
The God of His Fathers: Tales of the Klondyke
“By then the dogs’d been knocked apart and the crowd was untangling itself. Nobody was in proper place, so they didn’t note that Tilly’d gone. ‘Hello,’ I says, gripping Chief George by the hand. ‘May your potlach-smoke rise often, and the Sticks bring many furs with the spring.’
“Lord love me, Dick, but he was joyed to see me, – him with the upper hand and wedding Tilly. Chance to puff big over me. The tale that I was hot after her had spread through the camps, and my presence did him proud. All hands knew me, without my blanket, and set to grinning and giggling. It was rich, but I made it richer by playing unbeknowing.
“‘What’s the row?’ I asks. ‘Who’s getting married now?’
“‘Chief George,’ the shaman says, ducking his reverence to him.
“‘Thought he had two klooches.’
“‘Him takum more, – three,’ with another duck.
“‘Oh!’ And I turned away as though it didn’t interest me.
“But this wouldn’t do, and everybody begins singing out, ‘Killisnoo! Killisnoo!’
“‘Killisnoo what?’ I asked.
“‘Killisnoo, klooch, Chief George,’ they blathered. ‘Killisnoo, klooch.’
“I jumped and looked at Chief George. He nodded his head and threw out his chest.
“She’ll be no klooch of yours,’ I says solemnly. ‘No klooch of yours,’ I repeats, while his face went black and his hand began dropping to his hunting-knife.
“‘Look!’ I cries, striking an attitude. ‘Big Medicine. You watch my smoke.’
“I pulled off my mittens, rolled back my sleeves, and made half-a-dozen passes in the air.
“‘Killisnoo!’ I shouts. ‘Killisnoo! Killisnoo!’
“I was making medicine, and they began to scare. Every eye was on me; no time to find out that Tilly wasn’t there. Then I called Killisnoo three times again, and waited; and three times more. All for mystery and to make them nervous. Chief George couldn’t guess what I was up to, and wanted to put a stop to the foolery; but the shamans said to wait, and that they’d see me and go me one better, or words to that effect. Besides, he was a superstitious cuss, and I fancy a bit afraid of the white man’s magic.
“Then I called Killisnoo, long and soft like the howl of a wolf, till the women were all a-tremble and the bucks looking serious.
“‘Look!’ I sprang for’ard, pointing my finger into a bunch of squaws – easier to deceive women than men, you know. ‘Look!’ And I raised it aloft as though following the flight of a bird. Up, up, straight overhead, making to follow it with my eyes till it disappeared in the sky.
“‘Killisnoo,’ I said, looking at Chief George and pointing upward again. ‘Killisnoo.’
“So help me, Dick, the gammon worked. Half of them, at least, saw Tilly disappear in the air. They’d drunk my whiskey at Juneau and seen stranger sights, I’ll warrant. Why should I not do this thing, I, who sold bad spirits corked in bottles? Some of the women shrieked. Everybody fell to whispering in bunches. I folded my arms and held my head high, and they drew further away from me. The time was ripe to go. ‘Grab him,’ Chief George cries. Three or four of them came at me, but I whirled, quick, made a couple of passes like to send them after Tilly, and pointed up. Touch me? Not for the kingdoms of the earth. Chief George harangued them, but he couldn’t get them to lift a leg. Then he made to take me himself; but I repeated the mummery and his grit went out through his fingers.
“‘Let your shamans work wonders the like of which I have done this night,’ I says. ‘Let them call Killisnoo down out of the sky whither I have sent her.’ But the priests knew their limits. ‘May your klooches bear you sons as the spawn of the salmon,’ I says, turning to go; ‘and may your totem pole stand long in the land, and the smoke of your camp rise always.’
“But if the beggars could have seen me hitting the high places for the sloop as soon as I was clear of them, they’d thought my own medicine had got after me. Tilly’d kept warm by chopping the ice away, and was all ready to cast off. Gawd! how we ran before it, the Taku howling after us and the freezing seas sweeping over at every clip. With everything battened down, me a-steering and Tilly chopping ice, we held on half the night, till I plumped the sloop ashore on Porcupine Island, and we shivered it out on the beach; blankets wet, and Tilly drying the matches on her breast.
“So I think I know something about it. Seven years, Dick, man and wife, in rough sailing and smooth. And then she died, in the heart of the winter, died in childbirth, up there on the Chilcat Station. She held my hand to the last, the ice creeping up inside the door and spreading thick on the gut of the window. Outside, the lone howl of the wolf and the Silence; inside, death and the Silence. You’ve never heard the Silence yet, Dick, and Gawd grant you don’t ever have to hear it when you sit by the side of death. Hear it? Ay, till the breath whistles like a siren, and the heart booms, booms, booms, like the surf on the shore.
“Siwash, Dick, but a woman. White, Dick, white, clear through. Towards the last she says, ‘Keep my feather bed, Tommy, keep it always.’ And I agreed. Then she opened her eyes, full with the pain. ‘I’ve been a good woman to you, Tommy, and because of that I want you to promise – to promise’ – the words seemed to stick in her throat – ‘that when you marry, the woman be white. No more Siwash, Tommy. I know. Plenty white women down to Juneau now. I know. Your people call you “squaw-man,” your women turn their heads to the one side on the street, and you do not go to their cabins like other men. Why? Your wife Siwash. Is it not so? And this is not good. Wherefore I die. Promise me. Kiss me in token of your promise.’
“I kissed her, and she dozed off, whispering, ‘It is good.’ At the end, that near gone my ear was at her lips, she roused for the last time. ‘Remember, Tommy; remember my feather bed.’ Then she died, in childbirth, up there on the Chilcat Station.”
The tent heeled over and half flattened before the gale. Dick refilled his pipe, while Tommy drew the tea and set it aside against Molly’s return.
And she of the flashing eyes and Yankee blood? Blinded, falling, crawling on hand and knee, the wind thrust back in her throat by the wind, she was heading for the tent. On her shoulders a bulky pack caught the full fury of the storm. She plucked feebly at the knotted flaps, but it was Tommy and Dick who cast them loose. Then she set her soul for the last effort, staggered in, and fell exhausted on the floor.
Tommy unbuckled the straps and took the pack from her. As he lifted it there was a clanging of pots and pans. Dick, pouring out a mug of whiskey, paused long enough to pass the wink across her body. Tommy winked back. His lips pursed the monosyllable, “clothes,” but Dick shook his head reprovingly. “Here, little woman,” he said, after she had drunk the whiskey and straightened up a bit.
“Here’s some dry togs. Climb into them. We’re going out to extra-peg the tent. After that, give us the call, and we’ll come in and have dinner. Sing out when you’re ready.”
“So help me, Dick, that’s knocked the edge off her for the rest of this trip,” Tommy spluttered as they crouched to the lee of the tent.
“But it’s the edge is her saving grace.” Dick replied, ducking his head to a volley of sleet that drove around a corner of the canvas. “The edge that you and I’ve got, Tommy, and the edge of our mothers before us.”
THE MAN WITH THE GASH
Jacob Kent had suffered from cupidity all the days of his life. This, in turn, had engendered a chronic distrustfulness, and his mind and character had become so warped that he was a very disagreeable man to deal with. He was also a victim to somnambulic propensities, and very set in his ideas. He had been a weaver of cloth from the cradle, until the fever of Klondike had entered his blood and torn him away from his loom. His cabin stood midway between Sixty Mile Post and the Stuart River; and men who made it a custom to travel the trail to Dawson, likened him to a robber baron, perched in his fortress and exacting toll from the caravans that used his ill-kept roads. Since a certain amount of history was required in the construction of this figure, the less cultured wayfarers from Stuart River were prone to describe him after a still more primordial fashion, in which a command of strong adjectives was to be chiefly noted.
This cabin was not his, by the way, having been built several years previously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of logs at that point for a grub-stake. They had been most hospitable lads, and, after they abandoned it, travelers who knew the route made it an object to arrive there at nightfall. It was very handy, saving them all the time and toil of pitching camp; and it was an unwritten rule that the last man left a neat pile of firewood for the next comer. Rarely a night passed but from half a dozen to a score of men crowded into its shelter. Jacob Kent noted these things, exercised squatter sovereignty, and moved in. Thenceforth, the weary travelers were mulcted a dollar per head for the privilege of sleeping on the floor, Jacob Kent weighing the dust and never failing to steal the down-weight. Besides, he so contrived that his transient guests chopped his wood for him and carried his water. This was rank piracy, but his victims were an easy-going breed, and while they detested him, they yet permitted him to flourish in his sins.
One afternoon in April he sat by his door, – for all the world like a predatory spider, – marvelling at the heat of the returning sun, and keeping an eye on the trail for prospective flies. The Yukon lay at his feet, a sea of ice, disappearing around two great bends to the north and south, and stretching an honest two miles from bank to bank. Over its rough breast ran the sled-trail, a slender sunken line, eighteen inches wide and two thousand miles in length, with more curses distributed to the linear foot than any other road in or out of all Christendom.
Jacob Kent was feeling particularly good that afternoon. The record had been broken the previous night, and he had sold his hospitality to no less than twenty-eight visitors. True, it had been quite uncomfortable, and four had snored beneath his bunk all night; but then it had added appreciable weight to the sack in which he kept his gold dust. That sack, with its glittering yellow treasure, was at once the chief delight and the chief bane of his existence. Heaven and hell lay within its slender mouth. In the nature of things, there being no privacy to his one-roomed dwelling, he was tortured by a constant fear of theft. It would be very easy for these bearded, desperate-looking strangers to make away with it. Often he dreamed that such was the case, and awoke in the grip of nightmare. A select number of these robbers haunted him through his dreams, and he came to know them quite well, especially the bronzed leader with the gash on his right cheek. This fellow was the most persistent of the lot, and, because of him, he had, in his waking moments, constructed several score of hiding-places in and about the cabin. After a concealment he would breathe freely again, perhaps for several nights, only to collar the Man with the Gash in the very act of unearthing the sack. Then, on awakening in the midst of the usual struggle, he would at once get up and transfer the bag to a new and more ingenious crypt. It was not that he was the direct victim of these phantasms; but he believed in omens and thought-transference, and he deemed these dream-robbers to be the astral projection of real personages who happened at those particular moments, no matter where they were in the flesh, to be harboring designs, in the spirit, upon his wealth. So he continued to bleed the unfortunates who crossed his threshold, and at the same time to add to his trouble with every ounce that went into the sack.
As he sat sunning himself, a thought came to Jacob Kent that brought him to his feet with a jerk. The pleasures of life had culminated in the continual weighing and reweighing of his dust; but a shadow had been thrown upon this pleasant avocation, which he had hitherto failed to brush aside. His gold-scales were quite small; in fact, their maximum was a pound and a half, – eighteen ounces, – while his hoard mounted up to something like three and a third times that. He had never been able to weigh it all at one operation, and hence considered himself to have been shut out from a new and most edifying coign of contemplation. Being denied this, half the pleasure of possession had been lost; nay, he felt that this miserable obstacle actually minimized the fact, as it did the strength, of possession. It was the solution of this problem flashing across his mind that had just brought him to his feet. He searched the trail carefully in either direction. There was nothing in sight, so he went inside.
In a few seconds he had the table cleared away and the scales set up. On one side he placed the stamped disks to the equivalent of fifteen ounces, and balanced it with dust on the other. Replacing the weights with dust, he then had thirty ounces precisely balanced. These, in turn, he placed together on one side and again balanced with more dust. By this time the gold was exhausted, and he was sweating liberally. He trembled with ecstasy, ravished beyond measure. Nevertheless he dusted the sack thoroughly, to the last least grain, till the balance was overcome and one side of the scales sank to the table. Equilibrium, however, was restored by the addition of a pennyweight and five grains to the opposite side. He stood, head thrown back, transfixed. The sack was empty, but the potentiality of the scales had become immeasurable. Upon them he could weigh any amount, from the tiniest grain to pounds upon pounds. Mammon laid hot fingers on his heart. The sun swung on its westering way till it flashed through the open doorway, full upon the yellow-burdened scales. The precious heaps, like the golden breasts of a bronze Cleopatra, flung back the light in a mellow glow. Time and space were not.
“Gawd blime me! but you ’ave the makin’ of several quid there, ’aven’t you?”
Jacob Kent wheeled about, at the same time reaching for his double-barrelled shotgun, which stood handy. But when his eyes lit on the intruder’s face, he staggered back dizzily. It was the face of the Man with the Gash!
The man looked at him curiously.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said, waving his hand deprecatingly. “You needn’t think as I’ll ’arm you or your blasted dust.
“You’re a rum ’un, you are,” he added reflectively, as he watched the sweat pouring from off Kent’s face and the quavering of his knees.
“W’y don’t you pipe up an’ say somethin’?” he went on, as the other struggled for breath. “Wot’s gone wrong o’ your gaff? Anythink the matter?”
“W – w – where’d you get it?” Kent at last managed to articulate, raising a shaking forefinger to the ghastly scar which seamed the other’s cheek.
“Shipmate stove me down with a marlin-spike from the main-royal. An’ now as you ’ave your figger’ead in trim, wot I want to know is, wot’s it to you? That’s wot I want to know – wot’s it to you? Gawd blime me! do it ’urt you? Ain’t it smug enough for the likes o’ you? That’s wot I want to know!”
“No, no,” Kent answered, sinking upon a stool with a sickly grin. “I was just wondering.”
“Did you ever see the like?” the other went on truculently.
“No.”
“Ain’t it a beute?”
“Yes.” Kent nodded his head approvingly, intent on humoring this strange visitor, but wholly unprepared for the outburst which was to follow his effort to be agreeable.
“You blasted, bloomin’, burgoo-eatin’ son-of-a-sea-swab! Wot do you mean, a sayin’ the most onsightly thing Gawd Almighty ever put on the face o’ man is a beute? Wot do you mean, you – ”
And thereat this fiery son of the sea broke off into a string of Oriental profanity, mingling gods and devils, lineages and men, metaphors and monsters, with so savage a virility that Jacob Kent was paralyzed. He shrank back, his arms lifted as though to ward off physical violence. So utterly unnerved was he that the other paused in the mid-swing of a gorgeous peroration and burst into thunderous laughter.
“The sun’s knocked the bottom out o’ the trail,” said the Man with the Gash, between departing paroxysms of mirth. “An’ I only ’ope as you’ll appreciate the hoppertunity of consortin’ with a man o’ my mug. Get steam up in that fire-box o’ your’n. I’m goin’ to unrig the dogs an’ grub ’em. An’ don’t be shy o’ the wood, my lad; there’s plenty more where that come from, and it’s you’ve got the time to sling an axe. An’ tote up a bucket o’ water while you’re about it. Lively! or I’ll run you down, so ’elp me!”
Such a thing was unheard of. Jacob Kent was making the fire, chopping wood, packing water – doing menial tasks for a guest! When Jim Cardegee left Dawson, it was with his head filled with the iniquities of this roadside Shylock; and all along the trail his numerous victims had added to the sum of his crimes. Now, Jim Cardegee, with the sailor’s love for a sailor’s joke, had determined, when he pulled into the cabin, to bring its inmate down a peg or so. That he had succeeded beyond expectation he could not help but remark, though he was in the dark as to the part the gash on his cheek had played in it. But while he could not understand, he saw the terror it created, and resolved to exploit it as remorselessly as would any modern trader a choice bit of merchandise.
“Strike me blind, but you’re a ’ustler,” he said admiringly, his head cocked to one side, as his host bustled about. “You never ’ort to ’ave gone Klondiking. It’s the keeper of a pub’ you was laid out for. An’ it’s often as I ’ave ’eard the lads up an’ down the river speak o’ you, but I ’adn’t no idea you was so jolly nice.”
Jacob Kent experienced a tremendous yearning to try his shotgun on him, but the fascination of the gash was too potent. This was the real Man with the Gash, the man who had so often robbed him in the spirit. This, then, was the embodied entity of the being whose astral form had been projected into his dreams, the man who had so frequently harbored designs against his hoard; hence – there could be no other conclusion – this Man with the Gash had now come in the flesh to dispossess him. And that gash! He could no more keep his eyes from it than stop the beating of his heart. Try as he would, they wandered back to that one point as inevitably as the needle to the pole.
“Do it ’urt you?” Jim Cardegee thundered suddenly, looking up from the spreading of his blankets and encountering the rapt gaze of the other. “It strikes me as ’ow it ’ud be the proper thing for you to draw your jib, douse the glim, an’ turn in, seein’ as ’ow it worrits you. Jes’ lay to that, you swab, or so ’elp me I’ll take a pull on your peak-purchases!”
Kent was so nervous that it took three puffs to blow out the slush-lamp, and he crawled into his blankets without even removing his moccasins. The sailor was soon snoring lustily from his hard bed on the floor, but Kent lay staring up into the blackness, one hand on the shotgun, resolved not to close his eyes the whole night. He had not had an opportunity to secrete his five pounds of gold, and it lay in the ammunition box at the head of his bunk. But, try as he would, he at last dozed off with the weight of his dust heavy on his soul. Had he not inadvertently fallen asleep with his mind in such condition, the somnambulic demon would not have been invoked, nor would Jim Cardegee have gone mining next day with a dish-pan.
The fire fought a losing battle, and at last died away, while the frost penetrated the mossy chinks between the logs and chilled the inner atmosphere. The dogs outside ceased their howling, and, curled up in the snow, dreamed of salmon-stocked heavens where dog-drivers and kindred task-masters were not. Within, the sailor lay like a log, while his host tossed restlessly about, the victim of strange fantasies. As midnight drew near he suddenly threw off the blankets and got up. It was remarkable that he could do what he then did without ever striking a light. Perhaps it was because of the darkness that he kept his eyes shut, and perhaps it was for fear he would see the terrible gash on the cheek of his visitor; but, be this as it may, it is a fact that, unseeing, he opened his ammunition box, put a heavy charge into the muzzle of the shotgun without spilling a particle, rammed it down with double wads, and then put everything away and got back into bed.
Just as daylight laid its steel-gray fingers on the parchment window, Jacob Kent awoke. Turning on his elbow, he raised the lid and peered into the ammunition box. Whatever he saw, or whatever he did not see, exercised a very peculiar effect upon him, considering his neurotic temperament. He glanced at the sleeping man on the floor, let the lid down gently, and rolled over on his back. It was an unwonted calm that rested on his face. Not a muscle quivered. There was not the least sign of excitement or perturbation. He lay there a long while, thinking, and when he got up and began to move about, it was in a cool, collected manner, without noise and without hurry.
It happened that a heavy wooden peg had been driven into the ridge-pole just above Jim Cardegee’s head. Jacob Kent, working softly, ran a piece of half-inch manila over it, bringing both ends to the ground. One end he tied about his waist, and in the other he rove a running noose. Then he cocked his shotgun and laid it within reach, by the side of numerous moose-hide thongs. By an effort of will he bore the sight of the scar, slipped the noose over the sleeper’s head, and drew it taut by throwing back on his weight, at the same time seizing the gun and bringing it to bear.
Jim Cardegee awoke, choking, bewildered, staring down the twin wells of steel.
“Where is it?” Kent asked, at the same time slacking on the rope.
“You blasted – ugh – ”
Kent merely threw back his weight, shutting off the other’s wind.
“Bloomin’ – Bur – ugh – ”
“Where is it?” Kent repeated.
“Wot?” Cardegee asked, as soon as he had caught his breath.
“The gold-dust.”
“Wot gold-dust?” the perplexed sailor demanded.
“You know well enough, – mine.”
“Ain’t seen nothink of it. Wot do ye take me for? A safe-deposit? Wot ’ave I got to do with it, any’ow?”
“Mebbe you know, and mebbe you don’t know, but anyway, I’m going to stop your breath till you do know. And if you lift a hand, I’ll blow your head off!”
“Vast heavin’!” Cardegee roared, as the rope tightened.
Kent eased away a moment, and the sailor, wriggling his neck as though from the pressure, managed to loosen the noose a bit and work it up so the point of contact was just under the chin.
“Well?” Kent questioned, expecting the disclosure.
But Cardegee grinned. “Go ahead with your ’angin’, you bloomin’ old pot-wolloper!”
Then, as the sailor had anticipated, the tragedy became a farce. Cardegee being the heavier of the two, Kent, throwing his body backward and down, could not lift him clear of the ground. Strain and strive to the uttermost, the sailor’s feet still stuck to the floor and sustained a part of his weight. The remaining portion was supported by the point of contact just under his chin. Failing to swing him clear, Kent clung on, resolved to slowly throttle him or force him to tell what he had done with the hoard. But the Man with the Gash would not throttle. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and at the end of that time, in despair, Kent let his prisoner down.
“Well,” he remarked, wiping away the sweat, “if you won’t hang you’ll shoot. Some men wasn’t born to be hanged, anyway.”
“An’ it’s a pretty mess as you’ll make o’ this ’ere cabin floor.” Cardegee was fighting for time. “Now, look ’ere, I’ll tell you wot we do; we’ll lay our ’eads ’longside an’ reason together. You’ve lost some dust. You say as ’ow I know, an’ I say as ’ow I don’t. Let’s get a hobservation an’ shape a course – ”
“Vast heavin’!” Kent dashed in, maliciously imitating the other’s enunciation. “I’m going to shape all the courses of this shebang, and you observe; and if you do anything more, I’ll bore you as sure as Moses!”
“For the sake of my mother – ”
“Whom God have mercy upon if she loves you. Ah! Would you?” He frustrated a hostile move on the part of the other by pressing the cold muzzle against his forehead. “Lay quiet, now! If you lift as much as a hair, you’ll get it.”
It was rather an awkward task, with the trigger of the gun always within pulling distance of the finger; but Kent was a weaver, and in a few minutes had the sailor tied hand and foot. Then he dragged him without and laid him by the side of the cabin, where he could overlook the river and watch the sun climb to the meridian.