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Burning Daylight
by Jack London
December, 1996 [Etext #746]
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Burning Daylight, by Jack London
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BURNING DAYLIGHT
by Jack London
PART I
CHAPTER I
It was a quiet night in the Shovel. At the bar, which ranged
along one side of the large chinked-log room, leaned half a dozen
men, two of whom were discussing the relative merits of
spruce-tea and lime-juice as remedies for scurvy. They argued
with an air of depression and with intervals of morose silence.
The other men scarcely heeded them. In a row, against the
opposite wall, were the gambling games. The crap-table was
deserted. One lone man was playing at the faro-table. The
roulette-ball was not even spinning, and the gamekeeper stood by
the roaring, red-hot stove, talking with the young, dark-eyed
woman, comely of face and figure, who was known from Juneau to
Fort Yukon as the Virgin. Three men sat in at stud-poker, but
they played with small chips and without enthusiasm, while there
were no onlookers. On the floor of the dancing-room, which
opened out at the rear, three couples were waltzing drearily to
the strains of a violin and a piano.
Circle City was not deserted, nor was money tight. The miners
were in from Moseyed Creek and the other diggings to the west,
the summer washing had been good, and the men's pouches were
heavy with dust and nuggets. The Klondike had not yet been
discovered, nor had the miners of the Yukon learned the
possibilities of deep digging and wood-firing. No work was done
in the winter, and they made a practice of hibernating in the
large camps like Circle City during the long Arctic night. Time
was heavy on their hands, their pouches were well filled, and the
only social diversion to be found was in the saloons. Yet the
Shovel was practically deserted, and the Virgin, standing by the
stove, yawned with uncovered mouth and said to Charley Bates:-
"If something don't happen soon, I'm gin' to bed. What's the
matter with the camp, anyway? Everybody dead?"
Bates did not even trouble to reply, but went on moodily rolling
a cigarette. Dan MacDonald, pioneer saloonman and gambler on the
upper Yukon, owner and proprietor of the Tivoli and all its
games, wandered forlornly across the great vacant space of floor
and joined the two at the stove.
"Anybody dead?" the Virgin asked him.
"Looks like it," was the answer.
"Then it must be the whole camp," she said with an air of
finality and with another yawn.
MacDonald grinned and nodded, and opened his mouth to speak, when
the front door swung wide and a man appeared in the light. A
rush of frost, turned to vapor by the heat of the room, swirled
about him to his knees and poured on across the floor, growing
thinner and thinner, and perishing a dozen feet from the stove.
Taking the wisp broom from its nail inside the door, the newcomer
brushed the snow from his moccasins and high German socks. He
would have appeared a large man had not a huge French-Canadian
stepped up to him from the bar and gripped his hand.
"Hello, Daylight!" was his greeting. "By Gar, you good for sore
eyes!"
"Hello, Louis, when did you-all blow in?" returned the newcomer.
"Come up and have a drink and tell us all about Bone Creek. Why,
dog-gone you-all, shake again. Where's that pardner of yours?
I'm looking for him."
Another huge man detached himself from the bar to shake hands.
Olaf Henderson and French Louis, partners together on Bone Creek,
were the two largest men in the country, and though they were but
half a head taller than the newcomer, between them he was dwarfed
completely.
"Hello, Olaf, you're my meat, savvee that," said the one called
Daylight. "To-morrow's my birthday, and I'm going to put you-all
on your back--savvee? And you, too, Louis. I can put you-all on
your back on my birthday--savvee? Come up and drink, Olaf, and
I'll tell you-all about it."
The arrival of the newcomer seemed to send a flood of warmth
through the place. "It's Burning Daylight," the Virgin cried,
the first to recognize him as he came into the light. Charley
Bates' tight features relaxed at the sight, and MacDonald went
over and joined the three at the bar. With the advent of Burning
Daylight the whole place became suddenly brighter and cheerier.
The barkeepers were active. Voices were raised. Somebody
laughed. And when the fiddler, peering into the front room,
remarked to the pianist, "It's Burning Daylight," the waltz-time
perceptibly quickened, and the dancers, catching the contagion,
began to whirl about as if they really enjoyed it. It was known
to them of old time that nothing languished when Burning Daylight
was around.
He turned from the bar and saw the woman by the stove and the
eager look of welcome she extended him.
"Hello, Virgin, old girl," he called. "Hello, Charley. What's
the matter with you-all? Why wear faces like that when coffins
cost only three ounces? Come up, you-all, and drink. Come up,
you unburied dead, and name your poison. Come up, everybody.
This is my night, and I'm going to ride it. To-morrow I'm
thirty, and then I'll be an old man. It's the last fling of
youth. Are you-all with me? Surge along, then. Surge along.
"Hold on there, Davis," he called to the faro-dealer, who had
shoved his chair back from the table. "I'm going you one flutter
to see whether you-all drink with me or we-all drink with you."
Pulling a heavy sack of gold-dust from his coat pocket, he
dropped it on the HIGH CARD.
"Fifty," he said.
The faro-dealer slipped two cards. The high card won. He
scribbled the amount on a pad, and the weigher at the bar
balanced fifty dollars' worth of dust in the gold-scales and
poured it into Burning Daylight's sack. The waltz in the back
room being finished, the three couples, followed by the fiddler
and the pianist and heading for the bar, caught Daylight's eye.
"Surge along, you-all" he cried. "Surge along and name it. This
is my night, and it ain't a night that comes frequent. Surge up,
you Siwashes and Salmon-eaters. It's my night, I tell you-all--"
"A blame mangy night," Charley Bates interpolated.
"You're right, my son," Burning Daylight went on gaily.
"A mangy night, but it's MY night, you see. I'm the mangy old
he-wolf. Listen to me howl."
And howl he did, like a lone gray timber wolf, till the Virgin
thrust her pretty fingers in her ears and shivered. A minute
later she was whirled away in his arms to the dancing-floor,
where, along with the other three women and their partners, a
rollicking Virginia reel was soon in progress. Men and women
danced in moccasins, and the place was soon a-roar, Burning
Daylight the centre of it and the animating spark, with quip and
jest and rough merriment rousing them out of the slough of
despond in which he had found them.
The atmosphere of the place changed with his coming. He seemed
to fill it with his tremendous vitality. Men who entered from
the street felt it immediately, and in response to their queries
the barkeepers nodded at the back room, and said comprehensively,
"Burning Daylight's on the tear." And the men who entered
remained, and kept the barkeepers busy. The gamblers took heart
of life, and soon the tables were filled, the click of chips and
whir of the roulette-ball rising monotonously and imperiously
above the hoarse rumble of men's voices and their oaths and heavy
laughs.
Few men knew Elam Harnish by any other name than Burning
Daylight, the name which had been given him in the early days in
the land because of his habit of routing his comrades out of
their blankets with the complaint that daylight was burning. Of
the pioneers in that far Arctic wilderness, where all men were
pioneers, he was reckoned among the oldest. Men like Al Mayo and
Jack McQuestion antedated him; but they had entered the land by
crossing the Rockies from the Hudson Bay country to the east.
He, however, had been the pioneer over the Chilcoot and Chilcat
passes. In the spring of 1883, twelve years before, a stripling
of eighteen, he had crossed over the Chilcoot with five comrades.
In the fall he had crossed back with one. Four had perished by
mischance in the bleak, uncharted vastness. And for twelve years
Elam Harnish had continued to grope for gold among the shadows of
the Circle.
And no man had groped so obstinately nor so enduringly. He had
grown up with the land. He knew no other land. Civilization was
a dream of some previous life. Camps like Forty Mile and Circle
City were to him metropolises. And not alone had he grown up
with the land, for, raw as it was, he had helped to make it. He
had made history and geography, and those that followed wrote of
his traverses and charted the trails his feet had broken.
Heroes are seldom given to hero-worship, but among those of that
young land, young as he was, he was accounted an elder hero. In
point of time he was before them. In point of deed he was beyond
them. In point of endurance it was acknowledged that he could
kill the hardiest of them. Furthermore, he was accounted a nervy
man, a square man, and a white man.
In all lands where life is a hazard lightly played with and
lightly flung aside, men turn, almost automatically, to gambling
for diversion and relaxation. In the Yukon men gambled their
lives for gold, and those that won gold from the ground gambled
for it with one another. Nor was Elam Harnish an exception. He
was a man's man primarily, and the instinct in him to play the
game of life was strong. Environment had determined what form
that game should take. He was born on an Iowa farm, and his
father had emigrated to eastern Oregon, in which mining country
Elam's boyhood was lived. He had known nothing but hard knocks
for big stakes. Pluck and endurance counted in the game, but the
great god Chance dealt the cards. Honest work for sure but
meagre returns did not count. A man played big. He risked
everything for everything, and anything less than everything
meant that he was a loser. So for twelve Yukon years, Elam
Harnish had been a loser. True, on Moosehide Creek the past
summer he had taken out twenty thousand dollars, and what was
left in the ground was twenty thousand more. But, as he himself
proclaimed, that was no more than getting his ante back. He had
ante'd his life for a dozen years, and forty thousand was a small
pot for such a stake--the price of a drink and a dance at the
Tivoli, of a winter's flutter at Circle City, and a grubstake for
the year to come.
The men of the Yukon reversed the old maxim till it read: hard
come, easy go. At the end of the reel, Elam Harnish called the
house up to drink again. Drinks were a dollar apiece, gold rated
at sixteen dollars an ounce; there were thirty in the house that
accepted his invitation, and between every dance the house was
Elam's guest. This was his night, and nobody was to be allowed
to pay for anything.
Not that Elam Harnish was a drinking man. Whiskey meant little
to him. He was too vital and robust, too untroubled in mind and
body, to incline to the slavery of alcohol. He spent months at a
time on trail and river when he drank nothing stronger than
coffee, while he had gone a year at a time without even coffee.
But he was gregarious, and since the sole social expression of
the Yukon was the saloon, he expressed himself that way. When he
was a lad in the mining camps of the West, men had always done
that. To him it was the proper way for a man to express himself
socially. He knew no other way.
He was a striking figure of a man, despite his garb being similar
to that of all the men in the Tivoli. Soft-tanned moccasins of
moose-hide, beaded in Indian designs, covered his feet. His
trousers were ordinary overalls, his coat was made from a
blanket. Long-gauntleted leather mittens, lined with wool, hung
by his side. They were connected in the Yukon fashion, by a
leather thong passed around the neck and across the shoulders.
On his head was a fur cap, the ear-flaps raised and the
tying-cords dangling. His face, lean and slightly long, with the
suggestion of hollows under the cheek-bones, seemed almost
Indian. The burnt skin and keen dark eyes contributed to this
effect, though the bronze of the skin and the eyes themselves
were essentially those of a white man. He looked older than
thirty, and yet, smooth-shaven and without wrinkles, he was
almost boyish. This impression of age was based on no tangible
evidence. It came from the abstracter facts of the man, from
what he had endured and survived, which was far beyond that of
ordinary men. He had lived life naked and tensely, and something
of all this smouldered in his eyes, vibrated in his voice, and
seemed forever a-whisper on his lips.
The lips themselves were thin, and prone to close tightly over
the even, white teeth. But their harshness was retrieved by the
upward curl at the corners of his mouth. This curl gave to him
sweetness, as the minute puckers at the corners of the eyes
gave him laughter. These necessary graces saved him from a
nature that was essentially savage and that otherwise would have
been cruel and bitter. The nose was lean, full-nostrilled, and
delicate, and of a size to fit the face; while the high forehead,
as if to atone for its narrowness, was splendidly domed and
symmetrical. In line with the Indian effect was his hair, very
straight and very black, with a gloss to it that only health
could give.
"Burning Daylight's burning candlelight," laughed Dan MacDonald,
as an outburst of exclamations and merriment came from the
dancers.
"An' he is der boy to do it, eh, Louis?" said Olaf Henderson.
"Yes, by Gar! you bet on dat," said French Louis. "Dat boy is
all gold--"
"And when God Almighty washes Daylight's soul out on the last big
slucin' day," MacDonald interrupted, "why, God Almighty'll have
to shovel gravel along with him into the sluice-boxes."
"Dot iss goot," Olaf Henderson muttered, regarding the gambler
with profound admiration.
"Ver' good," affirmed French Louis. "I t'ink we take a drink on
dat one time, eh?"
CHAPTER II
It was two in the morning when the dancers, bent on getting
something to eat, adjourned the dancing for half an hour. And it
was at this moment that Jack Kearns suggested poker. Jack Kearns
was a big, bluff-featured man, who, along with Bettles, had made
the disastrous attempt to found a post on the head-reaches of the
Koyokuk, far inside the Arctic Circle. After that, Kearns had
fallen back on his posts at Forty Mile and Sixty Mile and changed
the direction of his ventures by sending out to the States for a
small sawmill and a river steamer. The former was even then
being sledded across Chilcoot Pass by Indians and dogs, and would
come down the Yukon in the early summer after the ice-run. Later
in the summer, when Bering Sea and the mouth of the Yukon cleared
of ice, the steamer, put together at St. Michaels, was to be
expected up the river loaded to the guards with supplies.
Jack Kearns suggested poker. French Louis, Dan MacDonald, and
Hal Campbell (who had make a strike on Moosehide), all three of
whom were not dancing because there were not girls enough to go
around, inclined to the suggestion. They were looking for a
fifth man when Burning Daylight emerged from the rear room, the
Virgin on his arm, the train of dancers in his wake. In response
to the hail of the poker-players, he came over to their table in
the corner.
"Want you to sit in," said Campbell. "How's your luck?"
"I sure got it to-night," Burning Daylight answered with
enthusiasm, and at the same time felt the Virgin press his arm
warningly. She wanted him for the dancing. "I sure got my luck
with me, but I'd sooner dance. I ain't hankerin' to take the
money away from you-all."
Nobody urged. They took his refusal as final, and the Virgin was
pressing his arm to turn him away in pursuit of the
supper-seekers, when he experienced a change of heart. It was
not that he did not want to dance, nor that he wanted to hurt
her; but that insistent pressure on his arm put his free
man-nature in revolt. The thought in his mind was that he did
not want any woman running him. Himself a favorite with women,
nevertheless they did not bulk big with him. They were toys,
playthings, part of the relaxation from the bigger game of life.
He met women along with the whiskey and gambling, and from
observation he had found that it was far easier to break away
from the drink and the cards than from a woman once the man was
properly entangled.
He was a slave to himself, which was natural in one with a
healthy ego, but he rebelled in ways either murderous or panicky
at being a slave to anybody else. Love's sweet servitude was a
thing of which he had no comprehension. Men he had seen in love
impressed him as lunatics, and lunacy was a thing he had never
considered worth analyzing. But comradeship with men was
different from love with women. There was no servitude in
comradeship. It was a business proposition, a square deal
between men who did not pursue each other, but who shared the
risks of trail and river and mountain in the pursuit of life and
treasure. Men and women pursued each other, and one must needs
bend the other to his will or hers. Comradeship was different.
There was no slavery about it; and though he, a strong man beyond
strength's seeming, gave far more than he received, he gave not
something due but in royal largess, his gifts of toil or heroic
effort falling generously from his hands. To pack for days over
the gale-swept passes or across the mosquito-ridden marshes, and
to pack double the weight his comrade packed, did not involve
unfairness or compulsion. Each did his best. That was the
business essence of it. Some men were stronger than
others--true;
but so long as each man did his best it was fair exchange, the
business spirit was observed, and the square deal obtained.
But with women--no. Women gave little and wanted all. Women had
apron-strings and were prone to tie them about any man who looked
twice in their direction. There was the Virgin, yawning her head
off when he came in and mightily pleased that he asked her to
dance. One dance was all very well, but because he danced twice
and thrice with her and several times more, she squeezed his arm
when they asked him to sit in at poker. It was the obnoxious
apron-string, the first of the many compulsions she would exert
upon him if he gave in. Not that she was not a nice bit of a
woman, healthy and strapping and good to look upon, also a very
excellent dancer, but that she was a woman with all a woman's
desire to rope him with her apron-strings and tie him hand and
foot for the branding. Better poker. Besides, he liked poker as
well as he did dancing.
He resisted the pull on his arm by the mere negative mass of him,
and said:-
"I sort of feel a hankering to give you-all a flutter."
Again came the pull on his arm. She was trying to pass the
apron-string around him. For the fraction of an instant he was a
savage, dominated by the wave of fear and murder that rose up in
him. For that infinitesimal space of time he was to all purposes
a frightened tiger filled with rage and terror at the
apprehension of the trap. Had he been no more than a savage, he
would have leapt wildly from the place or else sprung upon her
and destroyed her. But in that same instant there stirred in him
the generations of discipline by which man had become an
inadequate social animal. Tact and sympathy strove with him, and
he smiled with his eyes into the Virgin's eyes as he said:-
"You-all go and get some grub. I ain't hungry. And we'll dance
some more by and by. The night's young yet. Go to it, old
girl."
He released his arm and thrust her playfully on the shoulder, at
the same time turning to the poker-players.
"Take off the limit and I'll go you-all."
"Limit's the roof," said Jack Kearns.
"Take off the roof."
The players glanced at one another, and Kearns announced, "The
roof's off."
Elam Harnish dropped into the waiting chair, started to pull out
his gold-sack, and changed his mind. The Virgin pouted a moment,
then followed in the wake of the other dancers.
"I'll bring you a sandwich, Daylight," she called back over her
shoulder.
He nodded. She was smiling her forgiveness. He had escaped the
apron-string, and without hurting her feelings too severely.
"Let's play markers," he suggested. "Chips do everlastingly
clutter up the table....If it's agreeable to you-all?"
"I'm willing," answered Hal Campbell. "Let mine run at five
hundred."
"Mine, too," answered Harnish, while the others stated the values
they put on their own markers, French Louis, the most modest,
issuing his at a hundred dollars each.
In Alaska, at that time, there were no rascals and no tin-horn
gamblers. Games were conducted honestly, and men trusted one
another. A man's word was as good as his gold in the blower. A
marker was a flat, oblong composition chip worth, perhaps, a
cent. But when a man betted a marker in a game and said it was
worth five hundred dollars, it was accepted as worth five hundred
dollars. Whoever won it knew that the man who issued it would
redeem it with five hundred dollars' worth of dust weighed out on
the scales. The markers being of different colors, there was no
difficulty in identifying the owners. Also, in that early Yukon
day, no one dreamed of playing table-stakes. A man was good in a
game for all that he possessed, no matter where his possessions
were or what was their nature.
Harnish cut and got the deal. At this good augury, and while
shuffling the deck, he called to the barkeepers to set up the
drinks for the house. As he dealt the first card to Dan
MacDonald, on his left, he called out:
"Get down to the ground, you-all, Malemutes, huskies, and Siwash
purps! Get down and dig in! Tighten up them traces! Put your
weight into the harness and bust the breast-bands! Whoop-la!
Yow! We're off and bound for Helen Breakfast! And I tell
you-all clear and plain there's goin' to be stiff grades and fast
goin' to-night before we win to that same lady. And somebody's
goin' to bump...hard."
Once started, it was a quiet game, with little or no
conversation, though all about the players the place was a-roar.
Elam Harnish had ignited the spark. More and more miners dropped
in to the Tivoli and remained. When Burning Daylight went on the
tear, no man cared to miss it. The dancing-floor was full.
Owing to the shortage of women, many of the men tied bandanna
handkerchiefs around their arms in token of femininity and danced
with other men. All the games were crowded, and the voices of
the men talking at the long bar and grouped about the stove were
accompanied by the steady click of chips and the sharp whir,
rising and falling, of the roulette-ball. All the materials of a
proper Yukon night were at hand and mixing.
The luck at the table varied monotonously, no big hands being
out. As a result, high play went on with small hands though no
play lasted long. A filled straight belonging to French Louis
gave him a pot of five thousand against two sets of threes held
by Campbell and Kearns. One pot of eight hundred dollars was won
by a pair of trays on a showdown. And once Harnish called Kearns
for two thousand dollars on a cold steal. When Kearns laid down
his hand it showed a bobtail flush, while Harnish's hand proved
that he had had the nerve to call on a pair of tens.
But at three in the morning the big combination of hands arrived.
It was the moment of moments that men wait weeks for in a poker
game. The news of it tingled over the Tivoli. The onlookers
became quiet. The men farther away ceased talking and moved over
to the table. The players deserted the other games, and the
dancing-floor was forsaken, so that all stood at last, fivescore
and more, in a compact and silent group, around the poker-table.
The high betting had begun before the draw, and still the high
betting went on, with the draw not in sight. Kearns had dealt,
and French Louis had opened the pot with one marker--in his case
one hundred dollars. Campbell had merely "seen" it, but Elam
Harnish, corning next, had tossed in five hundred dollars, with
the remark to MacDonald that he was letting him in easy.
MacDonald, glancing again at his hand, put in a thousand in
markers. Kearns, debating a long time over his hand, finally
"saw." It then cost French Louis nine hundred to remain in the
game, which he contributed after a similar debate. It cost
Campbell likewise nine hundred to remain and draw cards, but to
the surprise of all he saw the nine hundred and raised another
thousand.
"You-all are on the grade at last," Harnish remarked, as he saw
the fifteen hundred and raised a thousand in turn. "Helen
Breakfast's sure on top this divide, and you-all had best look
out for bustin' harness."
"Me for that same lady," accompanied MacDonald's markers for two
thousand and for an additional thousand-dollar raise.
It was at this stage that the players sat up and knew beyond
peradventure that big hands were out. Though their features
showed nothing, each man was beginning unconsciously to tense.
Each man strove to appear his natural self, and each natural self
was different. Hal Campbell affected his customary cautiousness.
French Louis betrayed interest. MacDonald retained his
whole-souled benevolence, though it seemed to take on a slightly
exaggerated tone. Kearns was coolly dispassionate and
noncommittal, while Elam Harnish appeared as quizzical and
jocular as ever. Eleven thousand dollars were already in the
pot, and the markers were heaped in a confused pile in the centre
of the table.
"I ain't go no more markers," Kearns remarked plaintively. "We'd
best begin I.O.U.'s."
"Glad you're going to stay," was MacDonald's cordial response.
"I ain't stayed yet. I've got a thousand in already. How's it
stand now?"
"It'll cost you three thousand for a look in, but nobody will
stop you from raising."
"Raise--hell. You must think I got a pat like yourself."
Kearns looked at his hand. "But I'll tell you what I'll do, Mac.
I've got a hunch, and I'll just see that three thousand."
He wrote the sum on a slip of paper, signed his name, and
consigned it to the centre of the table.
French Louis became the focus of all eyes. He fingered his cards
nervously for a space. Then, with a "By Gar! Ah got not one
leetle beet hunch," he regretfully tossed his hand into the
discards.
The next moment the hundred and odd pairs of eyes shifted to
Campbell.
"I won't hump you, Jack," he said, contenting himself with
calling the requisite two thousand.
The eyes shifted to Harnish, who scribbled on a piece of paper
and shoved it forward.
"I'll just let you-all know this ain't no Sunday-school society
of philanthropy," he said. "I see you, Jack, and I raise you a
thousand. Here's where you-all get action on your pat, Mac."
"Action's what I fatten on, and I lift another thousand," was
MacDonald's rejoinder. "Still got that hunch, Jack?"
"I still got the hunch." Kearns fingered his cards a long
time. "And I'll play it, but you've got to know how I stand.
There's my steamer, the Bella--worth twenty thousand if she's
worth an ounce. There's Sixty Mile with five thousand in stock
on the shelves. And you know I got a sawmill coming in. It's at
Linderman now, and the scow is building. Am I good?"
"Dig in; you're sure good," was Daylight's answer. "And while
we're about it, I may mention casual that I got twenty thousand
in Mac's safe, there, and there's twenty thousand more in the
ground on Moosehide. You know the ground, Campbell. Is they
that-all in the dirt?"
"There sure is, Daylight."
"How much does it cost now?" Kearns asked.
"Two thousand to see."
"We'll sure hump you if you-all come in," Daylight warned him.
"It's an almighty good hunch," Kearns said, adding his slip for
two thousand to the growing heap. "I can feel her crawlin' up
and down my back."
"I ain't got a hunch, but I got a tolerable likeable hand,"
Campbell announced, as he slid in his slip; "but it's not a
raising hand."
"Mine is," Daylight paused and wrote. "I see that thousand and
raise her the same old thousand."
The Virgin, standing behind him, then did what a man's best
friend was not privileged to do. Reaching over Daylight's
shoulder, she picked up his hand and read it, at the same time
shielding the faces of the five cards close to his chest. What
she saw were three queens and a pair of eights, but nobody
guessed what she saw. Every player's eyes were on her face as
she scanned the cards, but no sign did she give. Her features
might have been carved from ice, for her expression was precisely
the same before, during, and after. Not a muscle quivered; nor
was there the slightest dilation of a nostril, nor the slightest
increase of light in the eyes. She laid the hand face down again
on the table, and slowly the lingering eyes withdrew from her,
having learned nothing.
MacDonald smiled benevolently. "I see you, Daylight, and I hump
this time for two thousand. How's that hunch, Jack?"
"Still a-crawling, Mac. You got me now, but that hunch is a
rip-snorter persuadin' sort of a critter, and it's my plain duty
to ride it. I call for three thousand. And I got another hunch:
Daylight's going to call, too."
"He sure is," Daylight agreed, after Campbell had thrown up his
hand. "He knows when he's up against it, and he plays accordin'.
I see that two thousand, and then I'll see the draw."
In a dead silence, save for the low voices of the three players,
the draw was made. Thirty-four thousand dollars were already in
the pot, and the play possibly not half over. To the Virgin's
amazement, Daylight held up his three queens, discarding his
eights and calling for two cards. And this time not even she
dared look at what he had drawn. She knew her limit of control.
Nor did he look. The two new cards lay face down on the table
where they had been dealt to him.
"Cards?" Kearns asked of MacDonald.
"Got enough," was the reply.
"You can draw if you want to, you know," Kearns warned him.
"Nope; this'll do me."
Kearns himself drew two cards, but did not look at them.
Still Harnish let his cards lie.
"I never bet in the teeth of a pat hand," he said slowly, looking
at the saloon-keeper. "You-all start her rolling, Mac."
MacDonald counted his cards carefully, to make doubles sure it
was not a foul hand, wrote a sum on a paper slip, and slid it
into the pot, with the simple utterance:-
"Five thousand."
Kearns, with every eye upon him, looked at his two-card draw,
counted the other three to dispel any doubt of holding more than
five cards, and wrote on a betting slip.
"I see you, Mac," he said, "and I raise her a little thousand
just so as not to keep Daylight out."
The concentrated gaze shifted to Daylight. He likewise examined
his draw and counted his five cards.
"I see that six thousand, and I raise her five thousand...just to
try and keep you out, Jack."
"And I raise you five thousand just to lend a hand at keeping
Jack out," MacDonald said, in turn.
His voice was slightly husky and strained, and a nervous twitch
in the corner of his mouth followed speech.
Kearns was pale, and those who looked on noted that his hand
trembled as he wrote his slip. But his voice was unchanged.
"I lift her along for five thousand," he said.
Daylight was now the centre. The kerosene lamps above flung high
lights from the rash of sweat on his forehead. The bronze of his
cheeks was darkened by the accession of blood. His black eyes
glittered, and his nostrils were distended and eager. They were
large nostrils, tokening his descent from savage ancestors who
had survived by virtue of deep lungs and generous air-passages.
Yet, unlike MacDonald, his voice was firm and customary, and,
unlike Kearns, his hand did not tremble when he wrote.
"I call, for ten thousand," he said. "Not that I'm afraid of
you-all, Mac. It's that hunch of Jack's."
"I hump his hunch for five thousand just the same," said
MacDonald. "I had the best hand before the draw, and I still
guess I got it."
"Mebbe this is a case where a hunch after the draw is better'n
the hunch before," Kearns remarked; "wherefore duty says, 'Lift
her, Jack, lift her,' and so I lift her another five thousand."
Daylight leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the kerosene
lamps while he computed aloud.
"I was in nine thousand before the draw, and I saw and raised
eleven thousand--that makes thirty. I'm only good for ten more."
He leaned forward and looked at Kearns. "So I call that ten
thousand."
"You can raise if you want," Kearns answered. "Your dogs are
good for five thousand in this game."
"Nary dawg. You-all can win my dust and dirt, but nary one of my
dawgs. I just call."
MacDonald considered for a long time. No one moved or whispered.
Not a muscle was relaxed on the part of the onlookers. Not the
weight of a body shifted from one leg to the other. It was a
sacred silence. Only could be heard the roaring draft of the
huge stove, and from without, muffled by the log-walls, the
howling of dogs. It was not every night that high stakes were
played on the Yukon, and for that matter, this was the highest in
the history of the country. The saloon-keeper finally spoke.
"If anybody else wins, they'll have to take a mortgage on the
Tivoli."
The two other players nodded.
"So I call, too." MacDonald added his slip for five thousand.
Not one of them claimed the pot, and not one of them called the
size of his hand. Simultaneously and in silence they faced their
cards on the table, while a general tiptoeing and craning of
necks took place among the onlookers. Daylight showed four
queens and an ace; MacDonald four jacks and an ace; and Kearns
four kings and a trey. Kearns reached forward with an encircling
movement of his arm and drew the pot in to him, his arm shaking
as he did so.
Daylight picked the ace from his hand and tossed it over
alongside MacDonald's ace, saying:-
"That's what cheered me along, Mac. I knowed it was only kings
that could beat me, and he had them.
"What did you-all have?" he asked, all interest, turning to
Campbell.
"Straight flush of four, open at both ends--a good drawing hand."
"You bet! You could a' made a straight, a straight flush, or a
flush out of it."
"That's what I thought," Campbell said sadly. "It cost me six
thousand before I quit."
"I wisht you-all'd drawn," Daylight laughed. "Then I wouldn't a'
caught that fourth queen. Now I've got to take Billy Rawlins'
mail contract and mush for Dyea. What's the size of the
killing, Jack?"
Kearns attempted to count the pot, but was too excited. Daylight
drew it across to him, with firm fingers separating and stacking
the markers and I.O.U.'s and with clear brain adding the sum.
"One hundred and twenty-seven thousand," he announced. "You-all
can sell out now, Jack, and head for home."
The winner smiled and nodded, but seemed incapable of speech.
"I'd shout the drinks," MacDonald said, "only the house don't
belong to me any more."
"Yes, it does," Kearns replied, first wetting his lips with his
tongue. "Your note's good for any length of time. But the
drinks are on me."
"Name your snake-juice, you-all--the winner pays!" Daylight
called
out loudly to all about him, at the same time rising from his
chair
and catching the Virgin by the arm. "Come on for a reel, you-all
dancers. The night's young yet, and it's Helen Breakfast and the
mail contract for me in the morning. Here, you-all Rawlins,
you--I
hereby do take over that same contract, and I start for salt
water
at nine A.M.--savvee? Come on, you-all! Where's that fiddler?"
CHAPTER III
It was Daylight's night. He was the centre and the head of the
revel, unquenchably joyous, a contagion of fun. He multiplied
himself, and in so doing multiplied the excitement. No prank he
suggested was too wild for his followers, and all followed save
those that developed into singing imbeciles and fell warbling by
the wayside. Yet never did trouble intrude. It was known on the
Yukon that when Burning Daylight made a night of it, wrath and
evil were forbidden. On his nights men dared not quarrel. In
the younger days such things had happened, and then men had known
what real wrath was, and been man-handled as only Burning
Daylight could man-handle. On his nights men must laugh and be
happy or go home. Daylight was inexhaustible. In between dances
he paid over to Kearns the twenty thousand in dust and
transferred to him his Moosehide claim. Likewise he arranged the
taking over of Billy Rawlins' mail contract, and made his
preparations for the start. He despatched a messenger to rout
out Kama, his dog-driver--a Tananaw Indian, far-wandered from his
tribal home in the service of the invading whites. Kama entered
the Tivoli, tall, lean, muscular, and fur-clad, the pick of his
barbaric race and barbaric still, unshaken and unabashed by the
revellers that rioted about him while Daylight gave his orders.
"Um," said Kama, tabling his instructions on his fingers. "Get
um letters from Rawlins. Load um on sled. Grub for Selkirk--you
think um plenty dog-grub stop Selkirk?"
"Plenty dog-grub, Kama."
"Um, bring sled this place nine um clock. Bring um snowshoes.
No bring um tent. Mebbe bring um fly? um little fly?"
"No fly," Daylight answered decisively.
"Um much cold."
"We travel light--savvee? We carry plenty letters out, plenty
letters back. You are strong man. Plenty cold, plenty travel,
all right."
"Sure all right," Kama muttered, with resignation.
"Much cold, no care a damn. Um ready nine um clock."
He turned on his moccasined heel and walked out, imperturbable,
sphinx-like, neither giving nor receiving greetings nor looking
to right or left. The Virgin led Daylight away into a corner.
"Look here, Daylight," she said, in a low voice, "you're busted."
"Higher'n a kite."
"I've eight thousand in Mac's safe--" she began.
But Daylight interrupted. The apron-string loomed near and he
shied like an unbroken colt.
"It don't matter," he said. "Busted I came into the world,
busted I go out, and I've been busted most of the time since I
arrived. Come on; let's waltz."
"But listen," she urged. "My money's doing nothing. I could
lend it to you--a grub-stake," she added hurriedly, at sight of
the alarm in his face.
"Nobody grub-stakes me," was the answer. "I stake myself, and
when I make a killing it's sure all mine. No thank you, old
girl. Much obliged. I'll get my stake by running the mail out
and in."
"Daylight," she murmured, in tender protest.
But with a sudden well-assumed ebullition of spirits he drew her
toward the dancing-floor, and as they swung around and around in
a waltz she pondered on the iron heart of the man who held her in
his arms and resisted all her wiles.
At six the next morning, scorching with whiskey, yet ever
himself, he stood at the bar putting every man's hand down. The
way of it was that two men faced each other across a corner,
their right elbows resting on the bar, their right hands gripped
together, while each strove to press the other's hand down. Man
after man came against him, but no man put his hand down, even
Olaf Henderson and French Louis failing despite their hugeness.
When they contended it was a trick, a trained muscular knack, he
challenged them to another test.
"Look here, you-all" he cried. "I'm going to do two things:
first, weigh my sack; and second, bet it that after you-all have
lifted clean from the floor all the sacks of flour you-all are
able, I'll put on two more sacks and lift the whole caboodle
clean."
"By Gar! Ah take dat!" French Louis rumbled above the cheers.
"Hold on!" Olaf Henderson cried. "I ban yust as good as you,
Louis. I yump half that bet."
Put on the scales, Daylight's sack was found to balance an even
four hundred dollars, and Louis and Olaf divided the bet between
them. Fifty-pound sacks of flour were brought in from
MacDonald's cache. Other men tested their strength first. They
straddled on two chairs, the flour sacks beneath them on the
floor and held together by rope-lashings. Many of the men were
able, in this manner, to lift four or five hundred pounds, while
some succeeded with as high as six hundred. Then the two giants
took a hand, tying at seven hundred. French Louis then added
another sack, and swung seven hundred and fifty clear. Olaf
duplicated the performance, whereupon both failed to clear eight
hundred. Again and again they strove, their foreheads beaded
with sweat, their frames crackling with the effort. Both were
able to shift the weight and to bump it, but clear the floor with
it they could not.
"By Gar! Daylight, dis tam you mek one beeg meestake," French
Louis said, straightening up and stepping down from the chairs.
"Only one damn iron man can do dat. One hundred pun' more--my
frien', not ten poun' more." The sacks were unlashed, but when
two sacks were added, Kearns interfered. "Only one sack more."
"Two!" some one cried. "Two was the bet."
"They didn't lift that last sack," Kearns protested.
"They only lifted seven hundred and fifty."
But Daylight grandly brushed aside the confusion.
"What's the good of you-all botherin' around that way? What's
one more sack? If I can't lift three more, I sure can't lift
two. Put 'em in."
He stood upon the chairs, squatted, and bent his shoulders down
till his hands closed on the rope. He shifted his feet slightly,
tautened his muscles with a tentative pull, then relaxed again,
questing for a perfect adjustment of all the levers of his body.
French Louis, looking on sceptically, cried out,
"Pool lak hell, Daylight! Pool lak hell!"
Daylight's muscles tautened a second time, and this time in
earnest, until steadily all the energy of his splendid body was
applied, and quite imperceptibly, without jerk or strain, the
bulky nine hundred pounds rose from the door and swung back and
forth, pendulum like, between his legs.
Olaf Henderson sighed a vast audible sigh. The Virgin, who had
tensed unconsciously till her muscles hurt her, relaxed. While
French Louis murmured reverently:-
"M'sieu Daylight, salut! Ay am one beeg baby. You are one beeg
man."
Daylight dropped his burden, leaped to the floor, and headed for
the bar.
"Weigh in!" he cried, tossing his sack to the weigher, who
transferred to it four hundred dollars from the sacks of the two
losers.
"Surge up, everybody!" Daylight went on. "Name your
snake-juice! The winner pays!"
"This is my night! " he was shouting, ten minutes later. "I'm
the lone he-wolf, and I've seen thirty winters. This is my
birthday, my one day in the year, and I can put any man on his
back. Come on, you-all! I'm going to put you-all in the snow.
Come on, you chechaquos [1] and sourdoughs[2], and get your
baptism!"
[1] Tenderfeet. [2] Old-timers.
The rout streamed out of doors, all save the barkeepers and the
singing Bacchuses. Some fleeting thought of saving his own
dignity entered MacDonald's head, for he approached Daylight with
outstretched hand.
"What? You first?" Daylight laughed, clasping the other's hand
as if in greeting.
"No, no," the other hurriedly disclaimed. "Just congratulations
on your birthday. Of course you can put me in the snow. What
chance have I against a man that lifts nine hundred pounds?"
MacDonald weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, and Daylight had
him gripped solely by his hand; yet, by a sheer abrupt jerk, he
took the saloon-keeper off his feet and flung him face downward
in the snow. In quick succession, seizing the men nearest him,
he threw half a dozen more. Resistance was useless. They flew
helter-skelter out of his grips, landing in all manner of
attitudes, grotesquely and harmlessly, in the soft snow. It soon
became difficult, in the dim starlight, to distinguish between
those thrown and those waiting their turn, and he began feeling
their backs and shoulders, determining their status by whether or
not he found them powdered with snow.
"Baptized yet?" became his stereotyped question, as he reached
out his terrible hands.
Several score lay down in the snow in a long row, while many
others knelt in mock humility, scooping snow upon their heads and
claiming the rite accomplished. But a group of five stood
upright, backwoodsmen and frontiersmen, they, eager to contest
any
man's birthday.
Graduates of the hardest of man-handling schools, veterans of
multitudes of rough-and-tumble battles, men of blood and sweat
and endurance, they nevertheless lacked one thing that Daylight
possessed in high degree--namely, an almost perfect brain and
muscular coordination. It was simple, in its way, and no virtue
of his. He had been born with this endowment. His nerves
carried messages more quickly than theirs; his mental processes,
culminating in acts of will, were quicker than theirs; his
muscles themselves, by some immediacy of chemistry, obeyed the
messages of his will quicker than theirs. He was so made, his
muscles were high-power explosives. The levers of his body
snapped into play like the jaws of steel traps. And in addition
to all this, his was that super-strength that is the dower of but
one human in millions--a strength depending not on size but on
degree, a supreme organic excellence residing in the stuff of the
muscles themselves. Thus, so swiftly could he apply a stress,
that, before an opponent could become aware and resist, the aim
of the stress had been accomplished. In turn, so swiftly did he
become aware of a stress applied to him, that he saved himself by
resistance or by delivering a lightning counter-stress.
"It ain't no use you-all standing there," Daylight addressed the
waiting group. "You-all might as well get right down and take
your baptizing. You-all might down me any other day in the year,
but on my birthday I want you-all to know I'm the best man. Is
that Pat Hanrahan's mug looking hungry and willing? Come on,
Pat." Pat Hanrahan, ex-bare-knuckle-prize fighter and
roughhouse-expert, stepped forth. The two men came against each
other in grips, and almost before he had exerted himself the
Irishman found himself in the merciless vise of a half-Nelson
that buried him head and shoulders in the snow. Joe Hines,
ex-lumber-jack, came down with an impact equal to a fall from a
two-story building--his overthrow accomplished by a
cross-buttock,
delivered, he claimed, before he was ready.
There was nothing exhausting in all this to Daylight. He did
not heave and strain through long minutes. No time, practically,
was occupied. His body exploded abruptly and terrifically in one
instant, and on the next instant was relaxed. Thus, Doc Watson,
the gray-bearded, iron bodied man without a past, a fighting
terror himself, was overthrown in the fraction of a second
preceding his own onslaught. As he was in the act of gathering
himself for a spring, Daylight was upon him, and with such
fearful suddenness as to crush him backward and down. Olaf
Henderson, receiving his cue from this, attempted to take
Daylight unaware, rushing upon him from one side as he stooped
with extended hand to help Doc Watson up. Daylight dropped on
his hands and knees, receiving in his side Olaf's knees. Olaf's
momentum carried him clear over the obstruction in a long, flying
fall. Before he could rise, Daylight had whirled him over on his
back and was rubbing his face and ears with snow and shoving
handfuls down his neck. "Ay ban yust as good a man as you ban,
Daylight," Olaf spluttered, as he pulled himself to his feet;
"but
by Yupiter, I ban navver see a grip like that." French Louis was
the last of the five, and he had seen enough to make him
cautious. He circled and baffled for a full minute before coming
to grips; and for another full minute they strained and reeled
without either winning the advantage. And then, just as the
contest was becoming interesting, Daylight effected one of his
lightning shifts, changing all stresses and leverages and at the
same time delivering one of his muscular explosions. French
Louis resisted till his huge frame crackled, and then, slowly,
was forced over and under and downward.
"The winner pays!" Daylight cried; as he sprang to his feet and
led the way back into the Tivoli. "Surge along you-all! This way
to the snake-room!"
They lined up against the long bar, in places two or three deep,
stamping the frost from their moccasined feet, for outside the
temperature was sixty below. Bettles, himself one of the gamest
of the old-timers in deeds and daring ceased from his drunken lay
of the "Sassafras Root," and titubated over to congratulate
Daylight. But in the midst of it he felt impelled to make a
speech, and raised his voice oratorically.
"I tell you fellers I'm plum proud to call Daylight my friend.
We've hit the trail together afore now, and he's eighteen carat
from his moccasins up, damn his mangy old hide, anyway. He was a
shaver when he first hit this country. When you fellers was his
age, you wa'n't dry behind the ears yet. He never was no kid.
He was born a full-grown man. An' I tell you a man had to be a
man in them days. This wa'n't no effete civilization like it's
come to be now." Bettles paused long enough to put his arm in
a proper bear-hug around Daylight's neck. "When you an' me
mushed into the Yukon in the good ole days, it didn't rain
soup and they wa'n't no free-lunch joints. Our camp fires was
lit where we killed our game, and most of the time we lived on
salmon-tracks and rabbit-bellies--ain't I right?"
But at the roar of laughter that greeted his inversion, Bettles
released the bear-hug and turned fiercely on them. "Laugh, you
mangy short-horns, laugh! But I tell you plain and simple, the
best of you ain't knee-high fit to tie Daylight's moccasin
strings.
Ain't I right, Campbell? Ain't I right, Mac? Daylight's one of
the old guard, one of the real sour-doughs. And in them days
they
wa'n't ary a steamboat or ary a trading-post, and we cusses had
to
live offen salmon-bellies and rabbit-tracks."
He gazed triumphantly around, and in the applause that followed
arose cries for a speech from Daylight. He signified his
consent. A chair was brought, and he was helped to stand upon
it. He was no more sober than the crowd above which he now
towered--a wild crowd, uncouthly garmented, every foot moccasined
or muc-lucked[3], with mittens dangling from necks and with furry
ear-flaps raised so that they took on the seeming of the winged
helmets of the Norsemen. Daylight's black eyes were flashing,
and the flush of strong drink flooded darkly under the bronze of
his cheeks. He was greeted with round on round of affectionate
cheers, which brought a suspicious moisture to his eyes, albeit
many of the voices were inarticulate and inebriate. And yet, men
have so behaved since the world began, feasting, fighting, and
carousing, whether in the dark cave-mouth or by the fire of the
squatting-place, in the palaces of imperial Rome and the rock
strongholds of robber barons, or in the sky-aspiring hotels of
modern times and in the boozing-kens of sailor-town. Just so
were these men, empire-builders in the Arctic Light, boastful and
drunken and clamorous, winning surcease for a few wild moments
from the grim reality of their heroic toil. Modern heroes they,
and in nowise different from the heroes of old time. "Well,
fellows, I don't know what to say to you-all," Daylight began
lamely, striving still to control his whirling brain. "I think
I'll tell you-all a story. I had a pardner wunst, down in
Juneau. He come from North Caroliney, and he used to tell this
same story to me. It was down in the mountains in his country,
and it was a wedding. There they was, the family and all the
friends. The parson was just puttin' on the last touches, and he
says, 'They as the Lord have joined let no man put asunder.'
[3] Muc-luc: a water-tight, Eskimo boot, made from walrus-hide
and trimmed with fur.
"'Parson,' says the bridegroom, 'I rises to question your
grammar in that there sentence. I want this weddin' done right.'
"When the smoke clears away, the bride she looks around and sees
a dead parson, a dead bridegroom, a dead brother, two dead
uncles, and five dead wedding-guests.
"So she heaves a mighty strong sigh and says, 'Them new-fangled,
self-cocking revolvers sure has played hell with my prospects.'
"And so I say to you-all," Daylight added, as the roar of
laughter died down, "that them four kings of Jack Kearns sure has
played hell with my prospects. I'm busted higher'n a kite, and
I'm hittin' the trail for Dyea--"
"Goin' out?" some one called. A spasm of anger wrought on his
face for a flashing instant, but in the next his good-humor was
back again.
"I know you-all are only pokin' fun asking such a question," he
said, with a smile. "Of course I ain't going out."
"Take the oath again, Daylight," the same voice cried.
"I sure will. I first come over Chilcoot in '83. I went out
over the Pass in a fall blizzard, with a rag of a shirt and a cup
of raw flour. I got my grub-stake in Juneau that winter, and in
the spring I went over the Pass once more. And once more the
famine drew me out. Next spring I went in again, and I swore
then that I'd never come out till I made my stake. Well, I ain't
made it, and here I am. And I ain't going out now. I get the
mail and I come right back. I won't stop the night at Dyea.
I'll hit up Chilcoot soon as I change the dogs and get the mail
and grub. And so I swear once more, by the mill-tails of hell
and the head of John the Baptist, I'll never hit for the Outside
till I make my pile. And I tell you-all, here and now, it's got
to be an almighty big pile."
"How much might you call a pile?" Bettles demanded from beneath,
his arms clutched lovingly around Daylight's legs.
"Yes, how much? What do you call a pile?" others cried.
Daylight steadied himself for a moment and debated. "Four or
five millions," he said slowly, and held up his hand for silence
as his statement was received with derisive yells. "I'll be real
conservative, and put the bottom notch at a million. And for not
an ounce less'n that will I go out of the country."
Again his statement was received with an outburst of derision.
Not only had the total gold output of the Yukon up to date been
below five millions, but no man had ever made a strike of a
hundred thousand, much less of a million.
"You-all listen to me. You seen Jack Kearns get a hunch
to-night. We had him sure beat before the draw. His ornery
three kings was no good. But he just knew there was another king
coming--that was his hunch--and he got it. And I tell you-all I
got a hunch. There's a big strike coming on the Yukon, and it's
just about due. I don't mean no ornery Moosehide, Birch-Creek
kind of a strike. I mean a real rip-snorter hair-raiser. I tell
you-all she's in the air and hell-bent for election. Nothing can
stop her, and she'll come up river. There's where you-all track
my moccasins in the near future if you-all want to find
me--somewhere in the country around Stewart River, Indian River,
and Klondike River. When I get back with the mail, I'll head
that way so fast you-all won't see my trail for smoke. She's
a-coming, fellows, gold from the grass roots down, a hundred
dollars to the pan, and a stampede in from the Outside fifty
thousand strong. You-all'll think all hell's busted loose when
that strike is made."
He raised his glass to his lips. "Here's kindness, and hoping
you-all will be in on it."
He drank and stepped down from the chair, falling into another
one of Bettles' bear-hugs.
"If I was you, Daylight, I wouldn't mush to-day," Joe Hines
counselled, coming in from consulting the spirit thermometer
outside the door. "We're in for a good cold snap. It's
sixty-two below now, and still goin' down. Better wait till she
breaks."
Daylight laughed, and the old sour-doughs around him laughed.
"Just like you short-horns," Bettles cried, "afeard of a little
frost. And blamed little you know Daylight, if you think frost
kin stop 'm."
"Freeze his lungs if he travels in it," was the reply.
"Freeze pap and lollypop! Look here, Hines, you only ben in this
here country three years. You ain't seasoned yet. I've seen
Daylight do fifty miles up on the Koyokuk on a day when the
thermometer busted at seventy-two."
Hines shook his head dolefully.
"Them's the kind that does freeze their lungs," he lamented. "If
Daylight pulls out before this snap breaks, he'll never get
through--an' him travelin' without tent or fly."
"It's a thousand miles to Dyea," Bettles announced, climbing on
the chair and supporting his swaying body by an arm passed around
Daylight's neck. "It's a thousand miles, I'm sayin' an' most of
the trail unbroke, but I bet any chechaquo--anything he
wants--that
Daylight makes Dyea in thirty days."
"That's an average of over thirty-three miles a day," Doc Watson
warned, "and I've travelled some myself. A blizzard on Chilcoot
would tie him up for a week."
"Yep," Bettles retorted, "an' Daylight'll do the second thousand
back again on end in thirty days more, and I got five hundred
dollars that says so, and damn the blizzards."
To emphasize his remarks, he pulled out a gold-sack the size of a
bologna sausage and thumped it down on the bar. Doc Watson
thumped his own sack alongside.
"Hold on!" Daylight cried. "Bettles's right, and I want in on
this. I bet five hundred that sixty days from now I pull up at
the Tivoli door with the Dyea mail."
A sceptical roar went up, and a dozen men pulled out their sacks.
Jack Kearns crowded in close and caught Daylight's attention.
"I take you,Daylight," he cried. "Two to one you don't--not in
seventy-five days."
"No charity, Jack," was the reply. "The bettin's even, and the
time is sixty days."
"Seventy-five days, and two to one you don't," Kearns insisted.
"Fifty Mile'll be wide open and the rim-ice rotten."
"What you win from me is yours," Daylight went on. "And, by
thunder, Jack, you can't give it back that way. I won't bet with
you. You're trying to give me money. But I tell you-all one
thing, Jack, I got another hunch. I'm goin' to win it back some
one of these days. You-all just wait till the big strike up
river. Then you and me'll take the roof off and sit in a game
that'll be full man's size. Is it a go?"
They shook hands.
"Of course he'll make it," Kearns whispered in Bettles' ear.
"And there's five hundred Daylight's back in sixty days," he
added aloud.
Billy Rawlins closed with the wager, and Bettles hugged Kearns
ecstatically.
"By Yupiter, I ban take that bet," Olaf Henderson said, dragging
Daylight away from Bettles and Kearns.
"Winner pays!" Daylight shouted, closing the wager.
"And I'm sure going to win, and sixty days is a long time between
drinks, so I pay now. Name your brand, you hoochinoos! Name
your
brand!"
Bettles, a glass of whiskey in hand, climbed back on his chair,
and swaying back and forth, sang the one song he knew:-
"O, it's Henry Ward Beecher
And Sunday-school teachers
All sing of the sassafras-root;
But you bet all the same,
If it had its right name
It's the juice of the forbidden fruit."
The crowd roared out the chorus:-
"But you bet all the same
If it had its right name
It's the juice of the forbidden fruit."
Somebody opened the outer door. A vague gray light filtered in.
"Burning daylight, burning daylight," some one called warningly.
Daylight paused for nothing, heading for the door and pulling
down his ear-flaps. Kama stood outside by the sled, a long,
narrow affair, sixteen inches wide and seven and a half feet in
length, its slatted bottom raised six inches above the steel-shod
runners. On it, lashed with thongs of moose-hide, were the light
canvas bags that contained the mail, and the food and gear for
dogs and men. In front of it, in a single line, lay curled five
frost-rimed dogs. They were huskies, matched in size and color,
all unusually large and all gray. From their cruel jaws to their
bushy tails they were as like as peas in their likeness to
timber-wolves. Wolves they were, domesticated, it was true, but
wolves in appearance and in all their characteristics. On top
the sled load, thrust under the lashings and ready for immediate
use, were two pairs of snowshoes.
Bettles pointed to a robe of Arctic hare skins, the end of which
showed in the mouth of a bag.
"That's his bed," he said. "Six pounds of rabbit skins. Warmest
thing he ever slept under, but I'm damned if it could keep me
warm, and I can go some myself. Daylight's a hell-fire furnace,
that's what he is."
"I'd hate to be that Indian," Doc Watson remarked.
"He'll kill'm, he'll kill'm sure," Bettles chanted exultantly.
"I know. I've ben with Daylight on trail. That man ain't never
ben tired in his life. Don't know what it means. I seen him
travel all day with wet socks at forty five below. There ain't
another man living can do that."
While this talk went on, Daylight was saying good-by to those
that clustered around him. The Virgin wanted to kiss him, and,
fuddled slightly though he was with the whiskey, he saw his way
out without compromising with the apron-string. He kissed the
Virgin, but he kissed the other three women with equal
partiality. He pulled on his long mittens, roused the dogs to
their feet, and took his Place at the gee pole.[4]
[4] A gee-pole: stout pole projecting forward from one side of
the front end of the sled, by which the sled is steered.
"Mush, you beauties!" he cried.
The animals threw their weights against their breastbands on the
instant, crouching low to the snow, and digging in their claws.
They whined eagerly, and before the sled had gone half a dozen
lengths both Daylight and Kama (in the rear) were running to keep
up. And so, running, man and dogs dipped over the bank and down
to the frozen bed of the Yukon, and in the gray light were gone.
CHAPTER IV
On the river, where was a packed trail and where snowshoes were
unnecessary, the dogs averaged six miles an hour. To keep up
with them, the two men were compelled to run. Daylight and Kama
relieved each other regularly at the gee-pole, for here was the
hard work of steering the flying sled and of keeping in advance
of it. The man relieved dropped behind the sled, occasionally
leaping upon it and resting.
It was severe work, but of the sort that was exhilarating.
They were flying, getting over the ground, making the most of the
packed trail. Later on they would come to the unbroken trail,
where three miles an hour would constitute good going. Then
there would be no riding and resting, and no running. Then the
gee-pole would be the easier task, and a man would come back to
it to rest after having completed his spell to the fore, breaking
trail with the snowshoes for the dogs. Such work was far from
exhilarating also, they must expect places where for miles at a
time they must toil over chaotic ice-jams, where they would be
fortunate if they made two miles an hour. And there would be the
inevitable bad jams, short ones, it was true, but so bad that a
mile an hour would require terrific effort. Kama and Daylight
did not talk. In the nature of the work they could not, nor in
their own natures were they given to talking while they worked.
At rare intervals, when necessary, they addressed each other in
monosyllables, Kama, for the most part, contenting himself with
grunts. Occasionally a dog whined or snarled, but in the main
the team kept silent. Only could be heard the sharp, jarring
grate of the steel runners over the hard surface and the creak of
the straining sled.
As if through a wall, Daylight had passed from the hum and roar
of the Tivoli into another world--a world of silence and
immobility. Nothing stirred. The Yukon slept under a coat of
ice three feet thick. No breath of wind blew. Nor did the sap
move in the hearts of the spruce trees that forested the river
banks on either hand. The trees, burdened with the last
infinitesimal pennyweight of snow their branches could hold,
stood in absolute petrifaction. The slightest tremor would have
dislodged the snow, and no snow was dislodged. The sled was the
one point of life and motion in the midst of the solemn quietude,
and the harsh churn of its runners but emphasized the silence
through which it moved.
It was a dead world, and furthermore, a gray world. The weather
was sharp and clear; there was no moisture in the atmosphere, no
fog nor haze; yet the sky was a gray pall. The reason for this
was that, though there was no cloud in the sky to dim the
brightness of day, there was no sun to give brightness. Far to
the south the sun climbed steadily to meridian, but between it
and the frozen Yukon intervened the bulge of the earth. The
Yukon lay in a night shadow, and the day itself was in reality a
long twilight-light. At a quarter before twelve, where a wide
bend of the river gave a long vista south, the sun showed its
upper rim above the sky-line. But it did not rise
perpendicularly. Instead, it rose on a slant, so that by high
noon it had barely lifted its lower rim clear of the horizon. It
was a dim, wan sun. There was no heat to its rays, and a man
could gaze squarely into the full orb of it without hurt to his
eyes. No sooner had it reached meridian than it began its slant
back beneath the horizon, and at quarter past twelve the earth
threw its shadow again over the land.
The men and dogs raced on. Daylight and Kama were both savages
so far as their stomachs were concerned. They could eat
irregularly in time and quantity, gorging hugely on occasion, and
on occasion going long stretches without eating at all. As for
the dogs, they ate but once a day, and then rarely did they
receive more than a pound each of dried fish. They were
ravenously hungry and at the same time splendidly in condition.
Like the wolves, their forebears, their nutritive processes were
rigidly economical and perfect. There was no waste. The last
least particle of what they consumed was transformed into energy.
And Kama and Daylight were like them. Descended themselves from
the generations that had endured, they, too, endured. Theirs was
the simple, elemental economy. A little food equipped them with
prodigious energy. Nothing was lost. A man of soft
civilization, sitting at a desk, would have grown lean and
woe-begone on the fare that kept Kama and Daylight at the
top-notch of physical efficiency. They knew, as the man at the
desk never knows, what it is to be normally hungry all the time,
so that they could eat any time. Their appetites were always
with them and on edge, so that they bit voraciously into whatever
offered and with an entire innocence of indigestion.
By three in the afternoon the long twilight faded into night.
The stars came out, very near and sharp and bright, and by their
light dogs and men still kept the trail. They were
indefatigable. And this was no record run of a single day, but
the first day of sixty such days. Though Daylight had passed a
night without sleep, a night of dancing and carouse, it seemed to
have left no effect. For this there were two explanations first,
his remarkable vitality; and next, the fact that such nights were
rare in his experience. Again enters the man at the desk, whose
physical efficiency would be more hurt by a cup of coffee at
bedtime than could Daylight's by a whole night long of strong
drink and excitement.
Daylight travelled without a watch, feeling the passage of time
and largely estimating it by subconscious processes. By what he
considered must be six o'clock, he began looking for a
camping-place. The trail, at a bend, plunged out across the
river. Not having found a likely spot, they held on for the
opposite bank a mile away. But midway they encountered an
ice-jam which took an hour of heavy work to cross. At last
Daylight glimpsed what he was looking for, a dead tree close by
the bank. The sled was run in and up. Kama grunted with
satisfaction, and the work of making camp was begun.
The division of labor was excellent. Each knew what he must do.
With one ax Daylight chopped down the dead pine. Kama, with a
snowshoe and the other ax, cleared away the two feet of snow
above the Yukon ice and chopped a supply of ice for cooking
purposes. A piece of dry birch bark started the fire, and
Daylight went ahead with the cooking while the Indian unloaded
the sled and fed the dogs their ration of dried fish. The food
sacks he slung high in the trees beyond leaping-reach of the
huskies. Next, he chopped down a young spruce tree and trimmed
off the boughs. Close to the fire he trampled down the soft snow
and covered the packed space with the boughs. On this flooring
he tossed his own and Daylight's gear-bags, containing dry socks
and underwear and their sleeping-robes. Kama, however, had two
robes of rabbit skin to Daylight's one.
They worked on steadily, without speaking, losing no time. Each
did whatever was needed, without thought of leaving to the other
the least task that presented itself to hand. Thus, Kama saw
when more ice was needed and went and got it, while a snowshoe,
pushed over by the lunge of a dog, was stuck on end again by
Daylight. While coffee was boiling, bacon frying, and flapjacks
were being mixed, Daylight found time to put on a big pot of
beans. Kama came back, sat down on the edge of the spruce
boughs, and in the interval of waiting, mended harness.
"I t'ink dat Skookum and Booga make um plenty fight maybe," Kama
remarked, as they sat down to eat.
"Keep an eye on them," was Daylight's answer.
And this was their sole conversation throughout the meal. Once,
with a muttered imprecation, Kama leaped away, a stick of
firewood in hand, and clubbed apart a tangle of fighting dogs.
Daylight, between mouthfuls, fed chunks of ice into the tin pot,
where it thawed into water. The meal finished, Kama replenished
the fire, cut more wood for the morning, and returned to the
spruce bough bed and his harness-mending. Daylight cut up
generous chunks of bacon and dropped them in the pot of bubbling
beans. The moccasins of both men were wet, and this in spite of
the intense cold; so when there was no further need for them to
leave the oasis of spruce boughs, they took off their moccasins
and hung them on short sticks to dry before the fire, turning
them about from time to time. When the beans were finally
cooked, Daylight ran part of them into a bag of flour-sacking a
foot and a half long and three inches in diameter. This he then
laid on the snow to freeze. The remainder of the beans were left
in the pot for breakfast.
It was past nine o'clock, and they were ready for bed. The
squabbling and bickering among the dogs had long since died down,
and the weary animals were curled in the snow, each with his feet
and nose bunched together and covered by his wolf's brush of a
tail. Kama spread his sleeping-furs and lighted his pipe.
Daylight rolled a brown-paper cigarette, and the second
conversation of the evening took place.
"I think we come near sixty miles," said Daylight.
"Um, I t'ink so," said Kama.
They rolled into their robes, all-standing, each with a woolen
Mackinaw jacket on in place of the parkas[5] they had worn all
day. Swiftly, almost on the instant they closed their eyes, they
were asleep. The stars leaped and danced in the frosty air, and
overhead the colored bars of the aurora borealis were shooting
like great searchlights.
[5] Parka: a light, hooded, smock-like garment made of cotton
drill.
In the darkness Daylight awoke and roused Kama. Though the
aurora still flamed, another day had begun. Warmed-over
flapjacks, warmed-over beans, fried bacon, and coffee composed
the breakfast. The dogs got nothing, though they watched with
wistful mien from a distance, sitting up in the snow, their tails
curled around their paws. Occasionally they lifted one fore paw
or the other, with a restless movement, as if the frost tingled
in their feet. It was bitter cold, at least sixty-five below
zero, and when Kama harnessed the dogs with naked hands he was
compelled several times to go over to the fire and warm the
numbing finger-tips. Together the two men loaded and lashed the
sled. They warmed their hands for the last time, pulled on their
mittens, and mushed the dogs over the bank and down to the
river-trail. According to Daylight's estimate, it was around
seven o'clock; but the stars danced just as brilliantly, and
faint, luminous streaks of greenish aurora still pulsed overhead.
Two hours later it became suddenly dark--so dark that they kept
to
the trail largely by instinct; and Daylight knew that his
time-estimate had been right. It was the darkness before dawn,
never anywhere more conspicuous than on the Alaskan winter-trail.
Slowly the gray light came stealing through the gloom,
imperceptibly at first, so that it was almost with surprise that
they noticed the vague loom of the trail underfoot. Next, they
were able to see the wheel-dog, and then the whole string of
running dogs and snow-stretches on either side. Then the near
bank loomed for a moment and was gone, loomed a second time and
remained. In a few minutes the far bank, a mile away,
unobtrusively came into view, and ahead and behind, the whole
frozen river could be seen, with off to the left a wide-extending
range of sharp-cut, snow-covered mountains. And that was all.
No sun arose. The gray light remained gray.
Once, during the day, a lynx leaped lightly across the trail,
under the very nose of the lead-dog, and vanished in the white
woods. The dogs' wild impulses roused. They raised the
hunting-cry of the pack, surged against their collars, and
swerved aside in pursuit. Daylight, yelling "Whoa!" struggled
with the gee-pole and managed to overturn the sled into the soft
snow. The dogs gave up, the sled was righted, and five minutes
later they were flying along the hard-packed trail again. The
lynx was the only sign of life they had seen in two days, and it,
leaping velvet-footed and vanishing, had been more like an
apparition.
At twelve o'clock, when the sun peeped over the earth-bulge,
they stopped and built a small fire on the ice. Daylight, with
the ax, chopped chunks off the frozen sausage of beans. These,
thawed and warmed in the frying-pan, constituted their meal.
They had no coffee. He did not believe in the burning of
daylight for such a luxury. The dogs stopped wrangling with one
another, and looked on wistfully. Only at night did they get
their pound of fish. In the meantime they worked.
The cold snap continued. Only men of iron kept the trail at such
low temperatures, and Kama and Daylight were picked men of their
races. But Kama knew the other was the better man, and thus, at
the start, he was himself foredoomed to defeat. Not that he
slackened his effort or willingness by the slightest conscious
degree, but that he was beaten by the burden he carried in his
mind. His attitude toward Daylight was worshipful. Stoical,
taciturn, proud of his physical prowess, he found all these
qualities incarnated in his white companion. Here was one that
excelled in the things worth excelling in, a man-god ready to
hand, and Kama could not but worship--withal he gave no signs of
it. No wonder the race of white men conquered, was his thought,
when it bred men like this man. What chance had the Indian
against such a dogged, enduring breed? Even the Indians did not
travel at such low temperatures, and theirs was the wisdom of
thousands of generations; yet here was this Daylight, from the
soft Southland, harder than they, laughing at their fears, and
swinging along the trail ten and twelve hours a day. And this
Daylight thought that he could keep up a day's pace of
thirty-three miles for sixty days! Wait till a fresh fall of
snow
came down, or they struck the unbroken trail or the rotten
rim-ice
that fringed open water.
In the meantime Kama kept the pace, never grumbling, never
shirking. Sixty-five degrees below zero is very cold. Since
water freezes at thirty-two above, sixty-five below meant
ninety-seven degrees below freezing-point. Some idea of the
significance of this may be gained by conceiving of an equal
difference of temperature in the opposite direction. One hundred
and twenty-nine on the thermometer constitutes a very hot day,
yet such a temperature is but ninety-seven degrees above
freezing. Double this difference, and possibly some slight
conception may be gained of the cold through which Kama and
Daylight travelled between dark and dark and through the dark.
Kama froze the skin on his cheek-bones, despite frequent
rubbings, and the flesh turned black and sore. Also he slightly
froze the edges of his lung-tissues--a dangerous thing, and the
basic reason why a man should not unduly exert himself in the
open at sixty-five below. But Kama never complained, and
Daylight was a furnace of heat, sleeping as warmly under his six
pounds of rabbit skins as the other did under twelve pounds.
On the second night, fifty more miles to the good, they camped in
the vicinity of the boundary between Alaska and the Northwest
Territory. The rest of the journey, save the last short stretch
to Dyea, would be travelled on Canadian territory. With the hard
trail, and in the absence of fresh snow, Daylight planned to make
the camp of Forty Mile on the fourth night. He told Kama as
much, but on the third day the temperature began to rise, and
they knew snow was not far off; for on the Yukon it must get warm
in order to snow. Also, on this day, they encountered ten miles
of chaotic ice-jams, where, a thousand times, they lifted the
loaded sled over the huge cakes by the strength of their arms and
lowered it down again. Here the dogs were well-nigh useless, and
both they and the men were tried excessively by the roughness of
the way. An hour's extra running that night caught up only part
of the lost time.
In the morning they awoke to find ten inches of snow on their
robes. The dogs were buried under it and were loath to leave
their comfortable nests. This new snow meant hard going. The
sled runners would not slide over it so well, while one of the
men must go in advance of the dogs and pack it down with
snowshoes so that they should not wallow. Quite different was it
from the ordinary snow known to those of the Southland. It was
hard, and fine, and dry. It was more like sugar. Kick it, and
it flew with a hissing noise like sand. There was no cohesion
among the particles, and it could not be moulded into snow-
balls. It was not composed of flakes, but of crystals--tiny,
geometrical frost-crystals. In truth, it was not snow, but
frost.
The weather was warm, as well, barely twenty below zero, and the
two men, with raised ear-flaps and dangling mittens, sweated as
they toiled. They failed to make Forty Mile that night, and when
they passed that camp next day Daylight paused only long enough
to get the mail and additional grub. On the afternoon of the
following day they camped at the mouth of the Klondike River.
Not a soul had they encountered since Forty Mile, and they had
made their own trail. As yet, that winter, no one had travelled
the river south of Forty Mile, and, for that matter, the whole
winter through they might be the only ones to travel it. In that
day the Yukon was a lonely land. Between the Klondike River and
Salt Water at Dyea intervened six hundred miles of snow-covered
wilderness, and in all that distance there were but two places
where Daylight might look forward to meeting men. Both were
isolated trading-posts, Sixty Mile and Fort Selkirk. In the
summer-time Indians might be met with at the mouths of the
Stewart and White rivers, at the Big and Little Salmons, and on
Lake Le Barge; but in the winter, as he well knew, they would be
on the trail of the moose-herds, following them back into the
mountains.
That night, camped at the mouth of the Klondike, Daylight did not
turn in when the evening's work was done. Had a white man been
present, Daylight would have remarked that he felt his "hunch"
working. As it was, he tied on his snowshoes, left the dogs
curled in the snow and Kama breathing heavily under his rabbit
skins, and climbed up to the big flat above the high earth-bank.
But the spruce trees were too thick for an outlook, and he
threaded his way across the flat and up the first steep slopes of
the mountain at the back. Here, flowing in from the east at
right angles, he could see the Klondike, and, bending grandly
from the south, the Yukon. To the left, and downstream, toward
Moosehide Mountain, the huge splash of white, from which it took
its name, showing clearly in the starlight. Lieutenant Schwatka
had given it its name, but he, Daylight, had first seen it long
before that intrepid explorer had crossed the Chilcoot and rafted
down the Yukon.
But the mountain received only passing notice. Daylight's
interest was centered in the big flat itself, with deep water all
along its edge for steamboat landings.
"A sure enough likely town site," he muttered. "Room for a camp
of forty thousand men. All that's needed is the gold-strike."
He meditated for a space. "Ten dollars to the pan'll do it, and
it'd be the all-firedest stampede Alaska ever seen. And if it
don't come here, it'll come somewhere hereabouts. It's a sure
good idea to keep an eye out for town sites all the way up."
He stood a while longer, gazing out over the lonely flat and
visioning with constructive imagination the scene if the stampede
did come. In fancy, he placed the sawmills, the big trading
stores, the saloons, and dance-halls, and the long streets of
miners' cabins. And along those streets he saw thousands of men
passing up and down, while before the stores were the heavy
freighting-sleds, with long strings of dogs attached. Also he
saw the heavy freighters pulling down the main street and heading
up the frozen Klondike toward the imagined somewhere where the
diggings must be located.
He laughed and shook the vision from his eyes, descended to the
level, and crossed the flat to camp. Five minutes after he had
rolled up in his robe, he opened his eyes and sat up, amazed that
he was not already asleep. He glanced at the Indian sleeping
beside him, at the embers of the dying fire, at the five dogs
beyond, with their wolf's brushes curled over their noses, and at
the four snowshoes standing upright in the snow.
"It's sure hell the way that hunch works on me" he murmured.
His mind reverted to the poker game. "Four kings!" He grinned
reminiscently. "That WAS a hunch!"
He lay down again, pulled the edge of the robe around his neck
and over his ear-flaps, closed his eyes, and this time fell
asleep.
CHAPTER V
At Sixty Mile they restocked provisions, added a few pounds of
letters to their load, and held steadily on. From Forty Mile
they had had unbroken trail, and they could look forward only to
unbroken trail clear to Dyea. Daylight stood it magnificently,
but the killing pace was beginning to tell on Kama. His pride
kept his mouth shut, but the result of the chilling of his lungs
in the cold snap could not be concealed. Microscopically small
had been the edges of the lung-tissue touched by the frost, but
they now began to slough off, giving rise to a dry, hacking
cough. Any unusually severe exertion precipitated spells of
coughing, during which he was almost like a man in a fit. The
blood congested in his eyes till they bulged, while the tears ran
down his cheeks. A whiff of the smoke from frying bacon would
start him off for a half-hour's paroxysm, and he kept carefully
to windward when Daylight was cooking.
They plodded days upon days and without end over the soft,
unpacked snow. It was hard, monotonous work, with none of the
joy and blood-stir that went with flying over hard surface. Now
one man to the fore in the snowshoes, and now the other, it was a
case of stubborn, unmitigated plod. A yard of powdery snow had
to be pressed down, and the wide-webbed shoe, under a man's
weight, sank a full dozen inches into the soft surface. Snowshoe
work, under such conditions, called for the use of muscles other
than those used in ordinary walking. From step to step the
rising foot could not come up and forward on a slant. It had to
be raised perpendicularly. When the snowshoe was pressed into
the snow, its nose was confronted by a vertical wall of snow
twelve inches high. If the foot, in rising, slanted forward the
slightest bit, the nose of the shoe penetrated the obstructing
wall and tipped downward till the heel of the shoe struck the
man's leg behind. Thus up, straight up, twelve inches, each foot
must be raised every time and all the time, ere the forward swing
from the knee could begin.
On this partially packed surface followed the dogs, the man at
the gee-pole, and the sled. At the best, toiling as only picked
men could toil, they made no more than three miles an hour. This
meant longer hours of travel, and Daylight, for good measure and
for a margin against accidents, hit the trail for twelve hours a
day. Since three hours were consumed by making camp at night and
cooking beans, by getting breakfast in the morning and breaking
camp, and by thawing beans at the midday halt, nine hours were
left for sleep and recuperation, and neither men nor dogs wasted
many minutes of those nine hours.
At Selkirk, the trading post near Pelly River, Daylight suggested
that Kama lay over, rejoining him on the back trip from Dyea. A
strayed Indian from Lake Le Barge was willing to take his place;
but Kama was obdurate. He grunted with a slight intonation of
resentment, and that was all. The dogs, however, Daylight
changed, leaving his own exhausted team to rest up against his
return, while he went on with six fresh dogs.
They travelled till ten o'clock the night they reached Selkirk,
and at six next morning they plunged ahead into the next stretch
of wilderness of nearly five hundred miles that lay between
Selkirk and Dyea. A second cold snap came on, but cold or warm
it was all the same, an unbroken trail. When the thermometer
went down to fifty below, it was even harder to travel, for at
that low temperature the hard frost-crystals were more like
sand-grains in the resistance they offered to the sled runners.
The dogs had to pull harder than over the same snow at twenty or
thirty below zero. Daylight increased the day's travel to
thirteen hours. He jealously guarded the margin he had gained,
for he knew there were difficult stretches to come.
It was not yet quite midwinter, and the turbulent Fifty Mile
River vindicated his judgment. In many places it ran wide open,
with precarious rim-ice fringing it on either side. In numerous
places, where the water dashed against the steep-sided bluffs,
rim-ice was unable to form. They turned and twisted, now
crossing the river, now coming back again, sometimes making half
a dozen attempts before they found a way over a particularly bad
stretch. It was slow work. The ice-bridges had to be tested,
and either Daylight or Kama went in advance, snowshoes on their
feet, and long poles carried crosswise in their hands. Thus, if
they broke through, they could cling to the pole that bridged the
hole made by their bodies. Several such accidents were the share
of each. At fifty below zero, a man wet to the waist cannot
travel without freezing; so each ducking meant delay. As soon as
rescued, the wet man ran up and down to keep up his circulation,
while his dry companion built a fire. Thus protected, a change
of garments could be made and the wet ones dried against the next
misadventure.
To make matters worse, this dangerous river travel could not be
done in the dark, and their working day was reduced to the six
hours of twilight. Every moment was precious, and they strove
never to lose one. Thus, before the first hint of the coming of
gray day, camp was broken, sled loaded, dogs harnessed, and the
two men crouched waiting over the fire. Nor did they make the
midday halt to eat. As it was, they were running far behind
their schedule, each day eating into the margin they had run up.
There were days when they made fifteen miles, and days when they
made a dozen. And there was one bad stretch where in two days
they covered nine miles, being compelled to turn their backs
three times on the river and to portage sled and outfit over the
mountains.
At last they cleared the dread Fifty Mile River and came out on
Lake Le Barge. Here was no open water nor jammed ice. For
thirty miles or more the snow lay level as a table; withal it lay
three feet deep and was soft as flour. Three miles an hour was
the best they could make, but Daylight celebrated the passing of
the Fifty Mile by traveling late. At eleven in the morning they
emerged at the foot of the lake. At three in the afternoon, as
the Arctic night closed down, he caught his first sight of the
head of the lake, and with the first stars took his bearings. At
eight in the evening they left the lake behind and entered the
mouth of the Lewes River. Here a halt of half an hour was made,
while chunks of frozen boiled beans were thawed and the dogs
were given an extra ration of fish. Then they pulled on up the
river till one in the morning, when they made their regular camp.
They had hit the trail sixteen hours on end that day, the dogs
had come in too tired to fight among themselves or even snarl,
and Kama had perceptibly limped the last several miles; yet
Daylight was on trail next morning at six o'clock. By eleven he
was at the foot of White Horse, and that night saw him camped
beyond the Box Canon, the last bad river-stretch behind him, the
string of lakes before him.
There was no let up in his pace. Twelve hours a day, six in the
twilight, and six in the dark, they toiled on the trail. Three
hours were consumed in cooking, repairing harnesses, and making
and breaking camp, and the remaining nine hours dogs and men
slept as if dead. The iron strength of Kama broke. Day by day
the terrific toil sapped him. Day by day he consumed more of his
reserves of strength. He became slower of movement, the
resiliency went out of his muscles, and his limp became
permanent. Yet he labored stoically on, never shirking, never
grunting a hint of complaint. Daylight was thin-faced and tired.
He looked tired; yet somehow, with that marvelous mechanism of a
body that was his, he drove on, ever on, remorselessly on. Never
was he more a god in Kama's mind than in the last days of the
south-bound traverse, as the failing Indian watched him, ever to
the fore, pressing onward with urgency of endurance such as Kama
had never seen nor dreamed could thrive in human form.
The time came when Kama was unable to go in the lead and break
trail, and it was a proof that he was far gone when he permitted
Daylight to toil all day at the heavy snowshoe work. Lake by
lake they crossed the string of lakes from Marsh to Linderman,
and began the ascent of Chilcoot. By all rights, Daylight should
have camped below the last pitch of the pass at the dim end of
day; but he kept on and over and down to Sheep Camp, while behind
him raged a snow-storm that would have delayed him twenty-four
hours.
This last excessive strain broke Kama completely. In the morning
he could not travel. At five, when called, he sat up after a
struggle, groaned, and sank back again. Daylight did the camp
work of both, harnessed the dogs, and, when ready for the start,
rolled the helpless Indian in all three sleeping robes and lashed
him on top of the sled. The going was good; they were on the
last lap; and he raced the dogs down through Dyea Canon and along
the hard-packed trail that led to Dyea Post. And running still,
Kama groaning on top the load, and Daylight leaping at the
gee-pole to avoid going under the runners of the flying sled,
they arrived at Dyea by the sea.
True to his promise, Daylight did not stop. An hour's time saw
the sled loaded with the ingoing mail and grub, fresh dogs
harnessed, and a fresh Indian engaged. Kama never spoke from the
time of his arrival till the moment Daylight, ready to depart,
stood beside him to say good-by. They shook hands.
"You kill um dat damn Indian," Kama said. "Sawee, Daylight? You
kill um."
"He'll sure last as far as Pelly," Daylight grinned.
Kama shook his head doubtfully, and rolled over on his side,
turning his back in token of farewell.
Daylight won across Chilcoot that same day, dropping down five
hundred feet in the darkness and the flurrying snow to Crater
Lake, where he camped. It was a 'cold' camp, far above the
timber-line, and he had not burdened his sled with firewood.
That night three feet of snow covered them, and in the black
morning, when they dug themselves out, the Indian tried to
desert. He had had enough of traveling with what he considered a
madman. But Daylight persuaded him in grim ways to stay by the
outfit, and they pulled on across Deep Lake and Long Lake and
dropped down to the level-going of Lake Linderman. It was the
same killing pace going in as coming out, and the Indian did not
stand it as well as Kama. He, too, never complained. Nor did he
try again to desert. He toiled on and did his best, while he
renewed his resolve to steer clear of Daylight in the future.
The days slipped into days, nights and twilight's alternating,
cold snaps gave way to snow-falls, and cold snaps came on again,
and all the while, through the long hours, the miles piled up
behind them.
But on the Fifty Mile accident befell them. Crossing an
ice-bridge, the dogs broke through and were swept under the
down-stream ice. The traces that connected the team with the
wheel-dog parted, and the team was never seen again. Only the
one wheel-dog remained, and Daylight harnessed the Indian and
himself to the sled. But a man cannot take the place of a dog at
such work, and the two men were attempting to do the work of five
dogs. At the end of the first hour, Daylight lightened up.
Dog-food, extra gear, and the spare ax were thrown away. Under
the extraordinary exertion the dog snapped a tendon the following
day, and was hopelessly disabled. Daylight shot it, and
abandoned the sled. On his back he took one hundred and sixty
pounds of mail and grub, and on the Indian's put one hundred and
twenty-five pounds. The stripping of gear was remorseless. The
Indian was appalled when he saw every pound of worthless mail
matter retained, while beans, cups, pails, plates, and extra
clothing were thrown by the board. One robe each was kept, one
ax, one tin pail, and a scant supply of bacon and flour. Bacon
could be eaten raw on a pinch, and flour, stirred in hot water,
could keep men going. Even the rifle and the score of rounds of
ammunition were left behind.
And in this fashion they covered the two hundred miles to
Selkirk. Daylight travelled late and early, the hours formerly
used by camp-making and dog-tending being now devoted to the
trail. At night they crouched over a small fire, wrapped in
their robes, drinking flour broth and thawing bacon on the ends
of sticks; and in the morning darkness, without a word, they
arose, slipped on their packs, adjusted head-straps, and hit the
trail. The last miles into Selkirk, Daylight drove the Indian
before him, a hollow-cheeked, gaunt-eyed wraith of a man who else
would have lain down and slept or abandoned his burden of mail.
At Selkirk, the old team of dogs, fresh and in condition, were
harnessed, and the same day saw Daylight plodding on, alternating
places at the gee-pole, as a matter of course, with the Le Barge
Indian who had volunteered on the way out. Daylight was two days
behind his schedule, and falling snow and unpacked trail kept him
two days behind all the way to Forty Mile. And here the weather
favored. It was time for a big cold snap, and he gambled on it,
cutting down the weight of grub for dogs and men. The men of
Forty Mile shook their heads ominously, and demanded to know what
he would do if the snow still fell.
"That cold snap's sure got to come," he laughed, and mushed out
on the trail.
A number of sleds had passed back and forth already that winter
between Forty Mile and Circle City, and the trail was well
packed. And the cold snap came and remained, and Circle City was
only two hundred miles away. The Le Barge Indian was a young
man, unlearned yet in his own limitations, and filled with pride.
He took Daylight's pace with joy, and even dreamed, at first,
that he would play the white man out. The first hundred miles he
looked for signs of weakening, and marveled that he saw them not.
Throughout the second hundred miles he observed signs in himself,
and gritted his teeth and kept up. And ever Daylight flew on
and on, running at the gee-pole or resting his spell on top the
flying sled. The last day, clearer and colder than ever, gave
perfect going, and they covered seventy miles. It was ten at
night when they pulled up the earth-bank and flew along the main
street of Circle City; and the young Indian, though it was his
spell to ride, leaped off and ran behind the sled. It was
honorable braggadocio, and despite the fact that he had found his
limitations and was pressing desperately against them, he ran
gamely on.
CHAPTER VI
A crowd filled the Tivoli--the old crowd that had seen Daylight
depart two months before; for this was the night of the sixtieth
day, and opinion was divided as ever as to whether or not he
would compass the achievement. At ten o'clock bets were still
being made, though the odds rose, bet by bet, against his
success. Down in her heart the Virgin believed he had failed,
yet she made a bet of twenty ounces with Charley Bates, against
forty ounces, that Daylight would arrive before midnight.
She it was who heard the first yelps of the dogs.
"Listen!" she cried. "It's Daylight!"
There was a general stampede for the door; but where the double
storm-doors were thrown wide open, the crowd fell back. They
heard the eager whining of dogs, the snap of a dog-whip, and the
voice of Daylight crying encouragement as the weary animals
capped all they had done by dragging the sled in over the wooden
floor. They came in with a rush, and with them rushed in the
frost, a visible vapor of smoking white, through which their
heads and backs showed, as they strained in the harness, till
they had all the seeming of swimming in a river. Behind them, at
the gee-pole, came Daylight, hidden to the knees by the swirling
frost through which he appeared to wade.
He was the same old Daylight, withal lean and tired-looking, and
his black eyes were sparkling and flashing brighter than ever.
His parka of cotton drill hooded him like a monk, and fell in
straight lines to his knees. Grimed and scorched by camp-smoke
and fire, the garment in itself told the story of his trip. A
two-months' beard covered his face; and the beard, in turn, was
matted with the ice of his breathing through the long
seventy-mile run.
His entry was spectacular, melodramatic; and he knew it. It was
his life, and he was living it at the top of his bent. Among his
fellows he was a great man, an Arctic hero. He was proud of the
fact, and it was a high moment for him, fresh from two thousand
miles of trail, to come surging into that bar-room, dogs, sled,
mail, Indian, paraphernalia, and all. He had performed one more
exploit that would make the Yukon ring with his name--he, Burning
Daylight, the king of travelers and dog-mushers.
He experienced a thrill of surprise as the roar of welcome went
up and as every familiar detail of the Tivoli greeted his
vision--the long bar and the array of bottles, the gambling
games,
the big stove, the weigher at the gold-scales, the musicians, the
men and women, the Virgin, Celia, and Nellie, Dan MacDonald,
Bettles, Billy Rawlins, Olaf Henderson, Doc Watson,--all of them.
It was just as he had left it, and in all seeming it might well
be
the very day he had left. The sixty days of incessant travel
through the white wilderness suddenly telescoped, and had no
existence in time. They were a moment, an incident. He had
plunged out and into them through the wall of silence, and back
through the wall of silence he had plunged, apparently the next
instant, and into the roar and turmoil of the Tivoli.
A glance down at the sled with its canvas mail-bags was necessary
to reassure him of the reality of those sixty days and the two
thousand miles over the ice. As in a dream, he shook the hands
that were thrust out to him. He felt a vast exaltation. Life
was magnificent. He loved it all. A great sense of humanness
and comradeship swept over him. These were all his, his own
kind. It was immense, tremendous. He felt melting in the heart
of him, and he would have liked to shake hands with them all at
once, to gather them to his breast in one mighty embrace.
He drew a deep breath and cried: "The winner pays, and I'm the
winner, ain't I? Surge up, you-all Malemutes and Siwashes, and
name your poison! There's your Dyea mail, straight from Salt
Water, and no hornswogglin about it! Cast the lashings adrift,
you-all, and wade into it!"
A dozen pairs of hands were at the sled-lashings, when the young
Le Barge Indian, bending at the same task, suddenly and limply
straightened up. In his eyes was a great surprise. He stared
about him wildly, for the thing he was undergoing was new to him.
He was profoundly struck by an unguessed limitation. He shook as
with a palsy, and he gave at the knees, slowly sinking down to
fall suddenly across the sled and to know the smashing blow of
darkness across his consciousness.
"Exhaustion," said Daylight. "Take him off and put him to bed,
some of you-all. He's sure a good Indian."
"Daylight's right," was Doc Watson's verdict, a moment later.
"The man's plumb tuckered out."
The mail was taken charge of, the dogs driven away to quarters
and fed, and Bettles struck up the paean of the sassafras root as
they lined up against the long bar to drink and talk and collect
their debts.
A few minutes later, Daylight was whirling around the
dance-floor, waltzing with the Virgin. He had replaced his parka
with his fur cap and blanket-cloth coat, kicked off his frozen
moccasins, and was dancing in his stocking feet. After wetting
himself to the knees late that afternoon, he had run on without
changing his foot-gear, and to the knees his long German socks
were matted with ice. In the warmth of the room it began to thaw
and to break apart in clinging chunks. These chunks rattled
together as his legs flew around, and every little while they
fell clattering to the floor and were slipped upon by the other
dancers. But everybody forgave Daylight. He, who was one of the
few that made the Law in that far land, who set the ethical pace,
and by conduct gave the standard of right and wrong, was
nevertheless above the Law. He was one of those rare and favored
mortals who can do no wrong. What he did had to be right,
whether others were permitted or not to do the same things. Of
course, such mortals are so favored by virtue of the fact that
they almost always do the right and do it in finer and higher
ways than other men. So Daylight, an elder hero in that young
land and at the same time younger than most of them, moved as a
creature apart, as a man above men, as a man who was greatly man
and all man. And small wonder it was that the Virgin yielded
herself to his arms, as they danced dance after dance, and was
sick at heart at the knowledge that he found nothing in her more
than a good friend and an excellent dancer. Small consolation it
was to know that he had never loved any woman. She was sick with
love of him, and he danced with her as he would dance with any
woman, as he would dance with a man who was a good dancer and
upon whose arm was tied a handkerchief to conventionalize him
into a woman.
One such man Daylight danced with that night. Among frontiersmen
it has always been a test of endurance for one man to whirl
another down; and when Ben Davis, the faro-dealer, a gaudy
bandanna on his arm, got Daylight in a Virginia reel, the fun
began. The reel broke up and all fell back to watch. Around and
around the two men whirled, always in the one direction. Word
was passed on into the big bar-room, and bar and gambling tables
were deserted. Everybody wanted to see, and they packed and
jammed the dance-room. The musicians played on and on, and on
and on the two men whirled. Davis was skilled at the trick, and
on the Yukon he had put many a strong man on his back. But after
a few minutes it was clear that he, and not Daylight, was going.
For a while longer they spun around, and then Daylight suddenly
stood still, released his partner, and stepped back, reeling
himself, and fluttering his hands aimlessly, as if to support
himself against the air. But Davis, a giddy smile of
consternation on his face, gave sideways, turned in an attempt to
recover balance, and pitched headlong to the floor. Still
reeling and staggering and clutching at the air with his hands,
Daylight caught the nearest girl and started on in a waltz.
Again he had done the big thing. Weary from two thousand miles
over the ice and a run that day of seventy miles, he had whirled
a fresh man down, and that man Ben Davis.
Daylight loved the high places, and though few high places there
were in his narrow experience, he had made a point of sitting in
the highest he had ever glimpsed. The great world had never
heard his name, but it was known far and wide in the vast silent
North, by whites and Indians and Eskimos, from Bering Sea to the
Passes, from the head reaches of remotest rivers to the tundra
shore of Point Barrow. Desire for mastery was strong in him, and
it was all one whether wrestling with the elements themselves,
with men, or with luck in a gambling game. It was all a game,
life and its affairs. And he was a gambler to the core. Risk
and chance were meat and drink. True, it was not altogether
blind, for he applied wit and skill and strength; but behind it
all was the everlasting Luck, the thing that at times turned on
its votaries and crushed the wise while it blessed the
fools--Luck, the thing all men sought and dreamed to conquer.
And
so he. Deep in his life-processes Life itself sang the siren
song of its own majesty, ever a-whisper and urgent, counseling
him that he could achieve more than other men, win out where they
failed, ride to success where they perished. It was the urge of
Life healthy and strong, unaware of frailty and decay, drunken
with sublime complacence, ego-mad, enchanted by its own mighty
optimism.
And ever in vaguest whisperings and clearest trumpet-calls came
the message that sometime, somewhere, somehow, he would run Luck
down, make himself the master of Luck, and tie it and brand it as
his own. When he played poker, the whisper was of four aces and
royal flushes. When he prospected, it was of gold in the
grass-roots, gold on bed-rock, and gold all the way down. At
the sharpest hazards of trail and river and famine, the message
was that other men might die, but that he would pull through
triumphant. It was the old, old lie of Life fooling itself,
believing itself--immortal and indestructible, bound to achieve
over other lives and win to its heart's desire.
And so, reversing at times, Daylight waltzed off his dizziness
and led the way to the bar. But a united protest went up. His
theory that the winner paid was no longer to be tolerated. It
was contrary to custom and common sense, and while it emphasized
good-fellowship, nevertheless, in the name of good-fellowship it
must cease. The drinks were rightfully on Ben Davis, and Ben
Davis must buy them. Furthermore, all drinks and general treats
that Daylight was guilty of ought to be paid by the house, for
Daylight brought much custom to it whenever he made a night.
Bettles was the spokesman, and his argument, tersely and
offensively vernacular, was unanimously applauded.
Daylight grinned, stepped aside to the roulette-table, and bought
a stack of yellow chips. At the end of ten minutes he weighed in
at the scales, and two thousand dollars in gold-dust was poured
into his own and an extra sack. Luck, a mere flutter of luck,
but it was his. Elation was added to elation. He was living,
and the night was his. He turned upon his well-wishing critics.
"Now the winner sure does pay," he said.
And they surrendered. There was no withstanding Daylight when he
vaulted on the back of life, and rode it bitted and spurred.
At one in the morning he saw Elijah Davis herding Henry Finn and
Joe Hines, the lumber-jack, toward the door. Daylight
interfered.
"Where are you-all going?" he demanded, attempting to draw them
to the bar.
"Bed," Elijah Davis answered.
He was a lean tobacco-chewing New Englander, the one daring
spirit in his family that had heard and answered the call of the
West shouting through the Mount Desert back odd-lots. "Got to,"
Joe Hines added apologetically. "We're mushing out in the
mornin'."
Daylight still detained them. "Where to? What's the
excitement?"
"No excitement," Elijah explained. "We're just a-goin' to play
your hunch, an' tackle the Upper Country. Don't you want to come
along?"
"I sure do," Daylight affirmed.
But the question had been put in fun, and Elijah ignored the
acceptance.
"We're tacklin' the Stewart," he went on. "Al Mayo told me he
seen some likely lookin' bars first time he come down the
Stewart, and we're goin' to sample 'em while the river's froze.
You listen, Daylight, an' mark my words, the time's comin' when
winter diggin's'll be all the go. There'll be men in them days
that'll laugh at our summer stratchin' an' ground-wallerin'."
At that time, winter mining was undreamed of on the Yukon. From
the moss and grass the land was frozen to bed-rock, and frozen
gravel, hard as granite, defied pick and shovel. In the summer
the men stripped the earth down as fast as the sun thawed it.
Then was the time they did their mining. During the winter they
freighted their provisions, went moose-hunting, got all ready for
the summer's work, and then loafed the bleak, dark months through
in the big central camps such as Circle City and Forty Mile.
"Winter diggin's sure comin'," Daylight agreed. "Wait till that
big strike is made up river. Then you-all'll see a new kind of
mining. What's to prevent wood-burning and sinking shafts and
drifting along bed-rock? Won't need to timber. That frozen muck
and gravel'll stand till hell is froze and its mill-tails is
turned to ice-cream. Why, they'll be working pay-streaks a
hundred feet deep in them days that's comin'. I'm sure going
along with you-all, Elijah."
Elijah laughed, gathered his two partners up, and was making a
second attempt to reach the door
"Hold on," Daylight called. "I sure mean it."
The three men turned back suddenly upon him, in their faces
surprise, delight, and incredulity.
"G'wan, you're foolin'," said Finn, the other lumberjack, a
quiet, steady, Wisconsin man.
"There's my dawgs and sled," Daylight answered. "That'll make
two
teams and halve the loads--though we-all'll have to travel easy
for
a spell, for them dawgs is sure tired."
The three men were overjoyed, but still a trifle incredulous.
"Now look here," Joe Hines blurted out, "none of your foolin,
Daylight. We mean business. Will you come?"
Daylight extended his hand and shook.
"Then you'd best be gettin' to bed," Elijah advised. "We're
mushin'
out at six, and four hours' sleep is none so long."
"Mebbe we ought to lay over a day and let him rest up," Finn
suggested.
Daylight's pride was touched.
"No you don't," he cried. "We all start at six. What time do
you-all want to be called? Five? All right, I'll rouse you-all
out."
"You oughter have some sleep," Elijah counselled gravely. "You
can't go on forever."
Daylight was tired, profoundly tired. Even his iron body
acknowledged weariness. Every muscle was clamoring for bed and
rest, was appalled at continuance of exertion and at thought of
the trail again. All this physical protest welled up into his
brain in a wave of revolt. But deeper down, scornful and
defiant, was Life itself, the essential fire of it, whispering
that all Daylight's fellows were looking on, that now was the
time to pile deed upon deed, to flaunt his strength in the face
of strength. It was merely Life, whispering its ancient lies.
And in league with it was whiskey, with all its consummate
effrontery and vain-glory.
"Mebbe you-all think I ain't weaned yet?" Daylight demanded.
"Why, I ain't had a drink, or a dance, or seen a soul in two
months. You-all get to bed. I'll call you-all at five."
And for the rest of the night he danced on in his stocking feet,
and at five in the morning, rapping thunderously on the door of
his new partners' cabin, he could be heard singing the song that
had given him his name:--
"Burning daylight, you-all Stewart River hunchers! Burning
daylight! Burning daylight! Burning daylight!"
CHAPTER VII
This time the trail was easier. It was better packed, and they
were not carrying mail against time. The day's run was shorter,
and likewise the hours on trail. On his mail run Daylight had
played out three Indians; but his present partners knew that they
must not be played out when they arrived at the Stewart bars, so
they set the slower pace. And under this milder toil, where his
companions nevertheless grew weary, Daylight recuperated and
rested up. At Forty Mile they laid over two days for the sake of
the dogs, and at Sixty Mile Daylight's team was left with the
trader. Unlike Daylight, after the terrible run from Selkirk to
Circle City, they had been unable to recuperate on the back
trail. So the four men pulled on from Sixty Mile with a fresh
team of dogs on Daylight's sled.
The following night they camped in the cluster of islands at the
mouth of the Stewart. Daylight talked town sites, and, though
the others laughed at him, he staked the whole maze of high,
wooded islands.
"Just supposing the big strike does come on the Stewart," he
argued. "Mebbe you-all'll be in on it, and then again mebbe
you-all won't. But I sure will. You-all'd better reconsider
and go in with me on it."
But they were stubborn.
"You're as bad as Harper and Joe Ladue," said Joe Hines.
"They're always at that game. You know that big flat jest below
the Klondike and under Moosehide Mountain? Well, the recorder at
Forty Mile was tellin' me they staked that not a month ago--The
Harper & Ladue Town Site. Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Elijah and Finn joined him in his laughter; but Daylight was
gravely in earnest.
"There she is!" he cried. "The hunch is working! It's in the
air, I tell you-all! What'd they-all stake the big flat for if
they-all didn't get the hunch? Wish I'd staked it."
The regret in his voice was provocative of a second burst of
laughter.
"Laugh, you-all, laugh! That's what's the trouble with you-all.
You-all think gold-hunting is the only way to make a stake. But
let me tell you-all that when the big strike sure does come,
you-all'll do a little surface-scratchin' and muck-raking, but
danged little you-all'll have to show for it. You-all laugh at
quicksilver in the riffles and think flour gold was manufactured
by God Almighty for the express purpose of fooling suckers and
chechaquos. Nothing but coarse gold for you-all, that's your
way, not getting half of it out of the ground and losing into the
tailings half of what you-all do get.
"But the men that land big will be them that stake the town
sites, organize the tradin' companies, start the banks--"
Here the explosion of mirth drowned him out. Banks in Alaska!
The idea of it was excruciating.
"Yep, and start the stock exchanges-"
Again they were convulsed. Joe Hines rolled over on his
sleeping-robe, holding his sides.
"And after them will come the big mining sharks that buy whole
creeks where you-all have been scratching like a lot of picayune
hens, and they-all will go to hydraulicking in summer and
steam-thawing in winter--"
Steam-thawing! That was the limit. Daylight was certainly
exceeding himself in his consummate fun-making.
Steam-thawing--when even wood-burning was an untried experiment,
a dream in the air!
"Laugh, dang you, laugh! Why your eyes ain't open yet. You-all
are a bunch of little mewing kittens. I tell you-all if that
strike comes on Klondike, Harper and Ladue will be millionaires.
And if it comes on Stewart, you-all watch the Elam Harnish town
site boom. In them days, when you-all come around makin' poor
mouths..." He heaved a sigh of resignation. "Well, I
suppose I'll have to give you-all a grub-stake or soup, or
something or other."
Daylight had vision. His scope had been rigidly limited, yet
whatever he saw, he saw big. His mind was orderly, his
imagination practical, and he never dreamed idly. When he
superimposed a feverish metropolis on a waste of timbered,
snow-covered flat, he predicated first the gold-strike that made
the city possible, and next he had an eye for steamboat landings,
sawmill and warehouse locations, and all the needs of a
far-northern mining city. But this, in turn, was the mere
setting for something bigger, namely, the play of temperament.
Opportunities swarmed in the streets and buildings and human and
economic relations of the city of his dream. It was a larger
table for gambling. The limit was the sky, with the Southland on
one side and the aurora borealis on the other. The play would be
big, bigger than any Yukoner had ever imagined, and he, Burning
Daylight, would see that he got in on that play.
In the meantime there was naught to show for it but the hunch.
But it was coming. As he would stake his last ounce on a good
poker hand, so he staked his life and effort on the hunch that
the future held in store a big strike on the Upper River. So he
and his three companions, with dogs, and sleds, and snowshoes,
toiled up the frozen breast of the Stewart, toiled on and on
through the white wilderness where the unending stillness was
never broken by the voices of men, the stroke of an ax, or the
distant crack of a rifle. They alone moved through the vast and
frozen quiet, little mites of earth-men, crawling their score of
miles a day, melting the ice that they might have water to drink,
camping in the snow at night, their wolf-dogs curled in
frost-rimed, hairy bunches, their eight snowshoes stuck on end in
the snow beside the sleds.
No signs of other men did they see, though once they passed a
rude poling-boat, cached on a platform by the river bank.
Whoever had cached it had never come back for it; and they
wondered and mushed on. Another time they chanced upon the site
of an Indian village, but the Indians had disappeared;
undoubtedly they were on the higher reaches of the Stewart in
pursuit of the moose-herds. Two hundred miles up from the Yukon,
they came upon what Elijah decided were the bars mentioned by Al
Mayo. A permanent camp was made, their outfit of food cached on
a high platform to keep it from the dogs, and they started work
on the bars, cutting their way down to gravel through the rim of
ice.
It was a hard and simple life. Breakfast over, and they were at
work by the first gray light; and when night descended, they did
their cooking and camp-chores, smoked and yarned for a while,
then rolled up in their sleeping-robes, and slept while the
aurora borealis flamed overhead and the stars leaped and danced
in the great cold. Their fare was monotonous: sour-dough bread,
bacon, beans, and an occasional dish of rice cooked along with a
handful of prunes. Fresh meat they failed to obtain. There was
an unwonted absence of animal life. At rare intervals they
chanced upon the trail of a snowshoe rabbit or an ermine; but in
the main it seemed that all life had fled the land. It was a
condition not unknown to them, for in all their experience, at
one time or another, they had travelled one year through a region
teeming with game, where, a year or two or three years later, no
game at all would be found.
Gold they found on the bars, but not in paying quantities.
Elijah, while on a hunt for moose fifty miles away, had panned
the surface gravel of a large creek and found good colors. They
harnessed their dogs, and with light outfits sledded to the
place. Here, and possibly for the first time in the history of
the Yukon, wood-burning, in sinking a shaft, was tried. It was
Daylight's initiative. After clearing away the moss and grass, a
fire of dry spruce was built. Six hours of burning thawed eight
inches of muck. Their picks drove full depth into it, and, when
they had shoveled out, another fire was started. They worked
early and late, excited over the success of the experiment. Six
feet of frozen muck brought them to gravel, likewise frozen.
Here progress was slower. But they learned to handle their fires
better, and were soon able to thaw five and six inches at a
burning. Flour gold was in this gravel, and after two feet it
gave away again to muck. At seventeen feet they struck a thin
streak of gravel, and in it coarse gold, testpans running as high
as six and eight dollars. Unfortunately, this streak of gravel
was not more than an inch thick. Beneath it was more muck,
tangled with the trunks of ancient trees and containing fossil
bones of forgotten monsters. But gold they had found--coarse
gold; and what more likely than that the big deposit would be
found on bed-rock? Down to bed-rock they would go, if it were
forty feet away. They divided into two shifts, working day and
night, on two shafts, and the smoke of their burning rose
continually.
It was at this time that they ran short of beans and that Elijah
was despatched to the main camp to bring up more grub. Elijah
was one of the hard-bitten old-time travelers himself. The round
trip was a hundred miles, but he promised to be back on the third
day, one day going light, two days returning heavy. Instead, he
arrived on the night of the second day. They had just gone to
bed when they heard him coming.
"What in hell's the matter now?" Henry Finn demanded, as the
empty sled came into the circle of firelight and as he noted that
Elijah's long, serious face was longer and even more serious.
Joe Hines threw wood on the fire, and the three men, wrapped in
their robes, huddled up close to the warmth. Elijah's whiskered
face was matted with ice, as were his eyebrows, so that, what of
his fur garb, he looked like a New England caricature of Father
Christmas.
"You recollect that big spruce that held up the corner of the
cache next to the river?" Elijah began.
The disaster was quickly told. The big tree, with all the
seeming of hardihood, promising to stand for centuries to come,
had suffered from a hidden decay. In some way its rooted grip on
the earth had weakened. The added burden of the cache and the
winter snow had been too much for it; the balance it had so long
maintained with the forces of its environment had been
overthrown; it had toppled and crashed to the ground, wrecking
the cache and, in turn, overthrowing the balance with environment
that the four men and eleven dogs had been maintaining. Their
supply of grub was gone. The wolverines had got into the wrecked
cache, and what they had not eaten they had destroyed.
"They plumb e't all the bacon and prunes and sugar and dog-food,"
Elijah reported, "and gosh darn my buttons, if they didn't gnaw
open the sacks and scatter the flour and beans and rice from Dan
to Beersheba. I found empty sacks where they'd dragged them a
quarter of a mile away."
Nobody spoke for a long minute. It was nothing less than a
catastrophe, in the dead of an Arctic winter and in a
game-abandoned land, to lose their grub. They were not
panic-stricken, but they were busy looking the situation squarely
in the face and considering. Joe Hines was the first to speak.
"We can pan the snow for the beans and rice... though there
wa'n't
more'n eight or ten pounds of rice left."
"And somebody will have to take a team and pull for Sixty Mile,"
Daylight said next.
"I'll go," said Finn.
They considered a while longer.
"But how are we going to feed the other team and three men till
he gets back?" Hines demanded.
"Only one thing to it," was Elijah's contribution. "You'll have
to take the other team, Joe, and pull up the Stewart till you
find them Indians. Then you come back with a load of meat.
You'll get here long before Henry can make it from Sixty Mile,
and while you're gone there'll only be Daylight and me to feed,
and we'll feed good and small."
"And in the morning we-all'll pull for the cache and pan snow to
find what grub we've got." Daylight lay back, as he spoke, and
rolled in his robe to sleep, then added: "Better turn in for an
early start. Two of you can take the dogs down. Elijah and
me'll skin out on both sides and see if we-all can scare up a
moose on the way down."
CHAPTER VIII
No time was lost. Hines and Finn, with the dogs, already on
short rations, were two days in pulling down. At noon of the
third day Elijah arrived, reporting no moose sign. That night
Daylight came in with a similar report. As fast as they arrived,
the men had started careful panning of the snow all around the
cache. It was a large task, for they found stray beans fully a
hundred yards from the cache. One more day all the men toiled.
The result was pitiful, and the four showed their caliber in the
division of the few pounds of food that had been recovered.
Little as it was, the lion's share was left with Daylight and
Elijah. The men who pulled on with the dogs, one up the Stewart
and one down, would come more quickly to grub. The two who
remained would have to last out till the others returned.
Furthermore, while the dogs, on several ounces each of beans a
day, would travel slowly, nevertheless, the men who travelled
with them, on a pinch, would have the dogs themselves to eat.
But the men who remained, when the pinch came, would have no
dogs. It was for this reason that Daylight and Elijah took the
more desperate chance. They could not do less, nor did they care
to do less. The days passed, and the winter began merging
imperceptibly into the Northland spring that comes like a
thunderbolt of suddenness. It was the spring of 1896 that was
preparing. Each day the sun rose farther east of south, remained
longer in the sky, and set farther to the west. March ended and
April began, and Daylight and Elijah, lean and hungry, wondered
what had become of their two comrades. Granting every delay, and
throwing in generous margins for good measure, the time was long
since passed when they should have returned. Without doubt they
had met with disaster. The party had considered the possibility
of disaster for one man, and that had been the principal reason
for despatching the two in different directions. But that
disaster should have come to both of them was the final blow.
In the meantime, hoping against hope, Daylight and Elija eked out
a meagre existence. The thaw had not yet begun, so they were
able to gather the snow about the ruined cache and melt it in
pots and pails and gold pans. Allowed to stand for a while, when
poured off, a thin deposit of slime was found on the bottoms of
the vessels. This was the flour, the infinitesimal trace of it
scattered through thousands of cubic yards of snow. Also, in
this slime occurred at intervals a water-soaked tea-leaf or
coffee-ground, and there were in it fragments of earth and
litter. But the farther they worked away from the site of the
cache, the thinner became the trace of flour, the smaller the
deposit of slime.
Elijah was the older man, and he weakened first, so that he came
to lie up most of the time in his furs. An occasional tree-
squirrel kept them alive. The hunting fell upon Daylight, and it
was hard work. With but thirty rounds of ammunition, he dared
not risk a miss; and, since his rifle was a 45-90, he was
compelled to shoot the small creatures through the head. There
were very few of them, and days went by without seeing one. When
he did see one, he took infinite precautions. He would stalk it
for hours. A score of times, with arms that shook from weakness,
he would draw a sight on the animal and refrain from pulling the
trigger. His inhibition was a thing of iron. He was the master.
Not til absolute certitude was his did he shoot. No matter how
sharp the pangs of hunger and desire for that palpitating morsel
of chattering life, he refused to take the slightest risk of a
miss. He, born gambler, was gambling in the bigger way. His
life was the stake, his cards were the cartridges, and he played
as only a big gambler could play, with infinite precaution, with
infinite consideration. Each shot meant a squirrel, and though
days elapsed between shots, it never changed his method of play.
Of the squirrels, nothing was lost. Even the skins were boiled
to make broth, the bones pounded into fragments that could be
chewed and swallowed. Daylight prospected through the snow, and
found occasional patches of mossberries. At the best,
mossberries were composed practically of seeds and water, with a
tough rind of skin about them; but the berries he found were of
the preceding year, dry and shrivelled, and the nourishment they
contained verged on the minus quality. Scarcely better was the
bark of young saplings, stewed for an hour and swallowed after
prodigious chewing.
April drew toward its close, and spring smote the land. The days
stretched out their length. Under the heat of the sun, the snow
began to melt, while from down under the snow arose the trickling
of tiny streams. For twenty-four hours the Chinook wind blew,
and in that twenty-four hours the snow was diminished fully a
foot in depth. In the late afternoons the melting snow froze
again, so that its surface became ice capable of supporting a
man's weight. Tiny white snow-birds appeared from the south,
lingered a day, and resumed their journey into the north. Once,
high in the air, looking for open water and ahead of the season,
a wedged squadron of wild geese honked northwards. And down by
the river bank a clump of dwarf willows burst into bud. These
young buds, stewed, seemed to posess an encouraging nutrition.
Elijah took heart of hope, though he was cast down again when
Daylight failed to find another clump of willows.
The sap was rising in the trees, and daily the trickle of unseen
streamlets became louder as the frozen land came back to life.
But the river held in its bonds of frost. Winter had been long
months in riveting them, and not in a day were they to be broken,
not even by the thunderbolt of spring. May came, and stray
last-year's mosquitoes, full-grown but harmless, crawled out of
rock crevices and rotten logs. Crickets began to chirp, and more
geese and ducks flew overhead. And still the river held. By May
tenth, the ice of the Stewart, with a great rending and snapping,
tore loose from the banks and rose three feet. But it did not go
down-stream. The lower Yukon, up to where the Stewart flowed
into it, must first break and move on. Until then the ice of the
Stewart could only rise higher and higher on the increasing flood
beneath. When the Yukon would break was problematical. Two
thousand miles away it flowed into Bering Sea, and it was the ice
conditions of Bering Sea that would determine when the Yukon
could rid itself of the millions of tons of ice that cluttered
its breast.
On the twelfth of May, carrying their sleeping-robes, a pail, an
ax, and the precious rifle, the two men started down the river on
the ice. Their plan was to gain to the cached poling-boat they
had seen, so that at the first open water they could launch it
and drift with the stream to Sixty Mile. In their weak
condition, without food, the going was slow and difficult.
Elijah developed a habit of falling down and being unable to
rise. Daylight gave of his own strength to lift him to his feet,
whereupon the older man would stagger automatically on until he
stumbled and fell again.
On the day they should have reached the boat, Elijah collapsed
utterly. When Daylight raised him, he fell again. Daylight
essayed to walk with him, supporting him, but such was Daylight's
own weakness that they fell together.
Dragging Elijah to the bank, a rude camp was made, and Daylight
started out in search of squirrels. It was at this time that he
likewise developed the falling habit. In the evening he found
his first squirrel, but darkness came on without his getting a
certain shot. With primitive patience he waited till next day,
and then, within the hour, the squirrel was his.
The major portion he fed to Elijah, reserving for himself the
tougher parts and the bones. But such is the chemistry of life,
that this small creature, this trifle of meat that moved, by
being eaten, transmuted to the meat of the men the same power to
move. No longer did the squirrel run up spruce trees, leap from
branch to branch, or cling chattering to giddy perches. Instead,
the same energy that had done these things flowed into the wasted
muscles and reeling wills of the men, making them move--nay,
moving them--till they tottered the several intervening miles to
the cached boat, underneath which they fell together and lay
motionless a long time.
Light as the task would have been for a strong man to lower the
small boat to the ground, it took Daylight hours. And many hours
more, day by day, he dragged himself around it, lying on his side
to calk the gaping seams with moss. Yet, when this was done, the
river still held. Its ice had risen many feet, but would not
start down-stream. And one more task waited, the launching of
the boat when the river ran water to receive it. Vainly Daylight
staggered and stumbled and fell and crept through the snow that
was wet with thaw, or across it when the night's frost still
crusted it beyond the weight of a man, searching for one more
squirrel, striving to achieve one more transmutation of furry
leap and scolding chatter into the lifts and tugs of a man's body
that would hoist the boat over the rim of shore-ice and slide it
down into the stream.
Not till the twentieth of May did the river break. The
down-stream movement began at five in the morning, and already
were the days so long that Daylight sat up and watched the
ice-run. Elijah was too far gone to be interested in the
spectacle. Though vaguely conscious, he lay without movement
while the ice tore by, great cakes of it caroming against the
bank, uprooting trees, and gouging out earth by hundreds of tons.
All about them the land shook and reeled from the shock of these
tremendous collisions. At the end of an hour the run stopped.
Somewhere below it was blocked by a jam. Then the river began to
rise, lifting the ice on its breast till it was higher than the
bank. From behind ever more water bore down, and ever more
millions of tons of ice added their weight to the congestion.
The pressures and stresses became terrific. Huge cakes of ice
were squeezed out till they popped into the air like melon seeds
squeezed from between the thumb and forefinger of a child, while
all along the banks a wall of ice was forced up. When the jam
broke, the noise of grinding and smashing redoubled. For another
hour the run continued. The river fell rapidly. But the wall of
ice on top the bank, and extending down into the falling water,
remained.
The tail of the ice-run passed, and for the first time in six
months Daylight saw open water. He knew that the ice had not yet
passed out from the upper reaches of the Stewart, that it lay in
packs and jams in those upper reaches, and that it might break
loose and come down in a second run any time; but the need was
too desperate for him to linger. Elijah was so far gone that he
might pass at any moment. As for himself, he was not sure that
enough strength remained in his wasted muscles to launch the
boat. It was all a gamble. If he waited for the second ice-run,
Elijah would surely die, and most probably himself. If he
succeeded in launching the boat, if he kept ahead of the second
ice-run, if he did not get caught by some of the runs from the
upper Yukon; if luck favored in all these essential particulars,
as well as in a score of minor ones, they would reach Sixty Mile
and be saved, if--and again the if--he had strength enough to
land
the boat at Sixty Mile and not go by.
He set to work. The wall of ice was five feet above the ground
on which the boat rested. First prospecting for the best
launching-place, he found where a huge cake of ice shelved upward
from the river that ran fifteen feet below to the top of the
wall. This was a score of feet away, and at the end of an hour
he had managed to get the boat that far. He was sick with nausea
from his exertions, and at times it seemed that blindness smote
him, for he could not see, his eyes vexed with spots and points
of light that were as excruciating as diamond-dust, his heart
pounding up in his throat and suffocating him. Elijah betrayed
no interest, did not move nor open his eyes; and Daylight fought
out his battle alone. At last, falling on his knees from the
shock of exertion, he got the boat poised on a secure balance on
top the wall. Crawling on hands and knees, he placed in the boat
his rabbit-skin robe, the rifle, and the pail. He did not bother
with the ax. It meant an additional crawl of twenty feet and
back, and if the need for it should arise he well knew he would
be past all need.
Elijah proved a bigger task than he had anticipated. A few
inches at a time, resting in between, he dragged him over the
ground and up a broken rubble of ice to the side of the boat.
But into the boat he could not get him. Elijah's limp body was
far more difficult to lift and handle than an equal weight of
like dimensions but rigid. Daylight failed to hoist him, for the
body collapsed at the middle like a part-empty sack of corn.
Getting into the boat, Daylight tried vainly to drag his comrade
in after him. The best he could do was to get Elijah's head and
shoulders on top the gunwale. When he released his hold, to
heave from farther down the body, Elijah promptly gave at the
middle and came down on the ice.
In despair, Daylight changed his tactics. He struck the other in
the face.
"God Almighty, ain't you-all a man?" he cried. "There! damn
you-all! there! "
At each curse he struck him on the cheeks, the nose, the mouth,
striving, by the shock of the hurt, to bring back the sinking
soul and far-wandering will of the man. The eyes fluttered open.
"Now listen!" he shouted hoarsely. "When I get your head to the
gunwale, hang on! Hear me? Hang on! Bite into it with your
teeth, but HANG ON! "
The eyes fluttered down, but Daylight knew the message had been
received. Again he got the helpless man's head and shoulders on
the gunwale.
"Hang on, damn you! Bite in" he shouted, as he shifted his grip
lower down.
One weak hand slipped off the gunwale, the fingers of the other
hand relaxed, but Elijah obeyed, and his teeth held on. When the
lift came, his face ground forward, and the splintery wood tore
and crushed the skin from nose, lips, and chin; and, face
downward, he slipped on and down to the bottom of the boat till
his limp middle collapsed across the gunwale and his legs hung
down outside. But they were only his legs, and Daylight shoved
them in; after him. Breathing heavily, he turned Elijah over on
his back, and covered him with his robes.
The final task remained--the launching of the boat. This, of
necessity, was the severest of all, for he had been compelled to
load his comrade in aft of the balance. It meant a supreme
effort at lifting. Daylight steeled himself and began.
Something must have snapped, for, though he was unaware of it,
the next he knew he was lying doubled on his stomach across the
sharp stern of the boat. Evidently, and for the first time in
his life, he had fainted. Furthermore, it seemed to him that he
was finished, that he had not one more movement left in him, and
that, strangest of all, he did not care. Visions came to him,
clear-cut and real, and concepts sharp as steel cutting-edges.
He, who all his days had looked on naked Life, had never seen so
much of Life's nakedness before. For the first time he
experienced a doubt of his own glorious personality. For the
moment Life faltered and forgot to lie. After all, he was a
little earth-maggot, just like all the other earth-maggots, like
the squirrel he had eaten, like the other men he had seen fail
and die, like Joe Hines and Henry Finn, who had already failed
and were surely dead, like Elijah lying there uncaring, with his
skinned face, in the bottom of the boat. Daylight's position was
such that from where he lay he could look up river to the bend,
around which, sooner or later, the next ice-run would come. And
as he looked he seemed to see back through the past to a time
when neither white man nor Indian was in the land, and ever he
saw the same Stewart River, winter upon winter, breasted with
ice, and spring upon spring bursting that ice asunder and running
free. And he saw also into an illimitable future, when the last
generations of men were gone from off the face of Alaska, when
he, too, would be gone, and he saw, ever remaining, that river,
freezing and fresheting, and running on and on.
Life was a liar and a cheat. It fooled all creatures. It had
fooled him, Burning Daylight, one of its chiefest and most joyous
exponents. He was nothing--a mere bunch of flesh and nerves and
sensitiveness that crawled in the muck for gold, that dreamed and
aspired and gambled, and that passed and was gone. Only the dead
things remained, the things that were not flesh and nerves and
sensitiveness, the sand and muck and gravel, the stretching
flats, the mountains, the river itself, freezing and breaking,
year by year, down all the years. When all was said and done, it
was a scurvy game. The dice were loaded. Those that died did
not win, and all died. Who won? Not even Life, the
stool-pigeon, the arch-capper for the game--Life, the ever
flourishing graveyard, the everlasting funeral procession.
He drifted back to the immediate present for a moment and noted
that the river still ran wide open, and that a moose-bird,
perched on the bow of the boat, was surveying him impudently.
Then he drifted dreamily back to his meditations.
There was no escaping the end of the game. He was doomed surely
to be out of it all. And what of it? He pondered that question
again and again.
Conventional religion had passed Daylight by. He had lived a
sort of religion in his square dealing and right playing with
other men, and he had not indulged in vain metaphysics about
future life. Death ended all. He had always believed that, and
been unafraid. And at this moment, the boat fifteen feet above
the water and immovable, himself fainting with weakness and
without a particle of strength left in him, he still believed
that death ended all, and he was still unafraid. His views were
too simply and solidly based to be overthrown by the first
squirm, or the last, of death-fearing life.
He had seen men and animals die, and into the field of his
vision, by scores, came such deaths. He saw them over again,
just as he had seen them at the time, and they did not shake him.
What of it? They were dead, and dead long since. They weren't
bothering about it. They weren't lying on their bellies across a
boat and waiting to die. Death was easy--easier than he had ever
imagined; and, now that it was near, the thought of it made him
glad.
A new vision came to him. He saw the feverish city of his
dream--the gold metropolis of the North, perched above the Yukon
on a high earth-bank and far-spreading across the flat. He saw
the river steamers tied to the bank and lined against it three
deep; he saw the sawmills working and the long dog-teams, with
double sleds behind, freighting supplies to the diggings. And he
saw, further, the gambling-houses, banks, stock-exchanges, and
all the gear and chips and markers, the chances and
opportunities, of a vastly bigger gambling game than any he had
ever seen. It was sure hell, he thought, with the hunch
a-working and that big strike coming, to be out of it all. Life
thrilled and stirred at the thought and once more began uttering
his ancient lies.
Daylight rolled over and off the boat, leaning against it as he
sat on the ice. He wanted to be in on that strike. And why
shouldn't he? Somewhere in all those wasted muscles of his was
enough strength, if he could gather it all at once, to up-end the
boat and launch it. Quite irrelevantly the idea suggested itself
of buying a share in the Klondike town site from Harper and Joe
Ladue. They would surely sell a third interest cheap. Then, if
the strike came on the Stewart, he would be well in on it with
the Elam Harnish town site; if on the Klondike, he would not be
quite out of it.
In the meantime, he would gather strength. He stretched out on
the ice full length, face downward, and for half an hour he lay
and rested. Then he arose, shook the flashing blindness from his
eyes, and took hold of the boat. He knew his condition
accurately. If the first effort failed, the following efforts
were doomed to fail. He must pull all his rallied strength into
the one effort, and so thoroughly must he put all of it in that
there would be none left for other attempts.
He lifted, and he lifted with the soul of him as well as with the
body, consuming himself, body and spirit, in the effort. The
boat rose. He thought he was going to faint, but he continued to
lift. He felt the boat give, as it started on its downward
slide. With the last shred of his strength he precipitated
himself into it, landing in a sick heap on Elijah's legs. He was
beyond attempting to rise, and as he lay he heard and felt the
boat take the water. By watching the tree-tops he knew it was
whirling. A smashing shock and flying fragments of ice told him
that it had struck the bank. A dozen times it whirled and
struck, and then it floated easily and free.
Daylight came to, and decided he had been asleep. The sun
denoted that several hours had passed. It was early afternoon.
He dragged himself into the stern and sat up. The boat was in
the middle of the stream. The wooded banks, with their
base-lines of flashing ice, were slipping by. Near him floated a
huge, uprooted pine. A freak of the current brought the boat
against it. Crawling forward, he fastened the painter to a root.
The tree, deeper in the water, was travelling faster, and the
painter tautened as the boat took the tow. Then, with a last
giddy look around, wherein he saw the banks tilting and swaying
and the sun swinging in pendulum-sweep across the sky, Daylight
wrapped himself in his rabbit-skin robe, lay down in the bottom,
and fell asleep.
When he awoke, it was dark night. He was lying on his back, and
he could see the stars shining. A subdued murmur of swollen
waters could be heard. A sharp jerk informed him that the boat,
swerving slack into the painter, had been straightened out by the
swifter-moving pine tree. A piece of stray drift-ice thumped
against the boat and grated along its side. Well, the following
jam hadn't caught him yet, was his thought, as he closed his eyes
and slept again.
It was bright day when next he opened his eyes. The sun showed
it to be midday. A glance around at the far-away banks, and he
knew that he was on the mighty Yukon. Sixty Mile could not be
far away. He was abominably weak. His movements were slow,
fumbling, and inaccurate, accompanied by panting and
head-swimming, as he dragged himself into a sitting-up position
in the stern, his rifle beside him. He looked a long time at
Elijah, but could not see whether he breathed or not, and he was
too immeasurably far away to make an investigation.
He fell to dreaming and meditating again, dreams and thoughts
being often broken by sketches of blankness, wherein he neither
slept, nor was unconscious, nor was aware of anything. It seemed
to him more like cogs slipping in his brain. And in this
intermittent way he reviewed the situation. He was still alive,
and most likely would be saved, but how came it that he was not
lying dead across the boat on top the ice-rim? Then he
recollected the great final effort he had made. But why had he
made it? he asked himself. It had not been fear of death. He
had not been afraid, that was sure. Then he remembered the hunch
and the big strike he believed was coming, and he knew that the
spur had been his desire to sit in for a hand at that big game.
And again why? What if he made his million? He would die, just
the same as those that never won more than grub-stakes. Then
again why? But the blank stretches in his thinking process began
to come more frequently, and he surrendered to the delightful
lassitude that was creeping over him.
He roused with a start. Something had whispered in him that he
must awake. Abruptly he saw Sixty Mile, not a hundred feet away.
The current had brought him to the very door. But the same
current was now sweeping him past and on into the down-river
wilderness. No one was in sight. The place might have been
deserted, save for the smoke he saw rising from the kitchen
chimney. He tried to call, but found he had no voice left. An
unearthly guttural hiss alternately rattled and wheezed in his
throat. He fumbled for the rifle, got it to his shoulder, and
pulled the trigger. The recoil of the discharge tore through his
frame, racking it with a thousand agonies. The rifle had fallen
across his knees, and an attempt to lift it to his shoulder
failed. He knew he must be quick, and felt that he was fainting,
so he pulled the trigger of the gun where it lay. This time it
kicked off and overboard. But just before darkness rushed over
him, he saw the kitchen door open, and a woman look out of the
big log house that was dancing a monstrous jig among the trees.
CHAPTER IX
Ten days later, Harper and Joe Ladue arrived at Sixty Mile, and
Daylight, still a trifle weak, but strong enough to obey the
hunch that had come to him, traded a third interest in his
Stewart town site for a third interest in theirs on the Klondike.
They had faith in the Upper Country, and Harper left down-stream,
with a raft-load of supplies, to start a small post at the mouth
of the Klondike.
"Why don't you tackle Indian River, Daylight?" Harper advised, at
parting. "There's whole slathers of creeks and draws draining in
up there, and somewhere gold just crying to be found. That's my
hunch. There's a big strike coming, and Indian River ain't going
to be a million miles away."
"And the place is swarming with moose," Joe Ladue added. "Bob
Henderson's up there somewhere, been there three years now,
swearing something big is going to happen, living off'n straight
moose and prospecting around like a crazy man."
Daylight decided to go Indian River a flutter, as he expressed
it; but Elijah could not be persuaded into accompanying him.
Elijah's soul had been seared by famine, and he was obsessed by
fear of repeating the experience.
"I jest can't bear to separate from grub," he explained. "I know
it's downright foolishness, but I jest can't help it. It's all I
can do to tear myself away from the table when I know I'm full to
bustin' and ain't got storage for another bite. I'm going back
to Circle to camp by a cache until I get cured."
Daylight lingered a few days longer, gathering strength and
arranging his meagre outfit. He planned to go in light, carrying
a pack of seventy-five pounds and making his five dogs pack as
well, Indian fashion, loading them with thirty pounds each.
Depending on the report of Ladue, he intended to follow Bob
Henderson's example and live practically on straight meat. When
Jack Kearns' scow, laden with the sawmill from Lake Linderman,
tied up at Sixty Mile, Daylight bundled his outfit and dogs on
board, turned his town-site application over to Elijah to be
filed, and the same day was landed at the mouth of Indian River.
Forty miles up the river, at what had been described to him as
Quartz Creek, he came upon signs of Bob Henderson's work, and
also at Australia Creek, thirty miles farther on. The weeks came
and went, but Daylight never encountered the other man. However,
he found moose plentiful, and he and his dogs prospered on the
meat diet. He found "pay" that was no more than "wages" on a
dozen surface bars, and from the generous spread of flour gold in
the muck and gravel of a score of creeks, he was more confident
than ever that coarse gold in quantity was waiting to be
unearthed. Often he turned his eyes to the northward ridge of
hills, and pondered if the gold came from them. In the end, he
ascended Dominion Creek to its head, crossed the divide, and came
down on the tributary to the Klondike that was later to be called
Hunker Creek. While on the divide, had he kept the big dome on
his right, he would have come down on the Gold Bottom, so named
by Bob Henderson, whom he would have found at work on it, taking
out the first pay-gold ever panned on the Klondike. Instead,
Daylight continued down Hunker to the Klondike, and on to the
summer fishing camp of the Indians on the Yukon.
Here for a day he camped with Carmack, a squaw-man, and his
Indian brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, bought a boat, and, with his
dogs on board, drifted down the Yukon to Forty Mile. August was
drawing to a close, the days were growing shorter, and winter was
coming on. Still with unbounded faith in his hunch that a strike
was coming in the Upper Country, his plan was to get together a
party of four or five, and, if that was impossible, at least a
partner, and to pole back up the river before the freeze-up to do
winter prospecting. But the men of Forty Mile were without
faith. The diggings to the westward were good enough for them.
Then it was that Carmack, his brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, and
Cultus Charlie, another Indian, arrived in a canoe at Forty Mile,
went straight to the gold commissioner, and recorded three claims
and a discovery claim on Bonanza Creek. After that, in the
Sourdough Saloon, that night, they exhibited coarse gold to the
sceptical crowd. Men grinned and shook their heads. They had
seen the motions of a gold strike gone through before. This was
too patently a scheme of Harper's and Joe Ladue's, trying to
entice prospecting in the vicinity of their town site and trading
post. And who was Carmack? A squaw-man. And who ever heard of
a squaw-man striking anything? And what was Bonanza Creek?
Merely a moose pasture, entering the Klondike just above its
mouth, and known to old-timers as Rabbit Creek. Now if Daylight
or Bob Henderson had recorded claims and shown coarse gold,
they'd known there was something in it. But Carmack, the
squaw-man! And Skookum Jim! And Cultus Charlie! No, no; that
was
asking too much.
Daylight, too, was sceptical, and this despite his faith in the
Upper Country. Had he not, only a few days before, seen Carmack
loafing with his Indians and with never a thought of prospecting?
But at eleven that night, sitting on the edge of his bunk and
unlacing his moccasins, a thought came to him. He put on his
coat and hat and went back to the Sourdough. Carmack was still
there, flashing his coarse gold in the eyes of an unbelieving
generation. Daylight ranged alongside of him and emptied
Carmack's sack into a blower. This he studied for a long time.
Then, from his own sack, into another blower, he emptied several
ounces of Circle City and Forty Mile gold. Again, for a long
time, he studied and compared. Finally, he pocketed his own
gold, returned Carmack's, and held up his hand for silence.
"Boys, I want to tell you-all something," he said. "She's sure
come--the up-river strike. And I tell you-all, clear and
forcible, this is it. There ain't never been gold like that in a
blower in this country before. It's new gold. It's got more
silver in it. You-all can see it by the color. Carmack's sure
made a strike. Who-all's got faith to come along with me?"
There were no volunteers. Instead, laughter and jeers went up.
"Mebbe you got a town site up there," some one suggested.
"I sure have," was the retort, "and a third interest in Harper
and Ladue's. And I can see my corner lots selling out for more
than your hen-scratching ever turned up on Birch Creek."
"That's all right, Daylight," one Curly Parson interposed
soothingly. "You've got a reputation, and we know you're dead
sure on the square. But you're as likely as any to be mistook on
a flimflam game, such as these loafers is putting up. I ask you
straight: When did Carmack do this here prospecting? You said
yourself he was lying in camp, fishing salmon along with his
Siwash relations, and that was only the other day."
"And Daylight told the truth," Carmack interrupted excitedly.
"And I'm telling the truth, the gospel truth. I wasn't
prospecting. Hadn't no idea of it. But when Daylight pulls out,
the very same day, who drifts in, down river, on a raft-load of
supplies, but Bob Henderson. He'd come out to Sixty Mile,
planning to go back up Indian River and portage the grub across
the divide between Quartz Creek and Gold Bottom-"
"Where in hell's Gold Bottom?" Curly Parsons demanded.
"Over beyond Bonanza that was Rabbit Creek," the squaw-man went
on. "It's a draw of a big creek that runs into the Klondike.
That's the way I went up, but I come back by crossing the divide,
keeping along the crest several miles, and dropping down into
Bonanza. 'Come along with me, Carmack, and get staked,' says Bob
Henderson to me. 'I've hit it this time, on Gold Bottom. I've
took out forty-five ounces already.' And I went along, Skookum
Jim and Cultus Charlie, too. And we all staked on Gold Bottom.
I come back by Bonanza on the chance of finding a moose. Along
down Bonanza we stopped and cooked grub. I went to sleep, and
what does Skookum Jim do but try his hand at prospecting. He'd
been watching Henderson, you see. He goes right slap up to the
foot of a birch tree, first pan, fills it with dirt, and washes
out more'n a dollar coarse gold. Then he wakes me up, and I goes
at it. I got two and a half the first lick. Then I named the
creek 'Bonanza,' staked Discovery, and we come here and
recorded."
He looked about him anxiously for signs of belief, but found
himself in a circle of incredulous faces--all save Daylight, who
had studied his countenance while he told his story.
"How much is Harper and Ladue givin' you for manufacturing a
stampede?" some one asked.
"They don't know nothing about it," Carmack answered. "I tell
you it's the God Almighty's truth. I washed out three ounces in
an hour."
"And there's the gold," Daylight said. "I tell you-all boys they
ain't never been gold like that in the blower before. Look at
the color of it."
"A trifle darker," Curly Parson said. "Most likely Carmack's
been carrying a couple of silver dollars along in the same sack.
And what's more, if there's anything in it, why ain't Bob
Henderson smoking along to record?"
"He's up on Gold Bottom," Carmack explained. "We made the strike
coming back."
A burst of laughter was his reward.
"Who-all'll go pardners with me and pull out in a poling-boat
to-morrow for this here Bonanza?" Daylight asked.
No one volunteered.
"Then who-all'll take a job from me, cash wages in advance, to
pole up a thousand pounds of grub?"
Curly Parsons and another, Pat Monahan, accepted, and, with his
customary speed, Daylight paid them their wages in advance and
arranged the purchase of the supplies, though he emptied his sack
in doing so. He was leaving the Sourdough, when he suddenly
turned back to the bar from the door.
"Got another hunch?" was the query.
"I sure have," he answered. "Flour's sure going to be worth what
a man will pay for it this winter up on the Klondike. Who'll
lend me some money?"
On the instant a score of the men who had declined to accompany
him on the wild-goose chase were crowding about him with
proffered gold-sacks.
"How much flour do you want?" asked the Alaska Commercial
Company's storekeeper.
"About two ton."
The proffered gold-sacks were not withdrawn, though their owners
were guilty of an outrageous burst of merriment.
"What are you going to do with two tons?" the store-keeper
demanded.
"Son," Daylight made reply, "you-all ain't been in this country
long enough to know all its curves. I'm going to start a
sauerkraut factory and combined dandruff remedy."
He borrowed money right and left, engaging and paying six other
men to bring up the flour in half as many more poling-boats.
Again his sack was empty, and he was heavily in debt.
Curly Parsons bowed his head on the bar with a gesture of
despair.
"What gets me," he moaned, "is what you're going to do with it
all."
"I'll tell you-all in simple A, B, C and one, two, three."
Daylight held up one finger and began checking off. "Hunch
number one: a big strike coming in Upper Country. Hunch number
two: Carmack's made it. Hunch number three: ain't no hunch at
all. It's a cinch. If one and two is right, then flour just has
to go sky-high. If I'm riding hunches one and two, I just got to
ride this cinch, which is number three. If I'm right, flour'll
balance gold on the scales this winter. I tell you-all boys,
when you-all got a hunch, play it for all it's worth. What's
luck good for, if you-all ain't to ride it? And when you-all
ride it, ride like hell. I've been years in this country, just
waiting for the right hunch to come along. And here she is.
Well, I'm going to play her, that's all. Good night, you-all;
good night."
CHAPTER X
Still men were without faith in the strike. When Daylight,
with his heavy outfit of flour, arrived at the mouth of the
Klondike, he found the big flat as desolate and tenantless as
ever. Down close by the river, Chief Isaac and his Indians were
camped beside the frames on which they were drying salmon.
Several old-timers were also in camp there. Having finished
their summer work on Ten Mile Creek, they had come down the
Yukon, bound for Circle City. But at Sixty Mile they had learned
of the strike, and stopped off to look over the ground. They had
just returned to their boat when Daylight landed his flour, and
their report was pessimistic.
"Damned moose-pasture," quoth one, Long Jim Harney, pausing to
blow into his tin mug of tea. "Don't you have nothin' to do with
it, Daylight. It's a blamed rotten sell. They're just going
through the motions of a strike. Harper and Ladue's behind it,
and Carmack's the stool-pigeon. Whoever heard of mining a
moose-pasture half a mile between rim-rock and God alone knows
how far to bed-rock!"
Daylight nodded sympathetically, and considered for a space.
"Did you-all pan any?" he asked finally.
"Pan hell!" was the indignant answer. "Think I was born
yesterday! Only a chechaquo'd fool around that pasture long
enough to fill a pan of dirt. You don't catch me at any such
foolishness. One look was enough for me. We're pulling on in
the morning for Circle City. I ain't never had faith in this
Upper Country. Head-reaches of the Tanana is good enough for me
from now on, and mark my words, when the big strike comes, she'll
come down river. Johnny, here, staked a couple of miles below
Discovery, but he don't know no better." Johnny looked
shamefaced.
"I just did it for fun," he explained. "I'd give my chance in
the creek for a pound of Star plug."
"I'll go you," Daylight said promptly. "But don't you-all come
squealing if I take twenty or thirty thousand out of it."
Johnny grinned cheerfully.
"Gimme the tobacco," he said.
"Wish I'd staked alongside," Long Jim murmured plaintively.
"It ain't too late," Daylight replied.
"But it's a twenty-mile walk there and back."
"I'll stake it for you to-morrow when I go up," Daylight offered.
"Then you do the same as Johnny. Get the fees from Tim Logan.
He's tending bar in the Sourdough, and he'll lend it to me. Then
fill in your own name, transfer to me, and turn the papers over
to Tim."
"Me, too," chimed in the third old-timer.
And for three pounds of Star plug chewing tobacco, Daylight
bought outright three five-hundred-foot claims on Bonanza. He
could still stake another claim in his own name, the others being
merely transfers.
"Must say you're almighty brash with your chewin' tobacco," Long
Jim grinned. "Got a factory somewheres?"
"Nope, but I got a hunch," was the retort, "and I tell you-all
it's cheaper than dirt to ride her at the rate of three plugs for
three claims."
But an hour later, at his own camp, Joe Ladue strode in, fresh
from Bonanza Creek. At first, non-committal over Carmack's
strike, then, later, dubious, he finally offered Daylight a
hundred dollars for his share in the town site.
"Cash?" Daylight queried.
"Sure. There she is."
So saying, Ladue pulled out his gold-sack. Daylight hefted it
absent-mindedly, and, still absent-mindedly, untied the strings
and ran some of the gold-dust out on his palm. It showed darker
than any dust he had ever seen, with the exception of Carmack's.
He ran the gold back tied the mouth of the sack, and returned it
to Ladue.
"I guess you-all need it more'n I do," was Daylight's comment.
"Nope; got plenty more," the other assured him.
"Where that come from?"
Daylight was all innocence as he asked the question, and Ladue
received the question as stolidly as an Indian. Yet for a swift
instant they looked into each other's eyes, and in that instant
an intangible something seemed to flash out from all the body and
spirit of Joe Ladue. And it seemed to Daylight that he had
caught this flash, sensed a secret something in the knowledge and
plans behind the other's eyes.
"You-all know the creek better'n me," Daylight went on. "And if
my share in the town site's worth a hundred to you-all with what
you-all know, it's worth a hundred to me whether I know it or
not."
"I'll give you three hundred," Ladue offered desperately.
"Still the same reasoning. No matter what I don't know, it's
worth to me whatever you-all are willing to pay for it."
Then it was that Joe Ladue shamelessly gave over. He led
Daylight away from the camp and men and told him things in
confidence.
"She's sure there," he said in conclusion. "I didn't sluice it,
or cradle it. I panned it, all in that sack, yesterday, on the
rim-rock. I tell you, you can shake it out of the grassroots.
And what's on bed-rock down in the bottom of the creek they ain't
no way of tellin'. But she's big, I tell you, big. Keep it
quiet, and locate all you can. It's in spots, but I wouldn't be
none surprised if some of them claims yielded as high as fifty
thousand. The only trouble is that it's spotted."
* * *
A month passed by, and Bonanza Creek remained quiet. A
sprinkling of men had staked; but most of them, after staking,
had gone on down to Forty Mile and Circle City. The few that
possessed sufficient faith to remain were busy building log
cabins against the coming of winter. Carmack and his Indian
relatives were occupied in building a sluice box and getting a
head of water. The work was slow, for they had to saw their
lumber by hand from the standing forest. But farther down
Bonanza were four men who had drifted in from up river, Dan
McGilvary, Dave McKay, Dave Edwards, and Harry Waugh. They were
a quiet party, neither asking nor giving confidences, and they
herded by themselves. But Daylight, who had panned the spotted
rim of Carmack's claim and shaken coarse gold from the
grass-roots, and who had panned the rim at a hundred other places
up and down the length of the creek and found nothing, was
curious to know what lay on bed-rock. He had noted the four
quiet men sinking a shaft close by the stream, and he had heard
their whip-saw going as they made lumber for the sluice boxes.
He did not wait for an invitation, but he was present the first
day they sluiced. And at the end of five hours' shovelling for
one man, he saw them take out thirteen ounces and a half of gold.
It was coarse gold, running from pinheads to a twelve-dollar
nugget, and it had come from off bed-rock. The first fall snow
was flying that day, and the Arctic winter was closing down; but
Daylight had no eyes for the bleak-gray sadness of the dying,
short-lived summer. He saw his vision coming true, and on the
big flat was upreared anew his golden city of the snows. Gold
had been found on bed-rock. That was the big thing. Carmack's
strike was assured. Daylight staked a claim in his own name
adjoining the three he had purchased with his plug tobacco. This
gave him a block of property two thousand feet long and extending
in width from rim-rock to rim-rock.
Returning that night to his camp at the mouth of Klondike, he
found in it Kama, the Indian he had left at Dyea. Kama was
travelling by canoe, bringing in the last mail of the year. In
his possession was some two hundred dollars in gold-dust, which
Daylight immediately borrowed. In return, he arranged to stake a
claim for him, which he was to record when he passed through
Forty Mile. When Kama departed next morning, he carried a number
of letters for Daylight, addressed to all the old-timers down
river, in which they were urged to come up immediately and stake.
Also Kama carried letters of similar import, given him by the
other men on Bonanza.
"It will sure be the gosh-dangdest stampede that ever was,"
Daylight chuckled, as he tried to vision the excited populations
of Forty Mile and Circle City tumbling into poling-boats and
racing the hundreds of miles up the Yukon; for he knew that his
word would be unquestioningly accepted.
With the arrival of the first stampeders, Bonanza Creek woke up,
and thereupon began a long-distance race between unveracity and
truth, wherein, lie no matter how fast, men were continually
overtaken and passed by truth. When men who doubted Carmack's
report of two and a half to the pan, themselves panned two and a
half, they lied and said that they were getting an ounce. And
long ere the lie was fairly on its way, they were getting not one
ounce but five ounces. This they claimed was ten ounces; but
when they filled a pan of dirt to prove the lie, they washed out
twelve ounces. And so it went. They continued valiantly to lie,
but the truth continued to outrun them.
One day in December Daylight filled a pan from bed rock on his
own claim and carried it into his cabin. Here a fire burned and
enabled him to keep water unfrozen in a canvas tank. He squatted
over the tank and began to wash. Earth and gravel seemed to fill
the pan. As he imparted to it a circular movement, the lighter,
coarser particles washed out over the edge. At times he combed
the surface with his fingers, raking out handfuls of gravel. The
contents of the pan diminished. As it drew near to the bottom,
for the purpose of fleeting and tentative examination, he gave
the pan a sudden sloshing movement, emptying it of water. And
the whole bottom showed as if covered with butter. Thus the
yellow gold flashed up as the muddy water was flirted away. It
was gold--gold-dust, coarse gold, nuggets, large nuggets. He was
all alone. He set the pan down for a moment and thought long
thoughts. Then he finished the washing, and weighed the result
in his scales. At the rate of sixteen dollars to the ounce, the
pan had contained seven hundred and odd dollars. It was beyond
anything that even he had dreamed. His fondest anticipation's
had gone no farther than twenty or thirty thousand dollars to a
claim; but here were claims worth half a million each at the
least, even if they were spotted.
He did not go back to work in the shaft that day, nor the next,
nor the next. Instead, capped and mittened, a light stampeding
outfit, including his rabbit skin robe, strapped on his back, he
was out and away on a many-days' tramp over creeks and divides,
inspecting the whole neighboring territory. On each creek he was
entitled to locate one claim, but he was chary in thus
surrendering up his chances. On Hunker Creek only did he stake a
claim. Bonanza Creek he found staked from mouth to source, while
every little draw and pup and gulch that drained into it was
like-wise staked. Little faith was had in these side-streams.
They had been staked by the hundreds of men who had failed to get
in on Bonanza. The most popular of these creeks was Adams. The
one least fancied was Eldorado, which flowed into Bonanza, just
above Karmack's Discovery claim. Even Daylight disliked the
looks of Eldorado; but, still riding his hunch, he bought a half
share in one claim on it for half a sack of flour. A month later
he paid eight hundred dollars for the adjoining claim. Three
months later, enlarging this block of property, he paid forty
thousand for a third claim; and, though it was concealed in the
future, he was destined, not long after, to pay one hundred and
fifty thousand for a fourth claim on the creek that had been the
least liked of all the creeks.
In the meantime, and from the day he washed seven hundred dollars
from a single pan and squatted over it and thought a long
thought, he never again touched hand to pick and shovel. As he
said to Joe Ladue the night of that wonderful washing:-
"Joe, I ain't never going to work hard again. Here's where I
begin to use my brains. I'm going to farm gold. Gold will grow
gold if you-all have the savvee and can get hold of some for
seed. When I seen them seven hundred dollars in the bottom of
the pan, I knew I had the seed at last."
"Where are you going to plant it?" Joe Ladue had asked.
And Daylight, with a wave of his hand, definitely indicated the
whole landscape and the creeks that lay beyond the divides.
"There she is," he said, "and you-all just watch my smoke.
There's millions here for the man who can see them. And I seen
all them millions this afternoon when them seven hundred dollars
peeped up at me from the bottom of the pan and chirruped, 'Well,
if here ain't Burning Daylight come at last.'"
CHAPTER XI
The hero of the Yukon in the younger days before the Carmack
strike, Burning Daylight now became the hero of the strike. The
story of his hunch and how he rode it was told up and down the
land. Certainly he had ridden it far and away beyond the
boldest, for no five of the luckiest held the value in claims
that he held. And, furthermore, he was still riding the hunch,
and with no diminution of daring. The wise ones shook their
heads and prophesied that he would lose every ounce he had won.
He was speculating, they contended, as if the whole country was
made of gold, and no man could win who played a placer strike in
that fashion.
On the other hand, his holdings were reckoned as worth millions,
and there were men so sanguine that they held the man a fool who
coppered[6] any bet Daylight laid. Behind his magnificent
free-handedness and careless disregard for money were hard,
practical judgment, imagination and vision, and the daring of the
big gambler. He foresaw what with his own eyes he had never
seen, and he played to win much or lose all.
[6] To copper: a term in faro, meaning to play a card to lose.
"There's too much gold here in Bonanza to be just a pocket," he
argued. "It's sure come from a mother-lode somewhere, and other
creeks will show up. You-all keep your eyes on Indian River.
The creeks that drain that side the Klondike watershed are just
as likely to have gold as the creeks that drain this side."
And he backed this opinion to the extent of grub-staking half a
dozen parties of prospectors across the big divide into the
Indian River region. Other men, themselves failing to stake on
lucky creeks, he put to work on his Bonanza claims. And he paid
them well--sixteen dollars a day for an eight-hour shift, and he
ran three shifts. He had grub to start them on, and when, on the
last water, the Bella arrived loaded with provisions, he traded a
warehouse site to Jack Kearns for a supply of grub that lasted
all his men through the winter of 1896. And that winter, when
famine pinched, and flour sold for two dollars a pound, he kept
three shifts of men at work on all four of the Bonanza claims.
Other mine-owners paid fifteen dollars a day to their men; but he
had been the first to put men to work, and from the first he paid
them a full ounce a day. One result was that his were picked
men, and they more than earned their higher pay.
One of his wildest plays took place in the early winter after the
freeze-up. Hundreds of stampeders, after staking on other creeks
than Bonanza, had gone on disgruntled down river to Forty Mile
and Circle City. Daylight mortgaged one of his Bonanza dumps
with the Alaska Commercial Company, and tucked a letter of credit
into his pouch. Then he harnessed his dogs and went down on the
ice at a pace that only he could travel. One Indian down,
another Indian back, and four teams of dogs was his record. And
at Forty Mile and Circle City he bought claims by the score.
Many of these were to prove utterly worthless, but some few of
them were to show up more astoundingly than any on Bonanza. He
bought right and left, paying as low as fifty dollars and as high
as five thousand. This highest one he bought in the Tivoli
Saloon. It was an upper claim on Eldorado, and when he agreed to
the price, Jacob Wilkins, an old-timer just returned from a look
at the moose-pasture, got up and left the room, saying:-
"Daylight, I've known you seven year, and you've always seemed
sensible till now. And now you're just letting them rob you
right and left. That's what it is--robbery. Five thousand for a
claim on that damned moose-pasture is bunco. I just can't stay
in the room and see you buncoed that way."
"I tell you-all," Daylight answered, "Wilkins, Carmack's strike's
so big that we-all can't see it all. It's a lottery. Every
claim I buy is a ticket. And there's sure going to be some
capital prizes."
Jacob Wilkins, standing in the open door, sniffed incredulously.
"Now supposing, Wilkins," Daylight went on, "supposing you-all
knew it was going to rain soup. What'd you-all do? Buy spoons,
of course. Well, I'm sure buying spoons. She's going to rain
soup up there on the Klondike, and them that has forks won't be
catching none of it."
But Wilkins here slammed the door behind him, and Daylight broke
off to finish the purchase of the claim.
Back in Dawson, though he remained true to his word and never
touched hand to pick and shovel, he worked as hard as ever in his
life. He had a thousand irons in the fire, and they kept him
busy. Representation work was expensive, and he was compelled to
travel often over the various creeks in order to decide which
claims should lapse and which should be retained. A quartz miner
himself in his early youth, before coming to Alaska, he dreamed
of finding the mother-lode. A placer camp he knew was ephemeral,
while a quartz camp abided, and he kept a score of men in the
quest for months. The mother-lode was never found, and, years
afterward, he estimated that the search for it had cost him fifty
thousand dollars.
But he was playing big. Heavy as were his expenses, he won more
heavily. He took lays, bought half shares, shared with the men
he grub-staked, and made personal locations. Day and night his
dogs were ready, and he owned the fastest teams; so that when a
stampede to a new discovery was on, it was Burning Daylight to
the fore through the longest, coldest nights till he blazed his
stakes next to Discovery. In one way or another (to say nothing
of the many worthless creeks) he came into possession of
properties on the good creeks, such as Sulphur, Dominion,
Excelsis, Siwash, Cristo, Alhambra, and Doolittle. The thousands
he poured out flowed back in tens of thousands. Forty Mile men
told the story of his two tons of flour, and made calculations of
what it had returned him that ranged from half a million to a
million. One thing was known beyond all doubt, namely, that the
half share in the first Eldorado claim, bought by him for a half
sack of flour, was worth five hundred thousand. On the other
hand, it was told that when Freda, the dancer, arrived from over
the passes in a Peterborough canoe in the midst of a drive of
mush-ice on the Yukon, and when she offered a thousand dollars
for ten sacks and could find no sellers, he sent the flour to her
as a present without ever seeing her. In the same way ten sacks
were sent to the lone Catholic priest who was starting the first
hospital.
His generosity was lavish. Others called it insane. At a time
when, riding his hunch, he was getting half a million for half a
sack of flour, it was nothing less than insanity to give twenty
whole sacks to a dancing-girl and a priest. But it was his way.
Money was only a marker. It was the game that counted with him.
The possession of millions made little change in him, except that
he played the game more passionately. Temperate as he had always
been, save on rare occasions, now that he had the wherewithal for
unlimited drinks and had daily access to them, he drank even
less. The most radical change lay in that, except when on trail,
he no longer did his own cooking. A broken-down miner lived in
his log cabin with him and now cooked for him. But it was the
same food: bacon, beans, flour, prunes, dried fruits, and rice.
He still dressed as formerly: overalls, German socks, moccasins,
flannel shirt, fur cap, and blanket coat. He did not take up
with cigars, which cost, the cheapest, from half a dollar to a
dollar each. The same Bull Durham and brown-paper cigarette,
hand-rolled, contented him. It was true that he kept more dogs,
and paid enormous prices for them. They were not a luxury, but a
matter of business. He needed speed in his travelling and
stampeding. And by the same token, he hired a cook. He was too
busy to cook for himself, that was all. It was poor business,
playing for millions, to spend time building fires and boiling
water.
Dawson grew rapidly that winter of 1896. Money poured in on
Daylight from the sale of town lots. He promptly invested it
where it would gather more. In fact, he played the dangerous
game of pyramiding, and no more perilous pyramiding than in a
placer camp could be imagined. But he played with his eyes wide
open.
"You-all just wait till the news of this strike reaches the
Outside," he told his old-timer cronies in the Moosehorn Saloon.
"The news won't get out till next spring. Then there's going to
be three rushes. A summer rush of men coming in light; a fall
rush of men with outfits; and a spring rush, the next year after
that, of fifty thousand. You-all won't be able to see the
landscape for chechaquos. Well, there's the summer and fall rush
of 1897 to commence with. What are you-all going to do about
it?"
"What are you going to do about it?" a friend demanded.
"Nothing," he answered. "I've sure already done it. I've got a
dozen gangs strung out up the Yukon getting out logs. You-all'll
see their rafts coming down after the river breaks. Cabins!
They sure will be worth what a man can pay for them next fall.
Lumber! It will sure go to top- notch. I've got two sawmills
freighting in over the passes. They'll come down as soon as the
lakes open up. And if you-all are thinking of needing lumber,
I'll make you-all contracts right nowthree hundred dollars a
thousand, undressed."
Corner lots in desirable locations sold that winter for from ten
to thirty thousand dollars. Daylight sent word out over the
trails and passes for the newcomers to bring down log-rafts, and,
as a result, the summer of 1897 saw his sawmills working day and
night, on three shifts, and still he had logs left over with
which to build cabins. These cabins, land included, sold at from
one to several thousand dollars. Two-story log buildings, in the
business part of town, brought him from forty to fifty thousand
dollars apiece. These fresh accretions of capital were
immediately invested in other ventures. He turned gold over and
over, until everything that he touched seemed to turn to gold.
But that first wild winter of Carmack's strike taught Daylight
many things. Despite the prodigality of his nature, he had
poise. He watched the lavish waste of the mushroom millionaires,
and failed quite to understand it. According to his nature and
outlook, it was all very well to toss an ante away in a night's
frolic. That was what he had done the night of the poker-game in
Circle City when he lost fifty thousand--all that he possessed.
But he had looked on that fifty thousand as a mere ante. When it
came to millions, it was different. Such a fortune was a stake,
and was not to be sown on bar-room floors, literally sown, flung
broadcast out of the moosehide sacks by drunken millionaires
who had lost all sense of proportion. There was McMann, who ran
up a single bar-room bill of thirty-eight thousand dollars; and
Jimmie the Rough, who spent one hundred thousand a month for four
months in riotous living, and then fell down drunk in the snow
one March night and was frozen to death; and Swiftwater Bill,
who, after spending three valuable claims in an extravagance of
debauchery, borrowed three thousand dollars with which to leave
the country, and who, out of this sum, because the lady-love that
had jilted him liked eggs, cornered the one hundred and ten dozen
eggs on the Dawson market, paying twenty-four dollars a dozen for
them and promptly feeding them to the wolf-dogs.
Champagne sold at from forty to fifty dollars a quart, and
canned oyster stew at fifteen dollars. Daylight indulged in no
such luxuries. He did not mind treating a bar-room of men to
whiskey at fifty cents a drink, but there was somewhere in his
own extravagant nature a sense of fitness and arithmetic that
revolted against paying fifteen dollars for the contents of an
oyster can. On the other hand, he possibly spent more money in
relieving hard-luck cases than did the wildest of the new
millionaires on insane debauchery. Father Judge, of the
hospital, could have told of far more important donations than
that first ten sacks of flour. And old-timers who came to
Daylight invariably went away relieved according to their need.
But fifty dollars for a quart of fizzy champagne! That was
appalling.
And yet he still, on occasion, made one of his old-time
hell-roaring nights. But he did so for different reasons.
First, it was expected of him because it had been his way in the
old days. And second, he could afford it. But he no longer
cared quite so much for that form of diversion. He had
developed, in a new way, the taste for power. It had become a
lust with him. By far the wealthiest miner in Alaska, he wanted
to be still wealthier. It was a big game he was playing in, and
he liked it better than any other game. In a way, the part he
played was creative. He was doing something. And at no time,
striking another chord of his nature, could he take the joy in a
million-dollar Eldorado dump that was at all equivalent to the
joy he took in watching his two sawmills working and the big down
river log-rafts swinging into the bank in the big eddy just above
Moosehide Mountain. Gold, even on the scales, was, after all, an
abstraction. It represented things and the power to do. But the
sawmills were the things themselves, concrete and tangible, and
they were things that were a means to the doing of more things.
They were dreams come true, hard and indubitable realizations of
fairy gossamers.
With the summer rush from the Outside came special correspondents
for the big newspapers and magazines, and one and all, using
unlimited space, they wrote Daylight up; so that, so far as the
world was concerned, Daylight loomed the largest figure in
Alaska. Of course, after several months, the world became
interested in the Spanish War, and forgot all about him; but in
the Klondike itself Daylight still remained the most prominent
figure. Passing along the streets of Dawson, all heads turned to
follow him, and in the saloons chechaquos watched him awesomely,
scarcely taking their eyes from him as long as he remained in
their range of vision. Not alone was he the richest man in the
country, but he was Burning Daylight, the pioneer, the man who,
almost in the midst of antiquity of that young land, had crossed
the Chilcoot and drifted down the Yukon to meet those elder
giants, Al Mayo and Jack McQuestion. He was the Burning Daylight
of scores of wild adventures, the man who carried word to the
ice-bound whaling fleet across the tundra wilderness to the
Arctic Sea, who raced the mail from Circle to Salt Water and back
again in sixty days, who saved the whole Tanana tribe from
perishing in the winter of '91--in short, the man who smote the
chechaquos' imaginations more violently than any other dozen men
rolled into one.
He had the fatal facility for self-advertisement. Things he did,
no matter how adventitious or spontaneous, struck the popular
imagination as remarkable. And the latest thing he had done was
always on men's lips, whether it was being first in the
heartbreaking stampede to Danish Creek, in killing the record
baldface grizzly over on Sulphur Creek, or in winning the
single-paddle canoe race on the Queen's Birthday, after being
forced to participate at the last moment by the failure of the
sourdough representative to appear. Thus, one night in the
Moosehorn, he locked horns with Jack Kearns in the long-promised
return game of poker. The sky and eight o'clock in the morning
were made the limits, and at the close of the game Daylight's
winnings were two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. To Jack
Kearns, already a several-times millionaire, this loss was not
vital. But the whole community was thrilled by the size of the
stakes, and each one of the dozen correspondents in the field
sent out a sensational article.
CHAPTER XII
Despite his many sources of revenue, Daylight's pyramiding kept
him pinched for cash throughout the first winter. The
pay-gravel, thawed on bed-rock and hoisted to the surface,
immediately froze again. Thus his dumps, containing several
millions of gold, were inaccessible. Not until the returning sun
thawed the dumps and melted the water to wash them was he able to
handle the gold they contained. And then he found himself with a
surplus of gold, deposited in the two newly organized banks; and
he was promptly besieged by men and groups of men to enlist his
capital in their enterprises.
But he elected to play his own game, and he entered combinations
only when they were generally defensive or offensive. Thus,
though he had paid the highest wages, he joined the Mine-owners'
Association, engineered the fight, and effectually curbed the
growing insubordination of the wage-earners. Times had changed.
The old days were gone forever. This was a new era, and
Daylight, the wealthy mine-owner, was loyal to his class
affiliations. It was true, the old-timers who worked for him, in
order to be saved from the club of the organized owners, were
made foremen over the gang of chechaquos; but this, with
Daylight, was a matter of heart, not head. In his heart he could
not forget the old days, while with his head he played the
economic game according to the latest and most practical methods.
But outside of such group-combinations of exploiters, he refused
to bind himself to any man's game. He was playing a great lone
hand, and he needed all his money for his own backing. The newly
founded stock-exchange interested him keenly. He had never
before seen such an institution, but he was quick to see its
virtues and to utilize it. Most of all, it was gambling, and on
many an occasion not necessary for the advancement of his own
schemes, he, as he called it, went the stock-exchange a flutter,
out of sheer wantonness and fun.
"It sure beats faro," was his comment one day, when, after
keeping the Dawson speculators in a fever for a week by alternate
bulling and bearing, he showed his hand and cleaned up what would
have been a fortune to any other man.
Other men, having made their strike, had headed south for the
States, taking a furlough from the grim Arctic battle. But,
asked when he was going Outside, Daylight always laughed and said
when he had finished playing his hand. He also added that a man
was a fool to quit a game just when a winning hand had been dealt
him.
It was held by the thousands of hero-worshipping chechaquos that
Daylight was a man absolutely without fear. But Bettles and Dan
MacDonald and other sourdoughs shook their heads and laughed as
they mentioned women. And they were right. He had always been
afraid of them from the time, himself a lad of seventeen, when
Queen Anne, of Juneau, made open and ridiculous love to him. For
that matter, he never had known women. Born in a mining-camp
where they were rare and mysterious, having no sisters, his
mother dying while he was an infant, he had never been in contact
with them. True, running away from Queen Anne, he had later
encountered them on the Yukon and cultivated an acquaintance with
them--the pioneer ones who crossed the passes on the trail of the
men who had opened up the first diggings. But no lamb had ever
walked with a wolf in greater fear and trembling than had he
walked with them. It was a matter of masculine pride that he
should walk with them, and he had done so in fair seeming; but
women had remained to him a closed book, and he preferred a game
of solo or seven-up any time.
And now, known as the King of the Klondike, carrying several
other royal titles, such as Eldorado King, Bonanza King, the
Lumber Baron, and the Prince of the Stampeders, not to omit the
proudest appellation of all, namely, the Father of the
Sourdoughs, he was more afraid of women than ever. As never
before they held out their arms to him, and more women were
flocking into the country day by day. It mattered not whether he
sat at dinner in the gold commissioner's house, called for the
drinks in a dancehall, or submitted to an interview from the
woman representative of the New York Sun, one and all of them
held out their arms.
There was one exception, and that was Freda, the girl that
danced, and to whom he had given the flour. She was the only
woman in whose company he felt at ease, for she alone never
reached out her arms. And yet it was from her that he was
destined to receive next to his severest fright. It came about
in the fall of 1897. He was returning from one of his dashes,
this time to inspect Henderson, a creek that entered the Yukon
just below the Stewart. Winter had come on with a rush, and he
fought his way down the Yukon seventy miles in a frail
Peterborough canoe in the midst of a run of mush-ice. Hugging
the rim-ice that had already solidly formed, he shot across the
ice-spewing mouth of the Klondike just in time to see a lone man
dancing excitedly on the rim and pointing into the water. Next,
he saw the fur-clad body of a woman, face under, sinking in the
midst of the driving mush-ice. A lane opening in the swirl of
the current, it was a matter of seconds to drive the canoe to the
spot, reach to the shoulder in the water, and draw the woman
gingerly to the canoe's side. It was Freda. And all might yet
have been well with him, had she not, later, when brought back to
consciousness, blazed at him with angry blue eyes and demanded:
"Why did you? Oh, why did you?"
This worried him. In the nights that followed, instead of
sinking immediately to sleep as was his wont, he lay awake,
visioning her face and that blue blaze of wrath, and conning her
words over and over. They rang with sincerity. The reproach was
genuine. She had meant just what she said. And still he
pondered.
The next time he encountered her she had turned away from him
angrily and contemptuously. And yet again, she came to him to
beg his pardon, and she dropped a hint of a man somewhere,
sometime,--she said not how,--who had left her with no desire to
live. Her speech was frank, but incoherent, and all he gleaned
from it was that the event, whatever it was, had happened years
before. Also, he gleaned that she had loved the man.
That was the thing--love. It caused the trouble. It was more
terrible than frost or famine. Women were all very well, in
themselves good to look upon and likable; but along came this
thing called love, and they were seared to the bone by it, made
so irrational that one could never guess what they would do next.
This Freda-woman was a splendid creature, full-bodied, beautiful,
and nobody's fool; but love had come along and soured her on the
world, driving her to the Klondike and to suicide so compellingly
that she was made to hate the man that saved her life.
Well, he had escaped love so far, just as he had escaped
smallpox; yet there it was, as contagious as smallpox, and a
whole lot worse in running its course. It made men and women do
such fearful and unreasonable things. It was like delirium
tremens, only worse. And if he, Daylight, caught it, he might
have it as badly as any of them. It was lunacy, stark lunacy,
and contagious on top of it all. A half dozen young fellows were
crazy over Freda. They all wanted to marry her. Yet she, in
turn, was crazy over that some other fellow on the other side of
the world, and would have nothing to do with them.
But it was left to the Virgin to give him his final fright. She
was found one morning dead in her cabin. A shot through the head
had done it, and she had left no message, no explanation. Then
came the talk. Some wit, voicing public opinion, called it a
case of too much Daylight. She had killed herself because of
him. Everybody knew this, and said so. The correspondents wrote
it up, and once more Burning Daylight, King of the Klondike, was
sensationally featured in the Sunday supplements of the United
States. The Virgin had straightened up, so the feature-stories
ran, and correctly so. Never had she entered a Dawson City
dance-hall. When she first arrived from Circle City, she had
earned her living by washing clothes. Next, she had bought a
sewing-machine and made men's drill parkas, fur caps, and
moosehide mittens. Then she had gone as a clerk into the First
Yukon Bank. All this, and more, was known and told, though one
and all were agreed that Daylight, while the cause, had been the
innocent cause of her untimely end.
And the worst of it was that Daylight knew it was true. Always
would he remember that last night he had seen her. He had
thought nothing of it at the time; but, looking back, he was
haunted by every little thing that had happened. In the light of
the tragic event, he could understand everything--her quietness,
that calm certitude as if all vexing questions of living had been
smoothed out and were gone, and that certain ethereal sweetness
about all that she had said and done that had been almost
maternal. He remembered the way she had looked at him, how she
had laughed when he narrated Mickey Dolan's mistake in staking
the fraction on Skookum Gulch. Her laughter had been lightly
joyous, while at the same time it had lacked its oldtime
robustness. Not that she had been grave or subdued. On the
contrary, she had been so patently content, so filled with peace.
She had fooled him, fool that he was. He had even thought that
night that her feeling for him had passed, and he had taken
delight in the thought, and caught visions of the satisfying
future friendship that would be theirs with this perturbing love
out of the way.
And then, when he stood at the door, cap in hand, and said good
night. It had struck him at the time as a funny and embarrassing
thing, her bending over his hand and kissing it. He had felt
like a fool, but he shivered now when he looked back on it and
felt again the touch of her lips on his hand. She was saying
good-by, an eternal good-by, and he had never guessed. At that
very moment, and for all the moments of the evening, coolly and
deliberately, as he well knew her way, she had been resolved to
die. If he had only known it! Untouched by the contagious
malady himself, nevertheless he would have married her if he had
had the slightest inkling of what she contemplated. And yet he
knew, furthermore, that hers was a certain stiff-kneed pride that
would not have permitted her to accept marriage as an act of
philanthropy. There had really been no saving her, after all.
The love-disease had fastened upon her, and she had been doomed
from the first to perish of it.
Her one possible chance had been that he, too, should have caught
it. And he had failed to catch it. Most likely, if he had, it
would have been from Freda or some other woman. There was
Dartworthy, the college man who had staked the rich fraction on
Bonanza above Discovery. Everybody knew that old Doolittle's
daughter, Bertha, was madly in love with him. Yet, when he
contracted the disease, of all women, it had been with the wife
of Colonel Walthstone, the great Guggenhammer mining expert.
Result, three lunacy cases: Dartworthy selling out his mine for
one-tenth its value; the poor woman sacrificing her
respectability and sheltered nook in society to flee with him in
an open boat down the Yukon; and Colonel Walthstone, breathing
murder and destruction, taking out after them in another open
boat. The whole impending tragedy had moved on down the muddy
Yukon, passing Forty Mile and Circle and losing itself in the
wilderness beyond. But there it was, love, disorganizing men's
and women's lives, driving toward destruction and death, turning
topsy-turvy everything that was sensible and considerate, making
bawds or suicides out of virtuous women, and scoundrels and
murderers out of men who had always been clean and square.
For the first time in his life Daylight lost his nerve. He was
badly and avowedly frightened. Women were terrible creatures,
and the love-germ was especially plentiful in their neighborhood.
And they were so reckless, so devoid of fear. THEY were not
frightened by what had happened to the Virgin. They held out
their arms to him more seductively than ever. Even without his
fortune, reckoned as a mere man, just past thirty, magnificently
strong and equally good-looking and good-natured, he was a prize
for most normal women. But when to his natural excellences were
added the romance that linked with his name and the enormous
wealth that was his, practically every free woman he encountered
measured him with an appraising and delighted eye, to say nothing
of more than one woman who was not free. Other men might have
been spoiled by this and led to lose their heads; but the only
effect on him was to increase his fright. As a result he refused
most invitations to houses where women might be met, and
frequented bachelor boards and the Moosehorn Saloon, which had no
dance-hall attached.
CHAPTER XIII
Six thousand spent the winter of 1897 in Dawson, work on the
creeks went on apace, while beyond the passes it was reported
that one hundred thousand more were waiting for the spring. Late
one brief afternoon, Daylight, on the benches between French Hill
and Skookum Hill, caught a wider vision of things. Beneath him
lay the richest part of Eldorado Creek, while up and down Bonanza
he could see for miles. It was a scene of a vast devastation.
The hills, to their tops, had been shorn of trees, and their
naked sides showed signs of goring and perforating that even the
mantle of snow could not hide. Beneath him, in every direction
were the cabins of men. But not many men were visible. A
blanket of smoke filled the valleys and turned the gray day to
melancholy twilight. Smoke arose from a thousand holes in the
snow, where, deep down on bed-rock, in the frozen muck and
gravel, men crept and scratched and dug, and ever built more
fires to break the grip of the frost. Here and there, where new
shafts were starting, these fires flamed redly. Figures of men
crawled out of the holes, or disappeared into them, or, on raised
platforms of hand-hewn timber, windlassed the thawed gravel to
the surface, where it immediately froze. The wreckage of the
spring washing appeared everywhere--piles of sluice-boxes,
sections of elevated flumes, huge water-wheels,--all the debris
of an army of gold-mad men.
"It-all's plain gophering," Daylight muttered aloud.
He looked at the naked hills and realized the enormous wastage of
wood that had taken place. From this bird's-eye view he
realized the monstrous confusion of their excited workings. It
was a gigantic inadequacy. Each worked for himself, and the
result was chaos. In this richest of diggings it cost out by
their feverish, unthinking methods another dollar was left
hopelessly in the earth. Given another year, and most of the
claims would be worked out, and the sum of the gold taken out
would no more than equal what was left behind.
Organization was what was needed, he decided; and his quick
imagination sketched Eldorado Creek, from mouth to source, and
from mountain top to mountain top, in the hands of one capable
management. Even steam-thawing, as yet untried, but bound to
come, he saw would be a makeshift. What should be done was to
hydraulic the valley sides and benches, and then, on the creek
bottom, to use gold-dredges such as he had heard described as
operating in California.
There was the very chance for another big killing. He had
wondered just what was precisely the reason for the Guggenhammers
and the big English concerns sending in their high-salaried
experts. That was their scheme. That was why they had
approached him for the sale of worked-out claims and tailings.
They were content to let the small mine-owners gopher out what
they could, for there would be millions in the leavings.
And, gazing down on the smoky inferno of crude effort, Daylight
outlined the new game he would play, a game in which the
Guggenhammers and the rest would have to reckon with him. Cut
along with the delight in the new conception came a weariness.
He was tired of the long Arctic years, and he was curious about
the Outside--the great world of which he had heard other men talk
and of which he was as ignorant as a child. There were games out
there to play. It was a larger table, and there was no reason
why he with his millions should not sit in and take a hand. So
it was, that afternoon on Skookum Hill, that he resolved to play
this last best Klondike hand and pull for the Outside.
It took time, however. He put trusted agents to work on the
heels of great experts, and on the creeks where they began to buy
he likewise bought. Wherever they tried to corner a worked-out
creek, they found him standing in the way, owning blocks of
claims or artfully scattered claims that put all their plans to
naught.
"I play you-all wide open to win--am I right" he told them once,
in a heated conference.
Followed wars, truces, compromises, victories, and defeats. By
1898, sixty thousand men were on the Klondike and all their
fortunes and affairs rocked back and forth and were affected by
the battles Daylight fought. And more and more the taste for the
larger game urged in Daylight's mouth. Here he was already
locked in grapples with the great Guggenhammers, and winning,
fiercely winning. Possibly the severest struggle was waged on
Ophir, the veriest of moose-pastures, whose low-grade dirt was
valuable only because of its vastness. The ownership of a block
of seven claims in the heart of it gave Daylight his grip and
they could not come to terms. The Guggenhammer experts concluded
that it was too big for him to handle, and when they gave him an
ultimatum to that effect he accepted and bought them out.
The plan was his own, but he sent down to the States for
competent engineers to carry it out. In the Rinkabilly
watershed, eighty miles away, he built his reservoir, and for
eighty miles the huge wooden conduit carried the water across
country to Ophir. Estimated at three millions, the reservoir and
conduit cost nearer four. Nor did he stop with this. Electric
power plants were installed, and his workings were lighted as
well as run by electricity. Other sourdoughs, who had struck it
rich in excess of all their dreams, shook their heads gloomily,
warned him that he would go broke, and declined to invest in so
extravagant a venture.
But Daylight smiled, and sold out the remainder of his town-site
holdings. He sold at the right time, at the height of the placer
boom. When he prophesied to his old cronies, in the Moosehorn
Saloon, that within five years town lots in Dawson could not be
given away, while the cabins would be chopped up for firewood, he
was laughed at roundly, and assured that the mother-lode would be
found ere that time. But he went ahead, when his need for lumber
was finished, selling out his sawmills as well. Likewise, he
began
to get rid of his scattered holdings on the various creeks, and
without thanks to any one he finished his conduit, built his
dredges, imported his machinery, and made the gold of Ophir
immediately accessible. And he, who five years before had
crossed
over the divide from Indian River and threaded the silent
wilderness, his dogs packing Indian fashion, himself living
Indian
fashion on straight moose meat, now heard the hoarse whistles
calling his hundreds of laborers to work, and watched them toil
under the white glare of the arc-lamps.
But having done the thing, he was ready to depart. And when he
let the word go out, the Guggenhammers vied with the English
concerns and with a new French company in bidding for Ophir and
all its plant. The Guggenhammers bid highest, and the price they
paid netted Daylight a clean million. It was current rumor that
he was worth anywhere from twenty to thirty millions. But he
alone knew just how he stood, and that, with his last claim sold
and the table swept clean of his winnings, he had ridden his
hunch to the tune of just a trifle over eleven millions.
His departure was a thing that passed into the history of the
Yukon along with his other deeds. All the Yukon was his guest,
Dawson the seat of the festivity. On that one last night no
man's dust save his own was good. Drinks were not to be
purchased. Every saloon ran open, with extra relays of exhausted
bartenders, and the drinks were given away. A man who refused
this hospitality, and persisted in paying, found a dozen fights
on his hands. The veriest chechaquos rose up to defend the name
of Daylight from such insult. And through it all, on moccasined
feet, moved Daylight, hell-roaring Burning Daylight,
over-spilling with good nature and camaraderie, howling his
he-wolf howl and claiming the night as his, bending men's arms
down on the bars, performing feats of strength, his bronzed face
flushed with drink, his black eyes flashing, clad in overalls and
blanket coat, his ear-flaps dangling and his gauntleted mittens
swinging from the cord across the shoulders. But this time it
was neither an ante nor a stake that he threw away, but a mere
marker in the game that he who held so many markers would not
miss.
As a night, it eclipsed anything that Dawson had ever seen. It
was Daylight's desire to make it memorable, and his attempt was a
success. A goodly portion of Dawson got drunk that night. The
fall weather was on, and, though the freeze-up of the Yukon still
delayed, the thermometer was down to twenty-five below zero and
falling. Wherefore, it was necessary to organize gangs of
life-savers, who patrolled the streets to pick up drunken men
from where they fell in the snow and where an hour's sleep would
be fatal. Daylight, whose whim it was to make them drunk by
hundreds and by thousands, was the one who initiated this life
saving. He wanted Dawson to have its night, but, in his deeper
processes never careless nor wanton, he saw to it that it was a
night without accident. And, like his olden nights, his ukase
went forth that there should be no quarrelling nor fighting,
offenders to be dealt with by him personally. Nor did he have to
deal with any. Hundreds of devoted followers saw to it that the
evilly disposed were rolled in the snow and hustled off to bed.
In the great world, where great captains of industry die, all
wheels under their erstwhile management are stopped for a minute.
But in the Klondike, such was its hilarious sorrow at the
departure of its captain, that for twenty-four hours no wheels
revolved. Even great Ophir, with its thousand men on the
pay-roll, closed down. On the day after the night there were no
men present or fit to go to work.
Next morning, at break of day, Dawson said good-by. The
thousands that lined the bank wore mittens and their ear-flaps
pulled down and tied. It was thirty below zero, the rim-ice was
thickening, and the Yukon carried a run of mush-ice. From the
deck of the Seattle, Daylight waved and called his farewells. As
the lines were cast off and the steamer swung out into the
current, those near him saw the moisture well up in Daylight's
eyes. In a way, it was to him departure from his native land,
this grim Arctic region which was practically the only land he
had known. He tore off his cap and waved it.
"Good-by, you-all!" he called. "Good-by, you-all!"
PART II
CHAPTER I
In no blaze of glory did Burning Daylight descend upon San
Francisco. Not only had he been forgotten, but the Klondike
along with him. The world was interested in other things, and
the
Alaskan adventure, like the Spanish War, was an old story. Many
things had happened since then. Exciting things were happening
every day, and the sensation-space of newspapers was limited.
The
effect of being ignored, however, was an exhilaration. Big man
as
he had been in the Arctic game, it merely showed how much bigger
was this new game, when a man worth eleven millions, and with a
history such as his, passed unnoticed.
He settled down in St. Francis Hotel, was interviewed by the
cub-reporters on the hotel-run, and received brief paragraphs of
notice for twenty-four hours. He grinned to himself, and began
to look around and get acquainted with the new order of beings
and things. He was very awkward and very self-possessed. In
addition to the stiffening afforded his backbone by the conscious
ownership of eleven millions, he possessed an enormous certitude.
Nothing abashed him, nor was he appalled by the display and
culture and power around him. It was another kind of wilderness,
that was all; and it was for him to learn the ways of it, the
signs and trails and water-holes where good hunting lay, and the
bad stretches of field and flood to be avoided. As usual, he
fought shy of the women. He was still too badly scared to come
to close quarters with the dazzling and resplendent creatures his
own millions made accessible.
They looked and longed, but he so concealed his timidity that he
had all the seeming of moving boldly among them. Nor was it his
wealth alone that attracted them. He was too much a man, and too
much an unusual type of man. Young yet, barely thirty-six,
eminently handsome, magnificently strong, almost bursting with a
splendid virility, his free trail-stride, never learned on
pavements, and his black eyes, hinting of great spaces and
unwearied with the close perspective of the city dwellers, drew
many a curious and wayward feminine glance. He saw, grinned
knowingly to himself, and faced them as so many dangers, with a
cool demeanor that was a far greater personal achievement than
had they been famine, frost, or flood.
He had come down to the States to play the man's game, not the
woman's game; and the men he had not yet learned. They struck
him as soft--soft physically; yet he divined them hard in their
dealings, but hard under an exterior of supple softness. It
struck him that there was something cat-like about them. He met
them in the clubs, and wondered how real was the good-fellowship
they displayed and how quickly they would unsheathe their claws
and gouge and rend. "That's the proposition," he repeated to
himself; "what will they-all do when the play is close and down
to brass tacks?" He felt unwarrantably suspicious of them.
"They're sure slick," was his secret judgment; and from bits of
gossip dropped now and again he felt his judgment well
buttressed. On the other hand, they radiated an atmosphere of
manliness and the fair play that goes with manliness. They might
gouge and rend in a fight--which was no more than natural; but he
felt, somehow, that they would gouge and rend according to rule.
This was the impression he got of them--a generalization tempered
by knowledge that there was bound to be a certain percentage of
scoundrels among them.
Several months passed in San Francisco during which time he
studied the game and its rules, and prepared himself to take a
hand. He even took private instruction in English, and succeeded
in eliminating his worst faults, though in moments of excitement
he was prone to lapse into "you-all," "knowed," "sure," and
similar solecisms. He learned to eat and dress and generally
comport himself after the manner of civilized man; but through it
all he remained himself, not unduly reverential nor
considerative, and never hesitating to stride rough-shod over any
soft-faced convention if it got in his way and the provocation
were great enough. Also, and unlike the average run of weaker
men coming from back countries and far places, he failed to
reverence the particular tin gods worshipped variously by the
civilized tribes of men. He had seen totems before, and knew
them for what they were.
Tiring of being merely an onlooker, he ran up to Nevada, where
the new gold-mining boom was fairly started--"just to try a
flutter," as he phrased it to himself. The flutter on the
Tonopah Stock Exchange lasted just ten days, during which time
his smashing, wild-bull game played ducks and drakes with the
more stereotyped gamblers, and at the end of which time, having
gambled Floridel into his fist, he let go for a net profit of
half a million. Whereupon, smacking his lips, he departed for
San Francisco and the St. Francis Hotel. It tasted good, and
his hunger for the game became more acute.
And once more the papers sensationalized him. BURNING DAYLIGHT
was a big-letter headline again. Interviewers flocked about him.
Old files of magazines and newspapers were searched through, and
the romantic and historic Elam Harnish, Adventurer of the Frost,
King of the Klondike, and father of the Sourdoughs, strode upon
the breakfast table of a million homes along with the toast and
breakfast foods. Even before his elected time, he was forcibly
launched into the game. Financiers and promoters, and all the
flotsam and jetsam of the sea of speculation surged upon the
shores of his eleven millions. In self-defence he was
compelled to open offices. He had made them sit up and take
notice, and now, willy-nilly, they were dealing him hands and
clamoring for him to play. Well, play he would; he'd show 'em;
even despite the elated prophesies made of how swiftly he would
be trimmed--prophesies coupled with descriptions of the bucolic
game he would play and of his wild and woolly appearance.
He dabbled in little things at first--"stalling for time," as he
explained it to Holdsworthy, a friend he had made at the
Alta-Pacific Club. Daylight himself was a member of the club,
and Holdsworthy had proposed him. And it was well that Daylight
played closely at first, for he was astounded by the multitudes
of sharks--"ground-sharks," he called them--that flocked about
him.
He saw through their schemes readily enough, and even marveled
that such numbers of them could find sufficient prey to keep them
going. Their rascality and general dubiousness was so
transparent that he could not understand how any one could be
taken in by them.
And then he found that there were sharks and sharks. Holdsworthy
treated him more like a brother than a mere fellow-clubman,
watching over him, advising him, and introducing him to the
magnates of the local financial world. Holdsworthy's family
lived in a delightful bungalow near Menlo Park, and here Daylight
spent a number of weekends, seeing a fineness and kindness of
home life of which he had never dreamed. Holdsworthy was an
enthusiast over flowers, and a half lunatic over raising prize
poultry; and these engrossing madnesses were a source of
perpetual joy to Daylight, who looked on in tolerant good humor.
Such amiable weaknesses tokened the healthfulness of the man, and
drew Daylight closer to him. A prosperous, successful business
man without great ambition, was Daylight's estimate of him--a man
too easily satisfied with the small stakes of the game ever to
launch out in big play.
On one such week-end visit, Holdsworthy let him in on a good
thing, a good little thing, a brickyard at Glen Ellen. Daylight
listened closely to the other's description of the situation. It
was a most reasonable venture, and Daylight's one objection was
that it was so small a matter and so far out of his line; and he
went into it only as a matter of friendship, Holdsworthy
explaining that he was himself already in a bit, and that while
it was a good thing, he would be compelled to make sacrifices in
other directions in order to develop it. Daylight advanced the
capital, fifty thousand dollars, and, as he laughingly explained
afterward, "I was stung, all right, but it wasn't Holdsworthy
that did it half as much as those blamed chickens and fruit-trees
of his."
It was a good lesson, however, for he learned that there were few
faiths in the business world, and that even the simple, homely
faith of breaking bread and eating salt counted for little in the
face of a worthless brickyard and fifty thousand dollars in cash.
But the sharks and sharks of various orders and degrees, he
concluded, were on the surface. Deep down, he divined, were the
integrities and the stabilities. These big captains of industry
and masters of finance, he decided, were the men to work with.
By the very nature of their huge deals and enterprises they had
to play fair. No room there for little sharpers' tricks and
bunco games. It was to be expected that little men should salt
gold-mines with a shotgun and work off worthless brick-yards on
their friends, but in high finance such methods were not worth
while. There the men were engaged in developing the country,
organizing its railroads, opening up its mines, making accessible
its vast natural resources. Their play was bound to be big and
stable. "They sure can't afford tin-horn tactics," was his
summing up.
So it was that he resolved to leave the little men, the
Holdsworthys, alone; and, while he met them in good-fellowship,
he chummed with none, and formed no deep friendships. He did not
dislike the little men, the men of the Alta-Pacific, for
instance. He merely did not elect to choose them for partners in
the big game in which he intended to play. What that big game
was, even he did not know. He was waiting to find it. And in
the meantime he played small hands, investing in several
arid-lands reclamation projects and keeping his eyes open for the
big chance when it should come along.
And then he met John Dowsett, the great John Dowsett. The whole
thing was fortuitous. This cannot be doubted, as Daylight
himself knew, it was by the merest chance, when in Los Angeles,
that he heard the tuna were running strong at Santa Catalina,
and went over to the island instead of returning directly to San
Francisco as he had planned. There he met John Dowsett, resting
off for several days in the middle of a flying western trip.
Dowsett had of course heard of the spectacular Klondike King and
his rumored thirty millions, and he certainly found himself
interested by the man in the acquaintance that was formed.
Somewhere along in this acquaintanceship the idea must have
popped into his brain. But he did not broach it, preferring to
mature it carefully. So he talked in large general ways, and did
his best to be agreeable and win Daylight's friendship.
It was the first big magnate Daylight had met face to face, and
he was pleased and charmed. There was such a kindly humanness
about the man, such a genial democraticness, that Daylight found
it hard to realize that this was THE John Dowsett, president of
a string of banks, insurance manipulator, reputed ally of the
lieutenants of Standard Oil, and known ally of the Guggenhammers.
Nor did his looks belie his reputation and his manner.
Physically, he guaranteed all that Daylight knew of him. Despite
his sixty years and snow-white hair, his hand-shake was firmly
hearty, and he showed no signs of decrepitude, walking with a
quick, snappy step, making all movements definitely and
decisively. His skin was a healthy pink, and his thin, clean
lips knew the way to writhe heartily over a joke. He had honest
blue eyes of palest blue; they looked out at one keenly and
frankly from under shaggy gray brows. His mind showed itself
disciplined and orderly, and its workings struck Daylight as
having all the certitude of a steel trap. He was a man who
KNEW and who never decorated his knowledge with foolish frills
of sentiment or emotion. That he was accustomed to command was
patent, and every word and gesture tingled with power. Combined
with this was his sympathy and tact, and Daylight could note
easily enough all the earmarks that distinguished him from a
little man of the Holdsworthy caliber. Daylight knew also his
history, the prime old American stock from which he had
descended, his own war record, the John Dowsett before him who
had been one of the banking buttresses of the Cause of the Union,
the Commodore Dowsett of the War of 1812 the General Dowsett of
Revolutionary fame, and that first far Dowsett, owner of lands
and slaves in early New England.
"He's sure the real thing," he told one of his fellow-clubmen
afterwards, in the smoking-room of the Alta-Pacific. "I tell
you, Gallon, he was a genuine surprise to me. I knew the big
ones had to be like that, but I had to see him to really know it.
He's one of the fellows that does things. You can see it
sticking out all over him. He's one in a thousand, that's
straight, a man to tie to. There's no limit to any game he
plays, and you can stack on it that he plays right up to the
handle. I bet he can lose or win half a dozen million without
batting an eye."
Gallon puffed at his cigar, and at the conclusion of the
panegyric regarded the other curiously; but Daylight, ordering
cocktails, failed to note this curious stare.
"Going in with him on some deal, I suppose," Gallon remarked.
"Nope, not the slightest idea. Here's kindness. I was just
explaining that I'd come to understand how these big fellows do
big things. Why, dye know, he gave me such a feeling that he
knew everything, that I was plumb ashamed of myself."
"I guess I could give him cards and spades when it comes to
driving a dog-team, though," Daylight observed, after a
meditative pause. "And I really believe I could put him on to a
few wrinkles in poker and placer mining, and maybe in paddling a
birch canoe. And maybe I stand a better chance to learn the game
he's been playing all his life than he would stand of learning
the game I played up North."
CHAPTER II
It was not long afterward that Daylight came on to New York. A
letter from John Dowsett had been the cause--a simple little
typewritten letter of several lines. But Daylight had thrilled
as he read it. He remembered the thrill that was his, a callow
youth of fifteen, when, in Tempas Butte, through lack of a fourth
man, Tom Galsworthy, the gambler, had said, "Get in, Kid; take a
hand." That thrill was his now. The bald, typewritten
sentences seemed gorged with mystery. "Our Mr. Howison will
call upon you at your hotel. He is to be trusted. We must not
be seen together. You will understand after we have had our
talk." Daylight conned the words over and over. That was it.
The big game had arrived, and it looked as if he were being
invited to sit in and take a hand. Surely, for no other reason
would one man so peremptorily invite another man to make a
journey across the continent.
They met--thanks to "our" Mr. Howison,--up the Hudson, in a
magnificent country home. Daylight, according to instructions,
arrived in a private motor-car which had been furnished him.
Whose car it was he did not know any more than did he know the
owner of the house, with its generous, rolling, tree-studded
lawns. Dowsett was already there, and another man whom Daylight
recognized before the introduction was begun. It was Nathaniel
Letton, and none other. Daylight had seen his face a score of
times in the magazines and newspapers, and read about his
standing in the financial world and about his endowed University
of Daratona. He, likewise, struck Daylight as a man of power,
though he was puzzled in that he could find no likeness to
Dowsett. Except in the matter of cleanness,--a cleanness that
seemed to go down to the deepest fibers of him,--Nathaniel Letton
was unlike the other in every particular. Thin to emaciation, he
seemed a cold flame of a man, a man of a mysterious, chemic sort
of flame, who, under a glacier-like exterior, conveyed, somehow,
the impression of the ardent heat of a thousand suns. His large
gray eyes were mainly responsible for this feeling, and they
blazed out feverishly from what was almost a death's-head, so
thin was the face, the skin of which was a ghastly, dull, dead
white. Not more than fifty, thatched with a sparse growth of
iron-gray hair, he looked several times the age of Dowsett. Yet
Nathaniel Letton possessed control--Daylight could see that
plainly. He was a thin-faced ascetic, living in a state of high,
attenuated calm--a molten planet under a transcontinental ice
sheet. And yet, above all most of all, Daylight was impressed by
the terrific and almost awful cleanness of the man. There was
no dross in him. He had all the seeming of having been purged by
fire. Daylight had the feeling that a healthy man-oath would be
a deadly offence to his ears, a sacrilege and a blasphemy.
They drank--that is, Nathaniel Letton took mineral water served
by the smoothly operating machine of a lackey who inhabited the
place, while Dowsett took Scotch and soda and Daylight a
cocktail. Nobody seemed to notice the unusualness of a Martini
at midnight, though Daylight looked sharply for that very thing;
for he had long since learned that Martinis had their strictly
appointed times and places. But he liked Martinis, and, being a
natural man, he chose deliberately to drink when and how he
pleased. Others had noticed this peculiar habit of his, but not
so Dowsett and Letton; and Daylight's secret thought was: "They
sure wouldn't bat an eye if I called for a glass of corrosive
sublimate."
Leon Guggenhammer arrived in the midst of the drink, and ordered
Scotch. Daylight studied him curiously. This was one of the
great Guggenhammer family; a younger one, but nevertheless one of
the crowd with which he had locked grapples in the North. Nor
did Leon Guggenhammer fail to mention cognizance of that old
affair. He complimented Daylight on his prowess-"The echoes of
Ophir came down to us, you know. And I must say, Mr.
Daylight--er,
Mr. Harnish, that you whipped us roundly in that affair."
Echoes! Daylight could not escape the shock of the
phrase--echoes
had come down to them of the fight into which he had flung all
his
strength and the strength of his Klondike millions. The
Guggenhammers sure must go some when a fight of that dimension
was no more than a skirmish of which they deigned to hear echoes.
"They sure play an almighty big game down here," was his
conclusion, accompanied by a corresponding elation that it was
just precisely that almighty big game in which he was about to be
invited to play a hand. For the moment he poignantly regretted
that rumor was not true, and that his eleven millions were not
in reality thirty millions. Well, that much he would be frank
about; he would let them know exactly how many stacks of chips he
could buy.
Leon Guggenhammer was young and fat. Not a day more than thirty,
his face, save for the adumbrated puff sacks under the eyes, was
as smooth and lineless as a boy's. He, too, gave the impression
of cleanness. He showed in the pink of health; his unblemished,
smooth-shaven skin shouted advertisement of his splendid physical
condition. In the face of that perfect skin, his very fatness
and mature, rotund paunch could be nothing other than normal. He
was constituted to be prone to fatness, that was all.
The talk soon centred down to business, though Guggenhammer had
first to say his say about the forthcoming international yacht
race and about his own palatial steam yacht, the Electra, whose
recent engines were already antiquated. Dowsett broached the
plan, aided by an occasional remark from the other two, while
Daylight asked questions. Whatever the proposition was, he was
going into it with his eyes open. And they filled his eyes with
the practical vision of what they had in mind.
"They will never dream you are with us," Guggenhammer
interjected, as the outlining of the matter drew to a close, his
handsome Jewish eyes flashing enthusiastically. "They'll think
you are raiding on your own in proper buccaneer style."
"Of course, you understand, Mr. Harnish, the absolute need for
keeping our alliance in the dark," Nathaniel Letton warned
gravely.
Daylight nodded his head. "And you also understand," Letton went
on, "that the result can only be productive of good. The thing
is legitimate and right, and the only ones who may be hurt are
the stock gamblers themselves. It is not an attempt to smash the
market. As you see yourself, you are to bull the market. The
honest investor will be the gainer."
"Yes, that's the very thing," Dowsett said. "The commercial need
for copper is continually increasing. Ward Valley Copper, and
all that it stands for,--practically one-quarter of the world's
supply, as I have shown you,--is a big thing, how big, even we
can
scarcely estimate. Our arrangements are made. We have plenty of
capital ourselves, and yet we want more. Also, there is too much
Ward Valley out to suit our present plans. Thus we kill both
birds
with one stone-"
"And I am the stone," Daylight broke in with a smile.
"Yes, just that. Not only will you bull Ward Valley, but you
will at the same time gather Ward Valley in. This will be of
inestimable advantage to us, while you and all of us will profit
by it as well. And as Mr. Letton has pointed out, the thing is
legitimate and square. On the eighteenth the directors meet,
and, instead of the customary dividend, a double dividend will be
declared."
"And where will the shorts be then?" Leon Guggenhammer cried
excitedly.
"The shorts will be the speculators," Nathaniel Letton explained,
"the gamblers, the froth of Wall Street--you understand. The
genuine investors will not be hurt. Furthermore, they will have
learned for the thousandth time to have confidence in Ward
Valley. And with their confidence we can carry through the large
developments we have outlined to you."
"There will be all sorts of rumors on the street," Dowsett warned
Daylight, "but do not let them frighten you. These rumors may
even originate with us. You can see how and why clearly. But
rumors are to be no concern of yours. You are on the inside.
All you have to do is buy, buy, buy, and keep on buying to the
last stroke, when the directors declare the double dividend.
Ward Valley will jump so that it won't be feasible to buy after
that."
"What we want," Letton took up the strain, pausing significantly
to sip his mineral water, "what we want is to take large blocks
of Ward Valley off the hands of the public. We could do this
easily enough by depressing the market and frightening the
holders. And we could do it more cheaply in such fashion. But
we are absolute masters of the situation, and we are fair enough
to buy Ward Valley on a rising market. Not that we are
philanthropists, but that we need the investors in our big
development scheme. Nor do we lose directly by the transaction.
The instant the action of the directors becomes known, Ward
Valley will rush heavenward. In addition, and outside the
legitimate field of the transaction, we will pinch the shorts for
a very large sum. But that is only incidental, you understand,
and in a way, unavoidable. On the other hand, we shall not turn
up our noses at that phase of it. The shorts shall be the
veriest gamblers, of course, and they will get no more than they
deserve."
"And one other thing, Mr. Harnish," Guggenhammer said, "if you
exceed your available cash, or the amount you care to invest in
the venture, don't fail immediately to call on us. Remember, we
are behind you."
"Yes, we are behind you," Dowsett repeated.
Nathaniel Letton nodded his head in affirmation.
"Now about that double dividend on the eighteenth-" John Dowsett
drew a slip of paper from his note-book and adjusted his glasses.
"Let me show you the figures. Here, you see..."
And thereupon he entered into a long technical and historical
explanation of the earnings and dividends of Ward Valley from the
day of its organization.
The whole conference lasted not more than an hour, during which
time Daylight lived at the topmost of the highest peak of life
that he had ever scaled. These men were big players. They were
powers. True, as he knew himself, they were not the real inner
circle. They did not rank with the Morgans and Harrimans. And
yet they were in touch with those giants and were themselves
lesser giants. He was pleased, too, with their attitude toward
him. They met him deferentially, but not patronizingly. It was
the deference of equality, and Daylight could not escape the
subtle flattery of it; for he was fully aware that in experience
as well as wealth they were far and away beyond him.
"We'll shake up the speculating crowd," Leon Guggenhammer
proclaimed jubilantly, as they rose to go. "And you are the man
to do it, Mr. Harnish. They are bound to think you are on your
own, and their shears are all sharpened for the trimming of
newcomers like you."
"They will certainly be misled," Letton agreed, his eerie gray
eyes blazing out from the voluminous folds of the huge Mueller
with which he was swathing his neck to the ears. "Their minds
run in ruts. It is the unexpected that upsets their stereotyped
calculations--any new combination, any strange factor, any fresh
variant. And you will be all that to them, Mr. Harnish. And I
repeat, they are gamblers, and they will deserve all that befalls
them. They clog and cumber all legitimate enterprise. You have
no idea of the trouble they cause men like us--sometimes, by
their
gambling tactics, upsetting the soundest plans, even overturning
the stablest institutions."
Dowsett and young Guggenhammer went away in one motor-car, and
Letton by himself in another. Daylight, with still in the
forefront of his consciousness all that had occurred in the
preceding hour, was deeply impressed by the scene at the moment
of departure. The three machines stood like weird night monsters
at the gravelled foot of the wide stairway under the unlighted
porte-cochere. It was a dark night, and the lights of the
motor-cars cut as sharply through the blackness as knives would
cut through solid substance. The obsequious lackey--the
automatic genie of the house which belonged to none of the three
men,--stood like a graven statue after having helped them in.
The fur-coated chauffeurs bulked dimly in their seats. One after
the other, like spurred steeds, the cars leaped into the
blackness, took the curve of the driveway, and were gone.
Daylight's car was the last, and, peering out, he caught a
glimpse of the unlighted house that loomed hugely through the
darkness like a mountain. Whose was it? he wondered. How came
they to use it for their secret conference? Would the lackey
talk? How about the chauffeurs? Were they trusted men like
"our" Mr. Howison? Mystery? The affair was alive with it. And
hand in hand with mystery walked Power. He leaned back and
inhaled his cigarette. Big things were afoot. The cards were
shuffled even the for a mighty deal, and he was in on it. He
remembered back to his poker games with Jack Kearns, and laughed
aloud. He had played for thousands in those days on the turn of
a card; but now he was playing for millions. And on the
eighteenth, when that dividend was declared, he chuckled at the
confusion that would inevitably descend upon the men with the
sharpened shears waiting to trim him--him, Burning Daylight.
CHAPTER III
Back at his hotel, though nearly two in the morning, he found
the reporters waiting to interview him. Next morning there were
more. And thus, with blare of paper trumpet, was he received by
New York. Once more, with beating of toms-toms and wild
hullaballoo, his picturesque figure strode across the printed
sheet. The King of the Klondike, the hero of the Arctic, the
thirty-million-dollar millionaire of the North, had come to New
York. What had he come for? To trim the New Yorkers as he had
trimmed the Tonopah crowd in Nevada? Wall Street had best watch
out, for the wild man of Klondike had just come to town. Or,
perchance, would Wall Street trim him? Wall Street had trimmed
many wild men; would this be Burning Daylight's fate? Daylight
grinned to himself, and gave out ambiguous interviews. It helped
the game, and he grinned again, as he meditated that Wall Street
would sure have to go some before it trimmed him.
They were prepared for him to play, and, when heavy buying of
Ward Valley began, it was quickly decided that he was the
operator. Financial gossip buzzed and hummed. He was after the
Guggenhammers once more. The story of Ophir was told over again
and sensationalized until even Daylight scarcely recognized it.
Still, it was all grist to his mill. The stock gamblers were
clearly befooled. Each day he increased his buying, and so eager
were the sellers that Ward Valley rose but slowly. "It sure
beats poker," Daylight whispered gleefully to himself, as he
noted the perturbation he was causing. The newspapers hazarded
countless guesses and surmises, and Daylight was constantly
dogged by a small battalion of reporters. His own interviews
were gems. Discovering the delight the newspapers took in his
vernacular, in his "you-alls," and "sures," and "surge-ups," he
even exaggerated these particularities of speech, exploiting the
phrases he had heard other frontiersmen use, and inventing
occasionally a new one of his own.
A wildly exciting time was his during the week preceding Thursday
the eighteenth. Not only was he gambling as he had never gambled
before, but he was gambling at the biggest table in the world and
for stakes so large that even the case-hardened habitues of that
table were compelled to sit up. In spite of the unlimited
selling, his persistent buying compelled Ward Valley steadily to
rise, and as Thursday approached, the situation became acute.
Something had to smash. How much Ward Valley was this Klondike
gambler going to buy? How much could he buy? What was the Ward
Valley crowd doing all this time? Daylight appreciated the
interviews with them that appeared--interviews delightfully
placid
and non-committal. Leon Guggenhammer even hazarded the opinion
that this Northland Croesus might possibly be making a mistake.
But not that they cared, John Dowsett explained. Nor did they
object. While in the dark regarding his intentions, of one thing
they were certain; namely, that he was bulling Ward Valley. And
they did not mind that. No matter what happened to him and his
spectacular operations, Ward Valley was all right, and would
remain
all right, as firm as the Rock of Gibraltar. No; they had no
Ward
Valley to sell, thank you. This purely fictitious state of the
market was bound shortly to pass, and Ward Valley was not to be
induced to change the even tenor of its way by any insane stock
exchange flurry. "It is purely gambling from beginning to end,"
were Nathaniel Letton's words; "and we refuse to have anything to
do with it or to take notice of it in any way."
During this time Daylight had several secret meetings with his
partners--one with Leon Guggenhammer, one with John Dowsett, and
two with Mr. Howison. Beyond congratulations, they really
amounted to nothing; for, as he was informed, everything was
going satisfactorily.
But on Tuesday morning a rumor that was disconcerting came to
Daylight's ears. It was also published in the Wall Street
Journal, and it was to the effect, on apparently straight inside
information, that on Thursday, when the directors of Ward Valley
met, instead of the customary dividend being declared, an
assessment would be levied. It was the first check Daylight had
received. It came to him with a shock that if the thing were so
he was a broken man. And it also came to him that all this
colossal operating of his was being done on his own money.
Dowsett, Guggenhammer, and Letton were risking nothing. It was a
panic, short-lived, it was true, but sharp enough while it lasted
to make him remember Holdsworthy and the brick-yard, and to
impel him to cancel all buying orders while he rushed to a
telephone.
"Nothing in it--only a rumor," came Leon Guggenhammer's throaty
voice in the receiver. "As you know," said Nathaniel Letton, "I
am one of the directors, and I should certainly be aware of it
were such action contemplated. And John Dowsett: "I warned you
against just such rumors. There is not an iota of truth in
it--certainly not. I tell you on my honor as a gentleman."
Heartily ashamed of himself for his temporary loss of nerve,
Daylight returned to his task. The cessation of buying had
turned the Stock Exchange into a bedlam, and down all the line of
stocks the bears were smashing. Ward Valley, as the ape,
received the brunt of the shock, and was already beginning to
tumble. Daylight calmly doubled his buying orders. And all
through Tuesday and Wednesday, and Thursday morning, he went on
buying, while Ward Valley rose triumphantly higher. Still they
sold, and still he bought, exceeding his power to buy many times
over, when delivery was taken into account. What of that? On
this day the double dividend would be declared, he assured
himself. The pinch of delivery would be on the shorts. They
would be making terms with him.
And then the thunderbolt struck. True to the rumor, Ward Valley
levied the assessment. Daylight threw up his arms. He verified
the report and quit. Not alone Ward Valley, but all securities
were being hammered down by the triumphant bears. As for Ward
Valley, Daylight did not even trouble to learn if it had fetched
bottom or was still tumbling. Not stunned, not even bewildered,
while Wall Street went mad, Daylight withdrew from the field to
think it over. After a short conference with his brokers, he
proceeded to his hotel, on the way picking up the evening papers
and glancing at the head-lines. BURNING DAYLIGHT CLEANED OUT, he
read; DAYLIGHT GETS HIS; ANOTHER WESTERNER FAILS TO FIND EASY
MONEY. As he entered his hotel, a later edition announced the
suicide of a young man, a lamb, who had followed Daylight's play.
What in hell did he want to kill himself for? was Daylight's
muttered comment.
He passed up to his rooms, ordered a Martini cocktail, took off
his shoes, and sat down to think. After half an hour he roused
himself to take the drink, and as he felt the liquor pass
warmingly through his body, his features relaxed into a slow,
deliberate, yet genuine grin. He was laughing at himself.
"Buncoed, by gosh!" he muttered.
Then the grin died away, and his face grew bleak and serious.
Leaving out his interests in the several Western reclamation
projects (which were still assessing heavily), he was a ruined
man. But harder hit than this was his pride. He had been so
easy. They had gold-bricked him, and he had nothing to show for
it. The simplest farmer would have had documents, while he had
nothing but a gentleman's agreement, and a verbal one at that.
Gentleman's agreement. He snorted over it. John Dowsett's
voice,
just as he had heard it in the telephone receiver, sounded in his
ears the words, "On my honor as a gentleman." They were
sneak-thieves and swindlers, that was what they were, and they
had given him the double-cross. The newspapers were right. He
had come to New York to be trimmed, and Messrs. Dowsett, Letton,
and Guggenhammer had done it. He was a little fish, and they had
played with him ten days--ample time in which to swallow him,
along with his eleven millions. Of course, they had been
unloading on him all the time, and now they were buying Ward
Valley back for a song ere the market righted itself. Most
probably, out of his share of the swag, Nathaniel Letton would
erect a couple of new buildings for that university of his. Leon
Guggenhammer would buy new engines for that yacht, or a whole
fleet of yachts. But what the devil Dowsett would do with his
whack, was beyond him--most likely start another string of banks.
And Daylight sat and consumed cocktails and saw back in his life
to Alaska, and lived over the grim years in which he had battled
for his eleven millions. For a while murder ate at his heart,
and wild ideas and sketchy plans of killing his betrayers flashed
through his mind. That was what that young man should have done
instead of killing himself. He should have gone gunning.
Daylight unlocked his grip and took out his automatic pistol--a
big Colt's .44. He released the safety catch with his thumb, and
operating the sliding outer barrel, ran the contents of the clip
through the mechanism. The eight cartridges slid out in a
stream. He refilled the clip, threw a cartridge into the
chamber, and, with the trigger at full cock, thrust up the safety
ratchet. He shoved the weapon into the side pocket of his coat,
ordered another Martini, and resumed his seat.
He thought steadily for an hour, but he grinned no more. Lines
formed in his face, and in those lines were the travail of the
North, the bite of the frost, all that he had achieved and
suffered--the long, unending weeks of trail, the bleak tundra
shore of Point Barrow, the smashing ice-jam of the Yukon, the
battles with animals and men, the lean-dragged days of famine,
the long months of stinging hell among the mosquitoes of the
Koyokuk, the toil of pick and shovel, the scars and mars of
pack-strap and tump-line, the straight meat diet with the dogs,
and all the long procession of twenty full years of toil and
sweat and endeavor.
At ten o'clock he arose and pored over the city directory. Then
he put on his shoes, took a cab, and departed into the night.
Twice he changed cabs, and finally fetched up at the night office
of a detective agency. He superintended the thing himself, laid
down money in advance in profuse quantities, selected the six men
he needed, and gave them their instructions. Never, for so
simple a task, had they been so well paid; for, to each, in
addition to office charges, he gave a five-hundred-dollar bill,
with the promise of another if he succeeded. Some time next day,
he was convinced, if not sooner, his three silent partners would
come together. To each one two of his detectives were to be
attached. Time and place was all he wanted to learn.
"Stop at nothing, boys," were his final instructions. "I must
have this information. Whatever you do, whatever happens, I'll
sure see you through."
Returning to his hotel, he changed cabs as before, went up to his
room, and with one more cocktail for a nightcap, went to bed and
to sleep. In the morning he dressed and shaved, ordered
breakfast and the newspapers sent up, and waited. But he did not
drink. By nine o'clock his telephone began to ring and the
reports to come in. Nathaniel Letton was taking the train at
Tarrytown. John Dowsett was coming down by the subway. Leon
Guggenhammer had not stirred out yet, though he was assuredly
within. And in this fashion, with a map of the city spread out
before him, Daylight followed the movements of his three men as
they drew together. Nathaniel Letton was at his offices in the
Mutual-Solander Building. Next arrived Guggenhammer. Dowsett
was still in his own offices. But at eleven came the word that
he also had arrived, and several minutes later Daylight was in a
hired motor-car and speeding for the Mutual-Solander Building.
CHAPTER IV
Nathaniel Letton was talking when the door opened; he ceased,
and with his two companions gazed with controlled perturbation at
Burning Daylight striding into the room. The free, swinging
movements of the trail-traveler were unconsciously exaggerated in
that stride of his. In truth, it seemed to him that he felt the
trail beneath his feet.
"Howdy, gentlemen, howdy," he remarked, ignoring the unnatural
calm with which they greeted his entrance. He shook hands with
them in turn, striding from one to another and gripping their
hands so heartily that Nathaniel Letton could not forbear to
wince. Daylight flung himself into a massive chair and sprawled
lazily, with an appearance of fatigue. The leather grip he had
brought into the room he dropped carelessly beside him on the
floor
"Goddle mighty, but I've sure been going some," he sighed. "We
sure trimmed them beautiful. It was real slick. And the beauty
of the play never dawned on me till the very end. It was pure
and simple knock down and drag out. And the way they fell for it
was amazin'."
The geniality in his lazy Western drawl reassured them. He was
not so formidable, after all. Despite the act that he had
effected an entrance in the face of Letton's instructions to the
outer office, he showed no indication of making a scene or
playing rough.
"Well," Daylight demanded good-humoredly, "ain't you-all got a
good word for your pardner? Or has his sure enough brilliance
plumb dazzled you-all?"
Letton made a dry sound in his throat. Dowsett sat quietly and
waited, while Leon Guggenhammer struggled into articulation.
"You have certainly raised Cain," he said.
Daylight's black eyes flashed in a pleased way.
"Didn't I, though!" he proclaimed jubilantly. "And didn't we
fool'em! I was totally surprised. I never dreamed they would be
that easy.
"And now," he went on, not permitting the pause to grow awkward,
"we-all might as well have an accounting. I'm pullin' West this
afternoon on that blamed Twentieth Century." He tugged at his
grip, got it open, and dipped into it with both his hands. "But
don't forget, boys, when you-all want me to hornswoggle Wall
Street another flutter, all you-all have to do is whisper the
word. I'll sure be right there with the goods."
His hands emerged, clutching a great mass of stubs, check-books,
and broker's receipts. These he deposited in a heap on the big
table, and dipping again, he fished out the stragglers and added
them to the pile. He consulted a slip of paper, drawn from his
coat pocket, and read aloud:-
"Ten million twenty-seven thousand and forty-two dollars and
sixty-eight cents is my figurin' on my expenses. Of course
that-all's taken from the winnings before we-all get to figurin'
on the whack-up. Where's your figures? It must a' been a Goddle
mighty big clean-up."
The three men looked their bepuzzlement at one another. The man
was a bigger fool than they had imagined, or else he was playing
a game which they could not divine.
Nathaniel Letton moistened his lips and spoke up.
"It will take some hours yet, Mr. Harnish, before the full
accounting can be made. Mr. Howison is at work upon it now.
We--ah--as you say, it has been a gratifying clean-up. Suppose
we
have lunch together and talk it over. I'll have the clerks work
through the noon hour, so that you will have ample time to catch
your train."
Dowsett and Guggenhammer manifested a relief that was almost
obvious. The situation was clearing. It was disconcerting,
under the circumstances, to be pent in the same room with this
heavy-muscled, Indian-like man whom they had robbed. They
remembered unpleasantly the many stories of his strength and
recklessness. If Letton could only put him off long enough for
them to escape into the policed world outside the office door,
all would be well; and Daylight showed all the signs of being put
off.
"I'm real glad to hear that," he said. "I don't want to miss
that train, and you-all have done me proud, gentlemen, letting me
in on this deal. I just do appreciate it without being able to
express my feelings. But I am sure almighty curious, and I'd
like terrible to know, Mr. Letton, what your figures of our
winning is. Can you-all give me a rough estimate?"
Nathaniel Letton did not look appealingly at his two friends, but
in the brief pause they felt that appeal pass out from him.
Dowsett, of sterner mould than the others, began to divine that
the Klondiker was playing. But the other two were still older
the blandishment of his child-like innocence.
"It is extremely--er--difficult," Leon Guggenhammer began. "You
see, Ward Valley has fluctuated so, er--"
"That no estimate can possibly be made in advance," Letton
supplemented.
"Approximate it, approximate it," Daylight counselled cheerfully.
"It don't hurt if you-all are a million or so out one side or the
other. The figures'll straighten that up. But I'm that curious
I'm just itching all over. What d'ye say?"
"Why continue to play at cross purposes?" Dowsett demanded
abruptly and coldly. "Let us have the explanation here and now.
Mr. Harnish is laboring under a false impression, and he should
be set straight. In this deal--"
But Daylight interrupted. He had played too much poker to be
unaware or unappreciative of the psychological factor, and he
headed Dowsett off in order to play the denouncement of the
present game in his own way.
"Speaking of deals," he said, "reminds me of a poker game I once
seen in Reno, Nevada. It wa'n't what you-all would call a
square game. They-all was tin-horns that sat in. But they was a
tenderfoot--short-horns they-all are called out there. He stands
behind the dealer and sees that same dealer give hisself four
aces offen the bottom of the deck. The tenderfoot is sure
shocked. He slides around to the player facin' the dealer across
the table.
"'Say,' he whispers, 'I seen the dealer deal hisself four aces.'
"'Well, an' what of it?" says the player.
"'I'm tryin' to tell you-all because I thought you-all ought to
know,' says the tenderfoot. 'I tell you-all I seen him deal
hisself four aces.'
"'Say, mister,' says the player, 'you-all'd better get outa
here. You-all don't understand the game. It's his deal, ain't
it?'"
The laughter that greeted his story was hollow and perfunctory,
but Daylight appeared not to notice it.
"Your story has some meaning, I suppose," Dowsett said pointedly.
Daylight looked at him innocently and did not reply. He turned
jovially to Nathaniel Letton.
"Fire away," he said. "Give us an approximation of our winning.
As I said before, a million out one way or the other won't
matter, it's bound to be such an almighty big winning." By
this time Letton was stiffened by the attitude Dowsett had taken,
and his answer was prompt and definite.
"I fear you are under a misapprehension, Mr. Harnish. There are
no winnings to be divided with you. Now don't get excited, I beg
of you. I have but to press this button..."
Far from excited, Daylight had all the seeming of being stunned.
He felt absently in his vest pocket for a match, lighted it, and
discovered that he had no cigarette. The three men watched him
with the tense closeness of cats. Now that it had come, they
knew that they had a nasty few minutes before them.
"Do you-all mind saying that over again?" Daylight said. "Seems
to me I ain't got it just exactly right. You-all said...?"
He hung with painful expectancy on Nathaniel Letton's utterance.
"I said you were under a misapprehension, Mr. Harnish, that was
all. You have been stock gambling, and you have been hard hit.
But neither Ward Valley, nor I, nor my associates, feel that we
owe you anything."
Daylight pointed at the heap of receipts and stubs on the table.
"That-all represents ten million twenty-seven thousand and
forty-two dollars and sixty-eight cents, hard cash. Ain't it
good for anything here?"
Letton smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
Daylight looked at Dowsett and murmured:--
"I guess that story of mine had some meaning, after all." He
laughed in a sickly fashion. "It was your deal all right, and
you-all dole them right, too. Well, I ain't kicking. I'm like
the player in that poker game. It was your deal, and you-all had
a right to do your best. And you d-one it-cleaned me out
slicker'n a whistle."
He gazed at the heap on the table with an air of stupefaction.
"And that-all ain't worth the paper it's written on. Gol dast it,
you-all can sure deal 'em 'round when you get a chance.
Oh, no, I ain't a-kicking. It was your deal, and you-all
certainly done me, and a man ain't half a man that squeals on
another man's deal. And now the hand is played out, and the
cards are on the table, and the deal's over, but..."
His hand, dipping swiftly into his inside breast pocket, appeared
with the big Colt's automatic.
"As I was saying, the old deal's finished. Now it's MY deal, and
I'm a-going to see if I can hold them four aces-
"Take your hand away, you whited sepulchre!" he cried sharply.
Nathaniel Letton's hand, creeping toward the push-button on the
desk, was abruptly arrested.
"Change chairs," Daylight commanded. "Take that chair over
there, you gangrene-livered skunk. Jump! By God! or I'll make
you leak till folks'll think your father was a water hydrant and
your mother a sprinkling-cart. You-all move your chair
alongside, Guggenhammer; and you-all Dowsett, sit right there,
while I just irrelevantly explain the virtues of this here
automatic. She's loaded for big game and she goes off eight
times. She's a sure hummer when she gets started.
"Preliminary remarks being over, I now proceed to deal.
Remember, I ain't making no remarks about your deal. You done
your darndest, and it was all right. But this is my deal, and
it's up to me to do my darndest. In the first place, you-all
know me. I'm Burning Daylight--savvee? Ain't afraid of God,
devil, death, nor destruction. Them's my four aces, and they
sure copper your bets. Look at that there living skeleton.
Letton, you're sure afraid to die. Your bones is all rattling
together you're that scared. And look at that fat Jew there.
This little weapon's sure put the fear of God in his heart. He's
yellow as a sick persimmon. Dowsett, you're a cool one. You-all
ain't batted an eye nor turned a hair. That's because you're
great on arithmetic. And that makes you-all dead easy in this
deal of mine. You're sitting there and adding two and two
together, and you-all know I sure got you skinned. You know me,
and that I ain't afraid of nothing. And you-all adds up all your
money and knows you ain't a-going to die if you can help it."
"I'll see you hanged," was Dowsett's retort.
"Not by a damned sight. When the fun starts, you're the first I
plug. I'll hang all right, but you-all won't live to see it.
You-all die here and now while I'll die subject to the law's
delay--savvee? Being dead, with grass growing out of your
carcasses, you won't know when I hang, but I'll sure have the
pleasure a long time of knowing you-all beat me to it."
Daylight paused.
"You surely wouldn't kill us?" Letton asked in a queer, thin
voice.
Daylight shook his head.
"It's sure too expensive. You-all ain't worth it. I'd sooner
have my chips back. And I guess you-all'd sooner give my chips
back than go to the dead-house."
A long silence followed.
"Well, I've done dealt. It's up to you-all to play. But while
you're deliberating, I want to give you-all a warning: if that
door opens and any one of you cusses lets on there's anything
unusual, right here and then I sure start plugging. They ain't a
soul'll get out the room except feet first."
A long session of three hours followed. The deciding factor was
not the big automatic pistol, but the certitude that Daylight
would use it. Not alone were the three men convinced of this,
but Daylight himself was convinced. He was firmly resolved to
kill the men if his money was not forthcoming. It was not an
easy matter, on the spur of the moment, to raise ten millions in
paper currency, and there were vexatious delays. A dozen times
Mr. Howison and the head clerk were summoned into the room. On
these occasions the pistol lay on Daylight's lap, covered
carelessly by a newspaper, while he was usually engaged in
rolling or lighting his brown-paper cigarettes. But in the end,
the thing was accomplished. A suit-case was brought up by one of
the clerks from the waiting motor-car, and Daylight snapped it
shut on the last package of bills. He paused at the door to make
his final remarks.
"There's three several things I sure want to tell you-all. When
I get outside this door, you-all'll be set free to act, and I
just want to warn you-all about what to do. In the first place,
no warrants for my arrest--savvee? This money's mine, and I
ain't
robbed you of it. If it gets out how you gave me the
double-cross
and how I done you back again, the laugh'll be on you, and it'll
sure be an almighty big laugh. You-all can't afford that laugh.
Besides, having got back my stake that you-all robbed me of, if
you
arrest me and try to rob me a second time, I'll go gunning for
you-all, and I'll sure get you. No little fraid-cat shrimps like
you-all can skin Burning Daylight. If you win you lose, and
there'll sure be some several unexpected funerals around this
burg.
Just look me in the eye, and you-all'll savvee I mean business.
Them stubs and receipts on the table is all yourn. Good day."
As the door shut behind him, Nathaniel Letton sprang for the
telephone, and Dowsett intercepted him.
"What are you going to do?" Dowsett demanded.
"The police. It's downright robbery. I won't stand it. I tell
you I won't stand it."
Dowsett smiled grimly, but at the same time bore the slender
financier back and down into his chair.
"We'll talk it over," he said; and in Leon Guggenhammer he found
an anxious ally.
And nothing ever came of it. The thing remained a secret with
the three men. Nor did Daylight ever give the secret away,
though that afternoon, leaning back in his stateroom on the
Twentieth Century, his shoes off, and feet on a chair, he
chuckled long and heartily. New York remained forever puzzled
over the affair; nor could it hit upon a rational explanation.
By all rights, Burning Daylight should have gone broke, yet it
was known that he immediately reappeared in San Francisco
possessing an apparently unimpaired capital. This was evidenced
by the magnitude of the enterprises he engaged in, such as, for
instance, Panama Mail, by sheer weight of money and fighting
power wresting the control away from Shiftily and selling out in
two months to the Harriman interests at a rumored enormous
advance.
CHAPTER V
Back in San Francisco, Daylight quickly added to his reputation
In ways it was not an enviable reputation. Men were afraid of
him. He became known as a fighter, a fiend, a tiger. His play
was a ripping and smashing one, and no one knew where or how his
next blow would fall. The element of surprise was large. He
balked on the unexpected, and, fresh from the wild North, his
mind not operating in stereotyped channels, he was able in
unusual degree to devise new tricks and stratagems. And once he
won the advantage, he pressed it remorselessly. "As relentless
as a Red Indian," was said of him, and it was said truly.
On the other hand, he was known as "square." His word was as
good as his bond, and this despite the fact that he accepted
nobody's word. He always shied at propositions based on
gentlemen's agreements, and a man who ventured his honor as a
gentleman, in dealing with Daylight, inevitably was treated to an
unpleasant time. Daylight never gave his own word unless he held
the whip-hand. It was a case with the other fellow taking it or
nothing.
Legitimate investment had no place in Daylight's play. It tied
up his money, and reduced the element of risk. It was the
gambling side of business that fascinated him, and to play in his
slashing manner required that his money must be ready to hand.
It was never tied up save for short intervals, for he was
principally engaged in turning it over and over, raiding here,
there, and everywhere, a veritable pirate of the financial main.
A five-per cent safe investment had no attraction for him; but to
risk millions in sharp, harsh skirmish, standing to lose
everything or to win fifty or a hundred per cent, was the savor
of life to him. He played according to the rules of the game,
but
he played mercilessly. When he got a man or a corporation down
and
they squealed, he gouged no less hard. Appeals for financial
mercy
fell on deaf ears. He was a free lance, and had no friendly
business associations. Such alliances as were formed
from time to time were purely affairs of expediency, and he
regarded his allies as men who would give him the double-cross or
ruin him if a profitable chance presented. In spite of this
point of view, he was faithful to his allies. But he was
faithful just as long as they were and no longer. The treason
had to come from them, and then it was 'Ware Daylight.
The business men and financiers of the Pacific coast never forgot
the lesson of Charles Klinkner and the California & Altamont
Trust Company. Klinkner was the president. In partnership with
Daylight, the pair raided the San Jose Interurban. The powerful
Lake Power & Electric Lighting corporation came to the rescue,
and Klinkner, seeing what he thought was the opportunity, went
over to the enemy in the thick of the pitched battle. Daylight
lost three millions before he was done with it, and before he was
done with it he saw the California & Altamont Trust Company
hopelessly wrecked, and Charles Klinkner a suicide in a felon's
cell. Not only did Daylight lose his grip on San Jose
Interurban, but in the crash of his battle front he lost heavily
all along the line. It was conceded by those competent to judge
that he could have compromised and saved much. But, instead, he
deliberately threw up the battle with San Jose Interurban and
Lake Power, and, apparently defeated, with Napoleonic suddenness
struck at Klinkner. It was the last unexpected thing Klinkner
would have dreamed of, and Daylight knew it. He knew, further,
that the California & Altamont Trust Company has an intrinsically
sound institution, but that just then it was in a precarious
condition due to Klinkner's speculations with its money. He
knew, also, that in a few months the Trust Company would be more
firmly on its feet than ever, thanks to those same speculations,
and that if he were to strike he must strike immediately. "It's
just that much money in pocket and a whole lot more," he was
reported to have said in connection with his heavy losses. "It's
just so much insurance against the future. Henceforth, men who
go in with me on deals will think twice before they try to
double-cross me, and then some."
The reason for his savageness was that he despised the men with
whom he played. He had a conviction that not one in a hundred of
them was intrinsically square; and as for the square ones, he
prophesied that, playing in a crooked game, they were sure to
lose and in the long run go broke. His New York experience had
opened his eyes. He tore the veils of illusion from the business
game, and saw its nakedness. He generalized upon industry and
society somewhat as follows:--
Society, as organized, was a vast bunco game. There were many
hereditary inefficients--men and women who were not weak enough
to
be confined in feeble-minded homes, but who were not strong
enough to be ought else than hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Then there were the fools who took the organized bunco game
seriously, honoring and respecting it. They were easy game for
the others, who saw clearly and knew the bunco game for what it
was.
Work, legitimate work, was the source of all wealth. That was to
say, whether it was a sack of potatoes, a grand piano, or a
seven-passenger touring car, it came into being only by the
performance of work. Where the bunco came in was in the
distribution of these things after labor had created them. He
failed to see the horny-handed sons of toil enjoying grand pianos
or riding in automobiles. How this came about was explained by
the bunco. By tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands men
sat up nights and schemed how they could get between the workers
and the things the workers produced. These schemers were the
business men. When they got between the worker and his product,
they took a whack out of it for themselves The size of the whack
was determined by no rule of equity; but by their own strength
and swinishness. It was always a case of "all the traffic can
bear." He saw all men in the business game doing this.
One day, in a mellow mood (induced by a string of cocktails and
a hearty lunch), he started a conversation with Jones, the
elevator boy. Jones was a slender, mop-headed, man-grown,
truculent flame of an individual who seemed to go out of his way
to insult his passengers. It was this that attracted Daylight's
interest, and he was not long in finding out what was the matter
with Jones. He was a proletarian, according to his own
aggressive classification, and he had wanted to write for a
living. Failing to win with the magazines, and compelled to find
himself in food and shelter, he had gone to the little valley of
Petacha, not a hundred miles from Los Angeles. Here, toiling in
the day-time, he planned to write and study at night. But the
railroad charged all the traffic would bear. Petacha was a
desert valley, and produced only three things: cattle, fire-wood,
and charcoal. For freight to Los Angeles on a carload of
cattle the railroad charged eight dollars. This, Jones
explained, was due to the fact that the cattle had legs and could
be driven to Los Angeles at a cost equivalent to the charge per
car load. But firewood had no legs, and the railroad charged
just precisely twenty-four dollars a carload.
This was a fine adjustment, for by working hammer-and- tongs
through a twelve-hour day, after freight had been deducted from
the selling price of the wood in Los Angeles, the wood-chopper
received one dollar and sixty cents. Jones had thought to get
ahead of the game by turning his wood into charcoa. His
estimates
were satisfactory. But the railroad also made estimates. It
issued a rate of forty-two dollars a car on charcoal. At the end
of three months, Jones went over his figures, and found that he
was
still making one dollar and sixty cents a day.
"So I quit," Jones concluded. "I went hobbling for a year, and I
got back at the railroads. Leaving out the little things, I came
across the Sierras in the summer and touched a match to the
snow-sheds. They only had a little thirty- thousand-dollar fire.
I guess that squared up all balances due on Petacha."
"Son, ain't you afraid to be turning loose such information?"
Daylight gravely demanded.
"Not on your life," quoth Jones. "They can't prove it. You
could say I said so, and I could say I didn't say so, and a hell
of a lot that evidence would amount to with a jury."
Daylight went into his office and meditated awhile. That was it:
all the traffic would bear. From top to bottom, that was the
rule of the game; and what kept the game going was the fact that
a sucker was born every minute. If a Jones were born every
minute, the game wouldn't last very long. Lucky for the players
that the workers weren't Joneses.
But there were other and larger phases of the game. Little
business men, shopkeepers, and such ilk took what whack they
could out of the product of the worker; but, after all, it was
the large business men who formed the workers through the little
business men. When all was said and done, the latter, like Jones
in Petacha Valley, got no more than wages out of their whack. In
truth, they were hired men for the large business men. Still
again, higher up, were the big fellows. They used vast and
complicated paraphernalia for the purpose, on a large scale of
getting between hundreds of thousands of workers and their
products. These men were not so much mere robbers as gamblers.
And, not content with their direct winnings, being essentially
gamblers, they raided one another. They called this feature of
the game HIGH FINANCE. They were all engaged primarily in
robbing the worker, but every little while they formed
combinations and robbed one another of the accumulated loot.
This explained the fifty-thousand-dollar raid on him by
Holdsworthy and the ten-million-dollar raid on him by Dowsett,
Letton, and Guggenhammer. And when he raided Panama Mail he had
done exactly the same thing. Well, he concluded, it was finer
sport robbing the robbers than robbing the poor stupid workers.
Thus, all unread in philosophy, Daylight preempted for himself
the position and vocation of a twentieth-century superman. He
found, with rare and mythical exceptions, that there was no
noblesse oblige among the business and financial supermen. As
a clever traveler had announced in an after-dinner speech at the
Alta-Pacific, "There was honor amongst thieves, and this was what
distinguished thieves from honest men." That was it. It hit
the nail on the head. These modern supermen were a lot of sordid
banditti who had the successful effrontery to preach a code of
right and wrong to their victims which they themselves did not
practise. With them, a man's word was good just as long as he
was compelled to keep it. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL was only
applicable to the honest worker. They, the supermen, were above
such commandments. They certainly stole and were honored by
their fellows according to the magnitude of their stealings.
The more Daylight played the game, the clearer the situation
grew. Despite the fact that every robber was keen to rob every
other robber, the band was well organized. It practically
controlled the political machinery of society, from the ward
politician up to the Senate of the United States. It passed laws
that gave it privilege to rob. It enforced these laws by means
of the police, the marshals, the militia and regular army, and
the courts. And it was a snap. A superman's chiefest danger was
his fellow-superman. The great stupid mass of the people did not
count. They were constituted of such inferior clay that the
veriest chicanery fooled them. The superman manipulated the
strings, and when robbery of the workers became too slow or
monotonous, they turned loose and robbed one another.
Daylight was philosophical, but not a philosopher. He had never
read the books. He was a hard-headed, practical man, and
farthest from him was any intention of ever reading the books.
He had lived life in the simple, where books were not necessary
for an understanding of life, and now life in the complex
appeared just as simple. He saw through its frauds and fictions,
and found it as elemental as on the Yukon. Men were made of the
same stuff. They had the same passions and desires. Finance was
poker on a larger scale. The men who played were the men who had
stakes. The workers were the fellows toiling for grubstakes. He
saw the game played out according to the everlasting rules, and
he played a hand himself. The gigantic futility of humanity
organized and befuddled by the bandits did not shock him. It was
the natural order. Practically all human endeavors were futile.
He had seen so much of it. His partners had starved and died on
the Stewart. Hundreds of old-timers had failed to locate on
Bonanza and Eldorado, while Swedes and chechaquos had come in
on the moose-pasture and blindly staked millions. It was life,
and life was a savage proposition at best. Men in civilization
robbed because they were so made. They robbed just as cats
scratched, famine pinched, and frost bit.
So it was that Daylight became a successful financier. He did
not
go in for swindling the workers. Not only did he not have the
heart for it, but it did not strike him as a sporting
proposition. The workers were so easy, so stupid. It was more
like slaughtering fat hand-reared pheasants on the English
preserves he had heard about. The sport to him, was in waylaying
the successful robbers and taking their spoils from them. There
was fun and excitement in that, and sometimes they put up the
very devil of a fight. Like Robin Hood of old, Daylight proceeded
to rob the rich; and, in a small way, to distribute to the needy.
But he was charitable after his own fashion. The great mass of
human misery meant nothing to him. That was part of the
everlasting order. He had no patience with the organized
charities and the professional charity mongers. Nor, on the
other hand, was what he gave a conscience dole. He owed no man,
and restitution was unthinkable. What he gave was a largess, a
free, spontaneous gift; and it was for those about him. He never
contributed to an earthquake fund in Japan nor to an open-air
fund in New York City. Instead, he financed Jones, the elevator
boy, for a year that he might write a book. When he learned that
the wife of his waiter at the St. Francis was suffering from
tuberculosis, he sent her to Arizona, and later, when her case
was declared hopeless, he sent the husband, too, to be with her
to the end. Likewise, he bought a string of horse-hair bridles
from a convict in a Western penitentiary, who spread the good
news until it seemed to Daylight that half the convicts in that
institution were making bridles for him. He bought them all,
paying from twenty to fifty dollars each for them. They were
beautiful and honest things, and he decorated all the available
wall-space of his bedroom with them.
The grim Yukon life had failed to make Daylight hard. It
required civilization to produce this result. In the fierce,
savage game he now played, his habitual geniality imperceptibly
slipped away from him, as did his lazy Western drawl. As his
speech became sharp and nervous, so did his mental processes. In
the swift rush of the game he found less and less time to spend
on being merely good-natured. The change marked his face itself.
The lines grew sterner. Less often appeared the playful curl of
his lips, the smile in the wrinkling corners of his eyes. The
eyes themselves, black and flashing, like an Indian's, betrayed
glints of cruelty and brutal consciousness of power. His
tremendous vitality remained, and radiated from all his being,
but it was vitality under the new aspect of the man-trampling
man-conqueror. His battles with elemental nature had been, in a
way, impersonal; his present battles were wholly with the males
of his species, and the hardships of the trail, the river, and
the frost marred him far less than the bitter keenness of the
struggle with his fellows.
He still had recrudescence of geniality, but they were largely
periodical and forced, and they were usually due to the cocktails
he took prior to meal-time. In the North, he had drunk deeply
and at irregular intervals; but now his drinking became
systematic and disciplined. It was an unconscious development,
but it was based upon physical and mental condition. The
cocktails served as an inhibition. Without reasoning or thinking
about it, the strain of the office, which was essentially due to
the daring and audacity of his ventures, required check or
cessation; and he found, through the weeks and months, that the
cocktails supplied this very thing. They constituted a stone
wall. He never drank during the morning, nor in office hours;
but the instant he left the office he proceeded to rear this wall
of alcoholic inhibition athwart his consciousness. The office
became immediately a closed affair. It ceased to exist. In the
afternoon, after lunch, it lived again for one or two hours,
when, leaving it, he rebuilt the wall of inhibition. Of course,
there were exceptions to this; and, such was the rigor of his
discipline, that if he had a dinner or a conference before him in
which, in a business way, he encountered enemies or allies and
planned or prosecuted campaigns, he abstained from drinking. But
the instant the business was settled, his everlasting call went
out for a Martini, and for a double-Martini at that, served in a
long glass so as not to excite comment.
CHAPTER VI
Into Daylight's life came Dede Mason. She came rather
imperceptibly. He had accepted her impersonally along with the
office furnishing, the office boy, Morrison, the chief,
confidential, and only clerk, and all the rest of the accessories
of a superman's gambling place of business. Had he been asked
any
time during the first months she was in his employ, he would have
been unable to tell the color of her eyes. From the fact that
she
was a demiblonde, there resided dimly in his subconsciousness a
conception that she was a brunette. Likewise he had an idea that
she was not thin, while there was an absence in his mind of any
idea that she was fat. As to how she dressed, he had no ideas at
all. He had no trained eye in such matters, nor was he
interested.
He took it for granted, in the lack of any impression to the
contrary, that she was dressed some how. He knew her as "Miss
Mason," and that was all, though he was aware that as a
stenographer she seemed quick and accurate. This
impression, however, was quite vague, for he had had no
experience with other stenographers, and naturally believed that
they were all quick and accurate.
One morning, signing up letters, he came upon an I shall.
Glancing quickly over the page for similar constructions, he
found a number of I wills. The I shall was alone. It stood out
conspicuously. He pressed the call-bell twice, and a moment
later Dede Mason entered. "Did I say that, Miss Mason?" he
asked, extending the letter to her and pointing out the criminal
phrase. A shade of annoyance crossed her face. She stood
convicted.
"My mistake," she said. "I am sorry. But it's not a mistake,
you know," she added quickly.
"How do you make that out?" challenged Daylight. "It sure don't
sound right, in my way of thinking."
She had reached the door by this time, and now turned the
offending
letter in her hand. "It's right just the same."
"But that would make all those I wills wrong, then," he argued.
"It does," was her audacious answer. "Shall I change them?"
"I shall be over to look that affair up on Monday." Daylight
repeated the sentence from the letter aloud. He did it with a
grave, serious air, listening intently to the sound of his own
voice. He shook his head. "It don't sound right, Miss Mason.
It just don't sound right. Why, nobody writes to me that way.
They all say I will--educated men, too, some of them. Ain't that
so?"
"Yes," she acknowledged, and passed out to her machine to make
the
correction.
It chanced that day that among the several men with whom he sat
at luncheon was a young Englishman, a mining engineer. Had it
happened any other time it would have passed unnoticed, but,
fresh from the tilt with his stenographer, Daylight was struck
immediately by the Englishman's I shall. Several times, in the
course of the meal, the phrase was repeated, and Daylight was
certain there was no mistake about it.
After luncheon he cornered Macintosh, one of the members whom he
knew to have been a college man, because of his football
reputation.
"Look here, Bunny," Daylight demanded, "which is right, I shall
be over to look that affair up on Monday, or I will be over to
look that affair up on Monday?"
The ex-football captain debated painfully for a minute. "Blessed
if I know," he confessed. "Which way do I say it?
"Oh, I will, of course."
"Then the other is right, depend upon it. I always was rotten on
grammar."
On the way back to the office, Daylight dropped into a bookstore
and bought a grammar; and for a solid hour, his feet up on the
desk, he toiled through its pages. "Knock off my head with
little apples if the girl ain't right," he communed aloud at the
end of the session. For the first time it struck him that there
was something about his stenographer. He had accepted her up to
then, as a female creature and a bit of office furnishing. But
now, having demonstrated that she knew more grammar than did
business men and college graduates, she became an individual.
She seemed to stand out in his consciousness as conspicuously as
the I shall had stood out on the typed page, and he began to take
notice.
He managed to watch her leaving that afternoon, and he was aware
for the first time that she was well-formed, and that her manner
of dress was satisfying. He knew none of the details of women's
dress, and he saw none of the details of her neat shirt-waist and
well-cut tailor suit. He saw only the effect in a general,
sketchy way. She looked right. This was in the absence of
anything wrong or out of the way.
"She's a trim little good-looker," was his verdict, when the
outer office door closed on her.
The next morning, dictating, he concluded that he liked the way
she did her hair, though for the life of him he could have given
no description of it. The impression was pleasing, that was all.
She sat between him and the window, and he noted that her hair
was light brown, with hints of golden bronze. A pale sun,
shining in, touched the golden bronze into smouldering fires that
were very pleasing to behold. Funny, he thought, that he had
never observed this phenomenon before.
In the midst of the letter he came to the construction which had
caused the trouble the day before. He remembered his wrestle
with the grammar, and dictated.
"I shall meet you halfway this proposition--"
Miss Mason gave a quick look up at him. The action was purely
involuntary, and, in fact, had been half a startle of surprise.
The next instant her eyes had dropped again, and she sat waiting
to go on with the dictation. But in that moment of her glance
Daylight had noted that her eyes were gray. He was later to
learn that at times there were golden lights in those same gray
eyes; but he had seen enough, as it was, to surprise him, for he
became suddenly aware that he had always taken her for a brunette
with brown eyes, as a matter of course.
"You were right, after all," he confessed, with a sheepish grin
that sat incongruously on his stern, Indian-like features.
Again he was rewarded by an upward glance and an acknowledging
smile, and this time he verified the fact that her eyes were
gray.
"But it don't sound right, just the same," he complained. At
this she laughed outright.
"I beg your pardon," she hastened to make amends, and then
spoiled
it by adding, "but you are so funny."
Daylight began to feel a slight awkwardness, and the sun would
persist in setting her hair a-smouldering.
"I didn't mean to be funny," he said.
"That was why I laughed. But it is right, and perfectly good
grammar."
"All right," he sighed--"I shall meet you halfway in this
proposition--got that?" And the dictation went on. He discovered
that in the intervals, when she had nothing to do, she read books
and magazines, or worked on some sort of feminine fancy work.
Passing her desk, once, he picked up a volume of Kipling's poems
and glanced bepuzzled through the pages. "You like reading, Miss
Mason?" he said, laying the book down.
"Oh, yes," was her answer; "very much."
Another time it was a book of Wells', The Wheels of Change.
"What's it all about?" Daylight asked.
"Oh, it's just a novel, a love-story." She stopped, but he still
stood waiting, and she felt it incumbent to go on.
"It's about a little Cockney draper's assistant, who takes a
vacation on his bicycle, and falls in with a young girl very much
above him. Her mother is a popular writer and all that. And the
situation is very curious, and sad, too, and tragic. Would you
care to read it?"
"Does he get her?" Daylight demanded.
"No; that's the point of it. He wasn't--"
"And he doesn't get her, and you've read all them pages, hundreds
of them, to find that out?" Daylight muttered in amazement.
Miss Mason was nettled as well as amused.
"But you read the mining and financial news by the hour," she
retorted.
"But I sure get something out of that. It's business, and it's
different. I get money out of it. What do you get out of
books?"
"Points of view, new ideas, life."
"Not worth a cent cash."
"But life's worth more than cash," she argued.
"Oh, well," he said, with easy masculine tolerance, "so long as
you enjoy it. That's what counts, I suppose; and there's no
accounting for taste."
Despite his own superior point of view, he had an idea that she
knew a lot, and he experienced a fleeting feeling like that of a
barbarian face to face with the evidence of some tremendous
culture. To Daylight culture was a worthless thing, and yet,
somehow, he was vaguely troubled by a sense that there was more
in culture than he imagined.
Again, on her desk, in passing, he noticed a book with which he
was familiar. This time he did not stop, for he had recognized
the cover. It was a magazine correspondent's book on the
Klondike, and he knew that he and his photograph figured in it
and he knew, also, of a certain sensational chapter concerned
with a woman's suicide, and with one "Too much Daylight."
After that he did not talk with her again about books. He
imagined
what erroneous conclusions she had drawn from that particular
chapter, and it stung him the more in that they were undeserved.
Of all unlikely things, to have the reputation of being a
lady-killer,--he, Burning Daylight,--and to have a woman kill
herself out of love for him. He felt that he was a most
unfortunate man and wondered by what luck that one book of all
the thousands of books should have fallen into his stenographer's
hands. For some days afterward he had an uncomfortable sensation
of guiltiness whenever he was in Miss Mason's presence; and once
he was positive that he caught her looking at him with a curious,
intent gaze, as if studying what manner of man he was.
He pumped Morrison, the clerk, who had first to vent his personal
grievance against Miss Mason before he could tell what little he
knew of her.
"She comes from Siskiyou County. She's very nice to work with in
the office, of course, but she's rather stuck on herself--
exclusive, you know."
"How do you make that out?" Daylight queried.
"Well, she thinks too much of herself to associate with those she
works with, in the office here, for instance. She won't have
anything to do with a fellow, you see. I've asked her out
repeatedly, to the theatre and the chutes and such things. But
nothing doing. Says she likes plenty of sleep, and can't stay up
late, and has to go all the way to Berkeley--that's where she
lives."
This phase of the report gave Daylight a distinct satisfaction.
She was a bit above the ordinary, and no doubt about it. But
Morrison's next words carried a hurt.
"But that's all hot air. She's running with the University boys,
that's what she's doing. She needs lots of sleep and can't go to
the theatre with me, but she can dance all hours with them. I've
heard it pretty straight that she goes to all their hops and such
things. Rather stylish and high-toned for a stenographer, I'd
say. And she keeps a horse, too. She rides astride all over
those hills out there. I saw her one Sunday myself. Oh, she's a
high-flyer, and I wonder how she does it. Sixty-five a month
don't go far. Then she has a sick brother, too."
"Live with her people?" Daylight asked.
"No; hasn't got any. They were well to do, I've heard. They
must have been, or that brother of hers couldn't have gone to the
University of California. Her father had a big cattle-ranch, but
he got to fooling with mines or something, and went broke before
he died. Her mother died long before that. Her brother must
cost a lot of money. He was a husky once, played football, was
great on hunting and being out in the mountains and such things.
He got his accident breaking horses, and then rheumatism or
something got into him. One leg is shorter than the other and
withered up some. He has to walk on crutches. I saw her out
with him once--crossing the ferry. The doctors have been
experimenting on him for years, and he's in the French Hospital
now, I think."
All of which side-lights on Miss Mason went to increase
Daylight's interest in her. Yet, much as he desired, he failed
to get acquainted with her. He had thoughts of asking her to
luncheon, but his was the innate chivalry of the frontiersman,
and the thoughts never came to anything. He knew a
self-respecting, square-dealing man was not supposed to take his
stenographer to luncheon. Such things did happen, he knew, for
he heard the chaffing gossip of the club; but he did not think
much of such men and felt sorry for the girls. He had a strange
notion that a man had less rights over those he employed than
over mere acquaintances or strangers. Thus, had Miss Mason not
been his employee, he was confident that he would have had her to
luncheon or the theatre in no time. But he felt that it was an
imposition for an employer, because he bought the time of an
employee in working hours, to presume in any way upon any of the
rest of that employee's time. To do so was to act like a bully.
The situation was unfair. It was taking advantage of the fact
that the employee was dependent on one for a livelihood. The
employee might permit the imposition through fear of angering the
employer and not through any personal inclination at all.
In his own case he felt that such an imposition would be
peculiarly obnoxious, for had she not read that cursed Klondike
correspondent's book? A pretty idea she must have of him, a girl
that was too high-toned to have anything to do with a
good-looking, gentlemanly fellow like Morrison. Also, and down
under all his other reasons, Daylight was timid. The only thing
he had ever been afraid of in his life was woman, and he had been
afraid all his life. Nor was that timidity to be put easily to
flight now that he felt the first glimmering need and desire for
woman. The specter of the apron-string still haunted him, and
helped him to find excuses for getting on no forwarder with Dede
Mason.
CHAPTER VII
Not being favored by chance in getting acquainted with Dede
Mason, Daylight's interest in her slowly waned. This was but
natural, for he was plunged deep in hazardous operations, and the
fascinations of the game and the magnitude of it accounted for
all the energy that even his magnificent organism could generate.
Such was his absorption that the pretty stenographer slowly and
imperceptibly faded from the forefront of his consciousness.
Thus, the first faint spur, in the best sense, of his need for
woman ceased to prod. So far as Dede Mason was concerned, he
possessed no more than a complacent feeling of satisfaction in
that he had a very nice stenographer. And, completely to put the
quietus on any last lingering hopes he might have had of her, he
was in the thick of his spectacular and intensely bitter fight
with the Coastwise Steam Navigation Company, and the Hawaiian,
Nicaraguan, and Pacific-Mexican Steamship-Company. He stirred
up a bigger muss than he had anticipated, and even he was
astounded at the wide ramifications of the struggle and at the
unexpected and incongruous interests that were drawn into it.
Every newspaper in San Francisco turned upon him. It was true,
one or two of them had first intimated that they were open to
subsidization, but Daylight's judgment was that the situation did
not warrant such expenditure. Up to this time the press had been
amusingly tolerant and good-naturedly sensational about him, but
now he was to learn what virulent scrupulousness an antagonized
press was capable of. Every episode of his life was resurrected
to serve as foundations for malicious fabrications. Daylight was
frankly amazed at the new interpretation put upon all he had
accomplished and the deeds he had done. From an Alaskan hero he
was metamorphosed into an Alaskan bully, liar, desperado, and all
around "bad Man." Not content with this, lies upon lies, out of
whole cloth, were manufactured about him. He never replied,
though once he went to the extent of disburdening his mind to
half a dozen reporters. "Do your damnedest," he told them.
"Burning Daylight's bucked bigger things than your dirty, lying
sheets. And I don't blame you, boys... that is, not much.
You can't help it. You've got to live. There's a mighty lot of
women in this world that make their living in similar fashion to
yours, because they're not able to do anything better.
Somebody's got to do the dirty work, and it might as well be you.
You're paid for it, and you ain't got the backbone to rustle
cleaner jobs."
The socialist press of the city jubilantly exploited this
utterance, scattering it broadcast over San Francisco in tens of
thousands of paper dodgers. And the journalists, stung to the
quick, retaliated with the only means in their power-printer's
ink abuse. The attack became bitterer than ever. The whole
affair sank to the deeper deeps of rancor and savageness. The
poor woman who had killed herself was dragged out of her grave
and paraded on thousands of reams of paper as a martyr and a
victim to Daylight's ferocious brutality. Staid, statistical
articles were published, proving that he had made his start by
robbing poor miners of their claims, and that the capstone to his
fortune had been put in place by his treacherous violation of
faith with the Guggenhammers in the deal on Ophir. And there
were editorials written in which he was called an enemy of
society, possessed of the manners and culture of a caveman, a
fomenter of wasteful business troubles, the destroyer of the
city's prosperity in commerce and trade, an anarchist of dire
menace; and one editorial gravely recommended that hanging would
be a lesson to him and his ilk, and concluded with the fervent
hope that some day his big motor-car would smash up and smash him
with it.
He was like a big bear raiding a bee-hive and, regardless of the
stings, he obstinately persisted in pawing for the honey. He
gritted his teeth and struck back. Beginning with a raid on two
steamship companies, it developed into a pitched battle with a
city, a state, and a continental coastline. Very well; they
wanted fight, and they would get it. It was what he wanted, and
he felt justified in having come down from the Klondike, for here
he was gambling at a bigger table than ever the Yukon had
supplied. Allied with him, on a splendid salary, with princely
pickings thrown in, was a lawyer, Larry Hegan, a young Irishman
with a reputation to make, and whose peculiar genius had been
unrecognized until Daylight picked up with him. Hegan had Celtic
imagination and daring, and to such degree that Daylight's cooler
head was necessary as a check on his wilder visions. Hegan's was
a Napoleonic legal mind, without balance, and it was just this
balance that Daylight supplied. Alone, the Irishman was doomed
to failure, but directed by Daylight, he was on the highroad to
fortune and recognition. Also, he was possessed of no more
personal or civic conscience than Napoleon.
It was Hegan who guided Daylight through the intricacies of
modern politics, labor organization, and commercial and
corporation law. It was Hegan, prolific of resource and
suggestion, who opened Daylight's eyes to undreamed possibilities
in twentieth-century warfare; and it was Daylight, rejecting,
accepting, and elaborating, who planned the campaigns and
prosecuted them. With the Pacific coast from Peugeot Sound to
Panama, buzzing and humming, and with San Francisco furiously
about his ears, the two big steamship companies had all the
appearance of winning. It looked as if Burning Daylight was
being beaten slowly to his knees. And then he struck--at the
steamship companies, at San Francisco, at the whole Pacific
coast.
It was not much of a blow at first. A Christian Endeavor
convention being held in San Francisco, a row was started by
Express Drivers' Union No. 927 over the handling of a small heap
of baggage at the Ferry Building. A few heads were broken, a
score of arrests made, and the baggage was delivered. No one
would have guessed that behind this petty wrangle was the fine
Irish hand of Hegan, made potent by the Klondike gold of Burning
Daylight. It was an insignificant affair at best--or so it
seemed. But the Teamsters' Union took up the quarrel, backed by
the whole Water Front Federation. Step by step, the strike
became involved. A refusal of cooks and waiters to serve scab
teamsters or teamsters' employers brought out the cooks and
waiters. The butchers and meat-cutters refused to handle meat
destined for unfair restaurants. The combined Employers'
Associations put up a solid front, and found facing them the
40,000 organized laborers of San Francisco. The restaurant
bakers and the bakery wagon drivers struck, followed by the
milkers, milk drivers, and chicken pickers. The building trades
asserted its position in unambiguous terms, and all San Francisco
was in turmoil.
But still, it was only San Francisco. Hegan's intrigues were
masterly, and Daylight's campaign steadily developed. The
powerful fighting organization known as the Pacific Slope
Seaman's Union refused to work vessels the cargoes of which were
to be handled by scab longshoremen and freight-handlers. The
union presented its ultimatum, and then called a strike. This
had been Daylight's objective all the time. Every incoming
coastwise vessel was boarded by the union officials and its crew
sent ashore. And with the Seamen went the firemen, the
engineers, and the sea cooks and waiters. Daily the number of
idle steamers increased. It was impossible to get scab crews,
for the men of the Seaman's Union were fighters trained in the
hard school of the sea, and when they went out it meant blood and
death to scabs. This phase of the strike spread up and down the
entire Pacific coast, until all the ports were filled with idle
ships, and sea transportation was at a standstill. The days and
weeks dragged out, and the strike held. The Coastwise Steam
Navigation Company, and the Hawaiian, Nicaraguan, and
Pacific-Mexican Steamship Company were tied up completely. The
expenses of combating the strike were tremendous, and they were
earning nothing, while daily the situation went from bad to
worse, until "peace at any price" became the cry. And still
there was no peace, until Daylight and his allies played out
their hand, raked in the winnings, and allowed a goodly portion
of a continent to resume business.
It was noted, in following years, that several leaders of workmen
built themselves houses and blocks of renting flats and took
trips to the old countries, while, more immediately, other
leaders and "dark horses" came to political preferment and the
control of the municipal government and the municipal moneys. In
fact, San Francisco's boss-ridden condition was due in greater
degree to Daylight's widespreading battle than even San Francisco
ever dreamed. For the part he had played, the details of which
were practically all rumor and guesswork, quickly leaked out, and
in consequence he became a much-execrated and well-hated man.
Nor had Daylight himself dreamed that his raid on the steamship
companies would have grown to such colossal proportions.
But he had got what he was after. He had played an exciting hand
and won, beating the steamship companies down into the dust and
mercilessly robbing the stockholders by perfectly legal methods
before he let go. Of course, in addition to the large sums of
money he had paid over, his allies had rewarded themselves by
gobbling the advantages which later enabled them to loot the
city. His alliance with a gang of cutthroats had brought about a
lot of cutthroating. But his conscience suffered no twinges. He
remembered what he had once heard an old preacher utter, namely,
that they who rose by the sword perished by the sword. One took
his chances when he played with cutting throats, and his,
Daylight's, throat was still intact. That was it! And he had
won. It was all gamble and war between the strong men. The
fools did not count. They were always getting hurt; and that
they always had been getting hurt was the conclusion he drew from
what little he knew of history. San Francisco had wanted war,
and he had given it war. It was the game. All the big fellows
did the same, and they did much worse, too.
"Don't talk to me about morality and civic duty," he replied to a
persistent interviewer. "If you quit your job tomorrow and went
to work on another paper, you would write just what you were told
to write. It's morality and civic duty now with you; on the new
job it would be backing up a thieving railroad with... morality
and civic duty, I suppose. Your price, my son, is just about
thirty per week. That's what you sell for. But your paper would
sell for a bit more. Pay its price to-day, and it would shift
its present rotten policy to some other rotten policy; but it
would never let up on morality and civic duty.
"And all because a sucker is born every minute. So long as the
people stand for it, they'll get it good and plenty, my son. And
the shareholders and business interests might as well shut up
squawking about how much they've been hurt. You never hear ary
squeal out of them when they've got the other fellow down and are
gouging him. This is the time THEY got gouged, and that's all
there is to it. Talk about mollycoddles! Son, those same
fellows would steal crusts from starving men and pull gold
fillings from the mouths of corpses, yep, and squawk like Sam
Scratch if some blamed corpse hit back. They're all tarred with
the same brush, little and big. Look at your Sugar Trust--with
all its millions stealing water like a common thief from New York
City, and short-weighing the government on its phoney scales.
Morality and civic duty! Son, forget it."
CHAPTER VIII
Daylight's coming to civilization had not improved him. True,
he wore better clothes, had learned slightly better manners, and
spoke better English. As a gambler and a man-trampler he had
developed remarkable efficiency. Also, he had become used to a
higher standard of living, and he had whetted his wits to razor
sharpness in the fierce, complicated struggle of fighting males.
But he had hardened, and at the expense of his old-time,
whole-souled geniality. Of the essential refinements of
civilization he knew nothing. He did not know they existed. He
had become cynical, bitter, and brutal. Power had its effect on
him that it had on all men. Suspicious of the big exploiters,
despising the fools of the exploited herd, he had faith only in
himself. This led to an undue and erroneous exaltation of his
ego, while kindly consideration of others--nay, even simple
respect--was destroyed, until naught was left for him but to
worship at the shrine of self. Physically, he was not the man of
iron muscles who had come down out of the Arctic. He did not
exercise sufficiently, ate more than was good for him, and drank
altogether too much. His muscles were getting flabby, and his
tailor called attention to his increasing waistband. In fact,
Daylight was developing a definite paunch. This physical
deterioration was manifest likewise in his face. The lean Indian
visage was suffering a city change. The slight hollows in the
cheeks under the high cheek-bones had filled out. The beginning
of puff-sacks under the eyes was faintly visible. The girth of
the neck had increased, and the first crease and fold of a double
chin were becoming plainly discernible. The old effect of
asceticism, bred of terrific hardships and toil, had vanished;
the features had become broader and heavier, betraying all the
stigmata of the life he lived, advertising the man's
self-indulgence, harshness, and brutality.
Even his human affiliations were descending. Playing a lone
hand, contemptuous of most of the men with whom he played,
lacking in sympathy or understanding of them, and certainly
independent of them, he found little in common with those to be
encountered, say at the Alta-Pacific. In point of fact, when the
battle with the steamship companies was at its height and his
raid was inflicting incalculable damage on all business
interests, he had been asked to resign from the Alta-Pacific.
The idea had been rather to his liking, and he had found new
quarters in clubs like the Riverside, organized and practically
maintained by the city bosses. He found that he really liked
such men better. They were more primitive and simple, and they
did not put on airs. They were honest buccaneers, frankly in the
game for what they could get out of it, on the surface more raw
and savage, but at least not glossed over with oily or graceful
hypocrisy. The Alta-Pacific had suggested that his resignation
be kept a private matter, and then had privily informed the
newspapers. The latter had made great capital out of the forced
resignation, but Daylight had grinned and silently gone his way,
though registering a black mark against more than one club member
who was destined to feel, in the days to come, the crushing
weight of the Klondiker's financial paw.
The storm-centre of a combined newspaper attack lasting for
months, Daylight's character had been torn to shreds. There was
no fact in his history that had not been distorted into a
criminality or a vice. This public making of him over into an
iniquitous monster had pretty well crushed any lingering hope he
had of getting acquainted with Dede Mason. He felt that there
was no chance for her ever to look kindly on a man of his
caliber, and, beyond increasing her salary to seventy-five
dollars a month, he proceeded gradually to forget about her. The
increase was made known to her through Morrison, and later she
thanked Daylight, and that was the end of it.
One week-end, feeling heavy and depressed and tired of the city
and its ways, he obeyed the impulse of a whim that was later to
play an important part in his life. The desire to get out of the
city for a whiff of country air and for a change of scene was the
cause. Yet, to himself, he made the excuse of going to Glen
Ellen for the purpose of inspecting the brickyard with which
Holdsworthy had goldbricked him.
He spent the night in the little country hotel, and on Sunday
morning, astride a saddle-horse rented from the Glen Ellen
butcher, rode out of the village. The brickyard was close at
hand on the flat beside the Sonoma Creek. The kilns were visible
among the trees, when he glanced to the left and caught sight of
a cluster of wooded knolls half a mile away, perched on the
rolling slopes of Sonoma Mountain. The mountain, itself wooded,
towered behind. The trees on the knolls seemed to beckon to him.
The dry, early-summer air, shot through with sunshine, was wine
to him. Unconsciously he drank it in deep breaths. The prospect
of the brickyard was uninviting. He was jaded with all things
business, and the wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse was
between his legs--a good horse, he decided; one that sent him
back
to the cayuses he had ridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood.
He
had been somewhat of a rider in those early days, and the champ
of
bit and creak of saddle-leather sounded good to him now.
Resolving to have his fun first, and to look over the brickyard
afterward, he rode on up the hill, prospecting for a way across
country to get to the knolls. He left the country road at the
first gate he came to and cantered through a hayfield. The grain
was waist-high on either side the wagon road, and he sniffed the
warm aroma of it with delighted nostrils. Larks flew up before
him, and from everywhere came mellow notes. From the appearance
of the road it was patent that it had been used for hauling clay
to the now idle brickyard. Salving his conscience with the idea
that this was part of the inspection, he rode on to the
clay-pit--a huge scar in a hillside. But he did not linger long,
swinging off again to the left and leaving the road. Not a
farm-house was in sight, and the change from the city crowding
was essentially satisfying. He rode now through open woods,
across little flower-scattered glades, till he came upon a
spring. Flat on the ground, he drank deeply of the clear water,
and, looking about him, felt with a shock the beauty of the
world. It came to him like a discovery; he had never realized it
before, he concluded, and also, he had forgotten much. One could
not sit in at high finance and keep track of such things. As he
drank in the air, the scene, and the distant song of larks, he
felt like a poker-player rising from a night-long table and
coming forth from the pent atmosphere to taste the freshness of
the morn.
At the base of the knolls he encountered a tumble-down
stake-and-rider fence. From the look of it he judged it must be
forty years old at least--the work of some first pioneer who had
taken up the land when the days of gold had ended. The woods
were very thick here, yet fairly clear of underbrush, so that,
while the blue sky was screened by the arched branches, he was
able to ride beneath. He now found himself in a nook of several
acres, where the oak and manzanita and madrono gave way to
clusters of stately redwoods. Against the foot of a steep-sloped
knoll he came upon a magnificent group of redwoods that seemed to
have gathered about a tiny gurgling spring.
He halted his horse, for beside the spring uprose a wild
California lily. It was a wonderful flower, growing there in the
cathedral nave of lofty trees. At least eight feet in height,
its stem rose straight and slender, green and bare for two-thirds
its length, and then burst into a shower of snow-white waxen
bells. There were hundreds of these blossoms, all from the one
stem, delicately poised and ethereally frail. Daylight had never
seen anything like it. Slowly his gaze wandered from it to all
that was about him. He took off his hat, with almost a vague
religious feeling. This was different. No room for contempt and
evil here. This was clean and fresh and beautiful-something he
could respect. It was like a church. The atmosphere was one of
holy calm. Here man felt the prompting of nobler things. Much
of this and more was in Daylight's heart as he looked about him.
But it was not a concept of his mind. He merely felt it without
thinking about it at all.
On the steep incline above the spring grew tiny maidenhair ferns,
while higher up were larger ferns and brakes. Great,
moss-covered trunks of fallen trees lay here and there, slowly
sinking back and merging into the level of the forest mould.
Beyond, in a slightly clearer space, wild grape and honeysuckle
swung in green riot from gnarled old oak trees. A gray Douglas
squirrel crept out on a branch and watched him. From somewhere
came the distant knocking of a woodpecker. This sound did not
disturb the hush and awe of the place. Quiet woods, noises
belonged there and made the solitude complete. The tiny bubbling
ripple of the spring and the gray flash of tree-squirrel were as
yardsticks with which to measure the silence and motionless
repose.
"Might be a million miles from anywhere," Daylight whispered to
himself.
But ever his gaze returned to the wonderful lily beside the
bubbling spring.
He tethered the horse and wandered on foot among the knolls.
Their tops were crowned with century-old spruce trees, and their
sides clothed with oaks and madronos and native holly. But to
the perfect redwoods belonged the small but deep canon that
threaded its way among the knolls. Here he found no passage out
for his horse, and he returned to the lily beside the spring. On
foot, tripping, stumbling, leading the animal, he forced his way
up the hillside. And ever the ferns carpeted the way of his
feet, ever the forest climbed with him and arched overhead, and
ever the clean joy and sweetness stole in upon his senses.
On the crest he came through an amazing thicket of velvet-trunked
young madronos, and emerged on an open hillside that led down
into
a tiny valley. The sunshine was at first dazzling in its
brightness, and he paused and rested, for he was panting from the
exertion. Not of old had he known shortness of breath such as
this, and muscles that so easily tired at a stiff climb. A tiny
stream ran down the tiny valley through a tiny meadow that was
carpeted knee-high with grass and blue and white nemophila. The
hillside was covered with Mariposa lilies and wild hyacinth, down
through which his horse dropped slowly, with circumspect feet and
reluctant gait.
Crossing the stream, Daylight followed a faint cattle trail over
a low, rocky hill and through a wine-wooded forest of manzanita,
and emerged upon another tiny valley, down which filtered another
spring-fed, meadow-bordered streamlet. A jack-rabbit bounded
from a bush under his horse's nose, leaped the stream, and
vanished up the opposite hillside of scrub-oak. Daylight watched
it admiringly as he rode on to the head of the meadow. Here he
startled up a many-pronged buck, that seemed to soar across the
meadow, and to soar over the stake-and-rider fence, and, still
soaring, disappeared in a friendly copse beyond.
Daylight's delight was unbounded. It seemed to him that he had
never been so happy. His old woods' training was aroused, and he
was keenly interested in everything in the moss on the trees and
branches; in the bunches of mistletoe hanging in the oaks; in the
nest of a wood-rat; in the water-cress growing in the sheltered
eddies of the little stream; in the butterflies drifting through
the rifted sunshine and shadow; in the blue jays that flashed in
splashes of gorgeous color across the forest aisles; in the tiny
birds, like wrens, that hopped among the bushes and imitated
certain minor quail-calls; and in the crimson-crested woodpecker
that ceased its knocking and cocked its head on one side to
survey him. Crossing the stream, he struck faint vestiges of a
wood-road, used, evidently, a generation back, when the meadow
had been cleared of its oaks. He found a hawk's nest on the
lightning-shattered tipmost top of a six-foot redwood. And to
complete it all his horse stumbled upon several large broods of
half-grown quail, and the air was filled with the thrum of their
flight. He halted and watched the young ones "petrifying" and
disappearing on the ground before his eyes, and listening to the
anxious calls of the old ones hidden in the thickets.
"It sure beats country places and bungalows at Menlo Park," he
communed aloud; "and if ever I get the hankering for country
life, it's me for this every time."
The old wood-road led him to a clearing, where a dozen acres of
grapes grew on wine-red soil. A cow-path, more trees and
thickets, and he dropped down a hillside to the southeast
exposure. Here, poised above a big forested canon, and looking
out upon Sonoma Valley, was a small farm-house. With its barn
and outhouses it snuggled into a nook in the hillside, which
protected it from west and north. It was the erosion from this
hillside, he judged, that had formed the little level stretch of
vegetable garden. The soil was fat and black, and there was
water in plenty, for he saw several faucets running wide open.
Forgotten was the brickyard. Nobody was at home, but Daylight
dismounted and ranged the vegetable garden, eating strawberries
and green peas, inspecting the old adobe barn and the rusty
plough and harrow, and rolling and smoking cigarettes while he
watched the antics of several broods of young chickens and the
mother hens. A foottrail that led down the wall of the big
canyon invited him, and he proceeded to follow it. A
water-pipe, usually above ground, paralleled the trail, which he
concluded led upstream to the bed of the creek. The wall of the
canon was several hundred feet from top to bottom, and
magnificent were the untouched trees that the place was plunged
in perpetual shade. He measured with his eye spruces five and
six feet in diameter and redwoods even larger. One such he
passed, a twister that was at least ten or eleven feet through.
The trail led straight to a small dam where was the intake for
the pipe that watered the vegetable garden. Here, beside the
stream, were alders and laurel trees, and he walked through
fern-brakes higher than his head. Velvety moss was everywhere,
out of which grew maiden-hair and gold-back ferns.
Save for the dam, it was a virgin wild. No ax had invaded, and
the trees died only of old age and stress of winter storm. The
huge trunks of those that had fallen lay moss-covered, slowly
resolving back into the soil from which they sprang. Some had
lain so long that they were quite gone, though their faint
outlines, level with the mould, could still be seen. Others
bridged the stream, and from beneath the bulk of one monster half
a dozen younger trees, overthrown and crushed by the fall,
growing out along the ground, still lived and prospered, their
roots bathed by the stream, their upshooting branches catching
the sunlight through the gap that had been made in the forest
roof.
Back at the farm-house, Daylight mounted and rode on away from
the ranch and into the wilder canons and steeper steeps beyond.
Nothing could satisfy his holiday spirit now but the ascent of
Sonoma Mountain. And here on the crest, three hours afterward,
he emerged, tired and sweaty, garments torn and face and hands
scratched, but with sparkling eyes and an unwonted zestfulness of
expression. He felt the illicit pleasure of a schoolboy playing
truant. The big gambling table of San Francisco seemed very far
away. But there was more than illicit pleasure in his mood. It
was as though he were going through a sort of cleansing bath. No
room here for all the sordidness, meanness, and viciousness that
filled the dirty pool of city existence. Without pondering in
detail upon the matter at all, his sensations were of
purification and uplift. Had he been asked to state how he felt,
he would merely have said that he was having a good time; for he
was unaware in his self-consciousness of the potent charm of
nature that was percolating through his city-rotted body and
brain--potent, in that he came of an abysmal past of wilderness
dwellers, while he was himself coated with but the thinnest rind
of crowded civilization.
There were no houses in the summit of Sonoma Mountain, and, all
alone under the azure California sky, he reined in on the
southern edge of the peak. He saw open pasture country,
intersected with wooded canons, descending to the south and west
from his feet, crease on crease and roll on roll, from lower
level to lower level, to the floor of Petaluma Valley, flat as a
billiard-table, a cardboard affair, all patches and squares of
geometrical regularity where the fat freeholds were farmed.
Beyond, to the west, rose range on range of mountains cuddling
purple mists of atmosphere in their valleys; and still beyond,
over the last range of all, he saw the silver sheen of the
Pacific. Swinging his horse, he surveyed the west and north,
from Santa Rosa to St. Helena, and on to the east, across Sonoma
to the chaparral-covered range that shut off the view of Napa
Valley. Here, part way up the eastern wall of Sonoma Valley, in
range of a line intersecting the little village of Glen Ellen, he
made out a scar upon a hillside. His first thought was that it
was the dump of a mine tunnel, but remembering that he was not in
gold-bearing country, he dismissed the scar from his mind and
continued the circle of his survey to the southeast, where,
across the waters of San Pablo Bay, he could see, sharp and
distant, the twin peaks of Mount Diablo. To the south was Mount
Tamalpais, and, yes, he was right, fifty miles away, where the
draughty winds of the Pacific blew in the Golden Gate, the smoke
of San Francisco made a low-lying haze against the sky.
"I ain't seen so much country all at once in many a day," he
thought aloud.
He was loath to depart, and it was not for an hour that he was
able to tear himself away and take the descent of the mountain.
Working out a new route just for the fun of it, late afternoon
was upon him when he arrived back at the wooded knolls. Here, on
the top of one of them, his keen eyes caught a glimpse of a shade
of green sharply differentiated from any he had seen all day.
Studying it for a minute, he concluded that it was composed of
three cypress trees, and he knew that nothing else than the hand
of man could have planted them there. Impelled by curiosity
purely boyish, he made up his mind to investigate. So densely
wooded was the knoll, and so steep, that he had to dismount and
go up on foot, at times even on hands and knees struggling hard
to force a way through the thicker underbrush. He came out
abruptly upon the cypresses. They were enclosed in a small
square of ancient fence; the pickets he could plainly see had
been hewn and sharpened by hand. Inside were the mounds of two
children's graves. Two wooden headboards, likewise hand-hewn,
told the state Little David, born 1855, died 1859; and Little
Roy, born 1853, died 1860.
"The poor little kids," Daylight muttered. The graves showed
signs of recent care. Withered bouquets of wild flowers were on
the mounds, and the lettering on the headboards was freshly
painted. Guided by these clews, Daylight cast about for a trail,
and found one leading down the side opposite to his ascent.
Circling the base of the knoll, he picked up with his horse and
rode on to the farm-house. Smoke was rising from the chimney and
he was quickly in conversation with a nervous, slender young man,
who, he learned, was only a tenant on the ranch. How large was
it? A matter of one hundred and eighty acres, though it seemed
much larger. This was because it was so irregularly shaped.
Yes, it included the clay-pit and all the knolls, and its
boundary that ran along the big canon was over a mile long.
"You see," the young man said, "it was so rough and broken that
when they began to farm this country the farmers bought in the
good land to the edge of it. That's why its boundaries are all
gouged and jagged."
"Oh, yes, he and his wife managed to scratch a living without
working too hard. They didn't have to pay much rent. Hillard,
the owner, depended on the income from the clay-pit. Hillard was
well off, and had big ranches and vineyards down on the flat of
the valley. The brickyard paid ten cents a cubic yard for the
clay. As for the rest of the ranch, the land was good in
patches, where it was cleared, like the vegetable garden and the
vineyard, but the rest of it was too much up-and-down.
"You're not a farmer," Daylight said. The young man laughed and
shook his head. "No; I'm a telegraph operator. But the wife and
I decided to take a two years' vacation, and... here we are
But the time's about up. I'm going back into the office this
fall after I get the grapes off."
Yes, there were about eleven acres in the vineyard--wine grapes.
The price was usually good. He grew most of what they ate. If
he owned the place, he'd clear a patch of land on the side-hill
above the vineyard and plant a small home orchard. The soil was
good. There was plenty of pasturage all over the ranch, and
there were several cleared patches, amounting to about fifteen
acres in all, where he grew as much mountain hay as could be
found. It sold for three to five dollars more a ton than the
rank-stalked valley hay.
Daylight listened, there came to him a sudden envy of this young
fellow living right in the midst of all this which Daylight had
travelled through the last few hours.
"What in thunder are you going back to the telegraph office for?"
he demanded.
The young man smiled with a certain wistfulness. "Because we
can't get ahead here..." (he hesitated an instant), "and
because there are added expenses coming. The rent, small as it
is, counts; and besides, I'm not strong enough to effectually
farm the place. If I owned it, or if I were a real husky like
you, I'd ask nothing better. Nor would the wife." Again the
wistful smile hovered on his face. "You see, we're country born,
and after bucking with cities for a few years, we kind of feel we
like the country best. We've planned to get ahead, though, and
then some day we'll buy a patch of land and stay with it."
The graves of the children? Yes, he had relettered them and hoed
the weeds out. It had become the custom. Whoever lived on the
ranch did that. For years, the story ran, the father and mother
had returned each summer to the graves. But there had come a
time when they came no more, and then old Hillard started the
custom. The scar across the valley? An old mine. It had never
paid. The men had worked on it, off and on, for years, for the
indications had been good. But that was years and years ago. No
paying mine had ever been struck in the valley, though there had
been no end of prospect-holes put down and there had been a sort
of rush there thirty years back.
A frail-looking young woman came to the door to call the young
man to supper. Daylight's first thought was that city living had
not agreed with her. And then he noted the slight tan and
healthy glow that seemed added to her face, and he decided that
the country was the place for her. Declining an invitation to
supper, he rode on for Glen Ellen sitting slack-kneed in the
saddle and softly humming forgotten songs. He dropped down the
rough, winding road through covered pasture, with here and
there thickets of manzanita and vistas of open glades. He
listened greedily to the quail calling, and laughed outright,
once, in sheer joy, at a tiny chipmunk that fled scolding up a
bank, slipping on the crumbly surface and falling down, then
dashing across the road under his horse's nose and, still
scolding, scrabbling up a protecting oak.
Daylight could not persuade himself to keep to the travelled
roads that day, and another cut across country to Glen Ellen
brought him upon a canon that so blocked his way that he was glad
to follow a friendly cow-path. This led him to a small frame
cabin. The doors and windows were open, and a cat was nursing a
litter of kittens in the doorway, but no one seemed at home. He
descended the trail that evidently crossed the canon. Part way
down, he met an old man coming up through the sunset. In his
hand he carried a pail of foamy milk. He wore no hat, and in his
face, framed with snow-white hair and beard, was the ruddy glow
and content of the passing summer day. Daylight thought that he
had never seen so contented-looking a being.
"How old are you, daddy?" he queried.
"Eighty-four," was the reply. "Yes, sirree, eighty-four,and
spryer
than most."
"You must a' taken good care of yourself," Daylight suggested.
"I don't know about that. I ain't loafed none. I walked across
the Plains with an ox-team and fit Injuns in '51, and I was a
family man then with seven youngsters. I reckon I was as old
then as you are now, or pretty nigh on to it."
"Don't you find it lonely here?"
The old man shifted the pail of milk and reflected. "That all
depends," he said oracularly. "I ain't never been lonely except
when the old wife died. Some fellers are lonely in a crowd, and
I'm one of them. That's the only time I'm lonely, is when I go
to 'Frisco. But I don't go no more, thank you 'most to death.
This is good enough for me. I've ben right here in this valley
since '54--one of the first settlers after the Spaniards."
Daylight started his horse, saying:-
"Well, good night, daddy. Stick with it. You got all the young
bloods skinned, and I guess you've sure buried a mighty sight of
them."
The old man chuckled, and Daylight rode on, singularly at peace
with himself and all the world. It seemed that the old
contentment of trail and camp he had known on the Yukon had come
back to him. He could not shake from his eyes the picture of the
old pioneer coming up the trail through the sunset light. He was
certainly going some for eighty-four. The thought of following
his example entered Daylight's mind, but the big game of San
Francisco vetoed the idea.
"Well, anyway," he decided, "when I get old and quit the game,
I'll settle down in a place something like this, and the city can
go to hell."
CHAPTER IX
Instead of returning to the city on Monday, Daylight rented the
butcher's horse for another day and crossed the bed of the valley
to its eastern hills to look at the mine. It was dryer and
rockier
here than where he had been the day before, and the ascending
slopes supported mainly chaparral, scrubby and dense and
impossible
to penetrate on horseback. But in the canyons water was
plentiful
and also a luxuriant forest growth. The mine was an abandoned
affair, but he enjoyed the half-hour's scramble
around. He had had experience in quartz-mining before he went to
Alaska, and he enjoyed the recrudescence of his old wisdom in
such matters. The story was simple to him: good prospects that
warranted the starting of the tunnel into the sidehill; the three
months' work and the getting short of money; the lay-off while
the men went away and got jobs; then the return and a new stretch
of work, with the "pay" ever luring and ever receding into the
mountain, until, after years of hope, the men had given up and
vanished. Most likely they were dead by now, Daylight thought,
as
he turned in the saddle and looked back across the canyon at the
ancient dump and dark mouth of the tunnel.
As on the previous day, just for the joy of it, he followed
cattle-trails at haphazard and worked his way up toward the
summits. Coming out on a wagon road that led upward, he followed
it for several miles, emerging in a small, mountain-encircled
valley, where half a dozen poor ranchers farmed the wine-grapes
on the steep slopes. Beyond, the road pitched upward. Dense
chaparral covered the exposed hillsides but in the creases of the
canons huge spruce trees grew, and wild oats and flowers.
Half an hour later, sheltering under the summits themselves, he
came out on a clearing. Here and there, in irregular patches
where the steep and the soil favored, wine grapes were growing.
Daylight could see that it had been a stiff struggle, and that
wild nature showed fresh signs of winning--chaparral that had
invaded the clearings; patches and parts of patches of vineyard,
unpruned, grassgrown, and abandoned; and everywhere old
stake-and-rider fences vainly striving to remain intact. Here,
at a small farm-house surrounded by large outbuildings, the road
ended. Beyond, the chaparral blocked the way.
He came upon an old woman forking manure in the barnyard, and
reined in by the fence.
"Hello, mother," was his greeting; "ain't you got any men-folk
around to do that for you?"
She leaned on her pitchfork, hitched her skirt in at the waist,
and regarded him cheerfully. He saw that her toil-worn,
weather-exposed hands were like a man's, callused,
large-knuckled, and gnarled, and that her stockingless feet were
thrust into heavy man's brogans.
"Nary a man," she answered. "And where be you from, and all the
way up here? Won't you stop and hitch and have a glass of wine?"
Striding clumsily but efficiently, like a laboring-man, she led
him into the largest building, where Daylight saw a hand-press
and all the paraphernalia on a small scale for the making of
wine. It was too far and too bad a road to haul the grapes to
the valley wineries, she explained, and so they were compelled to
do it themselves. "They," he learned, were she and her daughter,
the latter a widow of forty-odd. It had been easier before the
grandson died and before he went away to fight savages in the
Philippines. He had died out there in battle.
Daylight drank a full tumbler of excellent Riesling, talked a few
minutes, and accounted for a second tumbler. Yes, they just
managed not to starve. Her husband and she had taken up this
government land in '57 and cleared it and farmed it ever since,
until he died, when she had carried it on. It actually didn't
pay for the toil, but what were they to do? There was the wine
trust, and wine was down. That Riesling? She delivered it to
the
railroad down in the valley for twenty-two cents a gallon. And
it was a long haul. It took a day for the round trip. Her
daughter was gone now with a load.
Daylight knew that in the hotels, Riesling, not quite so good
even, was charged for at from a dollar and a half to two dollars
a quart. And she got twenty-two cents a gallon. That was the
game. She was one of the stupid lowly, she and her people before
her--the ones that did the work, drove their oxen across the
Plains, cleared and broke the virgin land, toiled all days and
all hours, paid their taxes, and sent their sons and grandsons
out to fight and die for the flag that gave them such ample
protection that they were able to sell their wine for twenty-two
cents. The same wine was served to him at the St. Francis for
two dollars a quart, or eight dollars a short gallon. That was
it.
Between her and her hand-press on the mountain clearing and him
ordering his wine in the hotel was a difference of seven dollars
and seventy-eight cents. A clique of sleek men in the city got
between her and him to just about that amount. And, besides
them, there was a horde of others that took their whack. They
called it railroading, high finance, banking, wholesaling, real
estate, and such things, but the point was that they got it,
while she got what was left,--twenty-two cents. Oh, well, a
sucker was born every minute, he sighed to himself, and nobody
was to blame; it was all a game, and only a few could win, but it
was damned hard on the suckers.
"How old are you, mother?" he asked.
"Seventy-nine come next January."
"Worked pretty hard, I suppose?"
"Sense I was seven. I was bound out in Michigan state until I
was woman-grown. Then I married, and I reckon the work got
harder and harder."
"When are you going to take a rest?"
She looked at him, as though she chose to think his question
facetious, and did not reply.
"Do you believe in God?"
She nodded her head.
"Then you get it all back," he assured her; but in his heart he
was wondering about God, that allowed so many suckers to be born
and that did not break up the gambling game by which they were
robbed from the cradle to the grave.
"How much of that Riesling you got?"
She ran her eyes over the casks and calculated. "Just short of
eight hundred gallons."
He wondered what he could do with all of it, and speculated as to
whom he could give it away.
"What would you do if you got a dollar a gallon for it?" he
asked.
"Drop dead, I suppose."
"No; speaking seriously."
"Get me some false teeth, shingle the house, and buy a new wagon.
The road's mighty hard on wagons."
"And after that?"
"Buy me a coffin."
"Well, they're yours, mother, coffin and all."
She looked her incredulity.
"No; I mean it. And there's fifty to bind the bargain. Never
mind
the receipt. It's the rich ones that need watching, their
memories
being so infernal short, you know. Here's my address. You've
got
to deliver it to the railroad. And now, show me the way out of
here. I want to get up to the top."
On through the chaparral he went, following faint cattle.
trails and working slowly upward till he came out on the divide
and gazed down into Napa Valley and back across to Sonoma
Mountain... "A sweet land," he muttered, "an almighty sweet
land."
Circling around to the right and dropping down along the
cattle-trails, he quested for another way back to Sonoma Valley;
but the cattle-trails seemed to fade out, and the chaparral to
grow thicker with a deliberate viciousness and even when he won
through in places, the canon and small feeders were too
precipitous for his horse, and turned him back. But there was no
irritation about it. He enjoyed it all, for he was back at his
old game of bucking nature. Late in the afternoon he broke
through, and followed a well-defined trail down a dry canon.
Here he got a fresh thrill. He had heard the baying of the hound
some minutes before, and suddenly, across the bare face of the
hill above him, he saw a large buck in flight. And not far
behind came the deer-hound, a magnificent animal. Daylight sat
tense in his saddle and watched until they disappeared, his
breath just a trifle shorter, as if he, too, were in the chase,
his nostrils distended, and in his bones the old hunting ache and
memories of the days before he came to live in cities.
The dry canon gave place to one with a slender ribbon of running
water. The trail ran into a wood-road, and the wood-road emerged
across a small flat upon a slightly travelled county road. There
were no farms in this immediate section, and no houses. The soil
was meagre, the bed-rock either close to the surface or
constituting the surface itself. Manzanita and scrub-oak,
however, flourished and walled the road on either side with a
jungle growth. And out a runway through this growth a man
suddenly scuttled in a way that reminded Daylight of a rabbit.
He was a little man, in patched overalls; bareheaded, with a
cotton shirt open at the throat and down the chest. The sun was
ruddy-brown in his face, and by it his sandy hair was bleached on
the ends to peroxide blond. He signed to Daylight to halt, and
held up a letter. "If you're going to town, I'd be obliged if
you mail this."
"I sure will." Daylight put it into his coat pocket.
"Do you live hereabouts, stranger?"
But the little man did not answer. He was gazing at Daylight in
a surprised and steadfast fashion.
"I know you," the little man announced. "You're Elam
Harnish--Burning Daylight, the papers call you. Am I right?"
Daylight nodded.
"But what under the sun are you doing here in the chaparral?"
Daylight grinned as he answered, "Drumming up trade for a free
rural delivery route."
"Well, I'm glad I wrote that letter this afternoon," the little
man went on, "or else I'd have missed seeing you. I've seen your
photo in the papers many a time, and I've a good memory for
faces. I recognized you at once. My name's Ferguson."
"Do you live hereabouts?" Daylight repeated his query.
"Oh, yes. I've got a little shack back here in the bush a hundred
yards, and a pretty spring, and a few fruit trees and berry
bushes.
Come in and take a look. And that spring is a dandy. You never
tasted water like it. Come in and try it."
Walking and leading his horse, Daylight followed the
quick-stepping eager little man through the green tunnel and
emerged abruptly upon the clearing, if clearing it might be
called, where wild nature and man's earth-scratching were
inextricably blended. It was a tiny nook in the hills, protected
by the steep walls of a canon mouth. Here were several large
oaks, evidencing a richer soil. The erosion of ages from the
hillside had slowly formed this deposit of fat earth. Under the
oaks, almost buried in them, stood a rough, unpainted cabin, the
wide verandah of which, with chairs and hammocks, advertised an
out-of doors bedchamber. Daylight's keen eyes took in every
thing. The clearing was irregular, following the patches of the
best soil, and every fruit tree and berry bush, and even each
vegetable plant, had the water personally conducted to it. The
tiny irrigation channels were every where, and along some of them
the water was running.
Ferguson looked eagerly into his visitor's face for signs of
approbation.
"What do you think of it, eh?"
"Hand-reared and manicured, every blessed tree," Daylight
laughed, but the joy and satisfaction that shone in his eyes
contented the little man.
"Why, d'ye know, I know every one of those trees as if they were
sons of mine. I planted them, nursed them, fed them, and brought
them up. Come on and peep at the spring."
"It's sure a hummer," was Daylight's verdict, after due
inspection and sampling, as they turned back for the house.
The interior was a surprise. The cooking being done in the
small, lean-to kitchen, the whole cabin formed a large living
room. A great table in the middle was comfortably littered with
books and magazines. All the available wall space, from floor to
ceiling, was occupied by filled bookshelves. It seemed to
Daylight that he had never seen so many books assembled in one
place. Skins of wildcat, 'coon, and deer lay about on the
pine-board floor.
"Shot them myself, and tanned them, too," Ferguson proudly
asserted.
The crowning feature of the room was a huge fireplace of rough
stones and boulders.
"Built it myself," Ferguson proclaimed, "and, by God, she drew!
Never a wisp of smoke anywhere save in the pointed channel, and
that during the big southeasters.
Daylight found himself charmed and made curious by the little
man. Why was he hiding away here in the chaparral, he and his
books? He was nobody's fool, anybody could see that. Then why?
The whole affair had a tinge of adventure, and Daylight accepted
an invitation to supper, half prepared to find his host a
raw-fruit-and-nut-eater or some similar sort of health faddest.
At table, while eating rice and jack-rabbit curry (the latter
shot by Ferguson), they talked it over, and Daylight found the
little man had no food "views." He ate whatever he liked, and
all he wanted, avoiding only such combinations that experience
had taught him disagreed with his digestion.
Next, Daylight surmised that he might be touched with religion;
but, quest about as he would, in a conversation covering the most
divergent topics, he could find no hint of queerness or
unusualness. So it was, when between them they had washed and
wiped the dishes and put them away, and had settled down to a
comfortable smoke, that Daylight put his question.
"Look here, Ferguson. Ever since we got together, I've been
casting about to find out what's wrong with you, to locate a
screw loose somewhere, but I'll be danged if I've succeeded.
What are you doing here, anyway? What made you come here? What
were you doing for a living before you came here? Go ahead and
elucidate yourself."
Ferguson frankly showed his pleasure at the questions.
"First of all," he began, "the doctors wound up by losing all
hope for me. Gave me a few months at best, and that, after a
course in sanatoriums and a trip to Europe and another to
Hawaii. They tried electricity, and forced feeding, and fasting.
I was a graduate of about everything in the curriculum. They
kept me poor with their bills while I went from bad to worse.
The trouble with me was two fold: first, I was a born weakling;
and next, I was living unnaturally--too much work, and
responsibility, and strain. I was managing editor of the
Times-Tribune--"
Daylight gasped mentally, for the Times-Tribune was the biggest
and most influential paper in San Francisco, and always had been
so.
"--and I wasn't strong enough for the strain. Of course my body
went back on me, and my mind, too, for that matter. It had to be
bolstered up with whiskey, which wasn't good for it any more than
was the living in clubs and hotels good for my stomach and the
rest of me. That was what ailed me; I was living all wrong."
He shrugged his shoulders and drew at his pipe.
"When the doctors gave me up, I wound up my affairs and gave the
doctors up. That was fifteen years ago. I'd been hunting
through here when I was a boy, on vacations from college, and
when I was all down and out it seemed a yearning came to me to go
back to the country. So I quit, quit everything, absolutely, and
came to live in the Valley of the Moon--that's the Indian name,
you know, for Sonoma Valley. I lived in the lean-to the first
year; then I built the cabin and sent for my books. I never knew
what happiness was before, nor health. Look at me now and dare
to tell me that I look forty-seven."
"I wouldn't give a day over forty," Daylight confessed.
"Yet the day I came here I looked nearer sixty, and that was
fifteen years ago."
They talked along, and Daylight looked at the world from new
angles. Here was a man, neither bitter nor cynical, who laughed
at the city-dwellers and called them lunatics; a man who did not
care for money, and in whom the lust for power had long since
died. As for the friendship of the city-dwellers, his host spoke
in no uncertain terms.
"What did they do, all the chaps I knew, the chaps in the clubs
with whom I'd been cheek by jowl for heaven knows how long? I
was not beholden to them for anything, and when I slipped out
there was not one of them to drop me a line and say, 'How are
you, old man? Anything I can do for you?' For several weeks it
was: 'What's become of Ferguson?" After that I became a
reminiscence and a memory. Yet every last one of them knew I had
nothing but my salary and that I'd always lived a lap ahead of
it."
"But what do you do now?" was Daylight's query. "You must need
cash to buy clothes and magazines?"
"A week's work or a month's work, now and again, ploughing in the
winter, or picking grapes in the fall, and there's always odd
jobs with the farmers through the summer. I don't need much, so
I don't have to work much. Most of my time I spend fooling
around the place. I could do hack work for the magazines and
newspapers; but I prefer the ploughing and the grape picking.
Just look at me and you can see why. I'm hard as rocks. And I
like the work. But I tell you a chap's got to break in to it.
It's a great thing when he's learned to pick grapes a whole long
day and come home at the end of it with that tired happy feeling,
instead of being in a state of physical collapse. That
fireplace--those big stones--I was soft, then, a little, anemic,
alcoholic degenerate, with the spunk of a rabbit and about one
per cent as much stamina, and some of those big stones nearly
broke my back and my heart. But I persevered, and used my body
in the way Nature intended it should be used--not bending over a
desk and swilling whiskey... and, well, here I am, a better man
for
it, and there's the fireplace, fine and dandy, eh?
"And now tell me about the Klondike, and how you turned San
Francisco upside down with that last raid of yours. You're a
bonny fighter, you know, and you touch my imagination, though my
cooler reason tells me that you are a lunatic like the rest. The
lust for power! It's a dreadful affliction. Why didn't you stay
in your Klondike? Or why don't you clear out and live a natural
life, for instance, like mine? You see, I can ask questions,
too. Now you talk and let me listen for a while."
It was not until ten o'clock that Daylight parted from Ferguson.
As he rode along through the starlight, the idea came to him of
buying the ranch on the other side of the valley. There was no
thought in his mind of ever intending to live on it. His game
was
in San Francisco. But he liked the ranch, and as soon as he got
back to the office he would open up negotiations with Hillard.
Besides, the ranch included the clay-pit, and it would give him
the
whip-hand over Holdsworthy if he ever tried to cut up any didoes.
CHAPTER X
The time passed, and Daylight played on at the game. But the
game had entered upon a new phase. The lust for power in the
mere gambling and winning was metamorphosing into the lust for
power in order to revenge. There were many men in San Francisco
against whom he had registered black marks, and now and again,
with one of his lightning strokes, he erased such a mark. He
asked no quarter; he gave no quarter. Men feared and hated him,
and no one loved him, except Larry Hegan, his lawyer, who would
have laid down his life for him. But he was the only man with
whom Daylight was really intimate, though he was on terms of
friendliest camaraderie with the rough and unprincipled following
of the bosses who ruled the Riverside Club.
On the other hand, San Francisco's attitude toward Daylight had
undergone a change. While he, with his slashing buccaneer
methods, was a distinct menace to the more orthodox financial
gamblers, he was nevertheless so grave a menace that they were
glad enough to leave him alone. He had already taught them the
excellence of letting a sleeping dog lie. Many of the men, who
knew that they were in danger of his big bear-paw when it reached
out for the honey vats, even made efforts to placate him, to get
on the friendly side of him. The Alta-Pacific approached him
confidentially with an offer of reinstatement, which he promptly
declined. He was after a number of men in that club, and,
whenever opportunity offered, he reached out for them and mangled
them. Even the newspapers, with one or two blackmailing
exceptions, ceased abusing him and became respectful. In short,
he was looked upon as a bald-faced grizzly from the Arctic wilds
to whom it was considered expedient to give the trail. At the
time he raided the steamship companies, they had yapped at him
and worried him, the whole pack of them, only to have him whirl
around and whip them in the fiercest pitched battle San Francisco
had ever known. Not easily forgotten was the Pacific Slope
Seaman's strike and the giving over of the municipal government
to the labor bosses and grafters. The destruction of Charles
Klinkner and the California and Altamont Trust Company had been a
warning. But it was an isolated case; they had been confident in
strength in numbers--until he taught them better.
Daylight still engaged in daring speculations, as, for instance,
at the impending outbreak of the Japanese-Russian War, when, in
the face of the experience and power of the shipping gamblers, he
reached out and clutched practically a monopoly of available
steamer-charters. There was scarcely a battered tramp on the
Seven Seas that was not his on time charter. As usual, his
position was, "You've got to come and see me"; which they did,
and, to use another of his phrases, they "paid through the nose"
for the privilege. And all his venturing and fighting had now
but
one motive. Some day, as he confided to Hegan, when he'd made a
sufficient stake, he was going back to New York and knock the
spots
out of Messrs. Dowsett, Letton, and Guggenhammer. He'd
show them what an all-around general buzz-saw he was and what a
mistake they'd made ever to monkey with him. But he never lost
his head, and he knew that he was not yet strong enough to go
into death-grapples with those three early enemies. In the
meantime the black marks against them remained for a future
easement day.
Dede Mason was still in the office. He had made no more
overtures, discussed no more books and no more grammar. He had
no active interest in her, and she was to him a pleasant memory
of what had never happened, a joy, which, by his essential
nature, he was barred from ever knowing. Yet, while his interest
had gone to sleep and his energy was consumed in the endless
battles he waged, he knew every trick of the light on her hair,
every quick denote mannerism of movement, every line of her
figure as expounded by her tailor-made gowns. Several times, six
months or so apart, he had increased her salary, until now she
was receiving ninety dollars a month. Beyond this he dared not
go, though he had got around it by making the work easier. This
he had accomplished after her return from a vacation, by
retaining her substitute as an assistant. Also, he had changed
his office suite, so that now the two girls had a room by
themselves.
His eye had become quite critical wherever Dede Mason was
concerned. He had long since noted her pride of carriage. It
was unobtrusive, yet it was there. He decided, from the way she
carried it, that she deemed her body a thing to be proud of, to
be cared for as a beautiful and valued possession. In this, and
in the way she carried her clothes, he compared her with her
assistant, with the stenographers he encountered in other
offices, with the women he saw on the sidewalks. "She's sure
well put up," he communed with himself; "and she sure knows how
to dress and carry it off without being stuck on herself and
without laying it on thick."
The more he saw of her, and the more he thought he knew of her,
the more unapproachable did she seem to him. But since he had no
intention of approaching her, this was anything but an
unsatisfactory fact. He was glad he had her in his office, and
hoped she'd stay, and that was about all.
Daylight did not improve with the passing years. The life was
not good for him. He was growing stout and soft, and there was
unwonted flabbiness in his muscles. The more he drank cocktails,
the more he was compelled to drink in order to get the desired
result, the inhibitions that eased him down from the concert
pitch of his operations. And with this went wine, too, at meals,
and the long drinks after dinner of Scotch and soda at the
Riverside. Then, too, his body suffered from lack of exercise;
and, from lack of decent human associations, his moral fibres
were weakening. Never a man to hide anything, some of his
escapades became public, such as speeding, and of joy-rides in
his big red motor-car down to San Jose with companions distinctly
sporty--incidents that were narrated as good fun and comically in
the newspapers.
Nor was there anything to save him. Religion had passed him by.
"A long time dead" was his epitome of that phase of speculation.
He was not interested in humanity. According to his rough-hewn
sociology, it was all a gamble. God was a whimsical, abstract,
mad thing called Luck. As to how one happened to be
born--whether
a sucker or a robber--was a gamble to begin with; Luck dealt out
the cards, and the little babies picked up the hands allotted
them.
Protest was vain. Those were their cards and they had to play
them, willy-nilly, hunchbacked or straight backed, crippled or
clean-limbed, addle-pated or clear- headed. There was no
fairness
in it. The cards most picked up put them into the sucker class;
the cards of a few enabled them to become robbers. The playing
of
the cards was life--the crowd of players, society.
The table was the earth, and the earth, in lumps and chunks, from
loaves of bread to big red motor-cars, was the stake. And in the
end, lucky and unlucky, they were all a long time dead.
It was hard on the stupid lowly, for they were coppered to lose
from the start; but the more he saw of the others, the apparent
winners, the less it seemed to him that they had anything to brag
about. They, too, were a long time dead, and their living did
not amount to much. It was a wild animal fight; the strong
trampled the weak, and the strong, he had already
discovered,--men
like Dowsett, and Letton, and Guggenhammer,--were not necessarily
the best. He remembered his miner comrades of the Arctic. They
were the stupid lowly, they did the hard work and were robbed of
the fruit of their toil just as was the old woman making wine in
the Sonoma hills; and yet they had finer qualities of truth, and
loyalty, and square-dealing than did the men who robbed them.
The
winners seemed to be the crooked ones, the unfaithful ones, the
wicked ones. And even they had no say in the matter. They
played
the cards that were given them; and Luck, the monstrous, mad-god
thing, the owner of the whole shebang, looked on and grinned. It
was he who stacked the universal card-deck of existence.
There was no justice in the deal. The little men that came, the
little pulpy babies, were not even asked if they wanted to try a
flutter at the game. They had no choice. Luck jerked them into
life, slammed them up against the jostling table, and told them:
"Now play, damn you, play!" And they did their best, poor little
devils. The play of some led to steam yachts and mansions; of
others, to the asylum or the pauper's ward. Some played the one
same card, over and over, and made wine all their days in the
chaparral, hoping, at the end, to pull down a set of false teeth
and a coffin. Others quit the game early, having drawn cards
that called for violent death, or famine in the Barrens, or
loathsome and lingering disease. The hands of some called for
kingship and irresponsible and numerated power; other hands
called for ambition, for wealth in untold sums, for disgrace and
shame, or for women and wine.
As for himself, he had drawn a lucky hand, though he could not
see all the cards. Somebody or something might get him yet. The
mad god, Luck, might be tricking him along to some such end. An
unfortunate set of circumstances, and in a month's time the
robber gang might be war-dancing around his financial carcass.
This very day a street-car might run him down, or a sign fall
from a building and smash in his skull. Or there was disease,
ever rampant, one of Luck's grimmest whims. Who could say?
To-morrow, or some other day, a ptomaine bug, or some other of a
thousand bugs, might jump out upon him and drag him down. There
was Doctor Bascom, Lee Bascom who had stood beside him a week ago
and talked and argued, a picture of magnificent youth, and
strength, and health. And in three days he was dead--pneumonia,
rheumatism of the heart, and heaven knew what else--at the end
screaming in agony that could be heard a block away. That had
been terrible. It was a fresh, raw stroke in Daylight's
consciousness. And when would his own turn come? Who could say?
In the meantime there was nothing to do but play the cards he
could see in his hand, and they were BATTLE, REVENGE, AND
COCKTAILS. And Luck sat over all and grinned.
CHAPTER XI
One Sunday, late in the afternoon, found Daylight across the bay
in the Piedmont hills back of Oakland. As usual, he was in a big
motor-car, though not his own, the guest of Swiftwater Bill,
Luck's own darling, who had come down to spend the clean-up of
the seventh fortune wrung from the frozen Arctic gravel. A
notorious spender, his latest pile was already on the fair road
to follow the previous six. He it was, in the first year of
Dawson, who had cracked an ocean of champagne at fifty dollars a
quart; who, with the bottom of his gold-sack in sight, had
cornered the egg-market, at twenty-four dollars per dozen, to the
tune of one hundred and ten dozen, in order to pique the
lady-love who had jilted him; and he it was, paying like a prince
for speed, who had chartered special trains and broken all
records between San Francisco and New York. And here he was once
more, the "luck-pup of hell," as Daylight called him, throwing
his latest fortune away with the same old-time facility.
It was a merry party, and they had made a merry day of it,
circling the bay from San Francisco around by San Jose and up to
Oakland, having been thrice arrested for speeding, the third
time, however, on the Haywards stretch, running away with their
captor. Fearing that a telephone message to arrest them had been
flashed ahead, they had turned into the back-road through the
hills, and now, rushing in upon Oakland by a new route, were
boisterously discussing what disposition they should make of the
constable.
"We'll come out at Blair Park in ten minutes," one of the men
announced. "Look here, Swiftwater, there's a crossroads right
ahead, with lots of gates, but it'll take us backcountry clear
into Berkeley. Then we can come back into Oakland from the other
side, sneak across on the ferry, and send the machine back around
to-night with the chauffeur."
But Swiftwater Bill failed to see why he should not go into
Oakland by way of Blair Park, and so decided.
The next moment, flying around a bend, the back-road they were
not going to take appeared. Inside the gate leaning out from her
saddle and just closing it, was a young woman on a chestnut
sorrel. With his first glimpse, Daylight felt there was
something strangely familiar about her. The next moment,
straightening up in the saddle with a movement he could not fail
to identify, she put the horse into a gallop, riding away with
her back toward them. It was Dede Mason--he remembered what
Morrison had told him about her keeping a riding horse, and he
was glad she had not seen him in this riotous company.
Swiftwater Bill stood up, clinging with one hand to the back of
the front seat and waving the other to attract her attention.
His lips were pursed for the piercing whistle for which he was
famous and which Daylight knew of old, when Daylight, with a hook
of his leg and a yank on the shoulder, slammed the startled Bill
down into his seat.
"You m-m-must know the lady," Swiftwater Bill spluttered.
"I sure do," Daylight answered, "so shut up."
"Well, I congratulate your good taste, Daylight. She's a peach,
and she rides like one, too."
Intervening trees at that moment shut her from view, and
Swiftwater Bill plunged into the problem of disposing of their
constable, while Daylight, leaning back with closed eyes, was
still seeing Dede Mason gallop off down the country road.
Swiftwater Bill was right. She certainly could ride. And,
sitting astride, her seat was perfect. Good for Dede! That was
an added point, her having the courage to ride in the only
natural and logical manner. Her head as screwed on right, that
was one thing sure.
On Monday morning, coming in for dictation, he looked at her with
new interest, though he gave no sign of it; and the stereotyped
business passed off in the stereotyped way. But the following
Sunday found him on a horse himself, across the bay and riding
through the Piedmont hills. He made a long day of it, but no
glimpse did he catch of Dede Mason, though he even took the
back-road of many gates and rode on into Berkeley. Here, along
the lines of multitudinous houses, up one street and down
another, he wondered which of them might be occupied by her.
Morrison had said long ago that she lived in Berkeley, and she
had been headed that way in the late afternoon of the previous
Sunday--evidently returning home.
It had been a fruitless day, so far as she was concerned; and yet
not entirely fruitless, for he had enjoyed the open air and the
horse under him to such purpose that, on Monday, his instructions
were out to the dealers to look for the best chestnut sorrel that
money could buy. At odd times during the week he examined
numbers of chestnut sorrels, tried several, and was unsatisfied.
It was not till Saturday that he came upon Bob. Daylight knew
him for what he wanted the moment he laid eyes on him. A large
horse for a riding animal, he was none too large for a big man
like Daylight. In splendid condition, Bob's coat in the sunlight
was a flame of fire, his arched neck a jeweled conflagration.
"He's a sure winner," was Daylight's comment; but the dealer was
not so sanguine. He was selling the horse on commission, and its
owner had insisted on Bob's true charactor being given. The
dealer gave it.
"Not what you'd call a real vicious horse, but a dangerous one.
Full of vinegar and all-round cussedness, but without malice.
Just as soon kill you as not, but in a playful sort of way, you
understand, without meaning to at all. Personally, I wouldn't
think of riding him. But he's a stayer. Look at them lungs.
And look at them legs. Not a blemish. He's never been hurt or
worked. Nobody ever succeeded in taking it out of him. Mountain
horse, too, trail-broke and all that, being raised in rough
country. Sure-footed as a goat, so long as he don't get it into
his head to cut up. Don't shy. Ain't really afraid, but makes
believe. Don't buck, but rears. Got to ride him with a
martingale. Has a bad trick of whirling around without cause
It's his idea of a joke on his rider. It's all just how he feels
One day he'll ride along peaceable and pleasant for twenty miles.
Next day, before you get started, he's well-nigh unmanageable.
Knows automobiles so he can lay down alongside of one and sleep
or eat hay out of it. He'll let nineteen go by without batting
an eye, and mebbe the twentieth, just because he's feeling
frisky,
he'll cut up over like a range cayuse. Generally
speaking, too lively for a gentleman, and too unexpected.
Present owner nicknamed him Judas Iscariot, and refuses to sell
without the buyer knowing all about him first. There, that's
about all I know, except look at that mane and tail. Ever see
anything like it? Hair as fine as a baby's."
The dealer was right. Daylight examined the mane and found it
finer than any horse's hair he had ever seen. Also, its color
was unusual in that it was almost auburn. While he ran his
fingers through it, Bob turned his head and playfully nuzzled
Daylight's shoulder
"Saddle him up, and I'll try him," he told the dealer. "I wonder
if he's used to spurs. No English saddle, mind. Give me a good
Mexican and a curb bit--not too severe, seeing as he likes to
rear."
Daylight superintended the preparations, adjusting the curb strap
and the stirrup length, and doing the cinching. He shook his
head at the martingale, but yielded to the dealer's advice and
allowed it to go on. And Bob, beyond spirited restlessness and a
few playful attempts, gave no trouble. Nor in the hour's ride
that followed, save for some permissible curveting and prancing,
did he misbehave. Daylight was delighted; the purchase was
immediately made; and Bob, with riding gear and personal
equipment, was despatched across the bay forthwith to take up his
quarters in the stables of the Oakland Riding Academy.
The next day being Sunday, Daylight was away early, crossing on
the ferry and taking with him Wolf, the leader of his sled team,
the one dog which he had selected to bring with him when he left
Alaska. Quest as he would through the Piedmont hills and along
the many-gated back-road to Berkeley, Daylight saw nothing of
Dede Mason and her chestnut sorrel. But he had little time for
disappointment, for his own chestnut sorrel kept him busy. Bob
proved a handful of impishness and contrariety, and he tried out
his rider as much as his rider tried him out. All of Daylight's
horse knowledge and horse sense was called into play, while Bob,
in turn, worked every trick in his lexicon. Discovering that his
martingale had more slack in it than usual, he proceeded to give
an exhibition of rearing and hind-leg walking. After ten
hopeless minutes of it, Daylight slipped off and tightened the
martingale, whereupon Bob gave an exhibition of angelic goodness.
He fooled Daylight completely. At the end of half an hour of
goodness, Daylight, lured into confidence, was riding along at a
walk and rolling a cigarette, with slack knees and relaxed seat,
the reins lying on the animal's neck. Bob whirled abruptly and
with lightning swiftness, pivoting on his hind legs, his fore
legs just lifted clear of the ground. Daylight found himself
with his right foot out of the stirrup and his arms around the
animal's neck; and Bob took advantage of the situation to bolt
down the road. With a hope that he should not encounter Dede
Mason at that moment, Daylight regained his seat and checked in
the horse.
Arrived back at the same spot, Bob whirled again. This time
Daylight kept his seat, but, beyond a futile rein across the
neck, did nothing to prevent the evolution. He noted that Bob
whirled to the right, and resolved to keep him straightened out
by a spur on the left. But so abrupt and swift was the whirl
that warning and accomplishment were practically simultaneous.
"Well, Bob," he addressed the animal, at the same time wiping the
sweat from his own eyes, "I'm free to confess that you're sure
the blamedest all-fired quickest creature I ever saw. I guess
the way to fix you is to keep the spur just a-touching--ah! you
brute!"
For, the moment the spur touched him, his left hind leg had
reached forward in a kick that struck the stirrup a smart blow.
Several times, out of curiosity, Daylight attempted the spur,
and each time Bob's hoof landed the stirrup. Then Daylight,
following the horse's example of the unexpected, suddenly drove
both spurs into him and reached him underneath with the quirt.
"You ain't never had a real licking before," he muttered as Bob,
thus rudely jerked out of the circle of his own impish mental
processes, shot ahead.
Half a dozen times spurs and quirt bit into him, and then
Daylight settled down to enjoy the mad magnificent gallop. No
longer punished, at the end of a half mile Bob eased down into a
fast canter. Wolf, toiling in the rear, was catching up, and
everything was going nicely.
"I'll give you a few pointers on this whirling game, my boy,"
Daylight was saying to him, when Bob whirled.
He did it on a gallop, breaking the gallop off short by fore legs
stiffly planted. Daylight fetched up against his steed's neck
with clasped arms, and at the same instant, with fore feet clear
of the ground, Bob whirled around. Only an excellent rider could
have escaped being unhorsed, and as it was, Daylight was nastily
near to it. By the time he recovered his seat, Bob was in full
career, bolting the way he had come, and making Wolf side-jump to
the bushes.
"All right, darn you!" Daylight grunted, driving in spurs and
quirt again and again. "Back-track you want to go, and
back-track you sure will go till you're dead sick of it."
When, after a time, Bob attempted to ease down the mad pace,
spurs and quirt went into him again with undiminished vim and put
him to renewed effort. And when, at last, Daylight decided
that the horse had had enough, he turned him around abruptly and
put him into a gentle canter on the forward track. After a time
he reined him in to a stop to see if he were breathing painfully.
Standing for a minute, Bob turned his head and nuzzled his
rider's stirrup in a roguish, impatient way, as much as to
intimate that it was time they were going on.
"Well, I'll be plumb gosh darned!" was Daylight's comment. "No
ill-will, no grudge, no nothing-and after that lambasting! You're
sure a hummer, Bob."
Once again Daylight was lulled into fancied security. For an
hour Bob was all that could be desired of a spirited mount, when,
and as usual without warning, he took to whirling and bolting.
Daylight put a stop to this with spurs and quirt, running him
several punishing miles in the direction of his bolt. But when
he turned him around and started forward, Bob proceeded to feign
fright at trees, cows, bushes, Wolf, his own shadow--in short, at
every ridiculously conceivable object. At such times, Wolf lay
down in the shade and looked on, while Daylight wrestled it out.
So the day passed. Among other things, Bob developed a trick of
making believe to whirl and not whirling. This was as
exasperating as the real thing, for each time Daylight was fooled
into tightening his leg grip and into a general muscular tensing
of all his body. And then, after a few make-believe attempts,
Bob actually did whirl and caught Daylight napping again and
landed him in the old position with clasped arms around the neck.
And to the end of the day, Bob continued to be up to one trick or
another; after passing a dozen automobiles on the way into
Oakland, suddenly electing to go mad with fright at a most
ordinary little runabout. And just before he arrived back at the
stable he capped the day with a combined whirling and rearing
that
broke the martingale and enabled him to gain a perpendicular
position on his hind legs. At this juncture a rotten stirrup
leather parted, and Daylight was all but unhorsed.
But he had taken a liking to the animal, and repented not of his
bargain. He realized that Bob was not vicious nor mean, the
trouble being that he was bursting with high spirits and was
endowed with more than the average horse's intelligence. It was
the spirits and the intelligence, combined with inordinate
roguishness, that made him what he was. What was required to
control him was a strong hand, with tempered sternness and yet
with the requisite touch of brutal dominance.
"It's you or me, Bob," Daylight told him more than once that day.
And to the stableman, that night:--
"My, but ain't he a looker! Ever see anything like him? Best
piece of horseflesh I ever straddled, and I've seen a few in my
time."
And to Bob, who had turned his head and was up to his playful
nuzzling:-
"Good-by, you little bit of all right. See you again next Sunday
A.M., and just you bring along your whole basket of tricks, you
old son-of-a-gun."
CHAPTER XII
Throughout the week Daylight found himself almost as much
interested in Bob as in Dede; and, not being in the thick of any
big deals, he was probably more interested in both of them than
in the business game. Bob's trick of whirling was of especial
moment to him. How to overcome it,--that was the thing. Suppose
he did meet with Dede out in the hills; and suppose, by some
lucky stroke of fate, he should manage to be riding alongside of
her; then that whirl of Bob's would be most disconcerting and
embarrassing. He was not particularly anxious for her to see him
thrown forward on Bob's neck. On the other hand, suddenly to
leave her and go dashing down the back-track, plying quirt and
spurs, wouldn't do, either.
What was wanted was a method wherewith to prevent that lightning
whirl. He must stop the animal before it got around. The reins
would not do this. Neither would the spurs. Remained the quirt.
But how to accomplish it? Absent-minded moments were many that
week, when, sitting in his office chair, in fancy he was astride
the wonderful chestnut sorrel and trying to prevent an
anticipated
whirl. One such moment, toward the end of the week,
occurred in the middle of a conference with Hegan. Hegan,
elaborating a new and dazzling legal vision, became aware that
Daylight was not listening. His eyes had gone lack-lustre, and
he, too, was seeing with inner vision.
"Got it" he cried suddenly. "Hegan, congratulate me. It's as
simple as rolling off a log. All I've got to do is hit him on
the nose, and hit him hard."
Then he explained to the startled Hegan, and became a good
listener again, though he could not refrain now and again from
making audible chuckles of satisfaction and delight. That was
the scheme. Bob always whirled to the right. Very well. He
would double the quirt in his hand and, the instant of the whirl,
that doubled quirt would rap Bob on the nose. The horse didn't
live, after it had once learned the lesson, that would whirl in
the face of the doubled quirt.
More keenly than ever, during that week in the office did
Daylight realize that he had no social, nor even human contacts
with Dede. The situation was such that he could not ask her the
simple question whether or not she was going riding next Sunday.
It was a hardship of a new sort, this being the employer of a
pretty girl. He looked at her often, when the routine work of
the day was going on, the question he could not ask her tickling
at the founts of speech--Was she going riding next Sunday? And
as
he looked, he wondered how old she was, and what love passages
she had had, must have had, with those college whippersnappers
with whom, according to Morrison, she herded and danced. His
mind was very full of her, those six days between the Sundays,
and one thing he came to know thoroughly well; he wanted her.
And so much did he want her that his old timidity of the
apron-string was put to rout. He, who had run away from women
most of his life, had now grown so courageous as to pursue. Some
Sunday, sooner or later, he would meet her outside the office,
somewhere in the hills, and then, if they did not get acquainted,
it would be because she did not care to get acquainted.
Thus he found another card in the hand the mad god had dealt him.
How important that card was to become he did not dream, yet he
decided that it was a pretty good card. In turn, he doubted.
Maybe it was a trick of Luck to bring calamity and disaster upon
him. Suppose Dede wouldn't have him, and suppose he went on
loving her more and more, harder and harder? All his old
generalized terrors of love revived. He remembered the
disastrous love affairs of men and women he had known in the
past. There was Bertha Doolittle, old Doolittle's daughter, who
had been madly in love with Dartworthy, the rich Bonanza fraction
owner; and Dartworthy, in turn, not loving Bertha at all, but
madly loving Colonel Walthstone's wife and eloping down the Yukon
with her; and Colonel Walthstone himself, madly loving his own
wife and lighting out in pursuit of the fleeing couple. And what
had been the outcome? Certainly Bertha's love had been
unfortunate and tragic, and so had the love of the other three.
Down below Minook, Colonel Walthstone and Dartworthy had fought
it out. Dartworthy had been killed. A bullet through the
Colonel's lungs had so weakened him that he died of pneumonia the
following spring. And the Colonel's wife had no one left alive
on earth to love.
And then there was Freda, drowning herself in the running
mush-ice because of some man on the other side of the world, and
hating him, Daylight, because he had happened along and pulled
her out of the mush-ice and back to life. And the Virgin....
The old memories frightened him. If this love-germ gripped him
good and hard, and if Dede wouldn't have him, it might be almost
as bad as being gouged out of all he had by Dowsett, Letton, and
Guggenhammer. Had his nascent desire for Dede been less, he
might well have been frightened out of all thought of her. As it
was, he found consolation in the thought that some love affairs
did come out right. And for all he knew, maybe Luck had stacked
the cards for him to win. Some men were born lucky, lived lucky
all their days, and died lucky. Perhaps, too, he was such a man,
a born luck-pup who could not lose.
Sunday came, and Bob, out in the Piedmont hills, behaved like an
angel. His goodness, at times, was of the spirited prancing
order, but otherwise he was a lamb. Daylight, with doubled quirt
ready in his right hand, ached for a whirl, just one whirl, which
Bob, with an excellence of conduct that was tantalizing, refused
to perform. But no Dede did Daylight encounter. He vainly
circled about among the hill roads and in the afternoon took the
steep grade over the divide of the second range and dropped into
Maraga Valley. Just after passing the foot of the descent, he
heard the hoof beats of a cantering horse. It was from ahead and
coming toward him. What if it were Dede? He turned Bob around
and started to return at a walk. If it were Dede, he was born to
luck, he decided; for the meeting couldn't have occurred under
better circumstances. Here they were, both going in the same
direction, and the canter would bring her up to him just where
the stiff grade would compel a walk. There would be nothing else
for her to do than ride with him to the top of the divide; and,
once there, the equally stiff descent on the other side would
compel more walking.
The canter came nearer, but he faced straight ahead until he
heard the horse behind check to a walk. Then he glanced over his
shoulder. It was Dede. The recognition was quick, and, with
her, accompanied by surprise. What more natural thing than that,
partly turning his horse, he should wait till she caught up with
him; and that, when abreast they should continue abreast on up
the grade? He could have sighed with relief. The thing was
accomplished, and so easily. Greetings had been exchanged; here
they were side by side and going in the same direction with miles
and miles ahead of them.
He noted that her eye was first for the horse and next for him.
"Oh, what a beauty" she had cried at sight of Bob. From the
shining light in her eyes, and the face filled with delight, he
would scarcely have believed that it belonged to a young woman he
had known in the office, the young woman with the controlled,
subdued office face
"I didn't know you rode," was one of her first remarks. "I
imagined you were wedded to get-there-quick machines."
"I've just taken it up lately," was his answer. "Beginning to
get stout; you know, and had to take it off somehow."
She gave a quick sidewise glance that embraced him from head to
heel, including seat and saddle, and said:--
"But you've ridden before."
She certainly had an eye for horses and things connected with
horses was his thought, as he replied:-
"Not for many years. But I used to think I was a regular
rip-snorter when I was a youngster up in Eastern Oregon, sneaking
away from camp to ride with the cattle and break cayuses and
that sort of thing."
Thus, and to his great relief, were they launched on a topic of
mutual interest. He told her about Bob's tricks, and of the
whirl and his scheme to overcome it; and she agreed that horses
had to be handled with a certain rational severity, no matter how
much one loved them. There was her Mab, which she had for eight
years and which she had had break of stall-kicking. The process
had been painful for Mab, but it had cured her.
"You've ridden a lot," Daylight said.
"I really can't remember the first time I was on a horse," she
told him. "I was born on a ranch, you know, and they couldn't
keep me away from the horses. I must have been born with the
love for them. I had my first pony, all my own, when I was six.
When I was eight I knew what it was to be all day in the saddle
along with Daddy. By the time I was eleven he was taking me on
my first deer hunts. I'd be lost without a horse. I hate
indoors, and without Mab here I suppose I'd have been sick and
dead long ago."
"You like the country?" he queried, at the same moment catching
his first glimpse of a light in her eyes other than gray. "As
much as I detest the city," she answered. "But a woman can't
earn a living in the country. So I make the best of it--along
with Mab."
And thereat she told him more of her ranch life in the days
before her father died. And Daylight was hugely pleased with
himself. They were getting acquainted. The conversation had not
lagged in the full half hour they had been together.
"We come pretty close from the same part of the country," he
said. "I was raised in Eastern Oregon, and that's none so far
from Siskiyou."
The next moment he could have bitten out his tongue for her quick
question was:--
"How did you know I came from Siskiyou? I'm sure I never
mentioned it."
"I don't know," he floundered temporarily. "I heard somewhere
that you were from thereabouts."
Wolf, sliding up at that moment, sleek-footed and like a shadow,
caused her horse to shy and passed the awkwardness off, for they
talked Alaskan dogs until the conversation drifted back to
horses. And horses it was, all up the grade and down the other
side.
When she talked, he listened and followed her, and yet all the
while he was following his own thoughts and impressions as well.
It was a nervy thing for her to do, this riding astride, and he
didn't know, after all, whether he liked it or not. His ideas of
women were prone to be old-fashioned; they were the ones he had
imbibed in the early-day, frontier life of his youth, when no
woman was seen on anything but a side-saddle. He had grown up to
the tacit fiction that women on horseback were not bipeds. It
came to him with a shock, this sight of her so manlike in her
saddle. But he had to confess that the sight looked good to him
just
Two other immediate things about her struck him. First, there
were the golden spots in her eyes. Queer that he had never
noticed them before. Perhaps the light in the office had not
been right, and perhaps they came and went. No; they were glows
of color--a sort of diffused, golden light. Nor was it golden,
either, but it was nearer that than any color he knew. It
certainly was not any shade of yellow. A lover's thoughts are
ever colored, and it is to be doubted if any one else in the
world would have called Dede's eyes golden. But Daylight's mood
verged on the tender and melting, and he preferred to think of
them as golden, and therefore they were golden.
And then she was so natural. He had been prepared to find her a
most difficult young woman to get acquainted with. Yet here it
was proving so simple. There was nothing highfalutin about her
company manners--it was by this homely phrase that he
differentiated this Dede on horseback from the Dede with the
office manners whom he had always known. And yet, while he was
delighted with the smoothness with which everything was going,
and with the fact that they had found plenty to talk about, he
was aware of an irk under it all. After all, this talk was empty
and idle. He was a man of action, and he wanted her, Dede Mason,
the woman; he wanted her to love him and to be loved by him; and
he wanted all this glorious consummation then and there. Used to
forcing issues used to gripping men and things and bending them
to his will, he felt, now, the same compulsive prod of mastery.
He wanted to tell her that he loved her and that there was
nothing else for her to do but marry him. And yet he did not
obey the prod. Women were fluttery creatures, and here mere
mastery would prove a bungle. He remembered all his hunting
guile, the long patience of shooting meat in famine when a hit or
a miss meant life or death. Truly, though this girl did not yet
mean quite that, nevertheless she meant much to him--more, now,
than ever, as he rode beside her, glancing at her as often as he
dared, she in her corduroy riding-habit, so bravely manlike, yet
so essentially and revealingly woman, smiling, laughing, talking,
her eyes sparkling, the flush of a day of sun and summer breeze
warm in her cheeks.
CHAPTER XIII
Another Sunday man and horse and dog roved the Piedmont hills.
And again Daylight and Dede rode together. But this time her
surprise at meeting him was tinctured with suspicion; or rather,
her surprise was of another order. The previous Sunday had been
quite accidental, but his appearing a second time among her
favorite haunts hinted of more than the fortuitous. Daylight was
made to feel that she suspected him, and he, remembering that he
had seen a big rock quarry near Blair Park, stated offhand that
he was thinking of buying it. His one-time investment in a
brickyard had put the idea into his head--an idea that he decided
was a good one, for it enabled him to suggest that she ride along
with him to inspect the quarry.
So several hours he spent in her company, in which she was much
the same girl as before, natural, unaffected, lighthearted,
smiling and laughing, a good fellow, talking horses with
unflagging enthusiasm, making friends with the crusty-tempered
Wolf, and expressing the desire to ride Bob, whom she declared
she was more in love with than ever. At this last Daylight
demurred. Bob was full of dangerous tricks, and he wouldn't
trust any one on him except his worst enemy.
"You think, because I'm a girl, that I don't know anything
about horses," she flashed back. "But I've been thrown off and
bucked off enough not to be over-confident. And I'm not a fool.
I wouldn't get on a bucking horse. I've learned better. And I'm
not afraid of any other kind. And you say yourself that Bob
doesn't buck."
"But you've never seen him cutting up didoes," Daylight
"But you must remember I've seen a few others, and I've been on
several of them myself. I brought Mab here to electric cars,
locomotives, and automobiles. She was a raw range colt when she
came to me. Broken to saddle that was all. Besides, I won't
hurt your horse."
Against his better judgment, Daylight gave in, and, on an
unfrequented stretch of road, changed saddles and bridles.
"Remember, he's greased lightning," he warned, as he helped her
to mount.
She nodded, while Bob pricked up his ears to the knowledge that
he had a strange rider on his back. The fun came quickly
enough--too quickly for Dede, who found herself against Bob's
neck
as he pivoted around and bolted the other way. Daylight followed
on her horse and watched. He saw her check the animal quickly to
a standstill, and immediately, with rein across neck and a
decisive
prod of the left spur, whirl him back the way he had come and
almost as swiftly.
"Get ready to give him the quirt on the nose," Daylight called.
But, too quickly for her, Bob whirled again, though this time, by
a severe effort, she saved herself from the undignified position
against his neck. His bolt was more determined, but she pulled
him into a prancing walk, and turned him roughly back with her
spurred heel. There was nothing feminine in the way she handled
him; her method was imperative and masculine. Had this not been
so, Daylight would have expected her to say she had had enough.
But that little preliminary exhibition had taught him something
of Dede's quality. And if it had not, a glance at her gray eyes,
just perceptibly angry with herself, and at her firm-set mouth,
would have told him the same thing. Daylight did not suggest
anything, while he hung almost gleefully upon her actions in
anticipation of what the fractious Bob was going to get. And Bob
got it, on his next whirl, or attempt, rather, for he was no more
than halfway around when the quirt met him smack on his tender
nose. There and then, in his bewilderment, surprise, and pain,
his fore feet, just skimming above the road, dropped down.
"Great!" Daylight applauded. "A couple more will fix him. He's
too smart not to know when he's beaten."
Again Bob tried. But this time he was barely quarter around when
the doubled quirt on his nose compelled him to drop his fore feet
to the road. Then, with neither rein nor spur, but by the mere
threat of the quirt, she straightened him out.
Dede looked triumphantly at Daylight.
"Let me give him a run?" she asked.
Daylight nodded, and she shot down the road. He watched her out
of sight around the bend, and watched till she came into sight
returning. She certainly could sit her horse, was his thought,
and she was a sure enough hummer. God, she was the wife for a
man! Made most of them look pretty slim. And to think of her
hammering all week at a typewriter. That was no place for her.
She should be a man's wife, taking it easy, with silks and satins
and diamonds (his frontier notion of what befitted a wife
beloved), and dogs, and horses, and such things--"And we'll see,
Mr. Burning Daylight, what you and me can do about it," he
murmured to himself! and aloud to her:--
"You'll do, Miss Mason; you'll do. There's nothing too good in
horseflesh you don't deserve, a woman who can ride like that.
No; stay with him, and we'll jog along to the quarry." He
chuckled. "Say, he actually gave just the least mite of a
groan that last time you fetched him. Did you hear it? And did
you see the way he dropped his feet to the road--just like he'd
struck a stone wall. And he's got savvee enough to know from now
on that that same stone wall will be always there ready for him
to lam into."
When he parted from her that afternoon, at the gate of the road
that led to Berkeley, he drew off to the edge of the intervening
clump of trees, where, unobserved, he watched her out of sight.
Then, turning to ride back into Oakland, a thought came to him
that made him grin ruefully as he muttered: "And now it's up to
me to make good and buy that blamed quarry. Nothing less than
that can give me an excuse for snooping around these hills."
But the quarry was doomed to pass out of his plans for a time,
for on the following Sunday he rode alone. No Dede on a chestnut
sorrel came across the back-road from Berkeley that day, nor the
day a week later. Daylight was beside himself with impatience
and apprehension, though in the office he contained himself. He
noted no change in her, and strove to let none show in himself.
The same old monotonous routine went on, though now it was
irritating and maddening. Daylight found a big quarrel on his
hands with a world that wouldn't let a man behave toward his
stenographer after the way of all men and women. What was the
good of owning millions anyway? he demanded one day of the
desk-calendar, as she passed out after receiving his dictation.
As the third week drew to a close and another desolate Sunday
confronted him, Daylight resolved to speak, office or no office.
And as was his nature, he went simply and directly to the point
She had finished her work with him, and was gathering her note
pad and pencils together to depart, when he said:--
"Oh, one thing more, Miss Mason, and I hope you won't mind my
being frank and straight out. You've struck me right along as a
sensible-minded girl, and I don't think you'll take offence at
what I'm going to say. You know how long you've been in the
office--it's years, now, several of them, anyway; and you know
I've always been straight and aboveboard with you. I've never
what you call--presumed. Because you were in my office I've
tried to be more careful than if--if you wasn't in my office--you
understand. But just the same, it don't make me any the less
human. I'm a lonely sort of a fellow--don't take that as a bid
for kindness. What I mean by it is to try and tell you just how
much those two rides with you have meant. And now I hope you
won't mind my just asking why you haven't been out riding the
last two Sundays?"
He came to a stop and waited, feeling very warm and awkward, the
perspiration starting in tiny beads on his forehead. She did not
speak immediately, and he stepped across the room and raised the
window higher.
"I have been riding," she answered; "in other directions."
"But why...?" He failed somehow to complete the question. "Go
ahead and be frank with me," he urged. "Just as frank as I am
with
you. Why didn't you ride in the Piedmont hills? I hunted for
you
everywhere.
"And that is just why." She smiled, and looked him straight in
the eyes for a moment, then dropped her own. "Surely, you
understand, Mr. Harnish."
He shook his head glumly.
"I do, and I don't. I ain't used to city ways by a long shot.
There's things one mustn't do, which I don't mind as long as I
don't want to do them."
"But when you do?" she asked quickly.
"Then I do them." His lips had drawn firmly with this affirmation
of will, but the next instant he was amending the statement "That
is, I mostly do. But what gets me is the things you mustn't do
when they're not wrong and they won't hurt anybody--this riding,
for instance."
She played nervously with a pencil for a time, as if debating her
reply, while he waited patiently.
"This riding," she began; "it's not what they call the right
thing.
I leave it to you. You know the world. You are Mr. Harnish, the
millionaire-"
"Gambler," he broke in harshly
She nodded acceptance of his term and went on.
"And I'm a stenographer in your office--"
"You're a thousand times better than me--" he attempted to
interpolate, but was in turn interrupted.
"It isn't a question of such things. It's a simple and fairly
common situation that must be considered. I work for you. And
it isn't what you or I might think, but what other persons will
think. And you don't need to be told any more about that. You
know yourself."
Her cool, matter-of-fact speech belied her--or so Daylight
thought, looking at her perturbed feminineness, at the rounded
lines of her figure, the breast that deeply rose and fell, and at
the color that was now excited in her cheeks.
"I'm sorry I frightened you out of your favorite stamping
ground," he said rather aimlessly.
"You didn't frighten me," she retorted, with a touch of fire.
"I'm not a silly seminary girl. I've taken care of myself for a
long time now, and I've done it without being frightened. We
were together two Sundays, and I'm sure I wasn't frightened of
Bob, or you. It isn't that. I have no fears of taking care of
myself, but the world insists on taking care of one as well.
That's the trouble. It's what the world would have to say about
me and my employer meeting regularly and riding in the hills on
Sundays. It's funny, but it's so. I could ride with one of the
clerks without remark, but with you--no."
"But the world don't know and don't need to know," he cried.
"Which makes it worse, in a way, feeling guilty of nothing and
yet sneaking around back-roads with all the feeling of doing
something wrong. It would be finer and braver for me
publicly..."
"To go to lunch with me on a week-day," Daylight said, divining
the drift of her uncompleted argument.
She nodded.
"I didn't have that quite in mind, but it will do. I'd prefer
doing the brazen thing and having everybody know it, to doing the
furtive thing and being found out. Not that I'm asking to be
invited to lunch," she added, with a smile; "but I'm sure you
understand my position."
"Then why not ride open and aboveboard with me in the hills?" he
urged.
She shook her head with what he imagined was just the faintest
hint of regret, and he went suddenly and almost maddeningly
hungry for her.
"Look here, Miss Mason, I know you don't like this talking over
of things in the office. Neither do I. It's part of the whole
thing, I guess; a man ain't supposed to talk anything but
business with his stenographer. Will you ride with me next
Sunday, and we can talk it over thoroughly then and reach some
sort of a conclusion. Out in the hills is the place where you
can talk something besides business. I guess you've seen enough
of me to know I'm pretty square. I-I do honor and respect you,
and... and all that, and I .." He was beginning to flounder, and
the hand that rested on the desk blotter was visibly trembling.
He strove to pull himself together. "I just want to harder than
anything ever in my life before. I-I-I can't explain myself, but
I do, that's all. Will you?--Just next Sunday? To-morrow?"
Nor did he dream that her low acquiescence was due, as much as
anything else, to the beads of sweat on his forehead, his
trembling hand, and his all too-evident general distress.
CHAPTER XIV
"Of course, there's no way of telling what anybody wants from
what they say." Daylight rubbed Bob's rebellious ear with his
quirt and pondered with dissatisfaction the words he had just
uttered. They did not say what he had meant them to say. "What
I'm driving at is that you say flatfooted that you won't meet me
again, and you give your reasons, but how am I to know they are
your real reasons? Mebbe you just don't want to get acquainted
with me, and won't say so for fear of hurting my feelings. Don't
you see? I'm the last man in the world to shove in where I'm not
wanted. And if I thought you didn't care a whoop to see anything
more of me, why, I'd clear out so blamed quick you couldn't see
me for smoke."
Dede smiled at him in acknowledgment of his words, but rode on
silently. And that smile, he thought, was the most sweetly
wonderful smile he had ever seen. There was a difference in it,
he assured himself, from any smile she had ever given him before.
It was the smile of one who knew him just a little bit, of one
who was just the least mite acquainted with him. Of course, he
checked himself up the next moment, it was unconscious on her
part. It was sure to come in the intercourse of any two persons.
Any stranger, a business man, a clerk, anybody after a few casual
meetings would show similar signs of friendliness. It was bound
to happen, but in her case it made more impression on him; and,
besides, it was such a sweet and wonderful smile. Other women he
had known had never smiled like that; he was sure of it.
It had been a happy day. Daylight had met her on the back-road
from Berkeley, and they had had hours together. It was only now,
with the day drawing to a close and with them approaching the
gate of the road to Berkeley, that he had broached the important
subject.
She began her answer to his last contention, and he listened
gratefully.
"But suppose, just suppose, that the reasons I have given are the
only ones?--that there is no question of my not wanting to know
you?"
"Then I'd go on urging like Sam Scratch," he said quickly.
"Because, you see, I've always noticed that folks that incline to
anything are much more open to hearing the case stated. But if
you did have that other reason up your sleeve, if you didn't want
to know me, if--if, well, if you thought my feelings oughtn't to
be hurt just because you had a good job with me..." Here, his
calm consideration of a possibility was swamped by the fear that
it was an actuality, and he lost the thread of his reasoning.
"Well, anyway, all you have to do is to say the word and I'll
clear out.
And with no hard feelings; it would be just a case of bad luck
for me. So be honest, Miss Mason, please, and tell me if that's
the reason--I almost got a hunch that it is."
She glanced up at him, her eyes abruptly and slightly moist, half
with hurt, half with anger.
"Oh, but that isn't fair," she cried. "You give me the choice of
lying to you and hurting you in order to protect myself by
getting rid of you, or of throwing away my protection by telling
you the truth, for then you, as you said yourself, would stay and
urge."
Her cheeks were flushed, her lips tremulous, but she continued to
look him frankly in the eyes.
Daylight smiled grimly with satisfaction.
"I'm real glad, Miss Mason, real glad for those words."
"But they won't serve you," she went on hastily. "They can't
serve you. I refuse to let them. This is our last ride, and...
here is the gate."
Ranging her mare alongside, she bent, slid the catch, and
followed the opening gate.
"No; please, no," she said, as Daylight started to follow.
Humbly acquiescent, he pulled Bob back, and the gate swung shut
between them. But there was more to say, and she did not ride
on.
"Listen, Miss Mason," he said, in a low voice that shook with
sincerity; "I want to assure you of one thing. I'm not just
trying to fool around with you. I like you, I want you, and I
was never more in earnest in my life. There's nothing wrong in
my intentions or anything like that. What I mean is strictly
honorable-"
But the expression of her face made him stop. She was angry, and
she was laughing at the same time.
"The last thing you should have said," she cried. "It's like
a--a matrimonial bureau: intentions strictly honorable; object,
matrimony. But it's no more than I deserved. This is what I
suppose you call urging like Sam Scratch."
The tan had bleached out of Daylight's skin since the time he
came to live under city roofs, so that the flush of blood showed
readily as it crept up his neck past the collar and overspread
his face. Nor in his exceeding discomfort did he dream that she
was looking upon him at that moment with more kindness than at
any time that day. It was not in her experience to behold big
grown-up men who blushed like boys, and already she repented the
sharpness into which she had been surprised.
"Now, look here, Miss Mason," he began, slowly and stumblingly at
first, but accelerating into a rapidity of utterance that was
almost incoherent; "I'm a rough sort of a man, I know that, and I
know I don't know much of anything. I've never had any training
in nice things. I've never made love before, and I've never been
in love before either--and I don't know how to go about it any
more than a thundering idiot. What you want to do is get behind
my tomfool words and get a feel of the man that's behind them.
That's me, and I mean all right, if I don't know how to go about
it."
Dede Mason had quick, birdlike ways, almost flitting from mood to
mood; and she was all contrition on the instant.
"Forgive me for laughing," she said across the gate. "It wasn't
really laughter. I was surprised off my guard, and hurt, too.
You see, Mr. Harnish, I've not been..."
She paused, in sudden fear of completing the thought into which
her birdlike precipitancy had betrayed her.
"What you mean is that you've not been used to such sort of
proposing," Daylight said; "a sort of on-the-run, 'Howdy,
glad-to-make-your-acquaintance, won't-you-be-mine' proposition."
She nodded and broke into laughter, in which he joined, and which
served to pass the awkwardness away. He gathered heart at this,
and went on in greater confidence, with cooler head and tongue.
"There, you see, you prove my case. You've had experience in
such matters. I don't doubt you've had slathers of proposals.
Well, I haven't, and I'm like a fish out of water. Besides, this
ain't a proposal. It's a peculiar situation, that's all, and I'm
in a corner. I've got enough plain horse-sense to know a man
ain't supposed to argue marriage with a girl as a reason for
getting acquainted with her. And right there was where I was in
the hole. Number one, I can't get acquainted with you in the
office. Number two, you say you won't see me out of the office
to give me a chance. Number three, your reason is that folks
will talk because you work for me. Number four, I just got to
get acquainted with you, and I just got to get you to see that I
mean fair and all right. Number five, there you are on one side
the gate getting ready to go, and me here on the other side the
gate pretty desperate and bound to say something to make you
reconsider. Number six, I said it. And now and finally, I just
do want you to reconsider."
And, listening to him, pleasuring in the sight of his earnest,
perturbed face and in the simple, homely phrases that but
emphasized his earnestness and marked the difference between him
and the average run of men she had known, she forgot to listen
and lost herself in her own thoughts. The love of a strong man
is ever a lure to a normal woman, and never more strongly did
Dede feel the lure than now, looking across the closed gate at
Burning Daylight. Not that she would ever dream of marrying
him--she had a score of reasons against it; but why not at least
see more of him? He was certainly not repulsive to her. On the
contrary, she liked him, had always liked him from the day she
had first seen him and looked upon his lean Indian face and into
his flashing Indian eyes. He was a figure of a man in more ways
than his mere magnificent muscles. Besides, Romance had gilded
him, this doughty, rough-hewn adventurer of the North, this man
of many deeds and many millions, who had come down out of the
Arctic to wrestle and fight so masterfully with the men of the
South.
Savage as a Red Indian, gambler and profligate, a man without
morals, whose vengeance was never glutted and who stamped on the
faces of all who opposed him--oh, yes, she knew all the hard
names he had been called. Yet she was not afraid of him. There
was more than that in the connotation of his name. Burning
Daylight called up other things as well. They were there in the
newspapers, the magazines, and the books on the Klondike. When
all was said, Burning Daylight had a mighty connotation--one to
touch any woman's imagination, as it touched hers, the gate
between them, listening to the wistful and impassioned simplicity
of his speech. Dede was after all a woman, with a woman's
sex-vanity, and it was this vanity that was pleased by the fact
that such a man turned in his need to her.
And there was more that passed through her mind--sensations of
tiredness and loneliness; trampling squadrons and shadowy armies
of vague feelings and vaguer prompting; and deeper and dimmer
whisperings and echoings, the flutterings of forgotten
generations crystallized into being and fluttering anew and
always, undreamed and unguessed, subtle and potent, the spirit
and essence of life that under a thousand deceits and masks
forever makes for life. It was a strong temptation, just to ride
with this man in the hills. It would be that only and nothing
more, for she was firmly convinced that his way of life could
never be her way. On the other hand, she was vexed by none of
the ordinary feminine fears and timidities. That she could take
care of herself under any and all circumstances she never
doubted. Then why not? It was such a little thing, after all.
She led an ordinary, humdrum life at best. She ate and slept and
worked, and that was about all. As if in review, her anchorite
existence passed before her: six days of the week spent in the
office and in journeying back and forth on the ferry; the hours
stolen before bedtime for snatches of song at the piano, for
doing her own special laundering, for sewing and mending and
casting up of meagre accounts; the two evenings a week of social
diversion she permitted herself; the other stolen hours and
Saturday afternoons spent with her brother at the hospital; and
the seventh day, Sunday, her day of solace, on Mab's back, out
among the blessed hills. But it was lonely, this solitary
riding. Nobody of her acquaintance rode. Several girls at the
University had been persuaded into trying it, but after a Sunday
or two on hired livery hacks they had lost interest. There was
Madeline, who bought her own horse and rode enthusiastically for
several months, only to get married and go away to live in
Southern California. After years of it, one did get tired of
this eternal riding alone.
He was such a boy, this big giant of a millionaire who had half
the rich men of San Francisco afraid of him. Such a boy! She
had never imagined this side of his nature.
"How do folks get married?" he was saying. "Why, number one,
they meet; number two, like each other's looks; number three, get
acquainted; and number four, get married or not, according to how
they like each other after getting acquainted. But how in
thunder we're to have a chance to find out whether we like each
other enough is beyond my savvee, unless we make that chance
ourselves. I'd come to see you, call on you, only I know you're
just rooming or boarding, and that won't do."
Suddenly, with a change of mood, the situation appeared to Dede
ridiculously absurd. She felt a desire to laugh--not angrily,
not hysterically, but just jolly. It was so funny. Herself, the
stenographer, he, the notorious and powerful gambling
millionaire, and the gate between them across which poured his
argument of people getting acquainted and married. Also, it was
an impossible situation. On the face of it, she could not go on
with it. This program of furtive meetings in the hills would
have to discontinue. There would never be another meeting. And
if, denied this, he tried to woo her in the office, she would be
compelled to lose a very good position, and that would be an end
of the episode. It was not nice to contemplate; but the world of
men, especially in the cities, she had not found particularly
nice. She had not worked for her living for years without losing
a great many of her illusions.
"We won't do any sneaking or hiding around about it," Daylight
was explaining. "We'll ride around as bold if you please, and if
anybody sees us, why, let them. If they talk--well, so long as
our consciences are straight we needn't worry. Say the word, and
Bob will have on his back the happiest man alive."
She shook her head, pulled in the mare, who was impatient to be
off for home, and glanced significantly at the lengthening
shadows.
"It's getting late now, anyway," Daylight hurried on, "and we've
settled nothing after all. Just one more Sunday, anyway--that's
not asking much--to settle it in."
"We've had all day," she said.
"But we started to talk it over too late. We'll tackle it
earlier next time. This is a big serious proposition with me, I
can tell you. Say next Sunday?"
"Are men ever fair?" she asked. "You know thoroughly well that
by 'next Sunday' you mean many Sundays."
"Then let it be many Sundays," he cried recklessly, while she
thought that she had never seen him looking handsomer. "Say the
word. Only say the word. Next Sunday at the quarry..."
She gathered the reins into her hand preliminary to starting.
"Good night," she said, "and--"
"Yes," he whispered, with just the faintest touch of
impressiveness.
"Yes," she said, her voice low but distinct.
At the same moment she put the mare into a canter and went down
the road without a backward glance, intent on an analysis of her
own feelings. With her mind made up to say no--and to the last
instant she had been so resolved--her lips nevertheless had said
yes. Or at least it seemed the lips. She had not intended to
consent. Then why had she? Her first surprise and bewilderment
at so wholly unpremeditated an act gave way to consternation as
she considered its consequences. She knew that Burning Daylight
was not a man to be trifled with, that under his simplicity and
boyishness he was essentially a dominant male creature, and that
she had pledged herself to a future of inevitable stress and
storm. And again she demanded of herself why she had said yes at
the very moment when it had been farthest from her intention.
CHAPTER XV
Life at the office went on much the way it had always gone.
Never, by word or look, did they acknowledge that the situation
was in any wise different from what it had always been. Each
Sunday saw the arrangement made for the following Sunday's ride;
nor was this ever referred to in the office. Daylight was
fastidiously chivalrous on this point. He did not want to lose
her from the office. The sight of her at her work was to him an
undiminishing joy. Nor did he abuse this by lingering over
dictation or by devising extra work that would detain her longer
before his eyes. But over and beyond such sheer selfishness of
conduct was his love of fair play. He scorned to utilize the
accidental advantages of the situation. Somewhere within him
was a higher appeasement of love than mere possession. He wanted
to be loved for himself, with a fair field for both sides.
On the other hand, had he been the most artful of schemers he
could not have pursued a wiser policy. Bird-like in her love of
individual freedom, the last woman in the world to be bullied in
her affections, she keenly appreciated the niceness of his
attitude. She did this consciously, but deeper than all
consciousness, and intangible as gossamer, were the effects of
this. All unrealizable, save for some supreme moment, did the
web of Daylight's personality creep out and around her. Filament
by filament, these secret and undreamable bonds were being
established. They it was that could have given the cue to her
saying yes when she had meant to say no. And in some such
fashion, in some future crisis of greater moment, might she not,
in violation of all dictates of sober judgment, give another
unintentional consent?
Among other good things resulting from his growing intimacy with
Dede, was Daylight's not caring to drink so much as formerly.
There was a lessening in desire for alcohol of which even he at
last became aware. In a way she herself was the needed
inhibition. The thought of her was like a cocktail. Or, at any
rate, she substituted for a certain percentage of cocktails.
From the strain of his unnatural city existence and of his
intense gambling operations, he had drifted on to the cocktail
route. A wall must forever be built to give him easement from
the high pitch, and Dede became a part of this wall. Her
personality, her laughter, the intonations of her voice, the
impossible golden glow of her eyes, the light on her hair, her
form, her dress, her actions on horseback, her merest physical
mannerisms--all, pictured over and over in his mind and dwelt
upon, served to take the place of many a cocktail or long Scotch
and soda.
In spite of their high resolve, there was a very measurable
degree of the furtive in their meetings. In essence, these
meetings were stolen. They did not ride out brazenly together in
the face of the world. On the contrary, they met always
unobserved, she riding across the many-gated backroad from
Berkeley to meet him halfway. Nor did they ride on any save
unfrequented roads, preferring to cross the second range of hills
and travel among a church-going farmer folk who would scarcely
have recognized even Daylight from his newspaper photographs.
He found Dede a good horsewoman--good not merely in riding but in
endurance. There were days when they covered sixty, seventy, and
even eighty miles; nor did Dede ever claim any day too long,
nor--another strong recommendation to Daylight--did the hardest
day ever the slightest chafe of the chestnut sorrel's back. "A
sure enough hummer," was Daylight's stereotyped but ever
enthusiastic verdict to himself.
They learned much of each other on these long, uninterrupted
rides. They had nothing much to talk about but themselves, and,
while she received a liberal education concerning Arctic travel
and gold-mining, he, in turn, touch by touch, painted an ever
clearer portrait of her. She amplified the ranch life of her
girlhood, prattling on about horses and dogs and persons and
things until it was as if he saw the whole process of her growth
and her becoming. All this he was able to trace on through the
period of her father's failure and death, when she had been
compelled to leave the university and go into office work. The
brother, too, she spoke of, and of her long struggle to have him
cured and of her now fading hopes. Daylight decided that it was
easier to come to an understanding of her than he had
anticipated, though he was always aware that behind and under all
he knew of her was the mysterious and baffling woman and sex.
There, he was humble enough to confess to himself, was a
chartless, shoreless sea, about which he knew nothing and which
he must nevertheless somehow navigate.
His lifelong fear of woman had originated out of
non-understanding and had also prevented him from reaching any
understanding. Dede on horseback, Dede gathering poppies on a
summer hillside, Dede taking down dictation in her swift
shorthand strokes--all this was comprehensible to him. But he
did not know the Dede who so quickly changed from mood to mood,
the Dede who refused steadfastly to ride with him and then
suddenly consented, the Dede in whose eyes the golden glow
forever waxed and waned and whispered hints and messages that
were not for his ears. In all such things he saw the glimmering
profundities of sex, acknowledged their lure, and accepted them
as incomprehensible.
There was another side of her, too, of which he was consciously
ignorant. She knew the books, was possessed of that mysterious
and awful thing called "culture." And yet, what continually
surprised him was that this culture was never obtruded on their
intercourse. She did not talk books, nor art, nor similar
folderols. Homely minded as he was himself, he found her almost
equally homely minded. She liked the simple and the
out-of-doors, the horses and the hills, the sunlight and the
flowers. He found himself in a partly new flora, to which she
was the guide, pointing out to him all the varieties of the oaks,
making him acquainted with the madrono and the manzanita,
teaching him the names, habits, and habitats of unending series
of wild flowers, shrubs, and ferns. Her keen woods eye was
another delight to him. It had been trained in the open, and
little escaped it. One day, as a test, they strove to see which
could discover the greater number of birds' nests. And he, who
had always prided himself on his own acutely trained observation,
found himself hard put to keep his score ahead. At the end of
the day he was but three nests in the lead, one of which she
challenged stoutly and of which even he confessed serious doubt.
He complimented her and told her that her success must be due to
the fact that she was a bird herself, with all a bird's keen
vision and quick-flashing ways.
The more he knew her the more he became convinced of this
birdlike quality in her. That was why she liked to ride, he
argued. It was the nearest approach to flying. A field of
poppies, a glen of ferns, a row of poplars on a country lane, the
tawny brown of a hillside, the shaft of sunlight on a distant
peak--all such were provocative of quick joys which seemed to him
like so many outbursts of song. Her joys were in little things,
and she seemed always singing. Even in sterner things it was the
same. When she rode Bob and fought with that magnificent brute
for mastery, the qualities of an eagle were uppermost in her.
These quick little joys of hers were sources of joy to him. He
joyed in her joy, his eyes as excitedly fixed on her as bears
were fixed on the object of her attention. Also through her he
came to a closer discernment and keener appreciation of nature.
She showed him colors in the landscape that he would never have
dreamed were there. He had known only the primary colors. All
colors of red were red. Black was black, and brown was just
plain brown until it became yellow, when it was no longer brown.
Purple he had always imagined was red, something like blood,
until she taught him better. Once they rode out on a high hill
brow where wind-blown poppies blazed about their horses' knees,
and she was in an ecstasy over the lines of the many distances.
Seven, she counted, and he, who had gazed on landscapes all his
life, for the first time learned what a "distance" was. After
that, and always, he looked upon the face of nature with a more
seeing eye, learning a delight of his own in surveying the
serried ranks of the upstanding ranges, and in slow contemplation
of the purple summer mists that haunted the languid creases of
the distant hills.
But through it all ran the golden thread of love. At first he
had been content just to ride with Dede and to be on comradely
terms with her; but the desire and the need for her increased.
The more he knew of her, the higher was his appraisal. Had she
been reserved and haughty with him, or been merely a giggling,
simpering creature of a woman, it would have been different.
Instead, she amazed him with her simplicity and wholesomeness,
with her great store of comradeliness. This latter was the
unexpected. He had never looked upon woman in that way. Woman,
the toy; woman, the harpy; woman, the necessary wife and mother
of the race's offspring,--all this had been his expectation and
understanding of woman. But woman, the comrade and playfellow
and joyfellow--this was what Dede had surprised him in. And the
more she became worth while, the more ardently his love burned,
unconsciously shading his voice with caresses, and with equal
unconsciousness flaring up signal fires in his eyes. Nor was she
blind to it yet, like many women before her, she thought to play
with the pretty fire and escape the consequent conflagration.
"Winter will soon be coming on," she said regretfully, and with
provocation, one day, "and then there won't be any more riding."
"But I must see you in the winter just the same," he cried
hastily.
She shook her head.
"We have been very happy and all that," she said, looking at him
with steady frankness. "I remember your foolish argument for
getting acquainted, too; but it won't lead to anything; it can't.
I know myself too well to be mistaken."
Her face was serious, even solicitous with desire not to hurt,
and her eyes were unwavering, but in them was the light, golden
and glowing--the abyss of sex into which he was now unafraid to
gaze.
"I've been pretty good," he declared. "I leave it to you if I
haven't. It's been pretty hard, too, I can tell you. You just
think it over. Not once have I said a word about love to you,
and me loving you all the time. That's going some for a man
that's used to having his own way. I'm somewhat of a rusher when
it comes to travelling. I reckon I'd rush God Almighty if it
came to a race over the ice. And yet I didn't rush you. I guess
this fact is an indication of how much I do love you. Of course
I want you to marry me. Have I said a word about it, though?
Nary a chirp, nary a flutter. I've been quiet and good, though
it's almost made me sick at times, this keeping quiet. I haven't
asked you to marry me. I'm not asking you now. Oh, not but what
you satisfy me. I sure know you're the wife for me. But how
about myself ? Do you know me well enough know your own mind?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, and I ain't going to
take chances on it now. You've got to know for sure whether you
think you could get along with me or not, and I'm playing a slow
conservative game. I ain't a-going to lose for overlooking my
hand."
This was love-making of a sort beyond Dede's experience. Nor had
she ever heard of anything like it. Furthermore, its lack of
ardor carried with it a shock which she could overcome only by
remembering the way his hand had trembled in the past, and by
remembering the passion she had seen that very day and every day
in his eyes, or heard in his voice. Then, too, she recollected
what he had said to her weeks before: "Maybe you don't know what
patience is," he had said, and thereat told her of shooting
squirrels with a big rifle the time he and Elijah Davis had
starved on the Stewart River.
"So you see," he urged, "just for a square deal we've got to see
some more of each other this winter. Most likely your mind ain't
made up yet--"
"But it is," she interrupted. "I wouldn't dare permit myself to
care for you. Happiness, for me, would not lie that way. I like
you, Mr. Harnish, and all that, but it can never be more than
that."
"It's because you don't like my way of living," he charged,
thinking in his own mind of the sensational joyrides and general
profligacy with which the newspapers had credited him--thinking
this, and wondering whether or not, in maiden modesty, she would
disclaim knowledge of it.
To his surprise, her answer was flat and uncompromising.
"No; I don't."
"I know I've been brash on some of those rides that got into the
papers," he began his defense, "and that I've been travelling
with a lively crowd."
"I don't mean that," she said, "though I know about it too, and
can't say that I like it. But it is your life in general, your
business. There are women in the world who could marry a man
like you and be happy, but I couldn't. And the more I cared for
such a man, the more unhappy I should be. You see, my
unhappiness, in turn, would tend to make him unhappy. I should
make a mistake, and he would make an equal mistake, though his
would not be so hard on him because he would still have his
business."
"Business!" Daylight gasped. "What's wrong with my business? I
play fair and square. There's nothing under hand about it, which
can't be said of most businesses, whether of the big corporations
or of the cheating, lying, little corner-grocerymen. I play the
straight rules of the game, and I don't have to lie or cheat or
break my word."
Dede hailed with relief the change in the conversation and at the
same time the opportunity to speak her mind.
"In ancient Greece," she began pedantically, "a man was judged a
good citizen who built houses, planted trees--" She did not
complete the quotation, but drew the conclusion hurriedly. "How
many houses have you built? How many trees have you planted?"
He shook his head noncommittally, for he had not grasped the
drift of the argument.
"Well," she went on, "two winters ago you cornered coal--"
"Just locally," he grinned reminiscently, "just locally. And I
took advantage of the car shortage and the strike in British
Columbia."
"But you didn't dig any of that coal yourself. Yet you forced it
up four dollars a ton and made a lot of money. That was your
business. You made the poor people pay more for their coal. You
played fair, as you said, but you put your hands down into all
their pockets and took their money away from them. I know. I
burn a grate fire in my sitting-room at Berkeley. And instead of
eleven dollars a ton for Rock Wells, I paid fifteen dollars that
winter. You robbed me of four dollars. I could stand it. But
there were thousands of the very poor who could not stand it.
You might call it legal gambling, but to me it was downright
robbery."
Daylight was not abashed. This was no revelation to him. He
remembered the old woman who made wine in the Sonoma hills and
the millions like her who were made to be robbed.
"Now look here, Miss Mason, you've got me there slightly, I
grant. But you've seen me in business a long time now, and you
know I don't make a practice of raiding the poor people. I go
after the big fellows. They're my meat. They rob the poor, and
I rob them. That coal deal was an accident. I wasn't after the
poor people in that, but after the big fellows, and I got them,
too. The poor people happened to get in the way and got hurt,
that was all.
"Don't you see," he went on, "the whole game is a gamble.
Everybody gambles in one way or another. The farmer gambles
against the weather and the market on his crops. So does the
United States Steel Corporation. The business of lots of men is
straight robbery of the poor people. But I've never made that my
business. You know that. I've always gone after the robbers."
"I missed my point," she admitted. "Wait a minute."
And for a space they rode in silence.
"I see it more clearly than I can state it, but it's something
like this. There is legitimate work, and there's work
that--well,
that isn't legitimate. The farmer works the soil and produces
grain. He's making something that is good for humanity. He
actually, in a way, creates something, the grain that will fill
the
mouths of the hungry."
"And then the railroads and market-riggers and the rest proceed
to rob him of that same grain,"--Daylight broke in Dede smiled
and
held up her hand.
"Wait a minute. You'll make me lose my point. It doesn't hurt
if they rob him of all of it so that he starves to death. The
point is that the wheat he grew is still in the world. It
exists. Don't you see? The farmer created something, say ten
tons of wheat, and those ten tons exist. The railroads haul the
wheat to market, to the mouths that will eat it. This also is
legitimate. It's like some one bringing you a glass of water,
or taking a cinder out of your eye. Something has been done, in
a
way been created, just like the wheat."
"But the railroads rob like Sam Scratch," Daylight objected.
"Then the work they do is partly legitimate and partly not. Now
we come to you. You don't create anything. Nothing new exists
when you're done with your business. Just like the coal. You
didn't dig it. You didn't haul it to market. You didn't deliver
it. Don't you see? that's what I meant by planting the trees
and building the houses. You haven't planted one tree nor built
a single house."
"I never guessed there was a woman in the world who could talk
business like that," he murmured admiringly. "And you've got me
on that point. But there's a lot to be said on my side just the
same. Now you listen to me. I'm going to talk under three
heads. Number one: We live a short time, the best of us, and
we're a long time dead. Life is a big gambling game. Some are
born lucky and some are born unlucky. Everybody sits in at the
table, and everybody tries to rob everybody else. Most of them
get robbed. They're born suckers.
"Fellow like me comes along and sizes up the proposition. I've
got
two choices. I can herd with the suckers, or I can herd with the
robbers. As a sucker, I win nothing. Even the crusts of bread
are
snatched out of my mouth by the robbers. I work hard all my
days,
and die working. And I ain't never had a flutter. I've had
nothing but work, work, work. They talk about the dignity of
labor. I tell you there ain't no dignity in that sort of labor.
My other choice is to herd with the robbers, and I herd with
them.
I play that choice wide open to win. I get the automobiles, and
the porterhouse steaks, and the soft beds.
"Number two: There ain't much difference between playing halfway
robber like the railroad hauling that farmer's wheat to market,
and playing all robber and robbing the robbers like I do. And,
besides, halfway robbery is too slow a game for me to sit in.
You don't win quick enough for me."
"But what do you want to win for?" Dede demanded. "You have
millions and millions, already. You can't ride in more than one
automobile at a time, sleep in more than one bed at a time."
"Number three answers that," he said, "and here it is: Men and
things are so made that they have different likes. A rabbit
likes a vegetarian diet. A lynx likes meat. Ducks swim;
chickens are scairt of water. One man collects postage stamps,
another man collects butterflies. This man goes in for
paintings, that man goes in for yachts, and some other fellow for
hunting big game. One man thinks horse-racing is It, with a big
I, and another man finds the biggest satisfaction in actresses.
They can't help these likes. They have them, and what are they
going to do about it? Now I like gambling. I like to play the
game. I want to play it big and play it quick. I'm just made
that way. And I play it."
"But why can't you do good with all your money?"
Daylight laughed.
"Doing good with your money! It's like slapping God in the face,
as much as to tell him that he don't know how to run his world
and that you'll be much obliged if he'll stand out of the way and
give you a chance. Thinking about God doesn't keep me sitting up
nights, so I've got another way of looking at it. Ain't it
funny, to go around with brass knuckles and a big club breaking
folks' heads and taking their money away from them until I've got
a pile, and then, repenting of my ways, going around and
bandaging up the heads the other robbers are breaking? I leave
it to you. That's what doing good with money amounts to. Every
once in a while some robber turns soft-hearted and takes to
driving an ambulance. That's what Carnegie did. He smashed
heads in pitched battles at Homestead, regular wholesale
head-breaker he was, held up the suckers for a few hundred
million, and now he goes around dribbling it back to them.
funny? I leave it to you."
He rolled a cigarette and watched her half curiously, half
amusedly. His replies and harsh generalizations of a harsh
school were disconcerting, and she came back to her earlier
position.
"I can't argue with you, and you know that. No matter how right
a woman is, men have such a way about them well, what they say
sounds most convincing, and yet the woman is still certain they
are wrong. But there is one thing--the creative joy. Call it
gambling if you will, but just the same it seems to me more
satisfying to create something, make something, than just to roll
dice out of a dice-box all day long. Why, sometimes, for
exercise, or when I've got to pay fifteen dollars for coal, I
curry Mab and give her a whole half hour's brushing. And when I
see her coat clean and shining and satiny, I feel a satisfaction
in what I've done. So it must be with the man who builds a house
or plants a tree. He can look at it. He made it. It's his
handiwork. Even if somebody like you comes along and takes his
tree away from him, still it is there, and still did he make it.
You can't rob him of that, Mr. Harnish, with all your millions.
It's the creative joy, and it's a higher joy than mere gambling.
Haven't you ever made things yourself--a log cabin up in the
Yukon, or a canoe, or raft, or something? And don't you remember
how satisfied you were, how good you felt, while you were doing
it and after you had it done?"
While she spoke his memory was busy with the associations she
recalled. He saw the deserted flat on the river bank by the
Klondike, and he saw the log cabins and warehouses spring up, and
all the log structures he had built, and his sawmills working
night and day on three shifts.
"Why, dog-gone it, Miss Mason, you're right--in a way. I've
built hundreds of houses up there, and I remember I was proud and
glad to see them go up. I'm proud now, when I remember them.
And there was Ophir--the most God-forsaken moose-pasture of a
creek you ever laid eyes on. I made that into the big Ophir.
Why, I ran the water in there from the Rinkabilly, eighty miles
away. They all said I couldn't, but I did it, and I did it by
myself. The dam and the flume cost me four million. But you
should have seen that Ophir--power plants, electric lights, and
hundreds of men on the pay-roll, working night and day. I guess
I do get an inkling of what you mean by making a thing. I made
Ophir, and by God, she was a sure hummer--I beg your pardon. I
didn't mean to cuss. But that Ophir !--I sure am proud of her
now, just as the last time I laid eyes on her."
"And you won something there that was more than mere money," Dede
encouraged. "Now do you know what I would do if I had lots of
money and simply had to go on playing at business? Take all the
southerly and westerly slopes of these bare hills. I'd buy them
in and plant eucalyptus on them. I'd do it for the joy of doing
it anyway; but suppose I had that gambling twist in me which you
talk about, why, I'd do it just the same and make money out of
the trees. And there's my other point again. Instead of raising
the price of coal without adding an ounce of coal to the market
supply, I'd be making thousands and thousands of cords of
firewood--making something where nothing was before. And
everybody who ever crossed on the ferries would look up at these
forested hills and be made glad. Who was made glad by your
adding four dollars a ton to Rock Wells?"
It was Daylight's turn to be silent for a time while she waited
an answer.
"Would you rather I did things like that?" he asked at last.
"It would be better for the world, and better for you," she
answered noncommittally.
CHAPTER XVI
All week every one in the office knew that something new and big
was afoot in Daylight's mind. Beyond some deals of no
importance, he had not been interested in anything for several
months. But now he went about in an almost unbroken brown study,
made unexpected and lengthy trips across the bay to Oakland, or
sat at his desk silent and motionless for hours. He seemed
particularly happy with what occupied his mind. At times men
came in and conferred with him--and with new faces and differing
in type from those that usually came to see him.
On Sunday Dede learned all about it. "I've been thinking a lot
of our talk," he began, "and I've got an idea I'd like to give it
a flutter. And I've got a proposition to make your hair stand
up. It's what you call legitimate, and at the same time it's the
gosh-dangdest gamble a man ever went into. How about planting
minutes wholesale, and making two minutes grow where one minute
grew before? Oh, yes, and planting a few trees, too--say several
million of them. You remember the quarry I made believe I was
looking at? Well, I'm going to buy it. I'm going to buy these
hills, too, clear from here around to Berkeley and down the other
way to San Leandro. I own a lot of them already, for that
matter. But mum is the word. I'll be buying a long time to come
before anything much is guessed about it, and I don't want the
market to jump up out of sight. You see that hill over there.
It's my hill running clear down its slopes through Piedmont and
halfway along those rolling hills into Oakland. And it's nothing
to all the things I'm going to buy."
He paused triumphantly. "And all to make two minutes grow where
one grew before?" Dede queried, at the same time laughing
heartily at his affectation of mystery.
He stared at her fascinated. She had such a frank, boyish way of
throwing her head back when she laughed. And her teeth were an
unending delight to him. Not small, yet regular and firm,
without a blemish, he considered then the healthiest, whitest,
prettiest teeth he had ever seen. And for months he had been
comparing them with the teeth of every woman he met.
It was not until her laughter was over that he was able to
continue.
"The ferry system between Oakland and San Francisco is the worst
one-horse concern in the United States. You cross on it every
day, six days in the week. That's say, twenty-five days a month,
or three hundred a year. Now long does it take you one way?
Forty minutes, if you're lucky. I'm going to put you across in
twenty minutes. If that ain't making two minutes grow where one
grew before, knock off my head with little apples. I'll save you
twenty minutes each way. That's forty minutes a day, times three
hundred, equals twelve thousand minutes a year, just for you,
just for one person. Let's see: that's two hundred whole hours.
Suppose I save two hundred hours a year for thousands of other
folks,--that's farming some, ain't it?"
Dede could only nod breathlessly. She had caught the contagion
of his enthusiasm, though she had no clew as to how this great
time-saving was to be accomplished.
"Come on," he said. "Let's ride up that hill, and when I get you
out on top where you can see something, I'll talk sense."
A small footpath dropped down to the dry bed of the canon, which
they crossed before they began the climb. The slope was steep
and covered with matted brush and bushes, through which the
horses slipped and lunged. Bob, growing disgusted, turned back
suddenly and attempted to pass Mab. The mare was thrust sidewise
into the denser bush, where she nearly fell. Recovering, she
flung her weight against Bob. Both riders' legs were caught in
the consequent squeeze, and, as Bob plunged ahead down hill, Dede
was nearly scraped off. Daylight threw his horse on to its
haunches and at the same time dragged Dede back into the saddle.
Showers of twigs and leaves fell upon them, and predicament
followed predicament, until they emerged on the hilltop the worse
for wear but happy and excited. Here no trees obstructed the
view. The particular hill on which they were, out-jutted from
the regular line of the range, so that the sweep of their vision
extended over three-quarters of the circle. Below, on the flat
land bordering the bay, lay Oakland, and across the bay was San
Francisco. Between the two cities they could see the white
ferry-boats on the water. Around to their right was Berkeley,
and to their left the scattered villages between Oakland and San
Leandro. Directly in the foreground was Piedmont, with its
desultory dwellings and patches of farming land, and from
Piedmont the land rolled down in successive waves upon Oakland.
"Look at it," said Daylight, extending his arm in a sweeping
gesture. "A hundred thousand people there, and no reason there
shouldn't be half a million. There's the chance to make five
people grow where one grows now. Here's the scheme in a
nutshell. Why don't more people live in Oakland? No good
service with San Francisco, and, besides, Oakland is asleep.
It's a whole lot better place to live in than San Francisco.
Now, suppose I buy in all the street railways of Oakland,
Berkeley, Alameda, San Leandro, and the rest,--bring them under
one head with a competent management? Suppose I cut the time to
San Francisco one-half by building a big pier out there almost to
Goat Island and establishing a ferry system with modern
up-to-date boats? Why, folks will want to live over on this
side. Very good. They'll need land on which to build. So,
first
I buy up the land. But the land's cheap now. Why? Because it's
in the country, no electric roads, no quick communication, nobody
guessing that the electric roads are coming. I'll build the
roads.
That will make the land jump up. Then I'll sell the land as fast
as the folks will want to buy because of the improved ferry
system
and transportation facilities.
"You see, I give the value to the land by building the roads.
Then I sell the land and get that value back, and after that,
there's the roads, all carrying folks back and forth and earning
big money. Can't lose. And there's all sorts of millions in it.
I'm going to get my hands on some of that water front and the
tide-lands. Take between where I'm going to build my pier and
the old pier. It's shallow water. I can fill and dredge and put
in a system of docks that will handle hundreds of ships. San
Francisco's water front is congested. No more room for ships.
With hundreds of ships loading and unloading on this side right
into the freight cars of three big railroads, factories will
start up over here instead of crossing to San Francisco. That
means factory sites. That means me buying in the factory sites
before anybody guesses the cat is going to jump, much less, which
way. Factories mean tens of thousands of workingmen and their
families. That means more houses and more land, and that means
me, for I'll be there to sell them the land. And tens of
thousands of families means tens of thousands of nickels every
day for my electric cars. The growing population will mean more
stores, more banks, more everything. And that'll mean me, for
I'll be right there with business property as well as home
property. What do you think of it?"
Therefore she could answer, he was off again, his mind's eye
filled with this new city of his dream which he builded on the
Alameda hills by the gateway to the Orient.
"Do you know--I've been looking it up--the Firth Of Clyde, where
all the steel ships are built, isn't half as wide as Oakland
Creek down there, where all those old hulks lie? Why ain't it a
Firth of Clyde? Because the Oakland City Council spends its time
debating about prunes and raisins. What is needed is somebody to
see things, and, after that, organization. That's me. I didn't
make Ophir for nothing. And once things begin to hum, outside
capital will pour in. All I do is start it going. 'Gentlemen,'
I say, 'here's all the natural advantages for a great metropolis.
God Almighty put them advantages here, and he put me here to see
them. Do you want to land your tea and silk from Asia and ship
it straight East? Here's the docks for your steamers, and here's
the railroads. Do you want factories from which you can ship
direct by land or water? Here's the site, and here's the modern,
up-to-date city, with the latest improvements for yourselves and
your workmen, to live in.'"
"Then there's the water. I'll come pretty close to owning the
watershed. Why not the waterworks too? There's two water
companies in Oakland now, fighting like cats and dogs and both
about broke. What a metropolis needs is a good water system.
They can't give it. They're stick-in-the-muds. I'll gobble them
up and deliver the right article to the city. There's money
there, too--money everywhere. Everything works in with
everything else. Each improvement makes the value of everything
else pump up. It's people that are behind the value. The bigger
the crowd that herds in one place, the more valuable is the real
estate. And this is the very place for a crowd to herd. Look at
it. Just look at it! You could never find a finer site for a
great city. All it needs is the herd, and I'll stampede a couple
of hundred thousand people in here ins two years. And what's
more it won't be one of these wild cat land booms. It will be
legitimate. Twenty years for now there'll be a million people on
this side the bay. Another thing is hotels. There isn't a
decent one in the town. I'll build a couple of up-to-date ones
that'll make them sit up and take notice. I won't care if they
don't pay for years. Their effect will more than give me my
money back out of the other holdings. And, oh, yes, I'm going to
plant eucalyptus, millions of them, on these hills."
"But how are you going to do it?" Dede asked. "You haven't
enough money for all that you've planned."
"I've thirty million, and if I need more I can borrow on the land
and other things. Interest on mortgages won't anywhere near eat
up the increase in land values, and I'll be selling land right
along."
In the weeks that followed, Daylight was a busy man. He spent
most of his time in Oakland, rarely coming to the office. He
planned to move the office to Oakland, but, as he told Dede, the
secret preliminary campaign of buying had to be put through
first. Sunday by Sunday, now from this hilltop and now from
that, they looked down upon the city and its farming suburbs, and
he pointed out to her his latest acquisitions. At first it was
patches and sections of land here and there; but as the weeks
passed it was the unowned portions that became rare, until at
last they stood as islands surrounded by Daylight's land.
It meant quick work on a colossal scale, for Oakland and the
adjacent country was not slow to feel the tremendous buying. But
Daylight had the ready cash, and it had always been his policy to
strike quickly. Before the others could get the warning of the
boom, he quietly accomplished many things. At the same time that
his agents were purchasing corner lots and entire blocks in the
heart of the business section and the waste lands for factory
sites, Day was rushing franchises through the city council,
capturing the two exhausted water companies and the eight or nine
independent street railways, and getting his grip on the Oakland
Creek and the bay tide-lands for his dock system. The tide-lands
had been in litigation for years, and he took the bull by the
horns--buying out the private owners and at the same time leasing
from the city fathers.
By the time that Oakland was aroused by this unprecedented
activity in every direction and was questioning excitedly the
meaning of it, Daylight secretly bought the chief Republican
newspaper and the chief Democratic organ, and moved boldly into
his new offices. Of necessity, they were on a large scale,
occupying four floors of the only modern office building in the
town--the only building that wouldn't have to be torn down later
on, as Daylight put it. There was department after department, a
score of them, and hundreds of clerks and stenographers. As he
told Dede: "I've got more companies than you can shake a stick
at. There's the Alameda & Contra Costa Land Syndicate, the
Consolidated Street Railways, the Yerba Buena Ferry Company, the
United Water Company, the Piedmont Realty Company, the Fairview
and Portola Hotel Company, and half a dozen more that I've got to
refer to a notebook to remember. There's the Piedmont Laundry
Farm, and Redwood Consolidated Quarries. Starting in with our
quarry, I just kept a-going till I got them all. And there's the
ship-building company I ain't got a name for yet. Seeing as I
had to have ferry-boats, I decided to build them myself. They'll
be done by the time the pier is ready for them. Phew! It all
sure beats poker. And I've had the fun of gouging the robber
gangs as well. The water company bunches are squealing yet. I
sure got them where the hair was short. They were just about all
in when I came along and finished them off."
"But why do you hate them so?" Dede asked.
"Because they're such cowardly skunks."
"But you play the same game they do."
"Yes; but not in the same way." Daylight regarded her
thoughtfully. "When I say cowardly skunks, I mean just
that,--cowardly skunks. They set up for a lot of gamblers, and
there ain't one in a thousand of them that's got the nerve to be
a gambler. They're four-flushers, if you know what that means.
They're a lot of little cottontail rabbits making believe they're
big rip-snorting timber wolves. They set out to everlastingly
eat up some proposition but at the first sign of trouble they
turn tail and stampede for the brush. Look how it works. When
the big fellows wanted to unload Little Copper, they sent Jakey
Fallow into the New York Stock Exchange to yell out: 'I'll buy
all or any part of Little Copper at fifty five,' Little Copper
being at fifty-four. And in thirty minutes them cottontails--
financiers, some folks call them--bid up Little Copper to sixty.
And an hour after that, stampeding for the brush, they were
throwing Little Copper overboard at forty-five and even forty.
"They're catspaws for the big fellows. Almost as fast as they
rob the suckers, the big fellows come along and hold them up. Or
else the big fellows use them in order to rob each other. That's
the way the Chattanooga Coal and Iron Company was swallowed up by
the trust in the last panic. The trust made that panic. It had
to break a couple of big banking companies and squeeze half a
dozen big fellows, too, and it did it by stampeding the
cottontails. The cottontails did the rest all right, and the
trust gathered in Chattanooga Coal and Iron. Why, any man, with
nerve and savvee, can start them cottontails jumping for the
brush. I don't exactly hate them myself, but I haven't any
regard for chicken-hearted four-flushers."
CHAPTER XVII
For months Daylight was buried in work. The outlay was terrific,
and there was nothing coming in. Beyond a general rise in land
values, Oakland had not acknowledged his irruption on the
financial scene. The city was waiting for him to show what he
was going to do, and he lost no time about it. The best skilled
brains on the market were hired by him for the different branches
of the work. Initial mistakes he had no patience with, and he
was determined to start right, as when he engaged Wilkinson,
almost doubling his big salary, and brought him out from Chicago
to take charge of the street railway organization. Night and day
the road gangs toiled on the streets. And night and day the
pile-drivers hammered the big piles down into the mud of San
Francisco Bay. The pier was to be three miles long, and the
Berkeley hills were denuded of whole groves of mature eucalyptus
for the piling.
At the same time that his electric roads were building out
through the hills, the hay-fields were being surveyed and broken
up into city squares, with here and there, according to best
modern methods, winding boulevards and strips of park. Broad
streets, well graded, were made, with sewers and water-pipes
ready laid, and macadamized from his own quarries. Cement
sidewalks were also laid, so that all the purchaser had to do was
to select his lot and architect and start building. The quick
service of Daylight's new electric roads into Oakland made this
big district immediately accessible, and long before the ferry
system was in operation hundreds of residences were going up.
The profit on this land was enormous. In a day, his onslaught of
wealth had turned open farming country into one of the best
residential districts of the city.
But this money that flowed in upon him was immediately poured
back into his other investments. The need for electric cars was
so great that he installed his own shops for building them. And
even on the rising land market, he continued to buy choice
factory sites and building properties. On the advice of
Wilkinson, practically every electric road already in operation
was rebuilt. The light, old fashioned rails were torn out and
replaced by the heaviest that were manufactured. Corner lots, on
the sharp turns of narrow streets, were bought and ruthlessly
presented to the city in order to make wide curves for his tracks
and high speed for his cars. Then, too, there were the main-line
feeders for his ferry system, tapping every portion of Oakland,
Alameda, and Berkeley, and running fast expresses to the pier
end. The same large-scale methods were employed in the water
system. Service of the best was needed, if his huge land
investment was to succeed. Oakland had to be made into a
worth-while city, and that was what he intended to do. In
addition to his big hotels, he built amusement parks for the
common people, and art galleries and club-house country inns for
the more finicky classes. Even before there was any increase in
population, a marked increase in street-railway traffic took
place. There was nothing fanciful about his schemes. They were
sound investments.
"What Oakland wants is a first glass theatre," he said, and,
after vainly trying to interest local capital, he started the
building of the theatre himself; for he alone had vision for the
two hundred thousand new people that were coming to the town.
But no matter what pressure was on Daylight, his Sundays he
reserved for his riding in the hills. It was not the winter
weather, however, that brought these rides with Dede to an end.
One Saturday afternoon in the office she told him not to expect
to meet her next day, and, when he pressed for an explanation:
"I've sold Mab."
Daylight was speechless for the moment. Her act meant one of so
many serious things that he couldn't classify it. It smacked
almost of treachery. She might have met with financial disaster.
It might be her way of letting him know she had seen enough of
him. Or...
"What's the matter?" he managed to ask.
"I couldn't afford to keep her with hay forty-five dollars a
ton," Dede answered.
"Was that your only reason?" he demanded, looking at her
steadily; for he remembered her once telling him how she had
brought the mare through one winter, five years before, when hay
had gone as high as sixty dollars a ton.
"No. My brother's expenses have been higher, as well, and I was
driven to the conclusion that since I could not afford both, I'd
better let the mare go and keep the brother."
Daylight felt inexpressibly saddened. He was suddenly aware of a
great emptiness. What would a Sunday be without Dede? And
Sundays without end without her? He drummed perplexedly on the
desk with his fingers.
"Who bought her?" he asked. Dede's eyes flashed in the way long
since familiar to him when she was angry.
"Don't you dare buy her back for me," she cried. "And don't deny
that that was what you had in mind."
"I won't deny it. It was my idea to a tee. But I wouldn't have
done it without asking you first, and seeing how you feel about
it, I won't even ask you. But you thought a heap of that mare,
and it's pretty hard on you to lose her. I'm sure sorry. And
I'm sorry, too, that you won't be riding with me tomorrow. I'll
be plumb lost. I won't know what to do with myself."
"Neither shall I," Dede confessed mournfully, "except that I
shall be able to catch up with my sewing."
"But I haven't any sewing."
Daylight's tone was whimsically plaintive, but secretly he was
delighted with her confession of loneliness. It was almost worth
the loss of the mare to get that out of her. At any rate, he
meant something to her. He was not utterly unliked.
"I wish you would reconsider, Miss Mason," he said softly. "Not
alone for the mare's sake, but for my sake. Money don't cut any
ice in this. For me to buy that mare wouldn't mean as it does to
most men to send a bouquet of flowers or a box of candy to a
young lady. And I've never sent you flowers or candy." He
observed the warning flash of her eyes, and hurried on to escape
refusal. "I'll tell you what we'll do. Suppose I buy the mare
and own her myself, and lend her to you when you want to ride.
There's nothing wrong in that. Anybody borrows a horse from
anybody, you know."
Agin he saw refusal, and headed her off.
"Lots of men take women buggy-riding. There's nothing wrong in
that. And the man always furnishes the horse and buggy. Well,
now, what's the difference between my taking you buggy-riding and
furnishing the horse and buggy, and taking you horse-back-riding
and furnishing the horses?"
She shook her head, and declined to answer, at the same time
looking at the door as if to intimate that it was time for this
unbusinesslike conversation to end. He made one more effort.
"Do you know, Miss Mason, I haven't a friend in the world outside
you? I mean a real friend, man or woman, the kind you chum with,
you know, and that you're glad to be with and sorry to be away
from. Hegan is the nearest man I get to, and he's a million
miles away from me. Outside business, we don't hitch. He's got
a big library of books, and some crazy kind of culture, and he
spends all his off times reading things in French and German and
other outlandish lingoes--when he ain't writing plays and poetry.
There's nobody I feel chummy with except you, and you know how
little we've chummed--once a week, if it didn't rain, on Sunday.
I've grown kind of to depend on you. You're a sort of--of--of--"
"A sort of habit," she said with a smile.
"That's about it. And that mare, and you astride of her, coming
along the road under the trees or through the sunshine--why, with
both you and the mare missing, there won't be anything worth
waiting through the week for. If you'd just let me buy her
back--"
"No, no; I tell you no." Dede rose impatiently, but her eyes
were moist with the memory of her pet. "Please don't mention her
to me again. If you think it was easy to part with her, you are
mistaken. But I've seen the last of her, and I want to forget
her."
Daylight made no answer, and the door closed behind him.
Half an hour later he was conferring with Jones, the erstwhile
elevator boy and rabid proletarian whom Daylight long before had
grubstaked to literature for a year. The resulting novel had
been a failure. Editors and publishers would not look at it, and
now Daylight was using the disgruntled author in a little private
secret service system he had been compelled to establish for
himself. Jones, who affected to be surprised at nothing after
his crushing experience with railroad freight rates on firweood
and charcoal, betrayed no surprise now when the task was given to
him to locate the purchaser of a certain sorrel mare.
"How high shall I pay for her?" he asked.
"Any price. You've got to get her, that's the point. Drive a
sharp bargain so as not to excite suspicion, but her. Then you
deliver her to that address up in Sonoma County. The man's the
caretaker on a little ranch I have there. Tell him he's to take
whacking good care of her. And after that forget all about it.
Don't tell me the name of the man you buy her from. Don't tell
me anything about it except that you've got her and delivered
her. Savvee?"
But the week had not passed, when Daylight noted the flash in
Dede's eyes that boded trouble.
"Something's gone wrong--what is it?" he asked boldly.
"Mab," she said. "The man who bought her has sold her already.
If I thought you had anything to do with it--"
"I don't even know who you sold her to," was Daylight's answer.
"And what's more, I'm not bothering my head about her. She was
your mare, and it's none of my business what you did with her.
You haven't got her, that's sure and worse luck. And now, while
we're on touchy subjects, I'm going to open another one with you.
And you needn't get touchy about it, for it's not really your
business at all."
She waited in the pause that followed, eyeing him almost
suspiciously.
"It's about that brother of yours. He needs more than you can do
for him. Selling that mare of yours won't send him to Germany.
And that's what his own doctors say he needs--that crack German
specialist who rips a man's bones and muscles into pulp and then
molds them all over again. Well, I want to send him to Germany
and give that crack a flutter, that's all."
"If it were only possible" she said, half breathlessly, and
wholly without anger. "Only it isn't, and you know it isn't. I
can't accept money from you--"
"Hold on, now," he interrupted. "Wouldn't you accept a drink of
water from one of the Twelve Apostles if you was dying of thirst?
Or would you be afraid of his evil intentions"--she made a
gesture of dissent "--or of folks might say about it?"
"But that's different," she began.
"Now look here, Miss Mason. You've got to get some foolish
notions out of your head. This money notion is one of the
funniest things I've seen. Suppose you was falling over a cliff,
wouldn't it be all right for me to reach out and hold you by the
arm? Sure it would. But suppose you ended another sort of
help--instead of the strength of arm, the strength of my pocket?
That would be all and that's what they all say. But why do they
say it. Because the robber gangs want all the suckers to be
honest and respect money. If the suckers weren't honest and
didn't respect money, where would the robbers be? Don't you see?
The robbers don't deal in arm-holds; they deal in dollars.
Therefore arm-holds are just common and ordinary, while dollars
are sacred--so sacred that you didn't let me lend you a hand with
a few.
"Or here's another way," he continued, spurred on by her mute
protest. "It's all right for me to give the strength of my arm
when you're falling over a cliff. But if I take that same
strength of arm and use it at pick-and-shovel work for a day and
earn two dollars, you won't have anything to do with the two
dollars. Yet it's the same old strength of arm in a new form,
that's all. Besides, in this proposition it won't be a claim on
you. It ain't even a loan to you. It's an arm-hold I'm giving
your brother--just the same sort of arm-hold as if he was falling
over a cliff. And a nice one you are, to come running out and
yell 'Stop!' at me, and let your brother go on over the cliff.
What he needs to save his legs is that crack in Germany, and
that's the arm-hold I'm offering.
"Wish you could see my rooms. Walls all decorated with horsehair
bridles--scores of them--hundreds of them. They're no use to me,
and they cost like Sam Scratch. But there's a lot of convicts
making them, and I go on buying. Why, I've spent more money in a
single night on whiskey than would get the best specialists and
pay all the expenses of a dozen cases like your brother's. And
remember, you've got nothing to do with this. If your brother
wants to look on it as a loan, all right. It's up to him, and
you've got to stand out of the way while I pull him back from
that cliff."
Still Dede refused, and Daylight's argument took a more painful
turn.
"I can only guess that you're standing in your brother's way on
account of some mistaken idea in your head that this is my idea
of courting. Well, it ain't. You might as well think I'm
courting all those convicts I buy bridles from. I haven't asked
you to marry me, and if I do I won't come trying to buy you into
consenting. And there won't be anything underhand when I come
a-asking."
Dede's face was flushed and angry. "If you knew how ridiculous
you
are, you'd stop," she blurted out. "You can make me more
uncomfortable than any man I ever knew. Every little while you
give me to understand that you haven't asked me to marry you yet.
I'm not waiting to be asked, and I warned you from the first that
you had no chance. And yet you hold it over my head that some
time, some day, you're going to ask me to marry you. Go ahead
and
ask me now, and get your answer and get it over and done with."
He looked at her in honest and pondering admiration. "I want you
so bad, Miss Mason, that I don't dast to ask you now," he said,
with such whimsicality and earnestness as to make her throw her
head back in a frank boyish laugh. "Besides, as I told you, I'm
green at it. I never went a-courting before, and I don't want to
make any mistakes."
"But you're making them all the time," she cried impulsively.
"No man ever courted a woman by holding a threatened proposal
over her head like a club."
"I won't do it any more," he said humbly. "And anyway, we're off
the argument. My straight talk a minute ago still holds. You're
standing in your brother's way. No matter what notions you've
got in your head, you've got to get out of the way and give him a
chance. Will you let me go and see him and talk it over with
him? I'll make it a hard and fast business proposition. I'll
stake him to get well, that's all, and charge him interest."
She visibly hesitated.
"And just remember one thing, Miss Mason: it's HIS leg, not
yours."
Still she refrained from giving her answer, and Daylight went on
strengthening his position.
"And remember, I go over to see him alone. He's a man, and I can
deal with him better without womenfolks around. I'll go over
to-morrow afternoon."
CHAPTER XVIII
Daylight had been wholly truthful when he told Dede that he had
no real friends. On speaking terms with thousands, on fellowship
and drinking terms with hundreds, he was a lonely man. He failed
to find the one man, or group of several men, with whom he could
be really intimate. Cities did not make for comradeship as did
the Alaskan trail. Besides, the types of men were different.
Scornful and contemptuous of business men on the one hand, on the
other his relations with the San Francisco bosses had been more
an alliance of expediency than anything else. He had felt more
of kinship for the franker brutality of the bosses and their
captains, but they had failed to claim any deep respect. They
were too prone to crookedness. Bonds were better than men's word
in this modern world, and one had to look carefully to the bonds.
In the old Yukon days it had been different. Bonds didn't go. A
man said he had so much, and even in a poker game his appeasement
was accepted.
Larry Hegan, who rose ably to the largest demands of Daylight's
operations and who had few illusions and less hypocrisy, might
have proved a chum had it not been for his temperamental twist.
Strange genius that he was, a Napoleon of the law, with a power
of visioning that far exceeded Daylight's, he had nothing in
common with Daylight outside the office. He spent his time with
books, a thing Daylight could not abide. Also, he devoted
himself to the endless writing of plays which never got beyond
manuscript form, and, though Daylight only sensed the secret
taint of it, was a confirmed but temperate eater of hasheesh.
Hegan lived all his life cloistered with books in a world of
agitation. With the out-of-door world he had no understanding
nor tolerance. In food and drink he was abstemious as a monk,
while exercise was a thing abhorrent. Daylight's friendships, in
lieu of anything closer, were drinking friendships and roistering
friendships. And with the passing of the Sunday rides with Dede,
he fell back more and more upon these for diversion. The
cocktail wall of inhibition he reared more assiduously than ever.
The big red motor-car was out more frequently now, while a stable
hand was hired to give Bob exercise. In his early San Francisco
days, there had been intervals of easement between his deals, but
in this present biggest deal of all the strain was unremitting.
Not in a month, or two, or three, could his huge land investment
be carried to a successful consummation. And so complete and
wide-reaching was it that complications and knotty situations
constantly arose. Every day brought its problems, and when he
had solved them in his masterful way, he left the office in his
big car, almost sighing with relief at anticipation of the
approaching double Martini. Rarely was he made tipsy. His
constitution was too strong for that. Instead, he was that
direst of all drinkers, the steady drinker, deliberate and
controlled, who averaged a far higher quantity of alcohol than
the irregular and violent drinker. For six weeks hard-running he
had seen nothing of Dede except in the office, and there he
resolutely refrained from making approaches. But by the seventh
Sunday his hunger for her overmastered him. It was a stormy day.
A heavy southeast gale was blowing, and squall after squall of
rain and wind swept over the city. He could not take his mind
off of her, and a persistent picture came to him of her sitting
by a window and sewing feminine fripperies of some sort. When
the time came for his first pre-luncheon cocktail to be served to
him in his rooms, he did not take it.
Filled with a daring determination, he glanced at his note book
for Dede's telephone number, and called for the switch.
At first it was her landlady's daughter who was raised, but in a
minute he heard the voice he had been hungry to hear.
"I just wanted to tell you that I'm coming out to see you," he
said. "I didn't want to break in on you without warning, that
was all."
"Has something happened?" came her voice.
"I'll tell you when I get there," he evaded.
He left the red car two blocks away and arrived on foot at the
pretty, three-storied, shingled Berkeley house. For an instant
only, he was aware of an inward hesitancy, but the next moment he
rang the bell. He knew that what he was doing was in direct
violation of her wishes, and that he was setting her a difficult
task to receive as a Sunday caller the multimillionaire and
notorious Elam Harnish of newspaper fame. On the other hand, the
one thing he did not expect of her was what he would have termed
"silly female capers."
And in this he was not disappointed.
She came herself to the door to receive him and shake hands with
him. He hung his mackintosh and hat on the rack in the
comfortable square hall and turned to her for direction.
"They are busy in there," she said, indicating the parlor from
which came the boisterous voices of young people, and through the
open door of which he could see several college youths. "So you
will have to come into my rooms."
She led the way through the door opening out of the hall to the
right, and, once inside, he stood awkwardly rooted to the floor,
gazing about him and at her and all the time trying not to gaze.
In his perturbation he failed to hear and see her invitation to a
seat. So these were her quarters. the intimacy of it and her
making no fuss about it was startling, but it was no more than he
would have expected of her. It was almost two rooms in one, the
one he was in evidently the sitting-room, and the one he could
see into, the bedroom. Beyond an oaken dressing-table, with an
orderly litter of combs and brushes and dainty feminine
knickknacks, there was no sign of its being used as a bedroom.
The broad couch, with a cover of old rose and banked high with
cushions, he decided must be the bed, but it was farthest from
any experience of a civilized bed he had ever had.
Not that he saw much of detail in that awkward moment of
standing. His general impression was one of warmth and comfort
and beauty. There were no carpets, and on the hardwood floor he
caught a glimpse of several wolf and coyote skins. What captured
and perceptibly held his eye for a moment was a Crouched Venus
that stood on a Steinway upright against a background of
mountain-lion skin on the wall.
But it was Dede herself that smote most sharply upon sense and
perception. He had always cherished the idea that she was very
much a woman--the lines of her figure, her hair, her eyes, her
voice, and birdlike laughing ways had all contributed to this;
but here, in her own rooms, clad in some flowing, clinging gown,
the emphasis of sex was startling. He had been accustomed to her
only in trim tailor suits and shirtwaists, or in riding costume
of velvet corduroy, and he was not prepared for this new
revelation. She seemed so much softer, so much more pliant, and
tender, and lissome. She was a part of this atmosphere of
quietude and beauty. She fitted into it just as she had fitted
in with the sober office furnishings.
"Won't you sit down?" she repeated.
He felt like an animal long denied food. His hunger for her
welled up in him, and he proceeded to "wolf" the dainty morsel
before him. Here was no patience, no diplomacy. The
straightest, direct way was none too quick for him and, had he
known it, the least unsuccessful way he could have chosen.
"Look here," he said, in a voice that shook with passion,
"there's one thing I won't do, and that's propose to you in the
office. That's why I'm here. Dede Mason, I want you. I just
want
you."
While he spoke he advanced upon her, his black eyes burning with
bright fire, his aroused blood swarthy in his cheek.
So precipitate was he, that she had barely time to cry out her
involuntary alarm and to step back, at the same time catching one
of his hands as he attempted to gather her into his arms.
In contrast to him, the blood had suddenly left her cheeks. The
hand that had warded his off and that still held it, was
trembling. She relaxed her fingers, and his arm dropped to his
side. She wanted to say something, do something, to pass on from
the awkwardness of the situation, but no intelligent thought nor
action came into her mind. She was aware only of a desire to
laugh. This impulse was party hysterical and partly spontaneous
humor--the latter growing from instant to instant. Amazing as
the affair was, the ridiculous side of it was not veiled to her.
She felt like one who had suffered the terror of the onslaught of
a murderous footpad only to find out that it was an innocent
pedestrian asking the time.
Daylight was the quicker to achieve action. "Oh, I know I'm a
sure enough fool," he said. "I-I guess I'll sit down. Don't be
scairt, Miss Mason. I'm not real dangerous."
"I'm not afraid," she answered, with a smile, slipping down
herself into a chair, beside which, on the floor, stood a
sewing-basket from which, Daylight noted, some white fluffy thing
of lace and muslin overflowed. Again she smiled. "Though I
confess you did startle me for the moment."
"It's funny," Daylight sighed, almost with regret; "here I am,
strong enough to bend you around and tie knots in you. Here I
am, used to having my will with man and beast and anything. And
here I am sitting in this chair, as weak and helpless as a little
lamb. You sure take the starch out of me."
Dede vainly cudgeled her brains in quest of a reply to these
remarks. Instead, her thought dwelt insistently upon the
significance of his stepping aside, in the middle of a violent
proposal, in order to make irrelevant remarks. What struck her
was the man's certitude. So little did he doubt that he would
have her, that he could afford to pause and generalize upon love
and the effects of love.
She noted his hand unconsciously slipping in the familiar way
into the side coat pocket where she knew he carried his tobacco
and brown papers.
"You may smoke, if you want to," she said. He withdrew his hand
with a jerk, as if something in the pocket had stung him.
"No, I wasn't thinking of smoking. I was thinking of you.
What's a man to do when he wants a woman but ask her to marry
him? That's all that I'm doing. I can't do it in style. I
know that. But I can use straight English, and that's good
enough for me. I sure want you mighty bad, Miss Mason. You're
in my mind 'most all the time, now. And what I want to know
is--well, do you want me? That's all."
"I-I wish you hadn't asked," she said softly.
"Mebbe it's best you should know a few things before you give me
an answer," he went on, ignoring the fact that the answer had
already been given. "I never went after a woman before in my
life, all reports to the contrary not withstanding. The stuff
you read about me in the papers and books, about me being a
lady-killer, is all wrong. There's not an iota of truth in it. I
guess I've done more than my share of card-playing and
whiskey-drinking, but women I've let alone. There was a woman
that killed herself, but I didn't know she wanted me that bad or
else I'd have married her--not for love, but to keep her from
killing herself. She was the best of the boiling, but I never
gave her any encouragement. I'm telling you all this because
you've read about it, and I want you to get it straight from me.
"Lady-killer! " he snorted. "Why, Miss Mason, I don't mind
telling you that I've sure been scairt of women all my life.
You're the first one I've not been afraid of. That's the strange
thing about it. I just plumb worship you, and yet I'm not afraid
of you. Mebbe it's because you're different from the women I
know. You've never chased me. Lady-killer! Why, I've been
running away from ladies ever since I can remember, and I
guess all that saved me was that I was strong in the wind and
that I never fell down and broke a leg or anything.
"I didn't ever want to get married until after I met you, and
until a long time after I met you. I cottoned to you from the
start; but I never thought it would get as bad as marriage. Why,
I can't get to sleep nights, thinking of you and wanting you."
He came to a stop and waited. She had taken the lace and muslin
from the basket, possibly to settle her nerves and wits, and was
sewing upon it. As she was not looking at him, he devoured her
with his eyes. He noted the firm, efficient hands--hands that
could control a horse like Bob, that could run a typewriter
almost as fast as a man could talk, that could sew on dainty
garments, and that, doubtlessly, could play on the piano over
there in the corner. Another ultra-feminine detail he
noticed--her slippers. They were small and bronze. He had never
imagined she had such a small foot. Street shoes and riding
boots were all that he had ever seen on her feet, and they had
given no advertisement of this. The bronze slippers fascinated
him, and to them his eyes repeatedly turned.
A knock came at the door, which she answered. Daylight could not
help hearing the conversation. She was wanted at the telephone.
"Tell him to call up again in ten minutes," he heard her say, and
the masculine pronoun caused in him a flashing twinge of
jealousy. Well, he decided, whoever it was, Burning Daylight
would give him a run for his money. The marvel to him was that a
girl like Dede hadn't been married long since.
She came back, smiling to him, and resumed her sewing. His eyes
wandered from the efficient hands to the bronze slippers and back
again, and he swore to himself that there were mighty few
stenographers like her in existence. That was because she must
have come of pretty good stock, and had a pretty good raising.
Nothing else could explain these rooms of hers and the clothes
she wore and the way she wore them.
"Those ten minutes are flying," he suggested.
"I can't marry you," she said.
"You don't love me?"
She shook her head.
"Do you like me--the littlest bit?"
This time she nodded, at the same time allowing the smile of
amusement to play on her lips. But it was amusement without
contempt. The humorous side of a situation rarely appealed in
vain to her.
"Well, that's something to go on," he announced. "You've got to
make a start to get started. I just liked you at first, and look
what it's grown into. You recollect, you said you didn't like my
way of life. Well, I've changed it a heap. I ain't gambling
like I used to. I've gone into what you called the legitimate,
making two minutes grow where one grew before, three hundred
thousand folks where only a hundred thousand grew before. And
this time next year there'll be two million eucalyptus growing on
the hills. Say do you like me more than the littlest bit?"
She raised her eyes from her work and looked at him as she
answered:
"I like you a great deal, but--"
He waited a moment for her to complete the sentence, failing
which, he went on himself.
"I haven't an exaggerated opinion of myself, so I know I ain't
bragging when I say I'll make a pretty good husband. You'd find
I was no hand at nagging and fault-finding. I can guess what it
must be for a woman like you to be independent. Well, you'd be
independent as my wife. No strings on you. You could follow
your own sweet will, and nothing would be too good for you. I'd
give you everything your heart desired--"
"Except yourself," she interrupted suddenly, almost sharply.
Daylight's astonishment was momentary.
"I don't know about that. I'd be straight and square, and live
true. I don't hanker after divided affections."
"I don't mean that," she said. "Instead of giving yourself to
your wife, you would give yourself to the three hundred thousand
people of Oakland, to your street railways and ferry-routes, to
the two million trees on the hills to everything
business--and--and to all that that means."
"I'd see that I didn't," he declared stoutly. "I'd be yours to
command."
"You think so, but it would turn out differently." She suddenly
became nervous. "We must stop this talk. It is too much like
attempting to drive a bargain. 'How much will you give?' 'I'll
give so much.' 'I want more,' and all that. I like you, but not
enough to marry you, and I'll never like you enough to marry
you."
"How do you know that?" he demanded.
"Because I like you less and less."
Daylight sat dumfounded. The hurt showed itself plainly in his
face.
"Oh, you don't understand," she cried wildly, beginning to lose
self-control--"It's not that way I mean. I do like you; the more
I've known you the more I've liked you. And at the same time the
more I've known you the less would I care to marry you."
This enigmatic utterance completed Daylight's perplexity.
"Don't you see?" she hurried on. "I could have far easier
married the Elam Harnish fresh from Klondike, when I first laid
eyes on him long ago, than marry you sitting before me now."
He shook his head slowly. "That's one too many for me. The more
you know and like a man the less you want to marry him.
Familiarity breeds contempt--I guess that's what you mean."
"No, no," she cried, but before she could continue, a knock came
on the door.
"The ten minutes is up," Daylight said.
His eyes, quick with observation like an Indian's, darted about
the room while she was out. The impression of warmth and comfort
and beauty predominated, though he was unable to analyze it;
while the simplicity delighted him--expensive simplicity, he
decided, and most of it leftovers from the time her father went
broke and died. He had never before appreciated a plain hardwood
floor with a couple of wolfskins; it sure beat all the carpets in
creation. He stared solemnly at a bookcase containing acCouple
of hundred books. There was mystery. He could not understand
what people found so much to write about.
Writing things and reading things were not the same as doing
things, and himself primarily a man of action, doing things was
alone comprehensible.
His gaze passed on from the Crouched Venus to a little tea-table
with all its fragile and exquisite accessories, and to a shining
copper kettle and copper chafing-dish. Chafing dishes were not
unknown to him, and he wondered if she concocted suppers on this
one for some of those University young men he had heard whispers
about. One or two water-colors on the wall made him conjecture
that she had painted them herself. There were photographs of
horses and of old masters, and the trailing purple of a Burial of
Christ held him for a time. But ever his gaze returned to that
Crouched Venus on the piano. To his homely, frontier-trained
mind, it seemed curious that a nice young woman should have such
a bold, if not sinful, object on display in her own room. But he
reconciled himself to it by an act of faith. Since it was Dede,
it must be eminently all right. Evidently such things went along
with culture. Larry Hegan had similar casts and photographs in
his book-cluttered quarters. But then, Larry Hegan was
different. There was that hint of unhealth about him that
Daylight invariably sensed in his presence, while Dede, on the
contrary, seemed always so robustly wholesome, radiating an
atmosphere compounded of the sun and wind and dust of the open
road. And yet, if such a clean, healthy woman as she went in for
naked women crouching on her piano, it must be all right. Dede
made it all right. She could come pretty close to making
anything all right. Besides, he didn't understand culture
anyway.
She reentered the room, and as she crossed it to her chair, he
admired the way she walked, while the bronze slippers were
maddening.
"I'd like to ask you several questions," he began immediately
"Are you thinking of marrying somebody?"
She laughed merrily and shook her head.
"Do you like anybody else more than you like me?--that man at the
'phone just now, for instance?"
"There isn't anybody else. I don't know anybody I like well
enough to marry. For that matter, I don't think I am a marrying
woman. Office work seems to spoil one for that."
Daylight ran his eyes over her, from her face to the tip of a
bronze slipper, in a way that made the color mantle in her
cheeks. At the same time he shook his head sceptically.
"It strikes me that you're the most marryingest woman that ever
made a man sit up and take notice. And now another question.
You see, I've just got to locate the lay of the land. Is there
anybody you like as much as you like me?"
But Dede had herself well in hand.
"That's unfair," she said. "And if you stop and consider, you
will find that you are doing the very thing you
disclaimed--namely,
nagging. I refuse to answer any more of your
questions. Let us talk about other things. How is Bob?"
Half an hour later, whirling along through the rain on Telegraph
Avenue toward Oakland, Daylight smoked one of his brown-paper
cigarettes and reviewed what had taken place. It was not at all
bad, was his summing up, though there was much about it that was
baffling. There was that liking him the more she knew him and at
the same time wanting to marry him less. That was a puzzler.
But the fact that she had refused him carried with it a certain
elation. In refusing him she had refused his thirty million
dollars. That was going some for a ninety dollar-a-month
stenographer who had known better ties. She wasn't after money,
that was patent. Every woman he had encountered had seemed
willing to swallow him down for the sake of his money. Why, he
had doubled his fortune, made fifteen millions, since the day she
first came to work for him, and behold, any willingness to marry
him she might have possessed had diminished as his money had
increased.
"Gosh!" he muttered. "If I clean up a hundred million on this
land deal she won't even be on speaking terms with me."
But he could not smile the thing away. It remained to baffle
him, that enigmatic statement of hers that she could more easily
have married the Elam Harnish fresh from the Klondike than the
present Elam Harnish. Well, he concluded, the thing to do was
for him to become more like that old-time Daylight who had come
down out of the North to try his luck at the bigger game. But
that was impossible. He could not set back the flight of time.
Wishing wouldn't do it, and there was no other way. He might as
well wish himself a boy again.
Another satisfaction he cuddled to himself from their interview.
He had heard of stenographers before, who refused their
employers, and who invariably quit their positions immediately
afterward. But Dede had not even hinted at such a thing. No
matter how baffling she was, there was no nonsensical silliness
about her. She was level headed. But, also, he had been
level-headed and was partly responsible for this. He hadn't
taken advantage of her in the office. True, he had twice
overstepped the bounds, but he had not followed it up and made a
practice of it. She knew she could trust him. But in spite of
all this he was confident that most young women would have been
silly enough to resign a position with a man they had turned
down. And besides, after he had put it to her in the right
light, she had not been silly over his sending her brother to
Germany.
"Gee!" he concluded, as the car drew up before his hotel. "If
I'd only known it as I do now, I'd have popped the question the
first day she came to work. According to her say-so, that would
have been the proper moment. She likes me more and more, and the
more she likes me the less she'd care to marry me! Now what do
youbthink of that? She sure must be fooling."
CHAPTER XIX
Once again, on a rainy Sunday, weeks afterward, Daylight
proposed to Dede. As on the first time, he restrained himself
until his hunger for her overwhelmed him and swept him away in
his red automobile to Berkeley. He left the machine several
blocks away and proceeded to the house on foot. But Dede was
out, the landlady's daughter told him, and added, on second
thought, that she was out walking in the hills. Furthermore, the
young lady directed him where Dede's walk was most likely to
extend.
Daylight obeyed the girl's instructions, and soon the street he
followed passed the last house and itself ceased where began the
first steep slopes of the open hills. The air was damp with the
on-coming of rain, for the storm had not yet burst, though the
rising wind proclaimed its imminence. As far as he could see,
there was no sign of Dede on the smooth, grassy hills. To the
right, dipping down into a hollow and rising again, was a large,
full-grown eucalyptus grove. Here all was noise and movement,
the lofty, slender trunked trees swaying back and forth in the
wind and clashing their branches together. In the squalls, above
all the minor noises of creaking and groaning, arose a deep
thrumming note as of a mighty harp. Knowing Dede as he did,
Daylight was confident that he would find her somewhere in this
grove where the storm effects were so pronounced. And find her
he did, across the hollow and on the exposed crest of the
opposing slope where the gale smote its fiercest blows.
There was something monotonous, though not tiresome, about the
way Daylight proposed. Guiltless of diplomacy subterfuge, he was
as direct and gusty as the gale itself. had time neither for
greeting nor apology.
"It's the same old thing," he said. "I want you and I've come
for
you. You've just got to have me, Dede, for the more I think
about it the more certain I am that you've got a Sneaking liking
for me that's something more than just Ordinary liking. And you
don't dast say that it isn't; now dast you?"
He had shaken hands with her at the moment he began speaking, and
he had continued to hold her hand. Now, when she did not answer,
she felt a light but firmly insistent pressure as of his drawing
her to him. Involuntarily, she half-yielded to him, her desire
for the moment stronger than her will. Then suddenly she drew
herself away, though permitting her hand still to remain in his.
"You sure ain't afraid of me?" he asked, with quick compunction.
"No." She smiled woefully. "Not of you, but of myself."
"You haven't taken my dare," he urged under this encouragement.
"Please, please," she begged. "We can never marry, so don't let
us discuss it."
"Then I copper your bet to lose." He was almost gay, now, for
success was coming faster than his fondest imagining. She liked
him, without a doubt; and without a doubt she liked him well
enough to let him hold her hand, well enough to be not repelled
by the nearness of him.
She shook her head. "No, it is impossible. You would lose your
bet."
For the first time a dark suspicion crossed Daylight's mind--a
clew
that explained everything.
"Say, you ain't been let in for some one of these secret
marriages
have you?"
The consternation in his voice and on his face was too much for
her, and her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous as a burst of
joy from the throat of a bird.
Daylight knew his answer, and, vexed with himself decided that
action was more efficient than speech. So he stepped between her
and the wind and drew her so that she stood close in the shelter
of him. An unusually stiff squall blew about them and thrummed
overhead in the tree-tops and both paused to listen. A shower of
flying leaves enveloped them, and hard on the heel of the wind
came driving drops of rain. He looked down on her and on her
hair wind-blown about her face; and because of her closeness to
him and of a fresher and more poignant realization of what she
meant to him, he trembled so that she was aware of it in the hand
that held hers.
She suddenly leaned against him, bowing her head until it rested
lightly upon his breast. And so they stood while another squall,
with flying leaves and scattered drops of rain, rattled past.
With equal suddenness she lifted her head and looked at him.
"Do you know," she said, "I prayed last night about you. I
prayed that you would fail, that you would lose everything
everything."
Daylight stared his amazement at this cryptic utterance. "That
sure beats me. I always said I got out of my depth with women,
and you've got me out of my depth now. Why you want me to lose
everything, seeing as you like me--"
"I never said so."
"You didn't dast say you didn't. So, as I was saying: liking me,
why you'd want me to go broke is clean beyond my simple
understanding. It's right in line with that other puzzler of
yours, the more-you-like-me-the-less-you-want-to-marry-me one.
Well, you've just got to explain, that's all."
His arms went around her and held her closely, and this time she
did not resist. Her head was bowed, and he had not see her face,
yet he had a premonition that she was crying. He had learned the
virtue of silence, and he waited her will in the matter. Things
had come to such a pass that she was bound to tell him something
now. Of that he was confident.
"I am not romantic," she began, again looking at him as he spoke.
"It might be better for me if I were. Then I could make a fool
of myself and be unhappy for the rest of my life. But my
abominable common sense prevents. And that doesn't make me a bit
happier, either."
"I'm still out of my depth and swimming feeble," Daylight said,
after waiting vainly for her to go on. "You've got to show me,
and you ain't shown me yet. Your common sense and praying that
I'd go broke is all up in the air to me. Little woman, I just
love you mighty hard, and I want you to marry me. That's
straight and simple and right off the bat. Will you marry me?"
She shook her head slowly, and then, as she talked, seemed to
grow angry, sadly angry; and Daylight knew that this anger was
against him.
"Then let me explain, and just as straight and simply as you have
asked." She paused, as if casting about for a beginning. "You
are honest and straightforward. Do you want me to be honest and
straightforward as a woman is not supposed to be?--to tell you
things that will hurt you?--to make confessions that ought to
shame me? to behave in what many men would think was an
unwomanly manner?"
The arm around her shoulder pressed encouragement, but he did not
speak.
"I would dearly like to marry you, but I am afraid. I am proud
and humble at the same time that a man like you should care for
me. But you have too much money. There's where my abominable
common sense steps in. Even if we did marry, you could never be
my man--my lover and my husband. You would be your money's man.
I know I am a foolish woman, but I want my man for myself. You
would not be free for me. Your money possesses you, taking your
time, your thoughts, your energy, ever thing, bidding you go here
and go there, do this and do that. Don't you see? Perhaps it's
pure silliness, but I feel that I can love much, give much--give
all, and in return, though I don't want all, I want much--and I
want much more than your money would permit you to give me.
"And your money destroys you; it makes you less and less nice. I
am not ashamed to say that I love you, because I shall never
marry you. And I loved you much when I did not know you at all,
when you first came down from Alaska and I first went into the
office. You were my hero. You were the Burning Daylight of the
gold-diggings, the daring traveler and miner. And you looked it.
I don't see how any woman could have looked at you without loving
you--then. But you don't look it now.
"Please, please, forgive me for hurting you. You wanted straight
talk, and I am giving it to you. All these last years you have
been living unnaturally. You, a man of the open, have been
cooping yourself up in the cities with all that that means. You
are not the same man at all, and your money is destroying you.
You are becoming something different, something not so healthy,
not so clean, not so nice. Your money and your way of life are
doing it. You know it. You haven't the same body now that you
had then. You are putting on flesh, and it is not healthy flesh.
You are kind and genial with me, I know, but you are not kind and
genial to all the world as you were then. You have become harsh
and cruel. And I know. Remember, I have studied you six days a
week, month after month, year after year; and I know more about
the most insignificant parts of you than you know of all of me.
The cruelty is not only in your heart and thoughts, but it is
there in face. It has put its lines there. I have watched them
come and grow. Your money, and the life it compels you to lead
have done all this. You are being brutalized and degraded. And
this process can only go on and on until you are hopelessly
destroyed--"
He attempted to interrupt, but she stopped him, herself
breathless and her voice trembling.
"No, no; let me finish utterly. I have done nothing but think,
think, think, all these months, ever since you came riding with
me, and now that I have begun to speak I am going to speak all
that I have in me. I do love you, but I cannot marry you and
destroy love. You are growing into a thing that I must in the
end despise. You can't help it. More than you can possibly love
me, do you love this business game. This business--and it's all
perfectly useless, so far as you are concerned--claims all of
you. I sometimes think it would be easier to share you equitably
with another woman than to share you with this business. I might
have half of you, at any rate. But this business would claim,
not half of you, but nine-tenths of you, or ninety-nine
hundredths.
"Remember, the meaning of marriage to me is not to get a man's
money to spend. I want the man. You say you want ME. And
suppose I consented, but gave you only one-hundredth part of me.
Suppose there was something else in my life that took the other
ninety-nine parts, and, furthermore, that ruined my figure, that
put pouches under my eyes and crows-feet in the corners, that
made me unbeautiful to look upon and that made my spirit
unbeautiful. Would you be satisfied with that one-hundredth part
of me? Yet that is all you are offering me of yourself. Do you
wonder that I won't marry you?--that I can't?"
Daylight waited to see if she were quite done, and she went on
again.
"It isn't that I am selfish. After all, love is giving, not
receiving. But I see so clearly that all my giving could not do
you any good. You are like a sick man. You don't play business
like other men. You play it heart and and all of you. No matter
what you believed and intended a wife would be only a brief
diversion. There is that magnificent Bob, eating his head off in
the stable. You would buy me a beautiful mansion and leave me in
it to yawn my head off, or cry my eyes out because of my
helplessness and inability to save you. This disease of business
would be corroding you and marring you all the time. You play it
as you have played everything else, as in Alaska you played the
life of the trail. Nobody could be permitted to travel as fast
and as far as you, to work as hard or endure as much. You hold
back nothing; you put all you've got into whatever you are
doing."
"Limit is the sky," he grunted grim affirmation.
"But if you would only play the lover-husband that way--"
Her voice faltered and stopped, and a blush showed in her wet
cheeks as her eyes fell before his.
"And now I won't say another word," she added. "I've delivered a
whole sermon."
She rested now, frankly and fairly, in the shelter of his arms,
and both were oblivious to the gale that rushed past them in
quicker and stronger blasts. The big downpour of rain had not
yet come, but the mist-like squalls were more frequent. Daylight
was openly perplexed, and he was still perplexed when he began to
speak.
"I'm stumped. I'm up a tree. I'm clean flabbergasted, Miss
Mason--or Dede, because I love to call you that name. I'm free
to confess there's a mighty big heap in what you say. As I
understand it, your conclusion is that you'd marry me if I hadn't
a cent and if I wasn't getting fat. No, no; I'm not joking. I
acknowledge the corn, and that's just my way of boiling the
matter down and summing it up. If I hadn't a cent, and if I was
living a healthy life with all the time in the world to love you
and be your husband instead of being awash to my back teeth in
business and all the rest--why, you'd marry me.
"That's all as clear as print, and you're correcter than I ever
guessed before. You've sure opened my eyes a few. But I'm
stuck. What can I do? My business has sure roped, thrown, and
branded me. I'm tied hand and foot, and I can't get up and
meander over green pastures. I'm like the man that got the bear
by the tail. I can't let go; and I want you, and I've got to let
go to get you.
"I don't know what to do, but something's sure got to happen--I
can't lose you. I just can't. And I'm not going to. Why,
you're running business a close second right now. Business never
kept me awake nights.
"You've left me no argument. I know I'm not the same man that
came from Alaska. I couldn't hit the trail with the dogs as I
did in them days. I'm soft in my muscles, and my mind's gone
hard. I used to respect men. I despise them now. You see, I
spent all my life in the open, and I reckon I'm an open-air man.
Why, I've got the prettiest little ranch you ever laid eyes on,
up in Glen Ellen. That's where I got stuck for that brick-yard.
You recollect handling the correspondence. I only laid eyes on
the ranch that one time, and I so fell in love with it that I
bought it there and then. I just rode around the hills, and was
happy as a kid out of school. I'd be a better man living in the
country. The city doesn't make me better. You're plumb right
there. I know it. But suppose your prayer should be answered
and I'd go clean broke and have to work for day's wages?"
She did not answer, though all the body of her seemed to urge
consent.
"Suppose I had nothing left but that little ranch, and was
satisfied to grow a few chickens and scratch a living somehow-
-would you marry me then, Dede?"
"Why, we'd be together all the time!" she cried.
"But I'd have to be out ploughing once in a while, he warned, "or
driving to town to get the grub."
"But there wouldn't be the office, at any rate, and no man to
see, and men to see without end. But it is all foolish and
impossible, and we'll have to be starting back now if we're to
escape the rain."
Then was the moment, among the trees, where they began the
descent of the hill, that Daylight might have drawn her closely
to him and kissed her once. But he was too perplexed with the
new thoughts she had put into his head to take advantage of the
situation. He merely caught her by the arm and helped her over
the rougher footing.
"It's darn pretty country up there at Glen Ellen," he said
meditatively. "I wish you could see it."
At the edge of the grove he suggested that it might be better for
them to part there.
"It's your neighborhood, and folks is liable to talk."
But she insisted that he accompany her as far as the house.
"I can't ask you in," she said, extending her hand at the foot of
the steps.
The wind was humming wildly in sharply recurrent gusts, but still
the rain held off.
"Do you know," he said, "taking it by and large, it's the
happiest day of my life." He took off his hat, and the wind
rippled and twisted his black hair as he went on solemnly, "And
I'm sure grateful to God, or whoever or whatever is responsible
for your being on this earth. For you do like me heaps. It's
been my joy to hear you say so to-day. It's--" He left the
thought arrested, and his face assumed the familiar whimsical
expression as he murmured: "Dede, Dede, we've just got to get
married. It's the only way, and trust to luck for it's coming
out all right--".
But the tears were threatening to rise in her eyes again, as she
shook her head and turned and went up the steps.
CHAPTER XX
When the ferry system began to run, and the time between Oakland
and San Francisco was demonstrated to be cut in half, the tide of
Daylight's terrific expenditure started to turn. Not that it
really did turn, for he promptly went into further investments.
Thousands of lots in his residence tracts were sold, and
thousands of homes were being built. Factory sites also were
selling, and business properties in the heart of Oakland. All
this tended to a steady appreciation in value of Daylight's huge
holdings. But, as of old, he had his hunch and was riding it.
Already he had begun borrowing from the banks. The magnificent
profits he made on the land he sold were turned into more land,
into more development; and instead of paying off old loans, he
contracted new ones. As he had pyramided in Dawson City, he now
pyramided in Oakland; but he did it with the knowledge that it
was a stable enterprise rather than a risky placer-mining boom.
In a small way, other men were following his lead, buying and
selling land and profiting by the improvement work he was doing.
But this was to be expected, and the small fortunes they were
making at his expense did not irritate him. There was an
exception, however. One Simon Dolliver, with money to go in
with, and with cunning and courage to back it up, bade fair to
become a several times millionaire at Daylight's expense.
Dolliver, too, pyramided, playing quickly and accurately, and
keeping his money turning over and over. More than once Daylight
found him in the way, as he himself had got in the way of the
Guggenhammers when they first set their eyes on Ophir Creek.
Work on Daylight's dock system went on apace, yet was one of
those enterprises that consumed money dreadfully and that could
not be accomplished as quickly as a ferry system. The
engineering difficulties were great, the dredging and filling a
cyclopean task. The mere item of piling was anything but small.
A good average pile, by the time it was delivered on the ground,
cost a twenty-dollar gold piece, and these piles were used in
unending thousands. All accessible groves of mature eucalyptus
were used, and as well, great rafts of pine piles were towed down
the coast from Peugeot Sound.
Not content with manufacturing the electricity for his street
railways in the old-fashioned way, in power-houses, Daylight
organized the Sierra and Salvador Power Company. This
immediately assumed large proportions. Crossing the San Joaquin
Valley on the way from the mountains, and plunging through the
Contra Costa hills, there were many towns, and even a robust
city, that could be supplied with power, also with light; and it
became a street- and house-lighting project as well. As soon as
the purchase of power sites in the Sierras was rushed through,
the survey parties were out and building operations begun.
And so it went. There were a thousand maws into which he poured
unceasing streams of money. But it was all so sound and
legitimate, that Daylight, born gambler that he was, and with his
clear, wide vision, could not play softly and safely. It was a
big opportunity, and to him there was only one way to play it,
and that was the big way. Nor did his one confidential adviser,
Larry Hegan, aid him to caution. On the contrary, it was
Daylight who was compelled to veto the wilder visions of that
able hasheesh dreamer. Not only did Daylight borrow heavily from
the banks and trust companies, but on several of his corporations
he was compelled to issue stock. He did this grudgingly however,
and retained most of his big enterprises of his own. Among the
companies in which he reluctantly allowed the investing public to
join were the Golden Gate Dock Company, and Recreation Parks
Company, the United Water Company, the Uncial Shipbuilding
Company, and the Sierra and Salvador Power Company.
Nevertheless, between himself and Hegan, he retained the
controlling share in each of these enterprises.
His affair with Dede Mason only seemed to languish. While
delaying to grapple with the strange problem it presented, his
desire for her continued to grow. In his gambling simile, his
conclusion was that Luck had dealt him the most remarkable card
in the deck, and that for years he had overlooked it. Love was
the card, and it beat them all. Love was the king card of
trumps, the fifth ace, the joker in a game of tenderfoot poker.
It was the card of cards, and play it he would, to the limit,
when the opening came. He could not see that opening yet. The
present game would have to play to some sort of a conclusion
first.
Yet he could not shake from his brain and vision the warm
recollection of those bronze slippers, that clinging gown, and
all the feminine softness and pliancy of Dede in her pretty
Berkeley rooms. Once again, on a rainy Sunday, he telephoned
that he was coming. And, as has happened ever since man first
looked upon woman and called her good, again he played the blind
force of male compulsion against the woman's secret weakness to
yield. Not that it was Daylight's way abjectly to beg and
entreat. On the contrary, he was masterful in whatever he did,
but he had a trick of whimsical wheedling that Dede found harder
to resist than the pleas of a suppliant lover. It was not a
happy scene in its outcome, for Dede, in the throes of her own
desire, desperate with weakness and at the same time with her
better judgment hating her weakness cried out:--
"You urge me to try a chance, to marry you now and trust to luck
for it to come out right. And life is a gamble say. Very well,
let us gamble. Take a coin and toss it in the air. If it comes
heads, I'll marry you. If it doesn't, you are forever to leave
me alone and never mention marriage again."
A fire of mingled love and the passion of gambling came into
Daylight's eyes. Involuntarily his hand started for his pocket
for the coin. Then it stopped, and the light in his eyes was
troubled.
"Go on," she ordered sharply. "Don't delay, or I may change my
mind, and you will lose the chance."
"Little woman." His similes were humorous, but there was no
humor in their meaning. His thought was as solemn as his voice.
"Little woman, I'd gamble all the way from Creation to the Day of
Judgment; I'd gamble a golden harp against another man's halo;
I'd toss for pennies on the front steps of the New Jerusalem or
set up a faro layout just outside the Pearly Gates; but I'll be
everlastingly damned if I'll gamble on love. Love's too big to
me to take a chance on. Love's got to be a sure thing, and
between you and me it is a sure thing. If the odds was a hundred
to one on my winning this flip, just the same, nary a flip."
In the spring of the year the Great Panic came on. The first
warning was when the banks began calling in their unprotected
loans. Daylight promptly paid the first several of his personal
notes that were presented; then he divined that these demands but
indicated the way the wind was going to blow, and that one of
those terrific financial storms he had heard about was soon to
sweep over the United States. How terrific this particular storm
was to be he did not anticipate. Nevertheless, he took every
precaution in his power, and had no anxiety about his weathering
it out.
Money grew tighter. Beginning with the crash of several of the
greatest Eastern banking houses, the tightness spread, until
every bank in the country was calling in its credits. Daylight
was caught, and caught because of the fact that for the first
time he had been playing the legitimate business game. In the
old days, such a panic, with the accompanying extreme shrinkage
of values, would have been a golden harvest time for him. As it
was, he watched the gamblers, who had ridden the wave of
prosperity and made preparation for the slump, getting out from
under and safely scurrying to cover or proceeding to reap a
double harvest. Nothing remained for him but to stand fast and
hold up.
He saw the situation clearly. When the banks demanded that he
pay his loans, he knew that the banks were in sore need of the
money. But he was in sorer need. And he knew that the banks did
not want his collateral which they held. It would do them no
good. In such a tumbling of values was no time to sell. His
collateral was good, all of it, eminently sound and worth while;
yet it was worthless at such a moment, when the one unceasing cry
was money, money, money. Finding him obdurate, the banks
demanded more collateral, and as the money pinch tightened they
asked for two and even three times as much as had been originally
accepted. Sometimes Daylight yielded to these demands, but more
often not, and always battling fiercely.
He fought as with clay behind a crumbling wall. All portions of
the wall were menaced, and he went around constantly
strengthening the weakest parts with clay. This clay was money,
and was applied, a sop here and a sop there, as fast as it was
needed, but only when it was directly needed. The strength of
his position lay in the Yerba Buena Ferry Company, the
Consolidated Street Railways, and the United Water Company.
Though people were no longer buying residence lots and factory
and business sites, they were compelled to ride on his cars and
ferry-boats and to consume his water. When all the financial
world was clamoring for money and perishing through lack of it,
the first of each month many thousands of dollars poured into his
coffers from the water-rates, and each day ten thousand dollars,
in dime and nickels, came in from his street railways and
ferries.
Cash was what was wanted, and had he had the use of all this
steady river of cash, all would have been well with him. As it
was, he had to fight continually for a portion of it.
Improvement work ceased, and only absolutely essential repairs
were made. His fiercest fight was with the operating expenses,
and this was a fight that never ended. There was never any
let-up in his turning the thumb-screws of extended credit and
economy. From the big wholesale suppliers down through the
salary list to office stationery and postage stamps, he kept the
thumb-screws turning. When his superintendents and heads of
departments performed prodigies of cutting down, he patted them
on the back and demanded more. When they threw down their hands
in despair, he showed them how more could be accomplished.
"You are getting eight thousand dollars a year," he told
Matthewson. "It's better pay than you ever got in your life
before. Your fortune is in the same sack with mine. You've got
to stand for some of the strain and risk. You've got personal
credit in this town. Use it. Stand off butcher and baker and
all the rest. Savvee? You're drawing down something like six
hundred and sixty dollars a month. I want that cash. From now
on, stand everybody off and draw down a hundred. I'll pay you
interest on the rest till this blows over."
Two weeks later, with the pay-roll before them, it was:--
"Matthewson, who's this bookkeeper, Rogers? Your nephew? I
thought so. He's pulling down eighty-five a month. After--this
let him draw thirty-five. The forty can ride with me at
interest."
"Impossible! " Matthewson cried. "He can't make ends meet on
his salary as it is, and he has a wife and two kids--"
Daylight was upon him with a mighty oath.
"Can't! Impossible! What in hell do you think I'm running? A
home for feeble-minded? Feeding and dressing and wiping the
little noses of a lot of idiots that can't take care of
themselves? Not on your life. I'm hustling, and now's the time
that everybody that works for me has got to hustle. I want no
fair-weather birds holding down my office chairs or anything
else. This is nasty weather, damn nasty weather, and they've got
to buck into it just like me. There are ten thousand men out of
work in Oakland right now, and sixty thousand more in San
Francisco. Your nephew, and everybody else on your pay-roll, can
do as I say right now or quit. Savvee? If any of them get
stuck, you go around yourself and guarantee their credit with the
butchers and grocers. And you trim down that pay-roll
accordingly. I've been carrying a few thousand folks that'll
have to carry themselves for a while now, that's all."
"You say this filter's got to be replaced," he told his chief of
the water-works. "We'll see about it. Let the people of Oakland
drink mud for a change. It'll teach them to appreciate good
water. Stop work at once. Get those men off the pay-roll.
Cancel all orders for material. The contractors will sue? Let
'em sue and be damned. We'll be busted higher'n a kite or on
easy street before they can get judgment."
And to Wilkinson:
"Take off that owl boat. Let the public roar and come home early
to its wife. And there's that last car that connects with the
12:45 boat at Twenty-second and Hastings. Cut it out. I can't
run it for two or three passengers. Let them take an earlier
boat home or walk. This is no time for philanthropy. And you
might as well take off a few more cars in the rush hours. Let
the strap-hangers pay. It's the strap-hangers that'll keep us
from
going under."
And to another chief, who broke down under the excessive strain
of retrenchment:-
"You say I can't do that and can't do this. I'll just show you a
few of the latest patterns in the can-and-can't line. You'll be
compelled to resign? All right, if you think so I never saw the
man yet that I was hard up for. And when any man thinks I can't
get along without him, I just show him the latest pattern in that
line of goods and give him his walking-papers."
And so he fought and drove and bullied and even wheedled his way
along. It was fight, fight, fight, and no let-up, from the first
thing in the morning till nightfall. His private office saw
throngs every day. All men came to see him, or were ordered to
come. Now it was an optimistic opinion on the panic, a funny
story, a serious business talk, or a straight take-it-or-leave-it
blow from the shoulder. And there was nobody to relieve him. It
was a case of drive, drive, drive, and he alone could do the
driving. And this went on day after day, while the whole
business world rocked around him and house after house crashed to
the ground.
"It's all right, old man," he told Hegan every morning; and it
was the same cheerful word that he passed out all day long,
except at such times when he was in the thick of fighting to have
his will with persons and things.
Eight o'clock saw him at his desk each morning. By ten o'clock,
it was into the machine and away for a round of the banks. And
usually in the machine with him was the ten thousand and more
dollars that had been earned by his ferries and railways the day
before. This was for the weakest spot in the financial dike.
And with one bank president after another similar scenes were
enacted. They were paralyzed with fear, and first of all he
played his role of the big vital optimist. Times were improving.
Of course they were. The signs were already in the air. All
that anybody had to do was to sit tight a little longer and hold
on. That was all. Money was already more active in the East.
Look at the trading on Wall Street of the last twenty-four hours.
That was the straw that showed the wind. Hadn't Ryan said so and
so? and wasn't it reported that Morgan was preparing to do this
and that?
As for himself, weren't the street-railway earnings increasing
steadily? In spite of the panic, more and more people were
coming to Oakland right along. Movements were already beginning
in real estate. He was dickering even then to sell over a
thousand of his suburban acres. Of course it was at a sacrifice,
but it would ease the strain on all of them and bolster up the
faint-hearted. That was the trouble--the faint-hearts. Had
there
been no faint-hearts there would have been no panic. There was
that Eastern syndicate, negotiating with him now to take the
majority of the stock in the Sierra and Salvador Power Company
off his hands. That showed confidence that better times were at
hand.
And if it was not cheery discourse, but prayer and entreaty or
show down and fight on the part of the banks, Daylight had to
counter in kind. If they could bully, he could bully. If the
favor he asked were refused, it became the thing he demanded.
And when it came down to raw and naked fighting, with the last
veil of sentiment or illusion torn off, he could take their
breaths away.
But he knew, also, how and when to give in. When he saw the wall
shaking and crumbling irretrievably at a particular place, he
patched it up with sops of cash from his three cash-earning
companies. If the banks went, he went too. It was a case of
their having to hold out. If they smashed and all the collateral
they held of his was thrown on the chaotic market, it would be
the end. And so it was, as the time passed, that on occasion his
red motor-car carried, in addition to the daily cash, the most
gilt-edged securities he possessed; namely, the Ferry Company,
United Water and Consolidated Railways. But he did this
reluctantly, fighting inch by inch.
As he told the president of the Merchants San Antonio who made
the plea of carrying so many others:--
"They're small fry. Let them smash. I'm the king pin here.
You've got more money to make out of me than them. Of course,
you're carrying too much, and you've got to choose, that's all.
It's root hog or die for you or them. I'm too strong to smash.
You could only embarrass me and get yourself tangled up. Your
way out is to let the small fry go, and I'll lend you a hand to
do it."
And it was Daylight, also, in this time of financial anarchy, who
sized up Simon Dolliver's affairs and lent the hand that sent
that rival down in utter failure. The Golden Gate National was
the keystone of Dolliver's strength, and to the president of that
institution Daylight said:--
"Here I've been lending you a hand, and you now in the last
ditch, with Dolliver riding on you and me all the time. It don't
go. You hear me, it don't go. Dolliver couldn't cough up eleven
dollars to save you. Let him get off and walk, and I'll tell you
what I'll do. I'll give you the railway nickels for four
days--that's forty thousand cash. And on the sixth of the month
you can count on twenty thousand more from the Water Company."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Take it or leave it. Them's my
terms."
"It's dog eat dog, and I ain't overlooking any meat that's
floating around," Daylight proclaimed that afternoon to Hegan;
and Simon Dolliver went the way of the unfortunate in the Great
Panic who were caught with plenty of paper and no money.
Daylight's shifts and devices were amazing. Nothing however
large or small, passed his keen sight unobserved. The strain he
was under was terrific. He no longer ate lunch. The days were
too short, and his noon hours and his office were as crowded as
at any other time. By the end of the day he was exhausted, and,
as never before, he sought relief behind his wall of alcoholic
inhibition. Straight to his hotel he was driven, and straight to
his rooms he went, where immediately was mixed for him the first
of a series of double Martinis. By dinner, his brain was well
clouded and the panic forgotten. By bedtime, with the assistance
of Scotch whiskey, he was full--not violently nor uproariously
full, nor stupefied, but merely well under the influence of a
pleasant and mild anesthetic.
Next morning he awoke with parched lips and mouth, and with
sensations of heaviness in his head which quickly passed away.
By eight o'clock he was at his desk, buckled down to the fight,
by ten o'clock on his personal round of the banks, and after
that, without a moment's cessation, till nightfall, he was
handling the knotty tangles of industry, finance, and human
nature that crowded upon him. And with nightfall it was back to
the hotel, the double Martinis and the Scotch; and this was his
program day after day until the days ran into weeks.
CHAPTER XXI
Though Daylight appeared among his fellows hearty voiced,
inexhaustible, spilling over with energy and vitality, deep down
he was a very weary man. And sometime under the liquor drug,
snatches of wisdom came to him far more lucidity than in his
sober moments, as, for instance, one night, when he sat on the
edge of the bed with one shoe in his hand and meditated on Dede's
aphorism to the effect that he could not sleep in more than one
bed at a time. Still holding the shoe, he looked at the array of
horsehair bridles on the walls. Then, carrying the shoe, he got
up and solemnly counted them, journeying into the two adjoining
rooms to complete the tale. Then he came back to the bed and
gravely addressed his shoe:--
"The little woman's right. Only one bed at a time. One hundred
and forty hair bridles, and nothing doing with ary one of them.
One bridle at a time! I can't ride one horse at a time. Poor
old Bob. I'd better be sending you out to pasture. Thirty
million dollars, and a hundred million or nothing in sight, and
what have I got to show for it? There's lots of things money
can't buy. It can't buy the little woman. It can't buy
capacity. What's the good of thirty millions when I ain't got
room for more than a quart of cocktails a day? If I had a
hundred-quart-cocktail thirst, it'd be different. But one
quart--one measly little quart! Here I am, a thirty times over
millionaire, slaving harder every day than any dozen men that
work for me, and all I get is two meals that don't taste good,
one bed, a quart of Martini, and a hundred and forty hair bridles
to look at on the wall."
He stared around at the array disconsolately. "Mr. Shoe, I'm
sizzled. Good night."
Far worse than the controlled, steady drinker is the solitary
drinker, and it was this that Daylight was developing into. He
rarely drank sociably any more, but in his own room, by himself.
Returning weary from each day's unremitting effort, he drugged
himself to sleep, knowing that on the morrow he would rise up
with a dry and burning mouth and repeat the program.
But the country did not recover with its wonted elasticity.
Money did not become freer, though the casual reader of
Daylight's newspapers, as well as of all the other owned and
subsidised newspapers in the country, could only have concluded
that the money tightness was over and that the panic was past
history. All public utterances were cheery and optimistic, but
privately many of the utters were in desperate straits. The
scenes enacted in the privacy of Daylight's office, and of the
meetings of his boards of directors, would have given the lie to
the editorials in his newspapers; as, for instance, when he
addressed the big stockholders in the Sierra and Salvador Power
Company, the United Water Company, and the several other stock
companies:--
"You've got to dig. You've got a good thing, but you'll have to
sacrifice in order to hold on. There ain't no use spouting hard
times explanations. Don't I know the hard times is on? Ain't
that what you're here for? As I said before, you've got to dig.
I run the majority stock, and it's come to a case of assess.
It's that or smash. If ever I start going you won't know what
struck you, I'll smash that hard. The small fry can let go, but
you big ones can't. This ship won't sink as long as you stay
with her. But if you start to leave her, down you'll sure go
before you can get to shore. This assessment has got to be met
that's all."
The big wholesale supply houses, the caterers for his hotels, and
all the crowd that incessantly demanded to be paid, had their hot
half-hours with him. He summoned them to his office and
displayed his latest patterns of can and can't and will and
won't.
"By God, you've got to carry me!" he told them. "If you think
this is a pleasant little game of parlor whist and that you can
quit and go home whenever you want, you're plumb wrong. Look
here, Watkins, you remarked five minutes ago that you wouldn't
stand for it. Now let me tell you a few. You're going to stand
for it and keep on standin's for it. You're going to continue
supplying me and taking my paper until the pinch is over. How
you're going to do it is your trouble, not mine. You remember
what I did to Klinkner and the Altamont Trust Company? I know
the inside of your business better than you do yourself, and if
you try to drop me I'll smash you. Even if I'd be going to smash
myself, I'd find a minute to turn on you and bring you down with
me. It's sink or swim for all of us, and I reckon you'll find it
to your interest to keep me on top the puddle."
Perhaps his bitterest fight was with the stockholders of the
United Water Company, for it was practically the whole of the
gross earnings of this company that he voted to lend to himself
and used to bolster up his wide battle front. Yet he never
pushed his arbitrary rule too far. Compelling sacrifice from the
men whose fortunes were tied up with his, nevertheless when any
one of them was driven to the wall and was in dire need, Daylight
was there to help him back into the line. Only a strong man
could have saved so complicated a situation in such time of
stress, and Daylight was that man. He turned and twisted,
schemed and devised, bludgeoned and bullied the weaker ones, kept
the faint-hearted in the fight, and had no mercy on the deserter.
And in the end, when early summer was on, everything began to
mend. Came a day when Daylight did the unprecedented. He left
the office an hour earlier than usual, and for the reason that
for the first time since the panic there was not an item of work
waiting to be done. He dropped into Hegan's private office,
before leaving, for a chat, and as he stood up to go, he said:--
"Hegan, we're all hunkadory. We're pulling out of the financial
pawnshop in fine shape, and we'll get out without leaving one
unredeemed pledge behind. The worst is over, and the end is in
sight. Just a tight rein for a couple more weeks, just a bit of
a pinch or a flurry or so now and then, and we can let go and
spit on our hands."
For once he varied his program. Instead of going directly to his
hotel, he started on a round of the bars and cafes, drinking a
cocktail here and a cocktail there, and two or three when he
encountered men he knew. It was after an hour or so of this that
he dropped into the bar of the Parthenon for one last drink
before going to dinner. By this time all his being was
pleasantly warmed by the alcohol, and he was in the most genial
and best of spirits. At the corner of the bar several young men
were up to the old trick of resting their elbows and attempting
to force each other's hands down. One broad-shouldered young
giant never removed his elbow, but put down every hand that came
against him. Daylight was interested.
"It's Slosson," the barkeeper told him, in answer to his query.
"He's the heavy-hammer thrower at the U.C. Broke all records
this year, and the world's record on top of it. He's a husky all
right all right."
Daylight nodded and went over to him, placing his own arm in
opposition.
"I'd like to go you a flutter, son, on that proposition," he
said.
The young man laughed and locked hands with him; and to
Daylight's astonishment it was his own hand that was forced down
on the bar
"Hold on," he muttered. "Just one more flutter. I reckon I
wasn't just ready that time."
Again the hands locked. It happened quickly. The offensive
attack of Daylight's muscles slipped instantly into defense, and,
resisting vainly, his hand was forced over and down. Daylight
was dazed. It had been no trick. The skill was equal, or, if
anything, the superior skill had been his. Strength, sheer
strength, had done it. He called for the drinks, and, still
dazed and pondering, held up his own arm, and looked at it as at
some new strange thing. He did not know this arm. It certainly
was not the arm he had carried around with him all the years.
The old arm? Why, it would have been play to turn down that
young husky's. But this arm--he continued to look at it with
such
dubious perplexity as to bring a roar of laughter from the young
men.
This laughter aroused him. He joined in it at first, and then
his face slowly grew grave. He leaned toward the hammer-thrower.
"Son," he said, "let me whisper a secret. Get out of here and
quit drinking before you begin."
The young fellow flushed angrily, but Daylight held steadily on.
"You listen to your dad, and let him say a few. I'm a young man
myself, only I ain't. Let me tell you, several years ago for me
to turn your hand down would have been like committing assault
and battery on a kindergarten."
Slosson looked his incredulity, while the others grinned and
clustered around Daylight encouragingly.
"Son, I ain't given to preaching. This is the first time I ever
come to the penitent form, and you put me there yourself--hard.
I've seen a few in my time, and I ain't fastidious so as you can
notice it. But let me tell you right not that I'm worth the
devil alone knows how many millions, and that I'd sure give it
all, right here on the bar, to turn down your hand. Which means
I'd give the whole shooting match just to be back where I was
before I quit sleeping under the stars and come into the
hen-coops
of cities to drink cocktails and lift up my feet and ride.
Son, that's that's the matter with me, and that's the way I feel
about it. The game ain't worth the candle. You just take care
of
yourself, and roll my advice over once in a while. Good night."
He turned and lurched out of the place, the moral effect of his
utterance largely spoiled by the fact that he was so patently
full while he uttered it.
Still in a daze, Daylight made to his hotel, accomplished his
dinner, and prepared for bed.
"The damned young whippersnapper!" he muttered. "Put my hand
down easy as you please. My hand!"
He held up the offending member and regarded it with stupid
wonder. The hand that had never been beaten! The hand that had
made the Circle City giants wince! And a kid from college, with
a
laugh on his face, had put it down--twice! Dede was right. He
was not the same man. The situation would bear more serious
looking into than he had ever given it. But this was not the
time. In the morning, after a good sleep, he would give it
consideration.
CHAPTER XXII
Daylight awoke with the familiar parched mouth and lips and
throat, took a long drink of water from the pitcher beside his
bed, and gathered up the train of thought where he had left it
the night before. He reviewed the easement of the financial
strain. Things were mending at last. While the going was still
rough, the greatest dangers were already past. As he had told
Hegan, a tight rein and careful playing were all that was needed
now. Flurries and dangers were bound to come, but not so grave
as the ones they had already weathered. He had been hit hard,
but he was coming through without broken bones, which was more
than Simon Dolliver and many another could say. And not one of
his business friends had been ruined. He had compelled them to
stay in line to save himself, and they had been saved as well.
His mind moved on to the incident at the corner of the bar of the
Parthenon, when the young athlete had turned his hand down. He
was no longer stunned by the event, but he was shocked and
grieved, as only a strong man can be, at this passing of his
strength. And the issue was too clear for him to dodge, even
with himself. He knew why his hand had gone down. Not because
he was an old man. He was just in the first flush of his prime,
and, by rights, it was the hand of the hammer-thrower which
should have gone down. Daylight knew that he had taken liberties
with himself. He had always looked upon this strength of his as
permanent, and here, for years, it had been steadily oozing from
him. As he had diagnosed it, he had come in from under the stars
to roost in the coops of cities. He had almost forgotten how to
walk. He had lifted up his feet and been ridden around in
automobiles, cabs and carriages, and electric cars. He had not
exercised, and he had dry-rotted his muscles with alcohol.
And was it worth it? What did all his money mean after all?
Dede was right. It could buy him no more than one bed at a time,
and at the same time it made him the abjectest of slaves. It
tied him fast. He was tied by it right now. Even if he so
desired, he could not lie abed this very day. His money called
him. The office whistle would soon blow, and he must answer it.
The early sunshine was streaming through his window--a fine day
for a ride in the hills on Bob, with Dede beside him on her Mab.
Yet all his millions could not buy him this one day. One of
those flurries might come along, and he had to be on the spot to
meet it. Thirty millions! And they were powerless to persuade
Dede to ride on Mab--Mab, whom he had bought, and who was unused
and growing fat on pasture. What were thirty millions when they
could not buy a man a ride with the girl he loved? Thirty
millions!--that made him come here and go there, that rode upon
him like so many millstones, that destroyed him while they grew,
that put their foot down and prevented him from winning this girl
who worked for ninety dollars a month.
Which was better? he asked himself. All this was Dede's own
thought. It was what she had meant when she prayed he would go
broke. He held up his offending right arm. It wasn't the same
old arm. Of course she could not love that arm and that body as
she had loved the strong, clean arm and body of years before. He
didn't like that arm and body himself. A young whippersnapper
had been able to take liberties with it. It had gone back on
him. He sat up suddenly. No, by God, he had gone back on it!
He had gone back on himself. He had gone back on Dede. She was
right, a thousand times right, and she had sense enough to know
it, sense enough to refuse to marry a money slave with a
whiskey-rotted carcass.
He got out of bed and looked at himself in the long mirror on the
wardrobe door. He wasn't pretty. The old-time lean cheeks
were gone. These were heavy, seeming to hang down by their own
weight. He looked for the lines of cruelty Dede had spoken of,
and he found them, and he found the harshness in the eyes as
well, the eyes that were muddy now after all the cocktails of the
night before, and of the months and years before. He looked at
the clearly defined pouches that showed under his eyes, and
they've shocked him. He rolled up the sleeve of his pajamas. No
wonder the hammer-thrower had put his hand down. Those weren't
muscles. A rising tide of fat had submerged them. He stripped
off the pajama coat. Again he was shocked, this time but the
bulk of his body. It wasn't pretty. The lean stomach had become
a paunch. The ridged muscles of chest and shoulders and abdomen
had broken down into rolls of flesh.
He sat down on the bed, and through his mind drifted pictures of
his youthful excellence, of the hardships he had endured over
other men, of the Indians and dogs he had run off their legs in
the heart-breaking days and nights on the Alaskan trail, of the
feats of strength that had made him king over a husky race of
frontiersmen.
And this was age. Then there drifted across the field of vision
of his mind's eye the old man he had encountered at Glen Ellen,
corning up the hillside through the fires of sunset, white-headed
and white-bearded, eighty-four, in his hand the pail of foaming
milk and in his face all the warm glow and content of the passing
summer day. That had been age. "Yes siree, eighty-four, and
spryer than most," he could hear the old man say. "And I ain't
loafed none. I walked across the Plains with an ox-team and fit
Injuns in '51, and I was a family man then with seven
youngsters."
Next he remembered the old woman of the chaparral, pressing
grapes in her mountain clearing; and Ferguson, the little man who
had scuttled into the road like a rabbit, the one-time managing
editor of a great newspaper, who was content to live in the
chaparral along with his spring of mountain water and his
hand-reared and manicured fruit trees. Ferguson had solved a
problem. A weakling and an alcoholic, he had run away from the
doctors and the chicken-coop of a city, and soaked up health like
a thirsty sponge. Well, Daylight pondered, if a sick man whom
the doctors had given up could develop into a healthy farm
laborer, what couldn't a merely stout man like himself do under
similar circumstances? He caught a vision of his body with all
its youthful excellence returned, and thought of Dede, and sat
down suddenly on the bed, startled by the greatness of the idea
that had come to him.
He did not sit long. His mind, working in its customary way,
like a steel trap, canvassed the idea in all its bearings. It
was big--bigger than anything he had faced before. And he faced
it squarely, picked it up in his two hands and turned it over and
around and looked at it. The simplicity of it delighted him. He
chuckled over it, reached his decision, and began to dress.
Midway in the dressing he stopped in order to use the telephone.
Dede was the first he called up.
"Don't come to the office this morning," he said. "I'm coming
out to see you for a moment." He called up others. He ordered
his motor-car. To Jones he gave instructions for the forwarding
of Bob and Wolf to Glen Ellen. Hegan he surprised by asking him
to look up the deed of the Glen Ellen ranch and make out a new
one in Dede Mason's name. "Who?" Hegan demanded. "Dede Mason,"
Daylight replied imperturbably the 'phone must be indistinct this
morning. "D-e-d-e M-a-s o-n. Got it?"
Half an hour later he was flying out to Berkeley. And for the
first time the big red car halted directly before the house.
Dede offered to receive him in the parlor, but he shook his head
and nodded toward her rooms.
"In there," he said. "No other place would suit."
As the door closed, his arms went out and around her. Then he
stood with his hands on her shoulders and looking down into her
face.
"Dede, if I tell you, flat and straight, that I'm going up to
live on that ranch at Glen Ellen, that I ain't taking a cent with
me, that I'm going to scratch for every bite I eat, and that I
ain't going to play ary a card at the business game again, will
you come along with me?"
She gave a glad little cry, and he nestled her in closely. But
the
next moment she had thrust herself out from him to the old
position at arm's length.
"I-I don't understand," she said breathlessly.
"And you ain't answered my proposition, though I guess no answer
is necessary. We're just going to get married right away and
start. I've sent Bob and Wolf along already. When will you be
ready?"
Dede could not forbear to smile. "My, what a hurricane of a man
it is. I'm quite blown away. And you haven't explained a word
to me."
Daylight smiled responsively.
"Look here, Dede, this is what card-sharps call a show-down. No
more philandering and frills and long-distance sparring between
you and me. We're just going to talk straight out in
meeting--the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Now you
answer some questions for me, and then I'll answer yours."
He paused. "Well, I've got only one question after all: Do you
love me enough to marry me?"
"But--" she began.
"No buts," he broke in sharply. "This is a show-down. When I
say marry, I mean what I told you at first, that we'd go up and
live on the ranch. Do you love me enough for that?"
She looked at him for a moment, then her lids dropped, and all of
her seemed to advertise consent.
"Come on, then, let's start." The muscles of his legs tensed
involuntarily as if he were about to lead her to the door. "My
auto's waiting outside. There's nothing to delay excepting
getting on your hat."
He bent over her. "I reckon it's allowable," he said, as he
kissed her.
It was a long embrace, and she was the first to speak.
"You haven't answered my questions. How is this possible? How
can you leave your business? Has anything happened?"
"No, nothing's happened yet, but it's going to, blame quick.
I've taken your preaching to heart, and I've come to the penitent
form. You are my Lord God, and I'm sure going to serve you. The
rest can go to thunder. You were sure right. I've been the
slave to my money, and since I can't serve two masters I'm
letting the money slide. I'd sooner have you than all the money
in the world, that's all." Again he held her closely in his
arms. "And I've sure got you, Dede. I've sure got you.
"And I want to tell you a few more. I've taken my last drink.
You're marrying a whiskey-soak, but your husband won't be that.
He's going to grow into another man so quick you won't know him.
A couple of months from now, up there in Glen Ellen, you'll wake
up some morning and find you've got a perfect stranger in the
house with you, and you'll have to get introduced to him all over
again. You'll say, 'I'm Mrs. Harnish, who are you?" And I'll
say, 'I'm Elam Harnish's younger brother. I've just arrived from
Alaska to attend the funeral.' 'What funeral?' you'll say. And
I'll say, 'Why, the funeral of that good-for-nothing, gambling,
whiskey-drinking Burning Daylight--the man that died of fatty
degeneration of the heart from sitting in night and day at the
business game 'Yes ma'am,' I'll say, 'he's sure a gone 'coon, but
I've come to take his place and make you happy. And now, ma'am,
if you'll allow me, I'll just meander down to the pasture and
milk the cow while you're getting breakfast.'"
Again he caught her hand and made as if to start with her for the
door. When she resisted, he bent and kissed her again and again.
"I'm sure hungry for you, little woman," he murmured "You make
thirty millions look like thirty cents."
"Do sit down and be sensible," she urged, her cheeks flushed, the
golden light in her eyes burning more golden than he had ever
seen it before.
But Daylight was bent on having his way, and when he sat down it
was with her beside him and his arm around her.
"'Yes, ma'am,' I'll say, 'Burning Daylight was a pretty good
cuss, but it's better that he's gone. He quit rolling up in his
rabbit-skins and sleeping in the snow, and went to living in a
chicken-coop. He lifted up his legs and quit walking and
working, and took to existing on Martini cocktails and Scotch
whiskey. He thought he loved you, ma'am, and he did his best,
but he loved his cocktails more, and he loved his money more, and
himself more, and 'most everything else more than he did you.'
And then I'll say, 'Ma'am, you just run your eyes over me and see
how different I am. I ain't got a cocktail thirst, and all the
money I got is a dollar and forty cents and I've got to buy a new
ax, the last one being plumb wore out, and I can love you just
about eleven times as much as your first husband did. You see,
ma'am, he went all to fat. And there ain't ary ounce of fat on
me.' And I'll roll up my sleeve and show you, and say, 'Mrs.
Harnish, after having experience with being married to that old
fat money-bags, do you-all mind marrying a slim young fellow like
me?' And you'll just wipe a tear away for poor old Daylight, and
kind of lean toward me with a willing expression in your eye, and
then I'll blush maybe some, being a young fellow, and put my arm
around you, like that, and then--why, then I'll up and marry my
brother's widow, and go out and do the chores while she's cooking
a bite to eat."
"But you haven't answered my questions," she reproached him, as
she emerged, rosy and radiant, from the embrace that had
accompanied the culmination of his narrative.
"Now just what do you want to know?" he asked.
"I want to know how all this is possible? How you are able to
leave your business at a time like this? What you meant by
saying that something was going to happen quickly? I--" She
hesitated and blushed. "I answered your question, you know."
"Let's go and get married," he urged, all the whimsicality of his
utterance duplicated in his eyes. "You know I've got to make way
for that husky young brother of mine, and I ain't got long to
live." She made an impatient moue, and he continued seriously.
"You see, it's like this, Dede. I've been working like forty
horses ever since this blamed panic set in, and all the time some
of those ideas you'd given me were getting ready to sprout.
Well, they sprouted this morning, that's all. I started to get
up, expecting to go to the office as usual. But I didn't go to
the office. All that sprouting took place there and then. The
sun was shining in the window, and I knew it was a fine day in
the hills. And I knew I wanted to ride in the hills with you
just about thirty million times more than I wanted to go to the
office. And I knew all the time it was impossible. And why?
Because of the office. The office wouldn't let me. All my money
reared right up on its hind legs and got in the way and wouldn't
let me. It's a way that blamed money has of getting in the way.
You know that yourself.
"And then I made up my mind that I was to the dividing of the
ways. One way led to the office. The other way led to Berkeley.
And I took the Berkeley road. I'm never going to set foot in the
office again. That's all gone, finished, over and done with, and
I'm letting it slide clean to smash and then some. My mind's set
on this. You see, I've got religion, and it's sure the old-time
religion; it's love and you, and it's older than the oldest
religion in the world. It's IT, that's what it is--IT, with a
capital I-T."
She looked at him with a sudden, startled expression.
"You mean--?" she began.
"I mean just that. I'm wiping the slate clean. I'm letting it
all go to smash. When them thirty million dollars stood up to my
face and said I couldn't go out with you in the hills to-day, I
knew the time had come for me to put my foot down. And I'm
putting it down. I've got you, and my strength to work for you,
and that little ranch in Sonoma. That's all I want, and that's
all I'm going to save out, along with Bob and Wolf, a suit case
and a hundred and forty hair bridles. All the rest goes, and
good riddance. It's that much junk."
But Dede was insistent.
"Then this--this tremendous loss is all unnecessary?" she asked.
"Just what I haven't been telling you. It IS necessary. If that
money thinks it can stand up right to my face and say I can't go
riding with you-"
"No, no; be serious," Dede broke in. "I don't mean that, and you
know it. What I want to know is, from a standpoint of business,
is this failure necessary?"
He shook his head.
"You bet it isn't necessary. That's the point of it. I'm not
letting go of it because I'm licked to a standstill by the panic
and have got to let go. I'm firing it out when I've licked the
panic and am winning, hands down. That just shows how little I
think of it. It's you that counts, little woman, and I make my
play accordingly."
But she drew away from his sheltering arms.
"You are mad, Elam."
"Call me that again," he murmured ecstatically. "It's sure
sweeter than the chink of millions."
All this she ignored.
"It's madness. You don't know what you are doing--"
"Oh, yes, I do," he assured her. "I'm winning the dearest wish
of my heart. Why, your little finger is worth more--"
"Do be sensible for a moment."
"I was never more sensible in my lie. I know what I want, and
I'm going to get it. I want you and the open air. I want to get
my foot off the paving-stones and my ear away from the telephone.
I want a little ranch-house in one of the prettiest bits of
country God ever made, and I want to do the chores around that
ranch-house--milk cows, and chop wood, and curry horses, and
plough the ground, and all the rest of it; and I want you there
in the ranch-house with me. I'm plumb tired of everything else,
and clean wore out. And I'm sure the luckiest man alive, for
I've got what money can't buy. I've got you, and thirty millions
couldn't buy you, nor three thousand millions, nor thirty cents-"
A knock at the door interrupted him, and he was left to stare
delightedly at the Crouched Venus and on around the room at
Dede's dainty possessions, while she answered the telephone.
"It is Mr. Hegan," she said, on returning. "He is holding the
line. He says it is important."
Daylight shook his head and smiled.
"Please tell Mr. Hegan to hang up. I'm done with the office and
I don't want to hear anything about anything."
A minute later she was back again.
"He refuses to hang up. He told me to tell you that Unwin is in
the office now, waiting to see you, and Harrison, too. Mr. Hegan
said that Grimshaw and Hodgkins are in trouble. That it
looks as if they are going to break. And he said something about
protection."
It was startling information. Both Unwin and Harrison
represented big banking corporations, and Daylight knew that if
the house of Grimshaw and Hodgkins went it would precipitate a
number of failures and start a flurry of serious dimensions. But
Daylight smiled, and shook his head, and mimicked the stereotyped
office tone of voice as he said:--
"Miss Mason, you will kindly tell Mr. Hegan that there is
nothing doing and to hang up."
"But you can't do this," she pleaded.
"Watch me," he grimly answered.
"Elam!"
"Say it again'' he cried. "Say it again, and a dozen Grimshaws
and Hodgkins can smash!"
He caught her by the hand and drew her to him.
"You let Hegan hang on to that line till he's tired. We can't be
wasting a second on him on a day like this. He's only in love
with books and things, but I've got a real live woman in my arms
that's loving me all the time she's kicking over the traces."
CHAPTER XXIII
"But I know something of the fight you have been making," Dede
contended. "If you stop now, all the work you have done,
everything, will be destroyed. You have no right to do it. You
can't do it."
Daylight was obdurate. He shook his head and smiled
tantalizingly.
"Nothing will be destroyed, Dede, nothing. You don't understand
this business game. It's done on paper. Don't you see? Where's
the gold I dug out of Klondike? Why, it's in twenty-dollar gold
pieces, in gold watches, in wedding rings. No matter what
happens to me, the twenty-dollar pieces, the watches, and the
wedding rings remain. Suppose I died right now. It wouldn't
affect the gold one iota. It's sure the same with this present
situation. All I stand for is paper. I've got the paper for
thousands of acres of land. All right. Burn up the paper, and
burn me along with it. The land remains, don't it? The rain
falls on it, the seeds sprout in it, the trees grow out of it,
the houses stand on it, the electric cars run over it. It's
paper that business is run on. I lose my paper, or I lose my
life, it's all the same; it won't alter one grain of sand in all
that land, or twist one blade of grass around sideways.
"Nothing is going to be lost--not one pile out of the docks, not
one railroad spike, not one ounce of steam out of the gauge of a
ferry-boat. The cars will go on running, whether I hold the
paper or somebody else holds it. The tide has set toward
Oakland. People are beginning to pour in. We're selling
building lots again. There is no stopping that tide. No matter
what happens to me or the paper, them three hundred thousand
folks are coming in the same. And there'll be cars to carry them
around, and houses to hold them, and good water for them to drink
and electricity to give them light, and all the rest."
By this time Hegan had arrived in an automobile. The honk of it
came in through the open window, and they saw, it stop alongside
the big red machine. In the car were Unwin and Harrison, while
Jones sat with the chauffeur
"I'll see Hegan," Daylight told Dede. "There's no need for the
rest. They can wait in the machine."
"Is he drunk?" Hegan whispered to Dede at the door.
She shook her head and showed him in.
"Good morning, Larry," was Daylight's greeting. "Sit down and
rest your feet. You sure seem to be in a flutter."
"I am," the little Irishman snapped back. "Grimshaw and Hodgkins
are going to smash if something isn't done quick. Why didn't you
come to the office? What are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing," Daylight drawled lazily. "Except let them smash, I
guess--"
"But--"
"I've had no dealings with Grimshaw and Hodgkins. I don't owe
them anything. Besides, I'm going to smash myself. Look here,
Larry, you know me. You know when I make up my mind I mean it.
Well, I've sure made up my mind. I'm tired of the whole game.
I'm letting go of it as fast as I can, and a smash is the
quickest way to let go."
Hegan stared at his chief, then passed his horror-stricken gaze
on to Dede, who nodded in sympathy.
"So let her smash, Larry," Daylight went on. "All you've got to
do is to protect yourself and all our friends. Now you listen to
me while I tell you what to do. Everything is in good shape to
do it. Nobody must get hurt. Everybody that stood by me must
come through without damage. All the back wages and salaries
must be paid pronto. All the money I've switched away from the
water company, the street cars, and the ferries must be switched
back. And you won't get hurt yourself none. Every company you
got stock in will come through-"
"You are crazy, Daylight!" the little lawyer cried out. "This is
all babbling lunacy. What is the matter with you? You haven't
been eating a drug or something?"
"I sure have!" Daylight smiled reply. "And I'm now coughing it
up. I'm sick of living in a city and playing business--I'm going
off to the sunshine, and the country, and the green grass. And
Dede, here, is going with me. So you've got the chance to be the
first to congratulate me."
"Congratulate the--the devil! " Hegan spluttered. "I'm not
going to stand for this sort of foolishness."
"Oh, yes, you are; because if you don't there'll be a bigger
smash and some folks will most likely get hurt. You're worth a
million or more yourself, now, and if you listen to me you come
through with a whole skin. I want to get hurt, and get hurt to
the limit. That's what I'm looking for, and there's no man or
bunch of men can get between me and what I'm looking for.
Savvee, Hegan? Savvee?"
"What have you done to him?" Hegan snarled at Dede.
"Hold on there, Larry." For the first time Daylight's voice
was sharp, while all the old lines of cruelty in his face stood
forth. "Miss Mason is going to be my wife, and while I don't
mind your talking to her all you want, you've got to use a
different tone of voice or you'll be heading for a hospital,
which will sure be an unexpected sort of smash. And let me tell
you one other thing. This-all is my doing. She says I'm crazy,
too."
Hegan shook his head in speechless sadness and continued to
stare.
"There'll be temporary receiverships, of course," Daylight
advised; "but they won't bother none or last long. What you must
do immediately is to save everybody--the men that have been
letting their wages ride with me, all the creditors, and all the
concerns that have stood by. There's the wad of land that New
Jersey crowd has been dickering for. They'll take all of a
couple of thousand acres and will close now if you give them half
a chance. That Fairmount section is the cream of it, and they'll
dig up as high as a thousand dollars an acre for a part of it.
That'll help out some. That five-hundred acre tract beyond,
you'll be lucky if they pay two hundred an acre."
Dede, who had been scarcely listening, seemed abruptly to make up
her mind, and stepped forward where she confronted the two men.
Her face was pale, but set with determination, so that Daylight,
looking at it, was reminded of the day when she first rode Bob.
"Wait," she said. "I want to say something. Elam, if you do
this insane thing, I won't marry you. I refuse to marry you."
Hegan, in spite of his misery, gave her a quick, grateful look.
"I'll take my chance on that," Daylight began.
"Wait!" she again interrupted. "And if you don't do this thing,
I will marry you."
"Let me get this proposition clear." Daylight spoke with
exasperating slowness and deliberation. "As I understand it, if
I keep right on at the business game, you'll sure marry me?
You'll marry me if I keep on working my head off and drinking
Martinis?"
After each question he paused, while she nodded an affirmation.
"And you'll marry me right away?"
"Yes."
"To-day? Now?"
"Yes."
He pondered for a moment.
"No, little woman, I won't do it. It won't work, and you know it
yourself. I want you--all of you; and to get it I'll have to
give you all of myself, and there'll be darn little of myself
left over to give if I stay with the business game. Why, Dede,
with you on the ranch with me, I'm sure of you--and of myself.
I'm sure of you, anyway. You can talk will or won't all you
want, but you're sure going to marry me just the same. And now,
Larry, you'd better be going. I'll be at the hotel in a little
while, and since I'm not going a step into the office again,
bring all papers to sign and the rest over to my rooms. And you
can get me on the 'phone there any time. This smash is going
through. Savvee? I'm quit and done."
He stood up as a sign for Hegan to go. The latter was plainly
stunned. He also rose to his feet, but stood looking helplessly
around.
"Sheer, downright, absolute insanity," he muttered.
Daylight put his hand on the other's shoulder.
"Buck up, Larry. You're always talking about the wonders of
human nature, and here I am giving you another sample of it and
you ain't appreciating it. I'm a bigger dreamer than you are,
that's all, and I'm sure dreaming what's coming true. It's the
biggest, best dream I ever had, and I'm going after it to get
it--"
"By losing all you've got," Hegan exploded at him.
"Sure--by losing all I've got that I don't want. But I'm
hanging on to them hundred and forty hair bridles just the same.
Now you'd better hustle out to Unwin and Harrison and get on down
town. I'll be at the hotel, and you can call me up any time."
He turned to Dede as soon as Hegan was gone, and took her by the
hand.
"And now, little woman, you needn't come to the office any more.
Consider yourself discharged. And remember I was your employer,
so you've got to come to me for recommendation, and if you're not
real good, I won't give you one. In the meantime, you just rest
up and think about what things you want to pack, because we'll
just about have to set up housekeeping on your stuff--leastways,
the front part of the house."
"But, Elam, I won't, I won't! If you do this mad thing I never
will marry you."
She attempted to take her hand away, but he closed on it with a
protecting, fatherly clasp.
"Will you be straight and honest? All right, here goes. Which
would you sooner have--me and the money, or me and the ranch?"
"But-" she began.
"No buts. Me and the money?"
She did not answer.
"Me and the ranch?"
Still she did not answer, and still he was undisturbed.
"You see, I know your answer, Dede, and there's nothing more to
say. Here's where you and I quit and hit the high places for
Sonoma. You make up your mind what you want to pack, and I'll
have some men out here in a couple of days to do it for you. It
will be about the last work anybody else ever does for us. You
and I will do the unpacking and the arranging ourselves."
She made a last attempt.
"Elam, won't you be reasonable? There is time to reconsider. I
can telephone down and catch Mr. Hegan as soon as he reaches the
office--"
"Why, I'm the only reasonable man in the bunch right now," he
rejoined. "Look at me--as calm as you please, and as happy as a
king, while they're fluttering around like a lot of cranky hens
whose heads are liable to be cut off."
"I'd cry, if I thought it would do any good," she threatened.
"In which case I reckon I'd have to hold you in my arms some more
and sort of soothe you down," he threatened back. "And now I'm
going to go. It's too bad you got rid of Mab. You could have
sent her up to the ranch. But see you've got a mare to ride of
some sort or other."
As he stood at the top of the steps, leaving, she said:-
"You needn't send those men. There will be no packing, because I
am not going to marry you."
"I'm not a bit scared," he answered, and went down the steps.
CHAPTER XXIV
Three days later, Daylight rode to Berkeley in his red car. It
was for the last time, for on the morrow the big machine passed
into another's possession. It had been a strenuous three days,
for his smash had been the biggest the panic had precipitated in
California. The papers had been filled with it, and a great cry
of indignation had gone up from the very men who later found that
Daylight had fully protected their interests. It was these
facts, coming slowly to light, that gave rise to the widely
repeated charge that Daylight had gone insane. It was the
unanimous conviction among business men that no sane man could
possibly behave in such fashion. On the other hand, neither his
prolonged steady drinking nor his affair with Dede became public,
so the only conclusion attainable was that the wild financier
from Alaska had gone lunatic. And Daylight had grinned and
confirmed the suspicion by refusing to see the reporters.
He halted the automobile before Dede's door, and met her with his
same rushing tactics, enclosing her in his arms before a word
could be uttered. Not until afterward, when she had recovered
herself from him and got him seated, did he begin to speak.
"I've done it," he announced. "You've seen the newspapers, of
course. I'm plumb cleaned out, and I've just called around to
find out what day you feel like starting for Glen Ellen. It'll
have to be soon, for it's real expensive living in Oakland these
days. My board at the hotel is only paid to the end of the week,
and I can't afford to stay after that. And beginning with
to-morrow I've got to use the street cars, and they sure eat up
the nickels."
He paused, and waited, and looked at her. Indecision and trouble
showed on her face. Then the smile he knew so well began to grow
on her lips and in her eyes, until she threw back her head and
laughed in the old forthright boyish way.
"When are those men coming to pack for me?" she asked.
And again she laughed and simulated a vain attempt to escape his
bearlike arms.
"Dear Elam," she whispered; "dear Elam." And of herself, for
the first time, she kissed him.
She ran her hand caressingly through his hair.
"Your eyes are all gold right now," he said. "I can look in them
and tell just how much you love me."
"They have been all gold for you, Elam, for a long time. I
think,
on our little ranch, they will always be all gold."
"Your hair has gold in it, too, a sort of fiery gold." He
turned her face suddenly and held it between his hands and looked
long into her eyes. "And your eyes were full of gold only the
other day, when you said you wouldn't marry me."
She nodded and laughed.
"You would have your will," she confessed. "But I couldn't be a
party to such madness. All that money was yours, not mine. But
I was loving you all the time, Elam, for the great big boy you
are, breaking the thirty-million toy with which you had grown
tired of playing. And when I said no, I knew all the time it was
yes. And I am sure that my eyes were golden all the time. I had
only one fear, and that was that you would fail to lose
everything. Because, dear, I knew I should marry you anyway, and
I did so want just you and the ranch and Bob and Wolf and those
horse-hair bridles. Shall I tell you a secret? As soon as you
left, I telephoned the man to whom I sold Mab."
She hid her face against his breast for an instant, and then
looked at him again, gladly radiant.
"You see, Elam, in spite of what my lips said, my mind was made
up then. I--I simply had to marry you. But I was praying you
would succeed in losing everything. And so I tried to find what
had become of Mab. But the man had sold her and did not know
what had become of her. You see, I wanted to ride with you over
the Glen Ellen hills, on Mab and you on Bob, just as I had ridden
with you through the Piedmont hills."
The disclosure of Mab's whereabouts trembled on Daylight's lips,
but he forbore.
"I'll promise you a mare that you'll like just as much as Mab,"
he said.
But Dede shook her head, and on that one point refused to be
comforted.
"Now, I've got an idea," Daylight said, hastening to get the
conversation on less perilous ground. "We're running away from
cities, and you have no kith nor kin, so it don't seem exactly
right that we should start off by getting married in a city. So
here's the idea: I'll run up to the ranch and get things in shape
around the house and give the caretaker his walking-papers. You
follow me in a couple of days, coming on the morning train. I'll
have the preacher fixed and waiting. And here's another idea.
You bring your riding togs in a suit case. And as soon as the
ceremony's over, you can go to the hotel and change. Then out
you come, and you find me waiting with a couple of horses, and
we'll ride over the landscape so as you can see the prettiest
parts of the ranch the first thing. And she's sure pretty, that
ranch. And now that it's settled, I'll be waiting for you at the
morning train day after to-morrow."
Dede blushed as she spoke.
"You are such a hurricane."
"Well, ma'am," he drawled, "I sure hate to burn daylight. And
you
and I have burned a heap of daylight. We've been
scandalously extravagant. We might have been married years ago."
Two days later, Daylight stood waiting outside the little Glen
Ellen hotel. The ceremony was over, and he had left Dede to go
inside and change into her riding-habit while he brought the
horses. He held them now, Bob and Mab, and in the shadow of the
watering-trough Wolf lay and looked on. Already two days of
ardent California sun had touched with new fires the ancient
bronze in Daylight's face. But warmer still was the glow that
came into his cheeks and burned in his eyes as he saw Dede coming
out the door, riding-whip in hand, clad in the familiar corduroy
skirt and leggings of the old Piedmont days. There was warmth
and glow in her own face as she answered his gaze and glanced on
past him to the horses. Then she saw Mab. But her gaze leaped
back to the man.
"Oh, Elam!" she breathed.
It was almost a prayer, but a prayer that included a thousand
meanings Daylight strove to feign sheepishness, but his heart was
singing too wild a song for mere playfulness. All things had
been in the naming of his name--reproach, refined away by
gratitude, and all compounded of joy and love.
She stepped forward and caressed the mare, and again turned and
looked at the man, and breathed:--
"Oh, Elam! "
And all that was in her voice was in her eyes, and in them
Daylight glimpsed a profundity deeper and wider than any speech
or thought--the whole vast inarticulate mystery and wonder of sex
and love.
Again he strove for playfulness of speech, but it was too great a
moment for even love fractiousness to enter in. Neither spoke.
She gathered the reins, and, bending, Daylight received her foot
in his hand. She sprang, as he lifted and gained the saddle.
The next moment he was mounted and beside her, and, with Wolf
sliding along ahead in his typical wolf-trot, they went up the
hill that led out of town--two lovers on two chestnut sorrel
steeds, riding out and away to honeymoon through the warm summer
day. Daylight felt himself drunken as with wine. He was at the
topmost pinnacle of life. Higher than this no man could climb
nor had ever climbed. It was his day of days, his love-time and
his mating-time, and all crowned by this virginal possession of a
mate who had said "Oh, Elam," as she had said it, and looked at
him out of her soul as she had looked.
They cleared the crest of the hill, and he watched the joy mount
in her face as she gazed on the sweet, fresh land. He pointed
out
the group of heavily wooded knolls across the rolling stretches
of
ripe grain.
"They're ours," he said. "And they're only a sample of the
ranch. Wait till you see the big canon. There are 'coons down
there, and back here on the Sonoma there are mink. And deer!--
why, that mountain's sure thick with them, and I reckon we can
scare up a mountain-lion if we want to real hard. And, say,
there's a little meadow=-well, I ain't going to tell you another
word. You wait and see for yourself."
They turned in at the gate, where the road to the clay-pit
crossed the fields, and both sniffed with delight as the warm
aroma of the ripe hay rose in their nostrils. As on his first
visit, the larks were uttering their rich notes and fluttering up
before the horses until the woods and the flower-scattered glades
were reached, when the larks gave way to blue jays and
woodpeckers.
"We're on our land now," he said, as they left the hayfield
behind. "It runs right across country over the roughest parts.
Just you wait and see."
As on the first day, he turned aside from the clay-pit and worked
through the woods to the left, passing the first spring and
jumping the horses over the ruined remnants of the
stake-and-rider fence. From here on, Dede was in an unending
ecstasy. By the spring that gurgled among the redwoods grew
another great wild lily, bearing on its slender stalk the
prodigious outburst of white waxen bells. This time he did not
dismount, but led the way to the deep canon where the stream had
cut a passage among the knolls. He had been at work here, and a
steep and slippery horse trail now crossed the creek, so they
rode up beyond, through the somber redwood twilight, and, farther
on, through a tangled wood of oak and madrono. They came to a
small clearing of several acres, where the grain stood waist
high.
"Ours," Daylight said.
She bent in her saddle, plucked a stalk of the ripe grain, and
nibbled it between her teeth.
"Sweet mountain hay," she cried. "The kind Mab likes."
And throughout the ride she continued to utter cries and
ejaculations of surprise and delight.
"And you never told me all this!" she reproached him, as they
looked across the little clearing and over the descending slopes
of woods to the great curving sweep of Sonoma Valley.
"Come," he said; and they turned and went back through the forest
shade, crossed the stream and came to the lily by the spring.
Here, also, where the way led up the tangle of the steep hill, he
had cut a rough horse trail. As they forced their way up the
zigzags, they caught glimpses out and down through the sea of
foliage. Yet always were their farthest glimpses stopped by the
closing vistas of green, and, yet always, as they climbed, did
the forest roof arch overhead, with only here and there rifts
that permitted shattered shafts of sunlight to penetrate. And
all about them were ferns, a score of varieties, from the tiny
gold-backs and maidenhair to huge brakes six and eight feet tall.
Below them, as they mounted, they glimpsed great gnarled trunks
and branches of ancient trees, and above them were similar great
gnarled branches.
Dede stopped her horse and sighed with the beauty of it all.
"It is as if we are swimmers," she said, "rising out of a deep
pool of green tranquillity. Up above is the sky and the sun, but
this is a pool, and we are fathoms deep."
They started their horses, but a dog-tooth violet, shouldering
amongst the maidenhair, caught her eye and made her rein in
again.
They cleared the crest and emerged from the pool as if into
another world, for now they were in the thicket of velvet-trunked
young madronos and looking down the open, sun-washed hillside,
across the nodding grasses, to the drifts of blue and white
nemophilae that carpeted the tiny meadow on either side the tiny
stream. Dede clapped her hands.
"It's sure prettier than office furniture," Daylight remarked.
"It sure is," she answered.
And Daylight, who knew his weakness in the use of the particular
word sure, knew that she had repeated it deliberately and with
love.
They crossed the stream and took the cattle track over the low
rocky hill and through the scrub forest of manzanita, till they
emerged on the next tiny valley with its meadow-bordered
streamlet.
"If we don't run into some quail pretty soon, I'll be surprised
some," Daylight said.
And as the words left his lips there was a wild series of
explosive thrumming as the old quail arose from all about Wolf,
while the young ones scuttled for safety and disappeared
miraculously before the spectators' very eyes.
He showed her the hawk's nest he had found in the
lightning-shattered top of the redwood, and she discovered a
wood-rat's nest which he had not seen before. Next they took the
old wood-road and came out on the dozen acres of clearing where
the
wine grapes grew in the wine-colored volcanic soil. Then they
followed the cow-path through more woods and thickets and
scattered glades, and dropped down the hillside to where the
farm-house, poised on the lip of the big canon, came into view
only when they were right upon it.
Dede stood on the wide porch that ran the length of the house
while Daylight tied the horses. To Dede it was very quiet. It
was the dry, warm, breathless calm of California midday. All the
world seemed dozing. From somewhere pigeons were cooing lazily.
With a deep sigh of satisfaction, Wolf, who had drunk his fill at
all the streams along the way, dropped down in the cool shadow of
the porch. She heard the footsteps of Daylight returning, and
caught her breath with a quick intake. He took her hand in his,
and, as he turned the door-knob, felt her hesitate. Then he put
his arm around her; the door swung open, and together they passed
in.
CHAPTER XXV
Many persons, themselves city-bred and city-reared, have fled to
the soil and succeeded in winning great happiness. In such cases
they have succeeded only by going through a process of savage
disillusionment. But with Dede and Daylight it was different.
They had both been born on the soil, and they knew its naked
simplicities and rawer ways. They were like two persons, after
far wandering, who had merely come home again. There was less of
the unexpected in their dealings with nature, while theirs was
all the delight of reminiscence. What might appear sordid and
squalid to the fastidiously reared, was to them eminently
wholesome and natural. The commerce of nature was to them no
unknown and untried trade. They made fewer mistakes. They
already knew, and it was a joy to remember what they had
forgotten.
And another thing they learned was that it was easier for one who
has gorged at the flesh-pots to content himself with the
meagerness of a crust, than for one who has known only the crust.
Not that their life was meagre. It was that they found keener
delights and deeper satisfactions in little things. Daylight,
who had played the game in its biggest and most fantastic
aspects, found that here, on the slopes of Sonoma Mountain, it
was still the same old game. Man had still work to perform,
forces to combat, obstacles to overcome. When he experimented in
a small way at raising a few pigeons for market, he found no less
zest in calculating in squabs than formerly when he had
calculated in millions. Achievement was no less achievement,
while the process of it seemed more rational and received the
sanction of his reason.
The domestic cat that had gone wild and that preyed on his
pigeons, he found, by the comparative standard, to be of no less
paramount menace than a Charles Klinkner in the field of finance,
trying to raid him for several millions. The hawks and weasels
and 'coons were so many Dowsetts, Lettons, and Guggenhammers that
struck at him secretly. The sea of wild vegetation that tossed
its surf against the boundaries of all his clearings and that
sometimes crept in and flooded in a single week was no mean enemy
to contend with and subdue. His fat-soiled vegetable-garden in
the nook of hills that failed of its best was a problem of
engrossing importance, and when he had solved it by putting in
drain-tile, the joy of the achievement was ever with him. He
never worked in it and found the soil unpacked and tractable
without experiencing the thrill of accomplishment.
There was the matter of the plumbing. He was enabled to purchase
the materials through a lucky sale of a number of his hair
bridles. The work he did himself, though more than once he was
forced to call in Dede to hold tight with a pipe-wrench. And in
the end, when the bath-tub and the stationary tubs were installed
and in working order, he could scarcely tear himself away from
the contemplation of what his hands had wrought. The first
evening, missing him, Dede sought and found him, lamp in hand,
staring with silent glee at the tubs. He rubbed his hand over
their smooth wooden lips and laughed aloud, and was as shamefaced
as any boy when she caught him thus secretly exulting in his own
prowess.
It was this adventure in wood-working and plumbing that brought
about the building of the little workshop, where he slowly
gathered a collection of loved tools. And he, who in the old
days, out of his millions, could purchase immediately whatever he
might desire, learned the new joy of the possession that follows
upon rigid economy and desire long delayed. He waited three
months before daring the extravagance of a Yankee screw-driver,
and his glee in the marvelous little mechanism was so keen that
Dede conceived forthright a great idea. For six months she saved
her egg-money, which was hers by right of allotment, and on his
birthday presented him with a turning-lathe of wonderful
simplicity and multifarious efficiencies. And their mutual
delight in the tool, which was his, was only equalled by their
delight in Mab's first foal, which was Dede's special private
property.
It was not until the second summer that Daylight built the huge
fireplace that outrivalled Ferguson's across the valley. For all
these things took time, and Dede and Daylight were not in a
hurry. Theirs was not the mistake of the average city-dweller
who flees in ultra-modern innocence to the soil. They did not
essay too much. Neither did they have a mortgage to clear, nor
did they desire wealth. They wanted little in the way of food,
and they had no rent to pay. So they planned unambiguously,
reserving their lives for each other and for the compensations of
country-dwelling from which the average country-dweller is
barred. From Ferguson's example, too, they profited much. Here
was a man who asked for but the plainest fare; who ministered to
his own simple needs with his own hands; who worked out as a
laborer only when he needed money to buy books and magazines; and
who saw to it that the major portion of his waking time was for
enjoyment. He loved to loaf long afternoons in the shade with
his books or to be up with the dawn and away over the hills.
On occasion he accompanied Dede and Daylight on deer hunts
through the wild canons and over the rugged steeps of Hood
Mountain, though more often Dede and Daylight were out alone.
This riding was one of their chief joys. Every wrinkle and
crease in the hills they explored, and they came to know every
secret spring and hidden dell in the whole surrounding wall of
the valley. They learned all the trails and cow-paths; but
nothing delighted them more than to essay the roughest and most
impossible rides, where they were glad to crouch and crawl along
the narrowest deer-runs, Bob and Mab struggling and forcing their
way along behind. Back from their rides they brought the seeds
and bulbs of wild flowers to plant in favoring nooks on the
ranch. Along the foot trail which led down the side of the big
canon to the intake of the water-pipe, they established their
fernery. It was not a formal affair, and the ferns were left to
themselves. Dede and Daylight merely introduced new ones from
time to time, changing them from one wild habitat to another. It
was the same with the wild lilac, which Daylight had sent to him
from Mendocino County. It became part of the wildness of the
ranch, and, after being helped for a season, was left to its own
devices. they used to gather the seeds of the California poppy
and scatter them over their own acres, so that the orange-colored
blossoms spangled the fields of mountain hay and prospered in
flaming drifts in the fence corners and along the edges of the
clearings.
Dede, who had a fondness for cattails, established a fringe of
them along the meadow stream, where they were left to fight it
out with the water-cress. And when the latter was threatened
with extinction, Daylight developed one of the shaded springs
into his water-cress garden and declared war upon any invading
cattail. On her wedding day Dede had discovered a long dog-tooth
violet by the zigzag trail above the redwood spring, and here she
continued to plant more and more. The open hillside above the
tiny meadow became a colony of Mariposa lilies. This was due
mainly to her efforts, while Daylight, who rode with a
short-handled ax on his saddle-bow, cleared the little manzanita
wood on the rocky hill of all its dead and dying and overcrowded
weaklings.
They did not labor at these tasks. Nor were they tasks. Merely
in passing, they paused, from time to time, and lent a hand to
nature. These flowers and shrubs grew of themselves, and their
presence was no violation of the natural environment. The man
and the woman made no effort to introduce a flower or shrub that
did not of its own right belong. Nor did they protect them from
their enemies. The horses and the colts and the cows and the
calves ran at pasture among them or over them, and flower or
shrub had to take its chance. But the beasts were not noticeably
destructive, for they were few in number and the ranch was large.
On the other hand, Daylight could have taken in fully a dozen
horses to pasture, which would have earned him a dollar and a
half per head per month. But this he refused to do, because of
the devastation such close pasturing would produce.
Ferguson came over to celebrate the housewarming that followed
the achievement of the great stone fireplace. Daylight had
ridden across the valley more than once to confer with him about
the undertaking, and he was the only other present at the sacred
function of lighting the first fire. By removing a partition,
Daylight had thrown two rooms into one, and this was the big
living-room where Dede's treasures were placed--her books, and
paintings and photographs, her piano, the Crouched Venus, the
chafing-dish and all its glittering accessories. Already, in
addition to her own wild-animal skins, were those of deer and
coyote and one mountain-lion which Daylight had killed. The
tanning he had done himself, slowly and laboriously, in frontier
fashion.
He handed the match to Dede, who struck it and lighted the fire.
The crisp manzanita wood crackled as the flames leaped up and
assailed the dry bark of the larger logs. Then she leaned in the
shelter of her husband's arm, and the three stood and looked in
breathless suspense. When Ferguson gave judgment, it was with
beaming face and extended hand.
"She draws! By crickey, she draws" he cried.
He shook Daylight's hand ecstatically, and Daylight shook his
with equal fervor, and, bending, kissed Dede on the lips. They
were as exultant over the success of their simple handiwork as
any great captain at astonishing victory. In Ferguson's eyes was
actually a suspicious moisture while the woman pressed even more
closely against the man whose achievement it was. He caught her
up suddenly in his arms and whirled her away to the piano, crying
out: "Come on, Dede! The Gloria! The Gloria!"
And while the flames in the fireplace that worked, the triumphant
strains of the Twelfth Mass rolled forth.
CHAPTER XXVI
Daylight had made no assertion of total abstinence though he had
not taken a drink for months after the day he resolved to let his
business go to smash. Soon he proved himself strong enough to
dare to take a drink without taking a second. On the other hand,
with his coming to live in the country, had passed all desire and
need for drink. He felt no yearning for it, and even forgot that
it existed. Yet he refused to be afraid of it, and in town, on
occasion, when invited by the storekeeper, would reply: "All
right, son. If my taking a drink will make you happy here goes.
Whiskey for mine."
But such a drink began no desire for a second. It made no
impression. He was too profoundly strong to be affected by a
thimbleful. As he had prophesied to Dede, Burning Daylight, the
city financier, had died a quick death on the ranch, and his
younger brother, the Daylight from Alaska, had taken his place.
The threatened inundation of fat had subsided, and all his
old-time Indian leanness and of muscle had returned. So,
likewise, did the old slight hollows in his cheeks come back.
For him they indicated the pink of physical condition. He became
the acknowledged strong man of Sonoma Valley, the heaviest lifter
and hardest winded among a husky race of farmer folk. And once a
year he celebrated his birthday in the old-fashioned frontier
way, challenging all the valley to come up the hill to the ranch
and be put on its back. And a fair portion of the valley
responded, brought the women-folk and children along, and
picnicked for the day.
At first, when in need of ready cash, he had followed Ferguson's
example of working at day's labor; but he was not long in
gravitating to a form of work that was more stimulating and more
satisfying, and that allowed him even more time for Dede and the
ranch and the perpetual riding through the hills. Having been
challenged by the blacksmith, in a spirit of banter, to attempt
the breaking of a certain incorrigible colt, he succeeded so
signally as to earn quite a reputation as a horse-breaker. And
soon he was able to earn whatever money he desired at this, to
him, agreeable work.
A sugar king, whose breeding farm and training stables were at
Caliente, three miles away, sent for him in time of need, and,
before the year was out, offered him the management of the
stables. But Daylight smiled and shook his head. Furthermore,
he refused to undertake the breaking of as many animals as were
offered. "I'm sure not going to die from overwork," he assured
Dede; and he accepted such work only when he had to have money.
Later, he fenced off a small run in the pasture, where, from time
to time, he took in a limited number of incorrigibles.
"We've got the ranch and each other," he told his wife, "and I'd
sooner ride with you to Hood Mountain any day than earn forty
dollars. You can't buy sunsets, and loving wives, and cool
spring water, and such folderols, with forty dollars; and forty
million dollars can't buy back for me one day that I didn't ride
with you to Hood Mountain."
His life was eminently wholesome and natural. Early to bed, he
slept like an infant and was up with the dawn. Always with
something to do, and with a thousand little things that enticed
but did not clamor, he was himself never overdone. Nevertheless,
there were times when both he and Dede were not above confessing
tiredness at bedtime after seventy or eighty miles in the saddle.
Sometimes, when he had accumulated a little money, and when the
season favored, they would mount their horses, with saddle-bags
behind, and ride away over the wall of the valley and down into
the other valleys. When night fell, they put up at the first
convenient farm or village, and on the morrow they would ride on,
without definite plan, merely continuing to ride on, day after
day, until their money gave out and they were compelled to
return. On such trips they would be gone anywhere from a week to
ten days or two weeks, and once they managed a three weeks' trip.
They even planned ambitiously some day when they were
disgracefully prosperous, to ride all the way up to Daylight's
boyhood home in Eastern Oregon, stopping on the way at Dede's
girlhood home in Siskiyou. And all the joys of anticipation were
theirs a thousand times as they contemplated the detailed
delights of this grand adventure.
One day, stopping to mail a letter at the Glen Ellen post office,
they were hailed by the blacksmith.
"Say, Daylight," he said, "a young fellow named Slosson sends you
his regards. He came through in an auto, on the way to Santa
Rosa. He wanted to know if you didn't live hereabouts, but the
crowd with him was in a hurry. So he sent you his regards and
said to tell you he'd taken your advice and was still going on
breaking his own record."
Daylight had long since told Dede of the incident.
"Slosson?" he meditated, "Slosson? That must be the
hammer-thrower. He put my hand down twice, the young scamp."
He turned suddenly to Dede. "Say, it's only twelve miles to
Santa Rosa, and the horses are fresh."
She divined what was in his mind, of which his twinkling eyes and
sheepish, boyish grin gave sufficient advertisement, and she
smiled and nodded acquiescence.
"We'll cut across by Bennett Valley," he said. "It's nearer that
way."
There was little difficulty, once in Santa Rosa, of finding
Slosson. He and his party had registered at the Oberlin Hotel,
and Daylight encountered the young hammer-thrower himself in the
office.
"Look here, son," Daylight announced, as soon as he had
introduced Dede, "I've come to go you another flutter at that
hand game. Here's a likely place."
Slosson smiled and accepted. The two men faced each other, the
elbows of their right arms on the counter, the hands clasped.
Slosson's hand quickly forced backward and down.
"You're the first man that ever succeeded in doing it," he said.
"Let's try it again."
"Sure," Daylight answered. "And don't forget, son, that you're
the first man that put mine down. That's why I lit out after you
to-day."
Again they clasped hands, and again Slosson's hand went down. He
was a broad-shouldered, heavy-muscled young giant, at least half
a head taller than Daylight, and he frankly expressed his chagrin
and asked for a third trial. This time he steeled himself to the
effort, and for a moment the issue was in doubt. With flushed
face and set teeth he met the other's strength till his crackling
muscles failed him. The air exploded sharply from his tensed
lungs, as he relaxed in surrender, and the hand dropped limply
down.
"You're too many for me," he confessed. "I only hope you'll keep
out of the hammer-throwing game."
Daylight laughed and shook his head.
"We might compromise, and each stay in his own class. You stick
to hammer-throwing, and I'll go on turning down hands."
But Slosson refused to accept defeat.
"Say," he called out, as Daylight and Dede, astride their horses,
were preparing to depart. "Say--do you mind if I look you up
next year? I'd like to tackle you again."
"Sure, son. You're welcome to a flutter any time. Though I give
you fair warning that you'll have to go some. You'll have to
train up, for I'm ploughing and chopping wood and breaking colts
these days."
Now and again, on the way home, Dede could hear her big
boy-husband chuckling gleefully. As they halted their horses on
the top of the divide out of Bennett Valley, in order to watch
the sunset, he ranged alongside and slipped his arm around her
waist.
"Little woman," he said, "you're sure responsible for it all.
And I leave it to you, if all the money in creation is worth as
much as one arm like that when it's got a sweet little woman like
this to go around."
For of all his delights in the new life, Dede was his greatest.
As he explained to her more than once, he had been afraid of love
all his life only in the end to come to find it the greatest
thing in the world. Not alone were the two well mated, but in
coming to live on the ranch they had selected the best soil in
which their love would prosper. In spite of her books and music,
there was in her a wholesome simplicity and love of the open and
natural, while Daylight, in every fiber of him, was essentially
an open-air man.
Of one thing in Dede, Daylight never got over marveling about,
and that was her efficient hands--the hands that he had first
seen
taking down flying shorthand notes and ticking away at the
typewriter; the hands that were firm to hold a magnificent brute
like Bob, that wonderfully flashed over the keys of the piano,
that were unhesitant in household tasks, and that were twin
miracles to caress and to run rippling fingers through his hair.
But Daylight was not unduly uxorious. He lived his man's life
just as she lived her woman's life. There was proper division of
labor in the work they individually performed. But the whole was
entwined and woven into a fabric of mutual interest and
consideration. He was as deeply interested in her cooking and
her music as she was in his agricultural adventures in the
vegetable garden. And he, who resolutely declined to die of
overwork, saw to it that she should likewise escape so dire a
risk.
In this connection, using his man's judgment and putting his
man's foot down, he refused to allow her to be burdened with the
entertaining of guests. For guests they had, especially in the
warm, long summers, and usually they were her friends from the
city, who were put to camp in tents which they cared for
themselves, and where, like true campers, they had also to cook
for themselves. Perhaps only in California, where everybody
knows camp life, would such a program have been possible. But
Daylight's steadfast contention was that his wife should not
become cook, waitress, and chambermaid because she did not happen
to possess a household of servants. On the other hand,
chafing-dish suppers in the big living-room for their camping
guests were a common happening, at which times Daylight allotted
them their chores and saw that they were performed. For one who
stopped only for the night it was different. Likewise it was
different with her brother, back from Germany, and again able to
sit a horse. On his vacations he became the third in the family,
and to him was given the building of the fires, the sweeping, and
the washing of the dishes.
Daylight devoted himself to the lightening of Dede's labors, and
it was her brother who incited him to utilize the splendid
water-power of the ranch that was running to waste. It required
Daylight's breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and
the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and
together they installed a Pelting wheel. Besides sawing wood and
turning his lathe and grindstone, Daylight connected the power
with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm
around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine,
run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked and really washed
clothes.
Dede and Ferguson, between them, after a patient struggle, taught
Daylight poetry, so that in the end he might have been often
seen, sitting slack in the saddle and dropping down the mountain
trails through the sun-flecked woods, chanting aloud Kipling's
"Tomlinson," or, when sharpening his ax, singing into the
whirling grindstone Henley's "Song of the Sword." Not that he
ever became consummately literary in the way his two teachers
were. Beyond "Fra Lippo Lippi" and "Caliban and Setebos," he
found nothing in Browning, while George Meredith was ever his
despair. It was of his own initiative, however, that he invested
in a violin, and practised so assiduously that in time he and
Dede beguiled many a happy hour playing together after night had
fallen.
So all went well with this well-mated pair. Time never dragged.
There were always new wonderful mornings and still cool twilights
at the end of day; and ever a thousand interests claimed him, and
his interests were shared by her. More thoroughly than he knew,
had he come to a comprehension of the relativity of things. In
this new game he played he found in little things all the
intensities of gratification and desire that he had found in the
frenzied big things when he was a power and rocked half a
continent with the fury of the blows he struck. With head and
hand, at risk of life and limb, to bit and break a wild colt and
win it to the service of man, was to him no less great an
achievement. And this new table on which he played the game was
clean. Neither lying, nor cheating, nor hypocrisy was here. The
other game had made for decay and death, while this new one made
for clean strength and life. And so he was content, with Dede at
his side, to watch the procession of the days and seasons from
the farm-house perched on the canon-lip; to ride through crisp
frosty mornings or under burning summer suns; and to shelter in
the big room where blazed the logs in the fireplace he had built,
while outside the world shuddered and struggled in the
storm-clasp of a southeaster.
Once only Dede asked him if he ever regretted, and his answer was
to crush her in his arms and smother her lips with his. His
answer, a minute later, took speech.
"Little woman, even if you did cost thirty millions, you are sure
the cheapest necessity of life I ever indulged in." And then
he added, "Yes, I do have one regret, and a monstrous big one,
too. I'd sure like to have the winning of you all over again.
I'd like to go sneaking around the Piedmont hills looking for
you. I'd like to meander into those rooms of yours at Berkeley
for the first time. And there's no use talking, I'm plumb
soaking with regret that I can't put my arms around you again
that time you leaned your head on my breast and cried in the wind
and rain."
CHAPTER XXVII
But there came the day, one year, in early April, when Dede sat
in an easy chair on the porch, sewing on certain small garments,
while Daylight read aloud to her. It was in the afternoon, and a
bright sun was shining down on a world of new green. Along the
irrigation channels of the vegetable garden streams of water were
flowing, and now and again Daylight broke off from his reading to
run out and change the flow of water. Also, he was teasingly
interested in the certain small garments on which Dede worked,
while she was radiantly happy over them, though at times, when
his tender fun was too insistent, she was rosily confused or
affectionately resentful.
From where they sat they could look out over the world. Like the
curve of a skirting blade, the Valley of the Moon stretched
before them, dotted with farm-houses and varied by pasture-lands,
hay-fields, and vineyards. Beyond rose the wall of the valley,
every crease and wrinkle of which Dede and Daylight knew, and at
one place, where the sun struck squarely, the white dump of the
abandoned mine burned like a jewel. In the foreground, in the
paddock by the barn, was Mab, full of pretty anxieties for the
early spring foal that staggered about her on tottery legs. The
air shimmered with heat, and altogether it was a lazy, basking
day. Quail whistled to their young from the thicketed hillside
behind the house. there was a gentle cooing of pigeons, and from
the green depths of the big canon arose the sobbing wood note of
a mourning dove. Once, there was a warning chorus from the
foraging hens and a wild rush for cover, as a hawk, high in the
blue, cast its drifting shadow along the ground.
It was this, perhaps, that aroused old hunting memories in Wolf.
At any rate, Dede and Daylight became aware of excitement in the
paddock, and saw harmlessly reenacted a grim old tragedy of the
Younger World. Curiously eager, velvet-footed and silent as a
ghost, sliding and gliding and crouching, the dog that was mere
domesticated wolf stalked the enticing bit of young life that Mab
had brought so recently into the world. And the mare, her own
ancient instincts aroused and quivering, circled ever between the
foal and this menace of the wild young days when all her ancestry
had known fear of him and his hunting brethren. Once, she
whirled and tried to kick him, but usually she strove to strike
him with her fore-hoofs, or rushed upon him with open mouth and
ears laid back in an effort to crunch his backbone between her
teeth. And the wolf-dog, with ears flattened down and crouching,
would slide silkily away, only to circle up to the foal from the
other side and give cause to the mare for new alarm. Then
Daylight, urged on by Dede's solicitude, uttered a low
threatening cry; and Wolf, drooping and sagging in all the body
of him in token of his instant return to man's allegiance, slunk
off behind the barn.
It was a few minutes later that Daylight, breaking off from his
reading to change the streams of irrigation, found that the water
had ceased flowing. He shouldered a pick and shovel, took a
hammer and a pipe-wrench from the tool-house, and returned to
Dede on the porch.
"I reckon I'll have to go down and dig the pipe out," he told
her. "It's that slide that's threatened all winter. I guess
she's come down at last."
"Don't you read ahead, now," he warned, as he passed around the
house and took the trail that led down the wall of the canon.
Halfway down the trail, he came upon the slide. It was a small
affair, only a few tons of earth and crumbling rock; but,
starting from fifty feet above, it had struck the water pipe with
force sufficient to break it at a connection. Before proceeding
to work, he glanced up the path of the slide, and he glanced with
the eye of the earth-trained miner. And he saw what made his
eyes startle and cease for the moment from questing farther.
"Hello," he communed aloud, "look who's here."
His glance moved on up the steep broken surface, and across it
from side to side. Here and there, in places, small twisted
manzanitas were rooted precariously, but in the main, save for
weeds and grass, that portion of the canon was bare. There were
signs of a surface that had shifted often as the rains poured a
flow of rich eroded soil from above over the lip of the canon.
"A true fissure vein, or I never saw one," he proclaimed softly.
And as the old hunting instincts had aroused that day in the
wolf-dog, so in him recrudesced all the old hot desire of
gold-hunting. Dropping the hammer and pipe-wrench, but retaining
pick and shovel, he climbed up the slide to where a vague line of
outputting but mostly soil-covered rock could be seen. It was
all but indiscernible, but his practised eye had sketched the
hidden formation which it signified. Here and there, along this
wall of the vein, he attacked the crumbling rock with the pick
and shoveled the encumbering soil away. Several times he
examined this rock. So soft was some of it that he could break
it in his fingers. Shifting a dozen feet higher up, he again
attacked with pick and shovel. And this time, when he rubbed the
soil from a chunk of rock and looked, he straightened up
suddenly, gasping with delight. And then, like a deer at a
drinking pool in fear of its enemies, he flung a quick glance
around to see if any eye were gazing upon him. He grinned at his
own foolishness and returned to his examination of the chunk. A
slant of sunlight fell on it, and it was all aglitter with tiny
specks of unmistakable free gold.
"From the grass roots down," he muttered in an awestricken voice,
as he swung his pick into the yielding surface.
He seemed to undergo a transformation. No quart of cocktails had
ever put such a flame in his cheeks nor such a fire in his eyes.
As he worked, he was caught up in the old passion that had ruled
most of his life. A frenzy seized him that markedly increased
from moment to moment. He worked like a madman, till he panted
from his exertions and the sweat dripped from his face to the
ground. He quested across the face of the slide to the opposite
wall of the vein and back again. And, midway, he dug down
through the red volcanic earth that had washed from the
disintegrating hill above, until he uncovered quartz, rotten
quartz, that broke and crumbled in his hands and showed to be
alive with free gold.
Sometimes he started small slides of earth that covered up his
work and compelled him to dig again. Once, he was swept fifty
feet down the canon-side; but he floundered and scrambled up
again without pausing for breath. He hit upon quartz that was so
rotten that it was almost like clay, and here the gold was richer
than ever. It was a veritable treasure chamber. For a hundred
feet up and down he traced the walls of the vein. He even
climbed over the canon-lip to look along the brow of the hill for
signs of the outcrop. But that could wait, and he hurried back
to his find.
He toiled on in the same mad haste, until exhaustion and an
intolerable ache in his back compelled him to pause. He
straightened up with even a richer piece of gold-laden quartz.
Stooping, the sweat from his forehead had fallen to the ground.
It now ran into his eyes, blinding him. He wiped it from him
with the back of his hand and returned to a scrutiny of the gold.
It would run thirty thousand to the ton, fifty thousand, anything
-
-he knew that. And as he gazed upon the yellow lure, and
panted for air, and wiped the sweat away, his quick vision leaped
and set to work. He saw the spur-track that must run up from the
valley and across the upland pastures, and he ran the grades and
built the bridge that would span the canon, until it was real
before his eyes. Across the canon was the place for the mill,
and there he erected it; and he erected, also, the endless chain
of buckets, suspended from a cable and operated by gravity, that
would carry the ore across the canon to the quartz-crusher.
Likewise, the whole mine grew before him and beneath him-tunnels,
shafts, and galleries, and hoisting plants. The blasts of the
miners were in his ears, and from across the canon he could hear
the roar of the stamps. The hand that held the lump of quartz
was trembling, and there was a tired, nervous palpitation
apparently in the pit of his stomach. It came to him abruptly
that what he wanted was a drink--whiskey, cocktails, anything, a
drink. And even then, with this new hot yearning for the alcohol
upon him, he heard, faint and far, drifting down the green abyss
of the canon, Dede's voice, crying:--
"Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here, chick, chick,
chick!"
He was astounded at the lapse of time. She had left her sewing
on the porch and was feeding the chickens preparatory to getting
supper. The afternoon was gone. He could not conceive that he
had been away that long.
Again came the call: "Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick!
Here, chick, chick, chick!"
It was the way she always called--first five, and then three. He
had long since noticed it. And from these thoughts of her arose
other thoughts that caused a great fear slowly to grow in his
face. For it seemed to him that he had almost lost her. Not
once had he thought of her in those frenzied hours, and for that
much, at least, had she truly been lost to him.
He dropped the piece of quartz, slid down the slide, and started
up the trail, running heavily. At the edge of the clearing he
eased down and almost crept to a point of vantage whence he could
peer out, himself unseen. She was feeding the chickens, tossing
to them handfuls of grain and laughing at their antics.
The sight of her seemed to relieve the panic fear into which he
had been flung, and he turned and ran back down the trail. Again
he climbed the slide, but this time he climbed higher, carrying
the pick and shovel with him. And again he toiled frenziedly,
but this time with a different purpose. He worked artfully,
loosing slide after slide of the red soil and sending it
streaming down and covering up all he had uncovered, hiding from
the light of day the treasure he had discovered. He even went
into the woods and scooped armfuls of last year's fallen leaves
which he scattered over the slide. But this he gave up as a vain
task; and he sent more slides of soil down upon the scene of his
labor, until no sign remained of the out-jutting walls of the
vein.
Next he repaired the broken pipe, gathered his tools together,
and started up the trail. He walked slowly, feeling a great
weariness, as of a man who had passed through a frightful crisis.
He put the tools away, took a great drink of the water that again
flowed through the pipes, and sat down on the bench by the open
kitchen door. Dede was inside, preparing supper, and the sound
of her footsteps gave him a vast content.
He breathed the balmy mountain air in great gulps, like a diver
fresh-risen from the sea. And, as he drank in the air, he gazed
with all his eyes at the clouds and sky and valley, as if he were
drinking in that, too, along with the air.
Dede did not know he had come back, and at times he turned his
head and stole glances in at her--at her efficient hands, at the
bronze of her brown hair that smouldered with fire when she
crossed the path of sunshine that streamed through the window, at
the promise of her figure that shot through him a pang most
strangely sweet and sweetly dear. He heard her approaching the
door, and kept his head turned resolutely toward the valley. And
next, he thrilled, as he had always thrilled, when he felt the
caressing gentleness of her fingers through his hair.
"I didn't know you were back," she said. "Was it serious?"
"Pretty bad, that slide," he answered, still gazing away and
thrilling to her touch. "More serious than I reckoned. But I've
got the plan. Do you know what I'm going to do?--I'm going to
plant eucalyptus all over it. They'll hold it. I'll plant them
thick as grass, so that even a hungry rabbit can't squeeze
between them; and when they get their roots agoing, nothing in
creation will ever move that dirt again."
"Why, is it as bad as that?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing exciting. But I'd sure like to see any blamed old slide
get the best of me, that's all. I'm going to seal that slide
down so that it'll stay there for a million years. And when the
last trump sounds, and Sonoma Mountain and all the other
mountains pass into nothingness, that old slide will be still
a-standing there, held up by the roots."
He passed his arm around her and pulled her down on his knees.
"Say, little woman, you sure miss a lot by living here on the
ranch--music, and theatres, and such things. Don't you ever have
a hankering to drop it all and go back?"
So great was his anxiety that he dared not look at her, and when
she laughed and shook her head he was aware of a great relief.
Also, he noted the undiminished youth that rang through that same
old-time boyish laugh of hers.
"Say," he said, with sudden fierceness, "don't you go fooling
around that slide until after I get the trees in and rooted.
It's mighty dangerous, and I sure can't afford to lose you now."
He drew her lips to his and kissed her hungrily and passionately.
"What a lover!" she said; and pride in him and in her own
womanhood was in her voice.
"Look at that, Dede." He removed one encircling arm and swept
it in a wide gesture over the valley and the mountains beyond.
"The Valley of the Moon--a good name, a good name. Do you know,
when I look out over it all, and think of you and of all it
means, it kind of makes me ache in the throat, and I have things
in my heart I can't find the words to say, and I have a feeling
that I can almost understand Browning and those other high-flying
poet-fellows. Look at Hood Mountain there, just where the sun's
striking. It was down in that crease that we found the spring."
"And that was the night you didn't milk the cows till ten
o'clock," she laughed. "And if you keep me here much longer,
supper won't be any earlier than it was that night."
Both arose from the bench, and Daylight caught up the milk-pail
from the nail by the door. He paused a moment longer to look out
over the valley.
"It's sure grand," he said.
"It's sure grand," she echoed, laughing joyously at him and with
him and herself and all the world, as she passed in through the door.
And Daylight, like the old man he once had met, himself went down
the hill through the fires of sunset with a milk pail on his arm.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Burning Daylight, by Jack London