The Trail of 98 (16 page)

I held both of her hands firmly, looking into her eyes.

"By marrying you. Will you marry me, dear? Will you be my wife?"

"No!"

I started. "Berna!"

"No! I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man left in the world," she
cried vehemently.

"Why?" I tried to be calm.

"Why! why, you don't
love me; you don't care for me."

"Yes, I do, Berna. I do indeed, girl. Care for you! Well, I care so much
thatI beg you to marry me."

"Yes, yes, but you don't love me right, not in your great, grand way. Not in
the way you told me of. Oh, I know; it's part pity, part friendship. It would be
different if I cared in the same way, ifif I didn't care so very much
more."

"You do, Berna; you love me like that?"

"How do I know? How can I tell? How can any of us tell?"

"No, dear," I said, "love has no limits, no bounds, it is always holding
something in reserve. There are yet heights beyond the heights, that mock our
climbing, never perfection; no great love but might have been eclipsed by a
greater. There's a master key to every heart, and we poor fools delude ourselves
with the idea we are opening all the doors. We are on sufferance, we are only
understudies in the love drama, but fortunately the star seldom appears on the
scene. However, this I know"

I rose to my feet.

"Since the moment I set eyes on you, I loved you. Long before I ever met you,
I loved you. I was just waiting for you, waiting. At first I could not
understand, I did not know what it meant, but now I do, beyond the peradventure
of a doubt; there never was any but you, never will be any but you. Since the
beginning of time it was all planned
that I should love you. And you, how do you care?"

She stood up to hear my words. She would not let me touch her, but there was
a great light in her eyes. Then she spoke and her voice was vibrant with
passion, all indifference gone from it.

"Oh, you blind! you coward! Couldn't you see? Couldn't you feel? That day on
the scow it came to meLove. It was such as I had never dreamed of, rapture,
ecstasy, anguish. Do you know what I wished as we went through the rapids? I
wished that it might be the end, that in such a supreme moment we might go down
clinging together, and that in death I might hold you in my arms. Oh, if you'd
only been like that afterwards, met love open-armed with love. But, no! you
slipped back to friendship. I feel as if there were a barrier of ice between us
now. I will try never to care for you any more. Now leave me, leave me, for I
never want to see you again."

"Yes, you will, you must, you must, Berna. I'd sell my immortal soul to win
that love from you, my dearest, my dearest; I'd crawl around the world to kiss
your shadow. If you called to me I would come from the ends of the earth,
through storm and darkness, to your side. I love you so, I love you so."

I crushed her to me, I kissed her madly, yet she was cold.

"Have you nothing more to say than fine words?" she asked.

"Marry me, marry
me," I repeated.

"Now?"

Now! I hesitated again. The suddenness of it was like a cold douche. God
knows, I burned for the girl, yet somehow convention clamped me.

"Now if you wish," I faltered; "but better when we get to Dawson. Better when
I've made good up there. Give me one year, Berna, one year and then"

"One year!"

The sudden gleam of hope vanished from her eyes. For the third time I was
failing her, yet my cursed prudence overrode me.

"Oh, it will pass swiftly, dear. You will be quite safe. I will be near you
and watch over you."

I reassured her, anxiously explaining how much better it would be if we
waited a little.

"One year!" she repeated, and it seemed to me her voice was toneless. Then
she turned to me in a sudden spate of passion, her face pleading, furrowed,
wretchedly sad.

"Oh, my dear, my dear, I love you better than the whole world, but I hoped
you would care enough for me to marry me now. It would have been best, believe
me. I thought you would rise to the occasion, but you've failed me. Well, be it
so, we'll wait one year."

"Yes, believe me, trust me, dear; it will be all right. I'll work for you,
slave for you, think only of you, and in twelve short monthsI'll give my whole
life to make you happy."

"Will you, dear?
Well, it doesn't matter now.... I've loved you."

All that night I wrestled with myself. I felt I ought to marry her at once to
shield her from the dangers that encompassed her. She was like a lamb among a
pack of wolves. I juggled with my conscience. I was young and marriage to me
seemed such a terribly all-important step.

Yet in the end my better nature triumphed, and ere the camp was astir I
arose. I was going to marry Berna that day. A feeling of relief came over me.
How had it ever seemed possible to delay? I was elated beyond measure.

I hurried to tell her, I pictured her joy. I was almost breathless. Love
words trembled on my tongue tip. It seemed to me I could not bear to wait a
moment.

Then as I reached the place where they had rested I gazed unbelievingly. A
sickening sense of loss and failure crushed me.

For the scow was gone.

It was three days before we made a start again, and to me each day was like a
year. I chafed bitterly at the delay. Would those sacks of flour never dry?
Longingly I gazed down the big, blue Yukon and cursed the current that was every
moment carrying her farther from me. Why her sudden departure? I had no doubt it
was enforced. I dreaded danger. Then in a while I grew calmer. I was foolish to
worry. She was safe enough. We would meet in Dawson.

At last we were under way. Once more we sped down that devious river, now
swirling under the shadow of a steep bank, now steering around a sandspit. The
scenery was hideous to me, bluffs of clay with pines peeping over their rims,
willow-fringed flats, swamps of niggerhead, ugly drab hills in endless
monotony.

How full of kinks and hooks was the river! How vicious with snags! How
treacherous with eddies! It was beginning to bulk in my thoughts almost like an
obsession. Then one day Lake Labarge burst on my delighted eyes. The trail was
nearing its end.

Once more with swelling sail we drove before the wind. Once more we were in a
fleet of Argonaut boats, and now, with the goal in sight, each man redoubled his
efforts. Perhaps the rich ground would
all be gone ere we reached the valley. Maddening thought after
what we had endured! We must get on.

There was not a man in all that fleet but imagined that fortune awaited him
with open arms. They talked exultantly. Their eyes shone with the gold-lust.
They strained at sweep and oar. To be beaten at the last! Oh, it was
inconceivable! A tigerish eagerness filled them; a panic of fear and cupidity
spurred them on.

Labarge was a dream lake, mirroring noble mountains in its depths (for soon
after we made it, a dead calm fell). But we had no eyes for its beauty. The
golden magnet was drawing us too strongly now. We cursed that exquisite serenity
that made us sweat at the oars; we cursed the wind that never would arise; the
currents that always were against us. In that breathless tranquillity myriads of
mosquitoes assailed us, blinded us, covered our food as we ate, made our lives a
perfect hell of misery. Yet the trail was nearing its finish.

What a relief it was when a sudden storm came up! White-caps tossed around
us, and the wind drove us on a precipitous shore, so that we nearly came to a
sorry end. But it was over at last, and we swept on into the Thirty-mile
River.

A furious, hurling stream was this, that matched our mad, impatient mood; but
it was staked with hidden dangers. We gripped our weary oars. Keenly alert we
had to be, steering and watching for rocks that would have ripped us from bow to
stern.
There was a
famously terrible one, on which scows smashed like egg-shells under a hammer,
and we missed it by a bare hand's-breadth. I felt sick to think of our
bitterness had we piled up on it. That was an evil, ugly river, full of
capricious turns and eddies, and the bluffs were high and steep.

Hootalinqua, Big Salmon, Little Salmon, these are names to me now. All I can
remember is long days of toil at the oar, fighting the growing obsession of
mosquitoes, ever pressing on to the golden valley. The ceaseless strain was
beginning to tell on us. We suffered from rheumatism, we barked with cold. Oh,
we were weary, weary, yet the trail was nearing its end.

One sunlit Sabbath evening I remember well. We were drifting along and we
came on a lovely glade where a creek joined the river. It was a green, velvety,
sparkling place, and by the creek were two men whipsawing lumber. We hailed them
jauntily and asked them if they had found prospects. Were they getting out
lumber for sluice-boxes?

One of the men came forward. He was very tired, very quiet, very solemn.
"No," he said, "we are sawing out a coffin for our dead."

Then we saw a limp shape in their boat and we hurried on, awed and
abashed.

The river was mud colour now, swirling in great eddies or convulsed from
below with sudden upheavals. Drifting on that oily current one seemed to be
quite motionless, and only the gliding banks assured us of progress. The country
seemed terrible
to me,
sinister, guilty, God-forsaken. At the horizon, jagged mountains stabbed
viciously at the sky.

The river overwhelmed me. Sometimes it was a stream of blood, running into
the eye of the setting sun, beautiful, yet weird and menacing. It broadened,
deepened, and every day countless streams swelled its volume. Islands waded in
it greenly. Always we heard it
singing
, a seething, hissing noise
supposed to be the pebbles shuffling on the bottom.

The days were insufferably hot and mosquito-curst; the nights chilly, damp
and mosquito-haunted. I suffered agonies from neuralgia. Never mind, it would
soon be over. We were on our last lap. The trail was near its end.

Yes, it was indeed the homestretch. Suddenly sweeping round a bend we raised
a shout of joy. There was that great livid scar on the mountain facethe
"Slide," and clustered below it like shells on the seashore, an army of tents.
It was the gold-born city.

Trembling with eagerness we pulled ashore. Our troubles were over. At last we
had gained our Eldorado, thank God, thank God!

A number of loafers were coming to meet us. They were strangely calm.

"How about the gold?" said the Prodigal; "lots of ground left to stake?"

One of them looked at us contemptuously. He chewed a moment ere he spoke.

"You Cheechakers better git right home. There ain't a foot of ground to
stake. Everything in sight
was staked last Fall. The rest is all mud. There's nothing
doin' an' there's ten men for every job! The whole thing's a fake. You
Cheechakers better git right home."

Yes, after all our travail, all our torment, we had better go right home.
Already many were preparing to do so. Yet what of that great oncoming horde of
which we were but the vanguard? What of the eager army, the host of the
Cheechakos? For hundreds of miles were lake and river white with their grotesque
boats. Beyond them again were thousands and thousands of others struggling on
through mosquito-curst morasses, bent under their inexorable burdens. Reckless,
indomitable, hope-inspired, they climbed the passes and shot the rapids; they
drowned in the rivers, they rotted in the swamps. Nothing could stay them. The
golden magnet was drawing them on; the spell of the gold-lust was in their
hearts.

And this was the end. For this they had mortgaged homes and broken hearts.
For this they had faced danger and borne suffering: to be told to return.

The land was choosing its own. All along it had weeded out the weaklings. Now
let the fainthearted go back. This land was only for the Strong.

Yet it was sad, so much weariness, and at the end disenchantment and
failure.

Verily the ways of the gold-trail were cruel.

I will always remember my first day in the gold-camp. We were well in front
of the Argonaut army, but already thousands were in advance of us. The flat at
the mouth of Bonanza was a congestion of cabins; shacks and tents clustered the
hillside, scattered on the heights and massed again on the slope sweeping down
to the Klondike. An intense vitality charged the air. The camp was alive, ahum,
vibrant with fierce, dynamic energy.

In effect the town was but one street stretching alongside the water front.
It was amazingly packed with men from side to side, from end to end. They
lounged in the doorways of oddly assorted buildings, and jostled each other on
the dislocated sidewalks. Stores of all kinds, saloons, gambling joints
flourished without number, and in one block alone there were half a dozen
dance-halls. Yet all seemed plethorically prosperous.

Many of the business houses were installed in tents. That huge canvas
erection was a mining exchange; that great log barn a dance-hall. Dwarfish log
cabins impudently nestled up to pretentious three-story hotels. The effect was
oddly staccato. All was grotesque, makeshift, haphazard. Back of the main street
lay the red-light quarter, and behind it again a swamp of niggerheads, the
breeding-place of fever and mosquito.