —"
The figure of a man blocked the doorway—a man in new brown boots laced up his legs, new mackinaw suit, new broad hat, in fact a brand new man just off the St. Michaels boat. Not a tear or a rip about him—chechocho written all over him from head to foot.
"Good evening, or perhaps I'd better say, 'Good-night,'" he began jauntily.
"The deuce you did!"
Imagine Livingstone when Stanley first showed on the horizon, and you have some conception of what it meant to these outcasts to see a face fresh from civilization. For seven months they had been cut off from news of the outside world, and here was a man fresh from the States, as if sent especially by Providence to enlighten them.
They began promptly, forgetting everything around them and asking a thousand questions about the war, about politics, about crops,—anything and everything they could think of. Then they made him sing the latest songs over and over until they had caught the air and learned the words. He promised them some old magazines he had on board. They had been restricted to a tattered copy of the Bible and a fragment of "The Origin of Species" for twelve months, so they naturally hailed him as a public benefactor. They made him talk—talk—talk! At first he enjoyed it; then it bored him; finally he rebelled.
"Say, have you fellows got anything to eat?" he asked. "There's nothing worth eating on the boat—nothing but canned goods and truck. You don't know what hardship is until you take the St. Michaels River trip."
"I presume that's so," said Grover, never twitching a muscle. "Well, you are through that hardship now, thank Heaven! You shall have a good square meal to start with—the best we have got."
They put it before him. He looked in pained surprise at the musty beans, the soggy bread, the fat bacon, and then asked for coffee.
"Haven't had any for two months," said Jones.
"Tea, then."
Grover shook his head. "Not in stock."
"But is this what you eat every day?"
"Yes. I thought it would be a pleasant change for you from the canned stuff on the boat."
"I don't believe I'm hungry after all," he said at last.
"They shouted with laughter and stamped up and down and slapped each other's backs in an ecstasy of joy till the tears rolled down their cheeks. They had had their revenge. They, who had endured the horrors of the trail, the dangers of the river with its cañons and its rapids, the hardship of a Klondike winter in the frozen North, with its stampedes over snow-clad mountains, its arduous work in the frozen ground, and its poor food and wretched shelter,—they, who had risked death from drowning, from fever, from starvation, from freezing,—they had been told by a dapper young clerk from the States, with the creases not yet out of his trousers, that they did not know what hardship was! It was too good!
The newcomer interrupted their laughter to make inquiries as to how far Ladue's claim was from Dawson.
"I mean to stake out one near his," he said. "It stands to reason that some of those around must be as rich as his."
His profound penetration sent Jones off in another shout of laughter. Grover explained that every river claim within fifty miles of Ladue's had been staked long ago.
"That can't be! The company told me there were plenty to be had."
"Of course the steamboat company told you that. These companies are the biggest liars on the face of this frozen earth. We tell you that there aren't any to be had near his."
"It may be to your interest to tell me that," he said stiffly.
"All right, my son. No teacher like experience. Better go and see. You'll be a wiser man in a couple of weeks. My word!" And Jones flung himself on his bunk, threw out his arms and legs, and kicked in a frenzy of appreciation of what was before the new-comer.
At this moment a whistle blew, and the inhabitants of Eagle City adjourned en masse to the banks of the Yukon; for an echo of this wicked but delightful world was coming up the river to meet them in the form of a shallow river flatboat.
| "At the Dropping-off Place" | |