Smoke Bellew - Jack London (best summer reads of all time .txt) 📗

forty miles to the Stewart by the cut-off I broke, and the fastest of them can’t make the round trip in less than five or six days. But it’s time you pulled out, Smoke, just the same.”

Breck drew his hunting-knife across the other’s bonds, and glanced at the woman. “I hope you don’t object?” he said, with significant politeness.

“If there’s goin’ to be any shootin’,” the blind man broke out, “I wish somebody’d take me to another cabin first.”

“Go on, an’ don’t mind me,” Lucy answered. “If I ain’t good enough to hang a man, I ain’t good enough to hold him.”

Smoke stood up, rubbing his wrists where the thongs had impeded the circulation.

“I’ve got a pack all ready for you,” Breck said. “Ten days’ grub, blankets, matches, tobacco, an axe, and a rifle.”

“Go to it,” Lucy encouraged. “Hit the high places, stranger. Beat it as fast as God’ll let you.”

“I’m going to have a square meal before I start,” Smoke said. “And when I start it will be up the McQuestion, not down. I want you to go along with me, Breck. We’re going to search that other bank for the man that really did the killing.”

“If you’ll listen to me, you’ll head down for the Stewart and the Yukon,” Breck objected. “When this gang gets back from my low-grade hydraulic proposition, it will be seeing red.”

Smoke laughed and shook his head.

“I can’t jump this country, Breck. I’ve got interests here. I’ve got to stay and make good. I don’t care whether you believe me or not, but I’ve found Surprise Lake. That’s where that gold came from. Besides, they took my dogs, and I’ve got to wait to get them back. Also, I know what I’m about. There was a man hidden on that bank. He came pretty close to emptying his magazine at me.”

Half an hour afterward, with a big plate of moose-steak before him and a big mug of coffee at his lips, Smoke half-started up from his seat. He had heard the sounds first. Lucy threw open the door.

“Hello, Spike; hello, Methody,” she greeted the two frost-rimed men who were bending over the burden on their sled.

“We just come down from Upper Camp,” one said, as the pair staggered into the room with a fur-wrapped object which they handled with exceeding gentleness. “An’ this is what we found by the way. He’s all in, I guess.”

“Put him in the near bunk there,” Lucy said. She bent over and pulled back the furs, disclosing a face composed principally of large, staring, black eyes, and of skin, dark and scabbed by repeated frost-bite, tightly stretched across the bones.

“If it ain’t Alonzo!” she cried. “You pore, starved devil!”

“That’s the man on the other bank,” Smoke said in an undertone to Breck.

“We found it raidin’ a cache that Harding must ‘a’ made,” one of the men was explaining. “He was eatin’ raw flour an’ frozen bacon, an’ when we got ‘m he was cryin’ an’ squealin’ like a hawg. Look at him! He’s all starved, an’ most of him frozen. He’ll kick at any moment.”

 

Half an hour later, when the furs had been drawn over the face of the still form in the bunk, Smoke turned to Lucy. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Peabody, I’ll have another whack at that steak. Make it thick and not so well done. I’m a meat-eater, I am.”

 

VI. THE RACE FOR NUMBER THREE.

 

“Huh! Get on to the glad rags!”

Shorty surveyed his partner with simulated disapproval, and Smoke, vainly attempting to rub the wrinkles out of the pair of trousers he had just put on, was irritated.

“They sure fit you close for a second-hand buy,” Shorty went on. “What was the tax?”

“One hundred and fifty for the suit,” Smoke answered. “The man was nearly my own size. I thought it was remarkably reasonable. What are you kicking about?”

“Who? Me? Oh, nothin’. I was just thinkin’ it was goin’ some for a meat-eater that hit Dawson in an ice-jam, with no grub, one suit of underclothes, a pair of mangy moccasins, an’ overalls that looked like they’d been through the wreck of the Hesperus. Pretty gay front, pardner. Pretty gay front. Say—?”

“What do you want now?” Smoke demanded testily.

“What’s her name?”

“There isn’t any her, my friend. I’m to have dinner at Colonel Bowie’s, if you want to know. The trouble with you, Shorty, is you’re envious because I’m going into high society and you’re not invited.”

“Ain’t you some late?” Shorty queried with concern.

“What do you mean?”

“For dinner. They’ll be eatin’ supper when you get there.”

Smoke was about to explain with crudely elaborate sarcasm when he caught the twinkle in the other’s eye. He went on dressing, with fingers that had lost their deftness, tying a Windsor tie in a bow-knot at the throat of his soft cotton shirt.

“Wisht I hadn’t sent all my starched shirts to the laundry,” Shorty murmured sympathetically. “I might ‘a’ fitted you out.”

By this time Smoke was straining at a pair of shoes. The woollen socks were too thick to go into them. He looked appealingly at Shorty, who shook his head.

“Nope. If I had thin ones I wouldn’t lend ‘em to you. Back to the moccasins, pardner. You’d sure freeze your toes in skimpy-fangled gear like that.”

“I paid fifteen dollars for them, second hand,” Smoke lamented.

“I reckon they won’t be a man not in moccasins.”

“But there are to be women, Shorty. I’m going to sit down and eat with real live women—Mrs. Bowie, and several others, so the Colonel told me.”

“Well, moccasins won’t spoil their appetite none,” was Shorty’s comment. “Wonder what the Colonel wants with you?”

“I don’t know, unless he’s heard about my finding Surprise Lake. It will take a fortune to drain it, and the Guggenheims are out for investment.”

“Reckon that’s it. That’s right, stick to the moccasins. Gee! That coat is sure wrinkled, an’ it fits you a mite too swift. Just peck around at your vittles. If you eat hearty you’ll bust through. An’ if them women folks gets to droppin’ handkerchiefs, just let ‘em lay. Don’t do any pickin’ up. Whatever you do, don’t.”

 

As became a high-salaried expert and the representative of the great house of Guggenheim, Colonel Bowie lived in one of the most magnificent cabins in Dawson. Of squared logs, hand-hewn, it was two stories high, and of such extravagant proportions that it boasted a big living room that was used for a living room and for nothing else.

Here were big bearskins on the rough board floor, and on the walls horns of moose and caribou. Here roared an open fireplace and a big wood-burning stove. And here Smoke met the social elect of Dawson—not the mere pick-handle millionaires, but the ultra-cream of a mining city whose population had been recruited from all the world—men like Warburton Jones, the explorer and writer; Captain Consadine of the Mounted Police; Haskell, Gold Commissioner of the Northwest Territory; and Baron Von Schroeder, an emperor’s favourite with an international duelling reputation.

And here, dazzling in evening gown, he met Joy Gastell, whom hitherto he had encountered only on trail, befurred and moccasined. At dinner he found himself beside her.

“I feel like a fish out of water,” he confessed. “All you folks are so real grand you know. Besides, I never dreamed such Oriental luxury existed in the Klondike. Look at Von Schroeder there. He’s actually got a dinner jacket, and Consadine’s got a starched shirt. I noticed he wore moccasins just the same. How do you like MY outfit?”

He moved his shoulders about as if preening himself for Joy’s approval.

“It looks as if you’d grown stout since you came over the Pass,” she laughed.

“Wrong. Guess again.”

“It’s somebody else’s.”

“You win. I bought it for a price from one of the clerks at the A. C. Company.”

“It’s a shame clerks are so narrow-shouldered,” she sympathized. “And you haven’t told me what you think of MY outfit.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m out of breath. I’ve been living on trail too long. This sort of thing comes to me with a shock, you know. I’d quite forgotten that women have arms and shoulders. To-morrow morning, like my friend Shorty, I’ll wake up and know it’s all a dream. Now, the last time I saw you on Squaw Creek—”

“I was just a squaw,” she broke in.

“I hadn’t intended to say that. I was remembering that it was on Squaw Creek that I discovered you had feet.”

“And I can never forget that you saved them for me,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to see you ever since to thank you—” (He shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly). “And that’s why you are here tonight.”

“You asked the Colonel to invite me?”

“No! Mrs. Bowie. And I asked her to let me have you at table. And here’s my chance. Everybody’s talking. Listen, and don’t interrupt. You know Mono Creek?”

“Yes.”

“It has turned out rich—dreadfully rich. They estimate the claims as worth a million and more apiece. It was only located the other day.”

“I remember the stampede.”

“Well, the whole creek was staked to the skyline, and all the feeders, too. And yet, right now, on the main creek, Number Three below Discovery is unrecorded. The creek was so far away from Dawson that the Commissioner allowed sixty days for recording after location. Every claim was recorded except Number Three below. It was staked by Cyrus Johnson. And that was all. Cyrus Johnson has disappeared. Whether he died, whether he went down river or up, nobody knows. Anyway, in six days, the time for recording will be up. Then the man who stakes it, and reaches Dawson first and records it, gets it.”

“A million dollars,” Smoke murmured.

“Gilchrist, who has the next claim below, has got six hundred dollars in a single pan off bedrock. He’s burned one hole down. And the claim on the other side is even richer. I know.”

“But why doesn’t everybody know?” Smoke queried skeptically.

“They’re beginning to know. They kept it secret for a long time, and it is only now that it’s coming out. Good dog-teams will be at a premium in another twenty-four hours. Now, you’ve got to get away as decently as you can as soon as dinner is over. I’ve arranged it. An Indian will come with a message for you. You read it, let on that you’re very much put out, make your excuses, and get away.”

“I—er—I fail to follow.”

“Ninny!” she exclaimed in a half-whisper. “What you must do is to get out tonight and hustle dog-teams. I know of two. There’s Hanson’s team, seven big Hudson Bay dogs—he’s holding them at four hundred each. That’s top price tonight, but it won’t be to-morrow. And Sitka Charley has eight Malemutes he’s asking thirty-five hundred for. To-morrow he’ll laugh at an offer of five thousand. Then you’ve got your own team of dogs. And you’ll have to buy several more teams. That’s your work tonight. Get the best. It’s dogs as well as men that will win this race. It’s a hundred and ten miles, and you’ll have to relay as frequently as you can.”

“Oh, I see, you want me to go in for it,” Smoke drawled.

“If you haven’t the money for the dogs, I’ll—” She faltered, but before she could continue, Smoke was speaking.

“I can buy the dogs. But—er—aren’t you afraid this is gambling?”

“After your exploits at roulette in the Elkhorn,” she retorted, “I’m not afraid that you’re afraid. It’s a sporting proposition, if that’s what you mean. A race for a million, and with some of the stiffest dog-mushers and travellers in the country entered against you. They