The Trail of 98 (40 page)

"It's some one outside," gasped the Halfbreed. Horror-stricken, we stared at
each other, then he rushed to the door. A great gust of wind came in on us.

"Hurry up, you fellows," he cried; "lend a hand. I think it's a man."

Frantically we pulled it in, an unconscious form that struck a strange chill
to our hearts. Anxiously we bent over it.

"He's not dead," said the Halfbreed, "only badly frozen, hands and feet and
face. Don't take him near the fire."

He had been peering inside the parka hood and suddenly he turned to me.

"Well, I'm darnedit's Locasto."

Locasto! I shrank back and stood there staring
blankly. Locasto! all the old hate resurged into my
heart. Many a time had I wished him dead; and even dying, never could I have
forgiven him. As I would have shrank from a reptile, I drew back.

"No, no," I said hoarsely, "I won't touch him. Curse him! Curse him! He can
die."

"Come on there," said Jim fiercely. "You wouldn't let a man die, would you?
There's the brand of a dog on you if you do. You'll be little better than a
murderer. It don't matter what wrong he's done you, it's your duty as a man to
help him. He's only a human soul, an' he's like to die anyway. Come on. Get
these mits off his hands."

Mechanically I obeyed him. I was dazed. It was as if I was impelled by a
stronger will than my own. I began pulling off the mits. The man's hands were
white as putty. I slit the sleeves and saw that the awful whiteness went clear
up the arm. It was horrible.

Jim and the Halfbreed had cut open his mucklucks and taken off his socks, and
there stretched out were two naked limbs, clay-white almost to the knees. Never
did I see anything so ghastly. Tearing off his clothing we laid him on the bed,
and forced some brandy between his lips.

At last heat was beginning to come back to the frozen frame. He moaned, and
opened his eyes in a wild gaze. He did not know us. He was still fighting the
blizzard. He raised himself up.

"Keep a-going, keep a-going," he panted.

"Keep that bucket a-going," said the Halfbreed.
"Thank God, we've got plenty of ice-water. We've got
to thaw him out."

Then for this man began a night of agony, such as few have endured. We lifted
him onto a chair and put one of those clay-cold feet into the water. At the
contact he screamed, and I could see ice crystallise on the edge of the bucket.
I had forgotten my hatred of the man. I only thought of those frozen hands and
feet, and how to get life into them once more. Our struggle began.

"The blood's beginning to circulate back," said the Halfbreed. "I guess that
water feels scalding hot to him right now. We'll have to hold him down
presently. Ughhold on, boys, for all you're worth."

He had not warned us any too soon. In a terrible spasm of agony Locasto threw
us off quickly. We grasped him again. Now we were struggling with him. He fought
like a demon. He was cursing us, praying us to leave him alone, raving,
shrieking. Grimly we held on, yet, all three, it was as much as we could do to
keep him down.

"One would think we were murdering him," said the Halfbreed. "Keep his foot
in the bucket there. I wish we'd some kind of dope to give him. There's boiling
lead running through his veins right now. Keep him down, boys; keep him
down."

It was hard, but keep him down we did; though his cries of anguish deafened
us through that awful night, and our muscles knotted as we gripped. Hour after
hour we held him, plunging now a hand, now
a foot in the ice-water, and holding it there. How
long he fought! How strong he was! But the time came when he could fight no
more. He was like a child in our hands.

There, at last it was done. We wrapped the tender flesh in pieces of blanket.
We laid him moaning on the bed. Then, tired out with our long struggle, we threw
ourselves down and slept like logs.

Next morning he was still unconscious. He suffered intense pain, so that Jim
or the Halfbreed had to be ever by him. I, for my part, refused to go near.
Indeed, I watched with a growing hatred his slow recovery. I was sorry, sorry. I
wished he had died.

At last he opened his eyes, and feebly he asked where he was. After the
Halfbreed had told him, he lay silent awhile.

"I've had a close call," he groaned. Then he went on triumphantly: "I guess
the Wild hasn't got the bulge on me yet. I can give it another round."

He began to pick up rapidly, and there in that narrow cabin I sat within a
few feet of him, and beheld him grow strong again. I suppose my face must have
showed my bitter hate, for often I saw him watching me through half-closed eyes,
as if he realised my feelings. Then a sneering smile would curve his lips, a
smile of satanic mockery. Again and again I thought of Berna. Fear and loathing
convulsed me, and at times a great rage burned in me so that I was like to kill
him.

"Seems to me
everything's healing up but that hand," said the Halfbreed. "I guess it's too
far gone. Gangrene's setting in. Say, Locasto, looks like you'll have to lose
it."

Locasto had been favouring me with a particularly sardonic look, but at these
words the sneer was wiped out, and horror crowded into his eyes.

"Lose my handdon't tell me that! Kill me at once! I don't want to be maimed.
Lose my hand! Oh, that's terrible! terrible!"

He gazed at the discoloured flesh. Already the stench of him was making us
sick, but this hand with its putrid tissues was disgusting to a degree.

"Yes," said the Halfbreed, "there's the line of the gangrene, and it's
spreading. Soon mortification will extend all up your arm, then you'll die of
blood poison. Locasto, better let me take off that hand. I've done jobs like
that before. I'm a handy man, I am. Come, let me take it off."

"Heavens! you're a cold-blooded butcher. You're going to kill me, between you
all. You're in a plot leagued against me, and that long-faced fool over there's
at the bottom of it. Damn you, then, go on and do what you want."

"You're not very grateful," said the Halfbreed. "All right, lie there and
rot."

At his words Locasto changed his tune. He became alarmed to the point of
terror. He knew the hand was doomed. He lay staring at it, staring, staring.
Then he sighed, and thrust its loathsomeness into our faces.

"Come on," he
growled. "Do something for me, you devils, or I'll do it myself."

The hour of the operation was at hand. The Halfbreed got his jack-knife
ready. He had filed the edge till it was like a rough saw. He cut the skin of
the wrist just above the gangrene line, and raised it up an inch or so. It was
here Locasto showed wonderful nerve. He took a large bite of tobacco and chewed
steadily, while his keen black eyes watched every move of the knife.

"Hurry up and get the cursed thing off," he snarled.

The Halfbreed nicked the flesh down to the bone, then with the ragged
jack-knife he began to saw. I could not bear to look. It made me deathly sick. I
heard the grit, grit of the jagged blade. I will remember the sound to my dying
day. How long it seemed to take! No man could stand such torture. A groan burst
from Locasto's lips. He fell back on the bed. His jaws no longer worked, and a
thin stream of brown saliva trickled down his chin. He had fainted.

Quickly the Halfbreed finished his work. The hand dropped on the floor. He
pulled down the flaps of skin and sewed them together.

"How's that for home-made surgery?" he chuckled. He was vastly proud of his
achievement. He took the severed hand upon a shovel and, going to the door, he
threw it far out into the darkness.

"WHY don't you go outside?" I asked of the Jam-wagon.

I had rescued him from one of his periodical plunges into the cesspool of
debauch, and he was peaked, pallid, penitent. Listlessly he stared at me a long
moment, the dull, hollow-eyed stare of the recently regenerate.

"Well," he said at last, "I think I stay for the same reason many another man
stayspride. I feel that the Yukon owes me one of two things, a stake or a
graveand she's going to pay."

"Seems to me, the way you're shaping you're more liable to get the
latter."

"Yeswell, that'll be all right."

"Look here," I remonstrated, "don't be a rotter. You're a man, a splendid
one. You might do anything, be anything. For Heaven's sake stop slipping cogs,
and get into the game."

His thin, handsome face hardened bitterly.

"I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm not fit to play the game; sometimes I
wonder if it's all worth while; sometimes I'm half inclined to end it."

"Oh, don't talk nonsense."

"I'm not; I mean it, every word. I don't often speak of myself. It doesn't
matter who I am, or what I've been. I've gone through a lotmore than
most men. For years I've
been a sort of a human derelict, drifting from port to port of the seven seas.
I've sprawled in their mire; I've eaten of their filth; I've wallowed in their
moist, barbaric slime. Time and time again I've gone to the mat, but somehow I
would never take the count. Something's always saved me at the last."

"Your guardian angel."

"Maybe. Somehow I wouldn't be utterly downed. I'm a bit of a fighter, and
every day's been a battle with me. Oh, you don't know, you can't believe how I
suffer! Often I pray, and my prayer always is: 'O dear God, don't allow me to
think
. Lash me with Thy wrath; heap burdens on me, but don't let me
think
.' They say there's a hell hereafter. They lie: it's here, now."

I was astonished at his vehemence. His face was wrenched with pain, and his
eyes full of remorseful misery.

"What about your friends?"

"Oh, themI died long ago, died in the early '80's. In a little French
graveyard there's a tombstone that bears my name, my real name, the name of the
'me' that was. Heart, soul and body, I died. My sisters mourned me, my friends
muttered, 'Poor devil.' A few women cried, and a girlwell, I mustn't speak of
that. It's all over long ago; but I must eternally do something, fight, drink,
work like the devilanything but think. I mustn't
think
."

"What about your guardian angel?"

"Yes, sometimes I think he's going to give me
another chance. This is no life for a man like me,
slaving in the drift, burning myself up in the dissipation of the town. A great,
glad fight with a good sweet woman to fight forthat would save me. Oh, to get
away from it all, get a clean start!"

"Well, I believe in you. I'm sure you'll be all right. Let me lend you the
money."

"Thank you, a thousand thanks; but I cannot take it. There it is againmy
pride. Maybe I'm all wrong. Maybe I'm a lost soul, and my goal's the potter's
field. No; thanks! In a day or two I'll be fighting-fit again. I wouldn't have
bored you with this talk, but I'm weak, and my nerve's gone."

"How much money have you got?" I asked.

He pulled a poor piece of silver from his pocket.

"Enough to do me till I join the pick-and-shovel gang."

"What are those tickets in your hand?"

He laughed carelessly.

"Chances in the ice pools. Funny thing, I don't remember buying them. Must
have been drunk."

"Yes, and you seem to have had a 'hunch.' You've got the same time on all
three: seven seconds, seven minutes past one, on the ninththat's to-day. It's
noon now. That old ice will have to hurry up if you're going to win. Fancy, if
you did! You'd clean up over three thousand dollars. There would be your new
start."

"Yes, fancy," he echoed mockingly. "Over five thousand betting, and the
guesses as close as peas in a pod."

"Well, the ice may
go out any moment. It's awful rotten."

With a curious fascination, we gazed down at the mighty river. Around us was
a glow of spring sunshine, above us the renaissance of blue skies. Rags of snow
still glimmered on the hills, and the brown earth, as if ashamed of its
nakedness, was bursting greenly forth. On the slope overlooking the Klondike,
girls in white dresses were gathering the wild crocus. All was warmth, colour,
awakening life.

Surely the river ice could not hold much longer. It was patchy, netted with
cracks, heaved up in ridges, mottled with slushy pools, corroded to the bottom.
Decidedly it was rotten, rotten. Still it held stubbornly. The Klondike hammered
it with mighty bergs, black and heavy as a house. Down the swift current they
sped, crashing, grinding, roaring, to batter into the unbroken armour of the
Yukon. And along its banks, watching even as we watched, were thousands of
others. On every lip was the question"The icewhen will it go out?" For to
these exiles of the North, after eight months of isolation, the sight of open
water would be like Heaven. It would mean boats, freedom, friendly faces, and a
step nearer to that "outside" of their dreams.

Towards the centre of the vast mass of ice that belted in the city was a
post, and on this lonely post thousands of eyes were constantly turning. For an
electric wire connected it with the town, so that when
it moved down a certain distance a
clock would register the exact moment. Thus, thousands gazing at that solitary
post thought of the bets they had made, and wondered if this year they would be
the lucky ones. It is a unique incident in Dawson life, this gambling on the
ice. There are dozens of pools, large and small, and both men and women take
part in the betting, with an eagerness and excitement that is almost
childish.

I sat on a bench on the N. C. trail overlooking the town, and watched the
Jam-wagon crawl down the hill to his cabin. Poor fellow! How drawn and white was
his face, and his long, clean framehow gaunt and weary! I felt sorry for him.
What would become of him? He was a splendid "misfit." If he only had another
chance! Somehow I believed in him, and fervently I hoped he would have that good
clean start again.

Up in the cold remoteness of the North are many of his kindthe black sheep,
the undesirables, the discards of the pack. Their lips are sealed; their eyes
are cold as glaciers, and often they drink deep. Oh, they are a mighty company,
the men you don't enquire about; but it is the code of the North to take them as
you find them, so they go their way unregarded.