| Several miles below they ran in to the bank, and all four walked
down to look at the bad water. The river, which was a succession of
rapids, was here deflected toward the right bank by a rocky reef.
The whole body of water, rushing crookedly into the narrow passage,
accelerated its speed frightfully and was up-flung into huge waves,
white and wrathful. This was the dread Mane of the White Horse, and
here an even heavier toll of dead had been exacted. On one side of
the Mane was a corkscrew curl-over and suck-under, and on the
opposite side was the big whirlpool. To go through, the Mane itself
must be ridden.
"This plum rips the strings outa the Box," Shorty concluded.
As they watched, a boat took the head of the rapids above. It was a
large boat, fully thirty feet long, laden with several tons of
outfit, and handled by six men. Before it reached the Mane it was
plunging and leaping, at times almost hidden by the foam and spray.
Shorty shot a slow, sidelong glance at Kit and said: "She's fair
smoking, and she hasn't hit the worst. They've hauled the oars in.
There she takes it now. God! She's gone! No; there she is!"
Big as the boat was, it had been buried from sight in the flying
smother between crests. The next moment, in the thick of the Mane,
the boat leaped up a crest and into view. To Kit's amazement he saw
the whole long bottom clearly outlined. The boat, for the fraction of
an instant, was in the air, the men sitting idly in their places, all
save one in the stern, who stood at the steering-sweep. Then came the
downward plunge into the trough and a second disappearance. Three
times the boat leaped and buried itself, then those on the bank saw
its nose take the whirlpool as it slipped off the Mane. The
steersman, vainly opposing with his full weight on the steering-gear,
surrendered to the whirlpool and helped the boat to take the circle.
Three times it went around, each time so close to the rocks on which
Kit and Shorty stood that either could have leaped on board. The
steersman, a man with a reddish beard of recent growth, waved his hand
to them. The only way out of the whirlpool was by the Mane, and on
the third round the boat entered the Mane obliquely at its upper end.
Possibly out of fear of the draw of the whirlpool, the steersman did
not attempt to straighten out quickly enough. When he did, it was too
late. Alternately in the air and buried, the boat angled the Mane and
was sucked into and down through the stiff wall of the corkscrew on
the opposite side of the river. A hundred feet below, boxes and bales
began to float up. Then appeared the bottom of the boat and the
scattered heads of six men. Two managed to make the bank in the eddy
below. The others were drawn under, and the general flotsam was lost
to view, borne on by the swift current around the bend.
There was a long minute of silence. Shorty was the first to speak.
"Come on," he said. "We might as well tackle it. My feet'll get
cold if I stay here any longer."
"We'll smoke some," Kit grinned at him.
"And you'll sure earn your name," was the rejoinder. Shorty turned
to their employers. "Comin'?" he queried.
Perhaps the roar of the water prevented them from hearing the
invitation.
Shorty and Kit tramped back through a foot of snow to the head of
the rapids and cast off the boat. Kit was divided between two
impressions: one, of the caliber of his comrade, which served as a
spur to him; the other, likewise a spur, was the knowledge that old
Isaac Bellew, and all the other Bellews, had done things like this
in their westward march of empire. What they had done, he could do.
It was the meat, the strong meat, and he knew, as never before, that
it required strong men to eat such meat.
"You've sure got to keep the top of the ridge," Shorty shouted at him,
the plug of tobacco lifting to his mouth, as the boat quickened in the
quickening current and took the head of the rapids.
Kit nodded, swayed his strength and weight tentatively on the
steering-gear, and headed the boat for the plunge.
Several minutes later, half-swamped and lying against the bank in
the eddy below the White Horse, Shorty spat out a mouthful of
tobacco juice and shook Kit's hand.
"Meat! Meat!" Shorty chanted. "We eat it raw! We eat it alive!"
At the top of the bank they met Breck. His wife stood at a little
distance. Kit shook his hand.
"I'm afraid your boat can't make it," he said. "It is smaller than
ours and a bit cranky."
The man pulled out a row of bills.
"I'll give you each a hundred if you run it through."
Kit looked out and up the tossing Mane of the White Horse. A long,
gray twilight was falling, it was turning colder, and the landscape
seemed taking on a savage bleakness.
"It ain't that," Shorty was saying. "We don't want your money.
Wouldn't touch it nohow. But my pardner is the real meat with
boats, and when he says yourn ain't safe I reckon he knows what he's
talkin' about."
Kit nodded affirmation, and chanced to glance at Mrs Breck. Her
eyes were fixed upon him, and he knew that if ever he had seen
prayer in a woman's eyes he was seeing it then. Shorty followed his
gaze and saw what he saw. They looked at each other in confusion
and did not speak. Moved by the common impulse, they nodded to each
other and turned to the trail that led to the head of the rapids.
They had not gone a hundred yards when they met Stine and Sprague
coming down.
"Where are you going?" the latter demanded.
"To fetch that other boat through," Shorty answered.
"No, you're not. It's getting dark. You two are going to pitch
camp."
So huge was Kit's disgust that he forebore to speak.
"He's got his wife with him," Shorty said.
"That's his lookout," Stine contributed.
"And Smoke's and mine," was Shorty's retort.
"I forbid you," Sprague said harshly. "Smoke, if you go another
step I'll discharge you."
"And you, too, Shorty," Stine added.
"And a hell of a pickle you'll be in with us fired," Shorty replied.
"How'll you get your blamed boat to Dawson? Who'll serve you coffee
in your blankets and manicure your finger-nails? Come on, Smoke.
They don't dast fire us. Besides, we've got agreements. If they
fire us they've got to divvy up grub to last us through the winter."
Barely had they shoved Breck's boat out from the bank and caught the
first rough water, when the waves began to lap aboard. They were
small waves, but it was an earnest of what was to come. Shorty cast
back a quizzical glance as he gnawed at his inevitable plug, and Kit
felt a strange rush of warmth at his heart for this man who couldn't
swim and who couldn't back out.
The rapids grew stiffer, and the spray began to fly. In the gathering
darkness, Kit glimpsed the Mane and the crooked fling of the current
into it. He worked into this crooked current, and felt a glow of
satisfaction as the boat hit the head of the Mane squarely in the
middle. After that, in the smother, leaping and burying and swamping,
he had no clear impression of anything save that he swung his weight
on the steering-oar and wished his uncle were there to see. They
emerged, breathless, wet through, the boat filled with water almost to
the gunwale. Lighter pieces of baggage and outfit were floating
inside the boat. A few careful strokes on Shorty's part worked the
boat into the draw of the eddy, and the eddy did the rest till the
boat softly touched the bank. Looking down from above was Mrs. Breck.
Her prayer had been answered, and the tears were streaming down her
cheeks.
"You boys have simply got to take the money," Breck called down to
them.
Shorty stood up, slipped, and sat down in the water, while the boat
dipped one gunwale under and righted again.
"Damn the money," said Shorty. "Fetch out that whiskey. Now that
it's over I'm getting cold feet, an' I'm sure likely to have a
chill."
In the morning, as usual, they were among the last of the boats to
start. Breck, despite his boating inefficiency, and with only his
wife and nephew for crew, had broken camp, loaded his boat, and
pulled out at the first streak of day. But there was no hurrying
Stine and Sprague, who seemed incapable of realizing that the
freeze-up might come at any time. They malingered, got in the way,
delayed, and doubled the work of Kit and Shorty.
"I'm sure losing my respect for God, seein' as he must 'a' made them
two mistakes in human form," was the latter's blasphemous way of
expressing his disgust.
"Well, you're the real goods, at any rate," Kit grinned back at him.
"It makes me respect God the more just to look at you."
"He was sure goin' some, eh?" was Shorty's fashion of overcoming the
embarrassment of the compliment.
The trail by water crossed Lake Labarge. Here was no fast current,
but a tideless stretch of forty miles which must be rowed unless a
fair wind blew. But the time for fair wind was past, and an icy
gale blew in their teeth out of the north. This made a rough sea,
against which it was almost impossible to pull the boat. Added to
their troubles was driving snow; also, the freezing of the water on
their oar-blades kept one man occupied in chopping it off with a
hatchet. Compelled to take their turn at the oars, Sprague and
Stine patently loafed. Kit had learned how to throw his weight on
an oar, but he noted that his employers made a seeming of throwing
their weights and that they dipped their oars at a cheating angle.
At the end of three hours, Sprague pulled his oar in and said they
would run back into the mouth of the river for shelter. Stine
seconded him, and the several hard-won miles were lost. A second
day, and a third, the same fruitless attempt was made. In the river
mouth, the continually arriving boats from White Horse made a
flotilla of over two hundred. Each day forty or fifty arrived, and
only two or three won to the northwest shore of the lake and did
not come back. Ice was now forming in the eddies, and connecting
from eddy to eddy in thin lines around the points. The freeze-up
was very imminent.
"We could make it if they had the souls of clams," Kit told Shorty,
as they dried their moccasins by the fire on the evening of the
third day. "We could have made it to-day if they hadn't turned
back. Another hour's work would have fetched that west shore.
They're--they're babes in the woods."
"Sure," Shorty agreed. He turned his moccasin to the flame and
debated a moment. "Look here, Smoke. It's hundreds of miles to
Dawson. If we don't want to freeze in here, we've got to do
something. What d'ye say?"Previous chapter:Next chapter SMOKE BELLEW, by Jack london. But he didn't. Somewhere in him was the strain of the hard, and he Over the ice-scoured rocks and above the timber-line, the trail ran Kit grinned to himself and went on. This was what he must expect to Next day the gale still blew. Lake Linderman was no more than a Several miles below they ran in to the bank, and all four walked Kit looked at him, and waited. The last night ashore was spent between the mouths of the White When Smoke entered the little cabin on the hillside back of Dawson, Often they thought they had reached the lead, but always they A trail did run up the creek, but so slight was it that they Shorty returned along the creek bed and climbed the bank to them. "I "Are you playing a system?" Smoke asked, at the end of ten minutes, "It's real," Smoke hammered his point home. "Surely." And all the time this fine, wise, Spartan Northland had been here, "Search the other bank first," Smoke urged. "Who was the man you hiked out of camp two weeks ago?" Smoke asked. "I can buy the dogs. But--er--aren't you afraid this is gambling?" Leaping down the bank beyond the glutted passage, he gained the He dropped behind very slowly, though when the last relay station was The valley Smoke was descending gradually widened after the fashion of "Well, here's the gold that will take you to Paris," Smoke assured Holding the few pounds of strain necessary for Smoke with his left Smoke kept himself warm by kicking a channel through the rim with the "They'll sure eat us if we don't. They look hungry enough for it. Cultus George, a big strapping Circle City Indian, leaned distantly "Wait," Smoke commanded. "Tie his hands. We don't want him Quite dark it was when Smoke's snow-shoe tripped him over a body. He Smoke followed him in. "But how was I to know?" "Just trying to remember something, Shorty." "Sure. I know that, too. Slavovitch's restaurant has most of them. "Go on," Smoke requested. "That's fair," Smoke added. "Money back for the bad ones, Wild Water. "It's all right," Smoke said cheerfully. "Keep your shirt on an' let "Did you see his face?" Shorty raved. "He was almost bustin' to keep "Five thousand." "Who are your friends?" Smoke asked. "Where's the stampede?" "An' this is it?" "But there's nothing doing, I tell you," Smoke said sharply. "But suppose I did want to vote twelve hundred shares," Wild Water was Before midday, traveling down a broad stream, past snow-buried willows Smoke could only mumble phrases that were awkwardly reminiscent of his Smoke shook his head. "I am a harsh, cruel man," Snass went on. "Yet the law is the law, Glancing back at McCan, in the rear, Labiskwee spoke in an undertone "There be three suns," McCan muttered hoarsely, reeling as he clung to "It is summer in the lower valleys," said Labiskwee. "Soon it will be Book list. |
(Thursday, 18 April, 2024.)
